Archive for March, 2006
March 30, 2006 at 9:38 am · Filed under General
I’m going snowboarding again this weekend. It is the first ever Plaxo company ski trip, and it should be a lot of fun.
The problem though… I broke my binding. I had to get it fixed… yesterday. So after a bit of searching and calling around to REI and Any Mountain, etc… none of them had it together. I called up a place I originally got my gear at… Skate Works in Redwood City. They had the stuff I needed.
First, however, I went to the Mountain View store thinking they had the ski gear there as well. This was just an assumption by me since I work in Mountain View. Nope, they didn’t carry snow gear there. However, some guy, who I think was the owner was really helpful and told me who to talk to in Redwood City. Ok, no problem, I can go there later since I live very close by. Besides, they were the only store that had the bindings I want. So I left work early and go down to the Redwood City store after picking up Aiden. Wow, what a great skate shop. The snow stuff is not a huge department, but they do have quality gear you will ever need… at a really good price. Most importantly, they fixed my old binding for like $10. Fortunately, though, they had the bindings I wanted, on sale for $120… so I bought them. This is better than eBay, craigs, whatever. These guys took care of getting them on the board and were totally helpful. I mean… the people working these stores are a lot nicer and more “with it” by a wide margin compared to the other places.
Overall, Skate Works is highly recommended. I will go their first when I need the right stuff with the right people.
BTW, if you didn’t check the link to Skate Works above, you’ll miss out on their sense of humour.
March 30, 2006 at 9:10 am · Filed under General
I’ve gotten more good feedback on “I told you so” than I’ve had in a long time.
I want to say just this, Thanks.
March 28, 2006 at 11:26 am · Filed under General
One of the things that really irks me… and I don’t know why is the “I told you so” factor. It happens all the time and it really REALLY gets to me.
For example, I was talking to my grandmother, and I explained that she would have to pay X in taxes about a week ago. Today, after she talks to her accountant, she goes… “hey, I have to pay X in taxes”
Here is another example, at work, I will say, “be careful with X, or try this”. Usually, after about a month or longer, I will here them repeat… “hey, I really got burned with X, maybe I should try Y”
Or my buddy Jim will go, “Hey, this .Net thing is great!”, this is after I told him that this stuff was great… much better than C++ for general programming … … like 4 YEARS AGO :-). (He was right, however, that nobody had the .NET runtime. Still his attitude of C# stuff was more of “I don’t know about that stuff, I’m happy here in C++ land”.)
Or my other buddy Jack will recently go, “Hey, this Java stuff is crap.”, this was after I esxplained to him that the J2EE stuff was crap like 6 years ago. He used to talk about N-Tier and anti-patterns, etc. Eventually he turned it around and even took the risky move of going into Ruby.
Side note, I will bet anybody right now that 9 out of 10 people out there who think they understand what it takes to run a big internet service are more wrong than right. In my experience, most internet service people really don’t understand the real patterns about scalability, be it programming, quality, or handling users.
One person I agree with on certain Tech issues, Steve.. nailed it when he told me to read the “Self, Power of Simplicity” paper about 12 years ago. He showed how prototype based languages with a killer runtime could be a great combination. I agreed with this and we both tried to push this idea to others. Everybody balked. Yet, right now, people go… “Hey, this Javascript thing has its problems, but boy am I productive… I’m getting neat things done.” Dave Ungar must be feeling this pain even more than us.
This stuff burns me. It makes me feel as though I’m not even here. I really like giving people the shortcut. I REALLY love to hear the, “damn, dru told me to try Y and guess what, it really fricken worked”. I think I’m some kind of ‘maven’ according to the book, the Tipping Point.
I think this is how my father felt as he watched me grow up. Only now at the ripe old age of 35 do I have some new stuff to offer back to him.
I’ve got to figure this out. I think that when I talk, people just tune me out or something (even in email)… or even this blog
hello! Are you even reading this !?!
March 23, 2006 at 11:56 am · Filed under General
Ok, quick post.
My grandmother was turning 82, and she was going to be in Vegas. Basically, she has been going to the Stardust hotel for over 20 years. She loves the place and knows the people there. I had helped her set up the flights so I planned on coming out on Monday to be with her for her birthday then fly back on Wednesday.
The Good - Southwest is a great and inexpensive airline. The Las Vegas airport has free WiFi - very nice! Even the hotel had WiFi for 24 hours for only $15.00 a day. This is not bad for a place that charges $2.50 for a muffin. Some of the sites and sounds… the people watching… pure entertainment. The iPod I bought really saved my sanity in those situations where you just have to wait when traveling.
The Bad & Ugly - Casinos are filled with smoke. Everyplace just reeks.
They are going to knock down the Stardust this year, so that part of Vegas will now be gone.
March 23, 2006 at 11:41 am · Filed under General
According to Mark Jen, I have just started my Plaxo employee blog. 
This is true on a time scale for continental drift, but in reality I started my blog a little over 2 years ago. Although I have been working as a software engineer at Plaxo for over 3 years, I’ve rarely posted about it. This was not a conscious effort. I just post about personal ideas. Occasionally, Plaxo and those ideas will intersect, but not often.
This is a good time, though, to reflect on the blog and how it has done. First off, the blog is just a simple thing for me to discuss or comment on things that me or my friends may find interesting. From that point of view, it has worked well. Eventually, I was going to move my home page over here and move off of redwoodsoft.com. I think I’ll start doing that. So, today I think I will change the theme and add a few links on the sidebar.
If you have any comments about the blog, send me an email.
March 23, 2006 at 11:12 am · Filed under General
My buddy Jack, published another O’Reilly book called PHP Hacks
. When he was writing the book, he asked people to contribute a hack or two. I worked hard a few months back and wrangled a ‘hack’ out. It was a way to generate a Flash app using Ming in PHP. Specifically, I would generate a Flash applet that would have some ActionScript (aka Javascript) that would then call back to another URL to grab some XML data. The end result was an animated bar chart of the data. It was fun to make it all work and a great reward to see my name on that ‘hack’ in the book. Thanks Jack!
March 20, 2006 at 12:08 am · Filed under General
See for your self.
March 17, 2006 at 8:08 pm · Filed under General
Last weekend’s boarding was great! I took the Honda Pilot up to Tahoe, and wow … no need for chains! So good. The destination was Sugar Bowl.
Anyways, the mountain was in great shape. Not overly powdery, not beaten down. There was occasional sun followed by snow every 20 or 30 minutes. When I got there, I met up with my pal who was going to board with me that day… Stewart C. He was the guy who got me into boarding 8 years ago. I’m still using the Burton Air that I bought of him.
As I did each run, I would complain about my bindings. They were getting a bit old and the right foot toe strap was complicated to get on because of a hack done by the previous owner It worked great, it was just a bitch to get on. Anyways, all is good and neither of us wipes out too bad. Then on the 9th or 10th run… just before I get the strap on.. the binding broke! The plastic was just too old and it cracked apart. No more boarding for the day. The bindings couldn’t be repaired. I had to hike up to the main lift (man, I’m way out of shape), and let the ski patrol do the ‘download’ at around 2:30 PM. I was ok with it. The weather was getting worse and I was getting tired anyways.
Overall: total success!
Next trip: 2 weeks
Next goal: get goggles AND new bindings
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