The Insomniac Coder

The dark secret of software development in the DC metro area is that it is harder to recruit for good programmers than what it takes to write the actual code. I really feel the pain for anyone struggling with recruiting for programmers in this town. My employer, who runs the most kickass, greatest little web shop in the DC Metro area, is now looking for one or more programmers to add to our band of misfits. This is a permanent, full-time (not contract) position. The company is based in the DC metro area with locations in Old Town Alexandria , Fairfax, Reston, Baltimore and the Maryland backwoods where the Blair Witch is rumored to still be roaming about. This is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national orgin, marital status, age, disability, disabled veteran, Vietnam era or other eligible veteran status. What we want: “ Programmers ” that grok programming, not somebody that is proficient in one language and c...

Well, not really. I was activating a replacement check card and about to go through my usual card destruction routine (file off the magnetic strip , file off the signature strip, cut the card into little bits, melt the whole damn thing) when I got curious as to what I could find with the microscope: The main number at 10x Center of Master Card hologram at 150x.  Signature strip at 150x. Notice the overlap of the signature lines, whenever signing a card I always feel like the strip is too hard and it won't take the ink , but obviously the material handles the ink perfectly, this card was signed at least two years ago and the ink looks pristine. 

These are my first attempts at micro photography, thanks to my new toy : US quarter US quarter Gap on Army ID tag, this was the result of my near electrocution many years ago.  6mm screw 6mm screw head 6mm screw thread McDonnald's French fry US dime Amazon Kindle 3 e-ink screen 24" Samsung LCD Casio AWG -100 Casio AWG-100 Casio AWG-100 US dime US dime US dime US dime US dime US current $5 note US current $5 note Nail scissors

How Pee Helps Us Understand Social Media The biggest problem I am having with this whole social media freakout is companies freaking out about it. People, on the other hand, are doing exactly what was expected with these new technologies. The problem with the companies is that they are too willing to shell out money to snake oil peddlers calling themselves social media experts, who are then tasked with shaping their "social media strategy." 99% of the time this means adding a  Facebook  group, a Twitter account, buttons to follow twitter and friend on Facebook on the corporate site, and telling everyone in the company to sign up for a LinkedIn account. When you go to their website, there's a link that says that they are on Facebook. When you visit their Facebook page, it is empty except for links back to the site, and a bunch of useless drivel, wall posts, like messages, etc. When you go to their Twitter, all you see is a bunch of regurgitated content ...

Amazon is usually good enough about their "are you interested ..." emails as to make them creepy, but I was more than a little pleased to see them screw it up at least once: Out of 8 games suggested, 3 had been already sold back to Amazon through their trade-in program. The fourth game that I highlighted was purchased from Amazon under the same account that received the email. Two of the highlighted games had been originally purchased through the same account that received the email. A "civilian" would go "well, how the hell are they supposed to account for THAT" but this being Amazon, I am sure that it is possible for them to add purchased and traded items as exclusion criteria to the queries used to mine for our emails. I am 49% sure that everyone received the same list of games, but these being so popular maybe it would had been a better idea to refine the criteria a bit more.

My new monitor is a real monitor instead of an  HDTV  (amazing how a 24" HD screen without analog inputs or ATSC tuner is so much cheaper than a 23" HDTV of the same product series), so I just got a Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System with Subwoofer , an impulse buy and at $23 I didn't think much of it. I didn't even finish reading the product page. The system arrived today, and it came with this little doodad: This little pod is a combination of: Power switch Headphone jack extension Microphone jack extension Volume knob I have been using it for maybe an hour, and I can't understand why every PC doesn't come with a pod like this.The two speakers sound like two tiny speakers, no surprise there. The sub-woofer actually sounds pretty cool, even better considering the whole thing cost $23 including free shipping. 

Image by Eexlebots via Flickr Should Younger Developers Be Paid More? : "jammag writes "A project manager describes facing an upset senior developer who learned that a new hire — a fresh college grad — would be making 30 percent more than him. The reason: the new grad knew a hot emerging technology that a client wanted. Yes, the senior coder was majorly pissed off. But with the constant upheaval in new technology, this situation is almost unavoidable — or is it? And at any rate, is it fair?" Sorry buddy, this is why you never want to know what others are making within your company. What you do want to know is how your salary places within the median for your locality for your field. If you are at the median or above, STFU and keep a low profile. If you are under the median, then you are underpaid. You will need to decide what to do about it, be it ask for a raise, make a move for a promotion or get a job elsewhere. What the other guy makes plays nothing into this. ...

Go ahead and roll your eyes if you have sat in this meeting already: Extra points if you remember sitting in this exact meeting, but about SEO instead of social media . Do you ever wonder what gives these people the right to call themselves experts? WTF is a SEO expert? Is it a guy with 20 years of experience in SEO? Did this field exist 20 years ago? 10? 5? Under that standard, should I call myself a Caffeination Expert? Is there some enterprising dumbass out there selling other dumbasses a certification test that lets them use the SEO expert title just for passing a test? Is there such a thing for social media too? Related articles by Zemanta SEO & Integration With Social Media (webguild.org) Optimize Your Social Media and Make Your SEO More Social (harpsocial.com)

This is really cool: you can tell in the middle picture that the plane was on fire before the debris cloud even touched it: This is because of the pulse of heat generated by the explosion. Related articles by Zemanta Kablam! (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

Image via Wikipedia Wanna know how you know you're old? My high school drafting classes were all done with mechanic pencil, on proper paper and drafting tables. Worse, we were the last class in my university to train in paper drafting for our engineering drawing courses, we were the pilot class for ACAD, the next class was 50/50, and the "kids" that arrived two years later did all their coursework in ACAD. My favorite part was watching people do some sloppy shiat thinking nobody could tell just by looking at the screen. You can easily grade paper drawings by looking at the smoothness of the pencil lines , but on screen all you see is a straight line. The trick is to have the student send the drawing to a pen plotter , if the student did something stupid, it will show up when the pen plotter draws it. For example, curve transitions that are not snapped properly, chamfers, compound curves, or even lines that don't connect properly. Related articles by Zemanta A...

Image by pvera via Flickr This is a pretty good read. People still have this mindset that military service is where you go to when you can't cut it anywhere else and you only expect three warm meals and a cot. This may have been the truth many years ago, but it is nowhere close to reality . For example, the military is now delaying basic training to some people by up to 14 months. When I enlisted in 1992 my " delayed entry program " lasted about two months. In my case it was simple: they couldn't send me to basic training because I would graduate before my advanced class started, so there was no point in having me pass basic training, only to ride a mop bucket and a lawn mower for a couple months until the next advanced class started. It was a money decision. People don't understand it is a numbers game . Recruiters are sales people with quotas. Notice in the article a recruiter even uses the phrase "quality numbers." The way the quota is structur...

Fred Gwinne as Herman Munster I feel like Dr. Frankenstein , and my monster is not very scary and more than a bit goofy-looking. And every time the customer bounces back the image with even more changes I imagine her (the customer, not my PM) as Rennfield (yea, I know, different story) as the one asking for the changes: Tom Waits as Rennfield "Master, Master, please move the Chinese text a tad more to the right, and make the chain logo a tiny bit smaller and move the ball with the other text to the other side of the kid with his head's chopped off..." And yea, I just described word-for-word something I just did to a banner. 

Would somebody care to explain to me how it came for me to daydream about this: Ferrari 599 GTO To actually shop around for something like this: Chevrolet Suburban And no, it has nothing to do with the money. And no, it has nothing to do with parenthood, two of the three sports cars I have owned were as a father (PJ was born while I was the owner of Miata #2), and the main reason for getting rid of my Miata was when my then new job dropped my weekly driving average from 300+ miles per week to less than 50 per month. We are talking daydreaming here, why would I just stop fantasizing about fast and dangerous cars and instead start shopping for a bigger SUV ?