Archive for the ‘Work’ Category
To alias or not to alias, that is the question
Posted by: jeffro in Technology, Web, Work on April 12th, 2011
I have a good number of servers I have to keep track of at work, and they all have rather long domain names, and I really haven’t gotten used to the subnetting at my job yet. So what is one to do? Well, I did what any concerned Linux user would do, I aliased all of then in my hosts file. Sort of like this:
192.168.125.133 dev1 192.168.125.137 dev2 10.6.8.201 uat1 10.6.8.202 uat2
I can hear you say already, “Jeff, just memorize them, there are only 4!”, yeah, ok, this is only about 1/16 of the aliases I have, so that becomes a bit more difficult. So here is my conundrum, do I continue with the aliases, or do I go cold-turkey and try to memorize them. The upside of aliasing is that I can fly when I am at my machine, its a no brainer to scp or ssh to a machine, but then I look like a total retard when I am at someone else’s computer, “What do you mean you don’t know the IP or domain name of your dev server!?”.
So therein lies the subject of my pondering..
A solution of sorts
A reoccurring issue with web development has always been cross-browser checking. Does the site work and layout correctly in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Opera, blah blah. A huge problem with doing all my development on Linux is that I can’t easily check Internet Explorer on Windows. Most of the rest of my team also decline to use Windows and most of them use Apple (a whole other debate, but I will skip that for now). Our clients are totally Window’s shops so this presents a problem. We have tried running VM’s locally, but this has its own issues such as resource usage on your local machine. You start up a VM and watch all your RAM go bye bye.
The solution I have for this now, which seems to work alright, is to run another box with a decent amount of RAM and let everyone RDP into it for testing. This coupled with the virtual machines that Microsoft provides for testing has been working very well.
Do you ever get the feeling?
Posted by: jeffro in Programming, Rants, Work on March 8th, 2011
I have been working to implement a Google custom search engine into a clients website. I have had to pour through the documentation to fully understand how it works and I am both impressed and revolted simultaneously. I keep getting the feeling that this stuff was originally developed by people that are obscenely smarter than I am. Its obviously brilliant, but like any brilliance, its usually offset by some other glaring omission.
First off, the search API from Google. Why is the primary search API deprecated and the recommended replacement not even out of labs yet? So let me get this straight, I can either use the API that will EOL’d at some unknown time by Google without warning, or I can use the unstable labs API that could and most likely will change in the future. Sounds like a call from the client complaining that their site is broken just waiting to happen.
Second, the API is written in a way that leaves massive holes of undocumented functionality. Usually when you document an API you include ALL the functionality so people can fully utilize all the features. So I am continually finding blogs and other bastions of literary excellence revealing ‘hidden’ features of the Google search API. I have implemented a fair amount of the code I have found on these sites and I am still flabbergasted as to why Google would just leave this stuff out of their documentation.
I am going to be writing up an article on implementing a Google custom search engine over the next few days, one, so I can remember if I have to do it again in the future, good documentation is sparse on this subject, and two so others can refer to it and hopefully avoid some of the frustration I have gone through to get this to work.
These are not the same
I have been coding for over a decade now and one thing about other coders has never ceased to annoy me. In defense of my rant, I present two snippets of HTML code, see if you can pick out the difference and the source of my exasperation, I’ll leave it up to you to make the determination as to which is the good and which is bad:
<div id="content"> <div id="content-wrapper"> <h1 class="layout-indent">Page Title</h1> <div class="separator thick-separator"> <div class="thick-separator-cap thick-separator-left-cap"> </div> <div class="thick-separator-cap thick-separator-right-cap"> </div> </div> <div class="layout-indent"> <div class="yui3-g"> <div class="yui3-u-1-3"> <a href="#" class="link action-link ">Filler Text....<br /> <img class="link-arrow" src="img.png" alt="" /> </a> <div class="clear"> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>
<div id="content"><div id="content-wrapper"> <h1 class="layout-indent">Page Title</h1> <div class="separator thick-separator"> <div class="thick-separator-cap thick-separator-left-cap"> </div> <div class="thick-separator-cap thick-separator-right-cap"> </div></div><div class="layout-indent"> <div class="yui3-g"><div class="yui3-u-1-3"> <a href="#" class="link action-link ">Filler Text.... <br /><img class="link-arrow" src="img.png" alt="" /></a> <div class="clear"> </div></div></div></div></div></div>
The structure of these snippets is identical, they probably layout the same between browsers too. I guarantee you that if anyone ever had to make a change, the first one would be far and away easier to change. So why do people still insist on editing spaghetti code? This isn’t just an HTML issue, it happens in every coding language I have ever encountered. I just want to say to people, “Would it kill you to use the tab and enter key from time to time?”, its as if not indenting their code will somehow make them work faster. “Look boss, I saved 2.78 seconds last week, by not formatting my code!!” In my opinion it really shows that someone [programmer] has pride in their work if they spend the extra few minutes documenting and formatting their code.
You can never really escape it
I enjoy running Linux, not only because I am sort of a fanboy about it, but I have been running it long enough to be much more proficient in it when compared to anything else. There are things that drive me nuts about it, just there are with anything. In my job, I am a front-end/UI developer. Not a designer, mind you, I am not terribly good at dreaming up good user interfaces, but I am good at implementing them. This is in the web-based world also I have to add. So that brings me to the biggest gripe I have about my profession, browser differences, or more specifically Internet Explorer.
I have the pleasure of being able to run Linux on my workstation, but I still have to keep a Window partition around so I can reboot occasionally and check my work in Internet Explorer. Usually there aren’t a lot of issues to correct for it to layout right in IE, but sometime there are major problems and I find myself spending the whole day in Windows. *sigh… I guess you can never really escape
There’s nothing like…
There’s nothing like, fixing a huge bug in a nationally visible app that has stumped developers both in the US and India…that I introduced. 
Should I be proud, or hiding under my desk?
You don’t know how much junk you have until you move
Here is the situation, I need to move a website running from server A to server B. Server A is starting to show its age and need some upgrades (hard drives, RAM, and OS). I needed to move a very important web site from server A to server B, so we can take down A for an extended period of time. So after using my best buddy rsync, all the files are in place on server B, all I need to do is point all the services that used to point to server A now will be pointed at server B. Easy right?
Try number 1; Rsynced all files to server B, flipped the switch and realized that something was wrong with the SMTP server, and I would need to flip it back to make the corrections. 1 day lost..
Try number 2; Rsynced all files to server B (there are people actively adding files to this server throughout the day); flipped the switch, and realized that I never installed a custom backup program that was running on server A, crap, I can’t find the source, flip it back to do some searching. Another day lost..
Try number 3; Flipped the switch, then found that the version of PHP installed on the new server had some issues with the CMS software, and I forgot to rsync the files over before I flipped the switch, crap! Flip it back to do some research on the issue. 1 week lost while I tracked down the issue with PHP 5..
Try number 4; Rsynced all the files to server B, flipped the switch…waited for the other shoe to drop…crawled out from under my desk and looked around, everything was running, nothing was broken..I am fully up and running on server B now.
I really should have written down everything that was required since I am going to have to move the site back to server A soon…
Going to work is a distraction
Kevin Purdy sums up why going to work is basically a distraction. Watch the video here
In the first 30 seconds he essentially summed up my day. Come to work…ramp up..meeting…ramp back up…conference call…lunch…ramp back up…phone call….ramp back up…someone stops by my cube…ramp back up…?…actually do some work for the last hour of the day.
I remember the days when I would get into the zone and work for hours..during the day of all times..and the meetings were like once a week at the beginning. Good ole’ i(dont)Care days..right Rich? Well..some of us rightfully stayed in development, others just wish we had. 
Common meeting where I work
I promise I won’t post too many Dilbert comics on the site, but this one was entirely too true…
Tech support
Posted by: jeffro in Technology, Work on February 2nd, 2009
I have come to the conclusion that we, as IT persons, are perceived as pricks to the general population. I think that this is a rightly applied label too. I was on the phone today with a vendor and a tech support individual to ‘help’ me decide what product would best suit my needs. This individual was quite used to stringing together sentences of technical jargon only loosely related in that it was technical jargon. The conversation began politely enough but after about 30 seconds I could tell that we were going nowhere very quickly. After a few more minute of endless circling about technologies I am positive are not found on the planet Earth, I ended the conversation by hanging up on the conference call. I emailed the vendor to tell them I could not continue due to a stroke I suffered during the phone conversation. He understood and wished me a speedy recovery.
…and I never did figure out what I needed
