Nelz' Blog

Live Code

First, let me make the following announcement:

Widgetbox.com's new homepage was released today!

Now, I have a confession to make... I realized that this is the first time in my (paid) career that I've had any code of mine out and in the wild for public consumption.

I've had side project code get released (like here or here or here), but never anything that I've worked on 'professionally'.

My pre-Web work at Eclipse Inc was a large application that you interacted with via (mostly) dumb terminals, with a whopping 24 X 80 character resolution. It was a hard-goods distribution application, which my grandmother would have no hope of ever accessing.

At ICAT, it was all web applications though they weren't for public consumption, just for internal or partner usage.

At PlanetOut/Gay.com we were rewriting Gay.com. My code there will be released into the wild soon, but it isn't scheduled to happen for at least another month or two.

So, this leaves Widgetbox. I got to write some of the code facilitating the different modules on the home page, such as the "Hidden Gems" or "New and Notable" or "Hottest Widgets".

It's pretty cool, because I think my Widgetbox stuff could pass the "Grandmother Test".

Posted at 10:36PM Apr 21, 2008 by Nelson "Nelz" Carpentier in General  |  Comments[0]

Ruffled My Feathers

Vendor Relations

The other day we met with a vendor who was proposing that we use their paradigm-shifted product. I'm okay with the vendor in general, and actually I kind of like their product.

But, I asked some questions that the Sales dude cast as tactical rather than strategic, and basically said I shouldn't worry about the tactical issues. After chewing on the conversation a bit, I'm gonna say "No!" Yeah, so my questions were tactical, but if the developers can't easily simulate a scaled-down version of the production environment, then your product actually does lose value to me. (In the end though, their product can easily scale down.)

Now, allow me to vent on another tangent... Hey "Sales Guys", I do not need you. Gimme a "Sales Engineer" any day... (One that is actually technical, BTW...) I can talk to those people. However, when a "Sales Guy" comes in with hyper-tanned leathery skin and mega-sun-bleached hair, talkin' all smarmy-like... I just wanna kick them in the shins and tell them to get out of my face. In my experience, "Sales Guys" like this are nothing but liars and over-promisers, to both the customers and to the actual engineers he is representing.

Framework Support

I've had a question posted to the Spring Framework Support Forums for a couple of weeks now. Yet, no authoritative member has responded... The only traffic at this point is myself and another guy who is also trying to figure out the same stuff.

I think I came up with a viable solution and posted it on that thread... But, it will (probably) be a couple of months before I get to experiment with it directly at work... But when I do, I'll try to remember to post my findings.

Posted at 11:33AM Apr 21, 2008 by Nelson "Nelz" Carpentier in General  |  Comments[0]