Felocity

I finally got a set of pictures done for my house. You can get a glance at the new house over at the House on Sonoma Image Gallery. We have a yard, a back yard, a porch, a garage... we have a complete house.

You'll notice in a few of the pictures of my room there are not one, but two monitors. After going so long at work with a second monitor, I became very dependant on that screen space. I don't just mean virtual space either. Changing resolution or using a Virtual Desktop Manager isn't the same. There is no substitute for 2048 x 768. I never used to understand why people went so gaga-crazy over the Apple Studio Displays- now I do. It's not about resolution. It's about physical dimensional space. The ability to run multiple things maximized side by side and solve the problem where applications were meant to be ran full screen. Now it can run full screen, and you have a whole other screen, It is truly beautiful.…

It's very nice to have alternatives on the IRC market, especially for windows. With mIRC being exploit prone, bulky, weighted, and sluggish while X-Chat gives the GPL the middle finger (and its developers who contributed as well). Suffice to say, the number of powerful and robust IRC clients for Windows designed for heavy use just went from two to zero. That's what I thought until I came across a powerful Windows IRC client called Klient. Klient is a for-pay IRC solution that gives mIRC a run for its money- literally. Well developed with many of the features in mind that people want from an IRC client, and a scripting language that is perfect in many ways, supporting PERL, Python, TCL, and VisualBasic all via a set of predefined hooks and an in-program script editor and syntax checker! Usually, I am pretty opposed to paying for an IRC client. I already paid once for mIRC (oh so long ago), have Trillian Pro, and have Gaim. However, none of these have native nickserv support, do well across 10-12 channels, and provide a well developed community. I'm still waiting on my registration code, but that's okay. Klient proved within the first 15 minutes of use that it was worth the $25 price tag.

We finally have DSL at home, which means I can begin to tackle the dozens of little projects that have been pooling. I think I will start tonight by uploading the new house pictures. Plus, I need them online soon so that I can show everyone back home what our place looks like. I figure between this, Super Mario RPG, some work on my web site redesign, and my programming for tonight, I've got a means to keep myself busy until it is time to go to bed.…

I didn't really think this was needed, but apparently I should stick a giant disclaimer on all my posts related to work. Since this is a personal web site, and I use it every bit as much for venting as I do discussion and collaboration, there will always be a mix of annoyance stirred in with discussions regarding current strategy, methods, and execution of things here at work. This blog serves secondarily as a reminder to myself about the problems I've had at the workplace, so that I can look back on, reflect, and learn from those experiences.

That all said, only one thing remains: These are the words of Jakob Heuser, and are not reflective of the opinions of MPSC, NPS, or the HSDL Project. If they were, they would probably be internal, classified, and I would be unable to write them here, in a personal blog, on the Internet. I don't know who would hold my words as the word of a project (especially since I am a lowly Webb Developer), but since that possibility is there, this needs to be out there. Additionally, pay no mind to the time associated with what few work posts you might see. b2evolution records the time you click "new post", not the time you hit submit. Many of these entries were typed on my lunch break, or after I had completed the day's work- placing it on my own time. I think that's everything...you may now continue with your regular readings.…

It's so hard to be without Internet- although this has forced me to do other things with my time (including the all important "unpacking" part). I've got both before and after pictures of my place, but thanks to the lack of said Internet, I've been unable to place the pictures up.

The move is going supurb, thanks for asking, and things are slowly begining to settle down. Tonight I fully intend to take advantage of our working fridge and acquire some hot-Albertson's-grocery action. As much as I enjoy not cooking, it has been placing a bit of a strain on my resources. I must also acquire an S-Video cable and finish wiring my room. It's been "almost done" for a while now. Last (but certainly not least) I need to sit down and do some heavy ideation on an actual logo for felocity.org. The site is coming up on redesign time, and I think it is about time to make some major changes. I'm not sure yet if I would completely restructure things, or if I would. Part of me thinks of taking advantage of the power of subdomains to seperate everything into nice pretty sub-sites. Of course, this also begs the question of "okay, now what?" which I hope to answer with enough time. Currently, I am toying with 1) restructuring my blog to be much more blog-like, 2) making the archives actually functional, 3) moving the portfolio and files to a single seperate subdomain, 4) power ALL of it by b2. I gave a long and hard look at the Mojavi framework (thanks 72) but I just didn't want to do something from scratch when well established solutions are out there.…

Often times, management that doesn't have much experience with technology will take the path of "hack" before "track" in their development, which I don't agree with in the least. You can't build features on bad infrastructure. Anything you build on a faulty foundation will become almost completely worthless should you ever change the underlying layers. So what does this tie back to? Well, a while ago, I talked about delivering an actual product versus consulting and hacking in a solution.

When I settle in on a project, it needs to be done right. It's great when you get something that works, but in the long run, you need to finish it. There are manuals, documentation, standards that are a bare minimum necessity of handing something off to another person. So then, what exactly does a product "have"? In my mind, something you have as a deliverable needs to have at the very least a complete product. All facets of the item need to be complete, and the entire item must have a polished look and feel. The second piece of a finished product is installation information. If it is a single exe, a setup file, or something naturally intuitive, that's fine. If it's a list of copy and configure instructions, that's okay too. Even a readme.txt, install.txt, or instructions.doc would be of value. If you don't know how to install the product, how do you install it again if you ever need to? The final thing any product should have is usage documentation. How does it function, how does it work, what does it do? Most every product comes with some kind of manual detailing how to carry out certain tasks. These three things make for a complete deliverable product. I had to supply such things for my Senior Project, and I supplied them when I was at ASAP.…

When Gaia is down, the computer is too slow to do work, the Internet is quiet, and it's only eleven at night- I write. We got to see the house today and I will be putting up pictures into my photo site for people to see as soon as possible. We got our key, and are going to try and make most of the move this weekend. If everything goes well, we will move just about everything over the weekend, meaning computer as well. The new place is wonderful- more than enough room for us, lots of yard space, and when we get our wireless access point, I fully intend to kick back on our porch, outside in the sunny Monterey breeze, and make with the Gaia joy.

I'm also seeking a decent comic shop here in the Monterey area. I am lacking my fix on the Fables series by Bill Willingham, and I know there are chapters coming out as I write this. I am currently resigned to Borders for the books when they come out. This is clearly not sufficient for me, as I crave this plot. Additionally, I'm a book behind in Blue Monday, and this annoys me more so, as there is nowhere to get this. The closest we have to a comic store is a place called the Gamekeeper. The last time I went there was 2 years ago. It has an odor of fanboy, and the guy who was behind the counter thought he was God's gift to gaming while he peddled d20s on unsuspecting children, I have a feeling he has been taking pride in his elite geekism since the days marvel was "underground", so I'm sure he'll still be there. Which of course, is also why I will never set foot in there again in the near future.…