Older blog entries for ErikLevy (starting at number 187)

I am way too busy. The company is redesigning (ahem, I'm leading the redesigning of) its network security architecture and authentication system. This is good because we are gaining more control over what gets through the network but unfortunately it coincides with the company's products that I lead development and sales of having a huge sales increase and thus pulling me in two pieces.

There are also so many other pressures at the moment that it seems like the day just doesn't end. I know this phase will pass but it is unlikely for it to get less busy versus actually just increasing more for various reasons.

P.S. raph something is wrong with the logout code. When using IE 5.5 (which is patched), it sometimes logs me out and sometimes doesn't. It may be IE specific but it may not be...I wonder if any other users have this problem?

Thanks to everyone who congratulated me on my engagement. I feel very lucky to have found someone who understands my particular quirks and even thinks they are a positive quality. (Note: It is totally fine to laugh at oneself in public as long as they realize you are trying to be funny ...)

On to other things (because my life is revolving enough around the marriage ceremony that I don't need to clog this space with it too)!

I had an interesting conversation with someone about infrastructure development and the fact that it isn't easy to do well and too many people think they know how to do it than the IQ curves allow. Seriously, major companies are having problems with this area and open source is playing an important part in the overall development. As it always has. I didn't say it was an easy way to make a living though.

Till later.

Word from the kingdom tells the tale that I am now engaged. It seems the story rings true.

In other words, I'm getting hitched boys and girls.

Things have been busy at work. Thus, I have felt like I have had little time to update my diary here.

All in all, everything is going fine. I have both been learning some new techniques through research and working hard to finish an in-house application and get ready for featuritis to start on some of our e-business applications.

Do you feel the heat on your face? That's the speeding electrons coming at you through your view screen. Thanks to that device, you can read my thoughts of the public moment.

Work has been going well. After speedy development, a slow down when the heavy stuff hit and then a pick up as the pieces fell into place, I am in a better place psychologically for finishing this large application.

I still think there is another week left but that's about it. I also think some other projects are just around the bend, which will be pleasant enough.

I wonder how difficult it is to migrate to the Apache 2.0 server module framework...I have heard that the speed up will not be that significant for popular UNIX based platforms. But without any empirical testing done, I will have to wait and see.

Spring is almost here. Now can you figure out my geographic location from that?

The application project is coming along well. Just adding in the last pieces that the users will need for most operations. Then the secondary features will be built in. Once all the above are completed, a demonstration to all involved will be commenced and any additional features or adjustments will occur.

Hopefully I will get this baby off my hands in the next two weeks. Then we have a rigorous testing period and then hopefully another product will be out in the land of users.

While this product is for in-house use only, it has a significant impact on the e-business infrastructure here at this company. The external and internal become the same thing in a new package in the world of digital.

Went away on a mini-vacation, that was definitely nice.

I have been writing code at both the low level bits and bytes level and the higher level 'object' level. It's extremely important to understand when one approach, say memory management of the heap versus GC is the best trade off for a given project. How many times have I heard, "I don't like GC because it is slow" or "Why would I want to bother managing memory when I need this to work now."

The truth is that, like the projects that many of us have to deal with, trade offs always exist and being closed minded is going to hurt you rather than help you many times.

Since software is by definition flexible, projects always evolve and the most difficult aspect can be just to predict where a project is going to lead.

Unfortunately, as the US stock market shows, we humans are not necessarily very good at predicting.

Lets see, revenue is up several times more than expected at the company, I have about 60 items on my to-do list at work, and I feel a bit 'energized ' for some reason today.

All in all, I'm in a great mood. Things are coming together quite well indeed.

I have been around and even visiting advogato, but I haven't felt I've had the time to write. I'm still developing administration tools to make my and everyone else's life easier at the company.

The problem is that there are a lot of tools that would do things a lot faster, which also means it takes the time to prototype, build, test and maintain more and more pieces of software. Since I'm a limit resource, this all takes a bit of time to get done. The benefit is that once they are done, I should have more time to do other things.

I went to San Francisco on business on the day SFO (the airport by the city) had a shoe bomber who walked away. While I was not delayed, I saw on the local news there that a lot of people were (like several thousands).

Also, I didn't feel that safe when the pilot turned on the com unit and said that there aren't any delays at the airport you are going to because someone had bomb chemicals on their shoes, but they can't find them, so after rescreening everyone, things appear safe. Since that was the first I heard of the incident, I wasn't too pleased.

Otherwise though, the trip was a success and drummed up business for the company's products which I lead the development on and manage.

All and in all, everything is sort of the same but a little better. I like the sound of that.

Well, DNS went out and cause all sorts of problems. Got that back up and things are happy again. Luckily, clients never noticed from their end.

I made some changes to the credit interfaces. That wasn't to hard. Now I'm working on some needed admin tools that I've wanted for a few months.

Other

Wrote some C code last night, and that went well. Also worked on some math stuff. That went well too. I'm expecting to finish the current C stuff in the next two weeks. Then I'll start the more complex software develop part.

I have to say I like things about C better than Java, but I miss the OO stuff from a conceptual part. C++ has advantages and disadvantages in these areas as well.