Well, last week was another PGA Championship. It represents the climax of our season, and our work, every summer. I’m very proud of this site. I didn’t design it, but my team and I built virtually all the infrastructure that made it possible. We podcasted. I’m certain that is really cool, and it’s neat to see the podcast show up in the iTunes Music Store, even if it was after the event.
I can't easily explain how stressful this week is for me every year. If any of the software, or any of the servers fail, it is my responsibility, through millions of page views and thousands of updates. I enter a zone for that week that I wouldn't want to be in all the time. On Monday, when they finished the tournament due to bad weather on Sunday, I saw the single fastest minute by minute increase in traffic I've ever seen in my career. I wish I could post the graphical representation of that traffic surge here. It pushed our server farm to it's limits, we started to saturate the available pipe we had to work with, and just when it seemed like we might be in trouble, the tournament ended and the traffic subsided.
This week, I slowly emerge from the mode I was in. I'm hoping to update more here starting today. I'm hoping to see my friends more often for the rest of the summer. Finally, I am hoping to take some time off and go somewhere new and adventurous for me. The roller coaster ride is over, for this year at least.
Cam and Damien are the Blogger Twins. I’ve known these guys for a while now, and I have watched the Amazing Race religiously for the last few seasons. I think they would be great for the show, and I am not just saying that because I want to be able to say I know someone on the Race. They are quality people, and I don’t say that lightly. Here’s hoping that the producers of the show get it.
Apple Mighty Mouse. Get this, it looks like a one button mouse, but it’s not a one button mouse. Designed to work with Tiger, it’s a four button. Update: Here’s a hands on review with pictures, it looks like I will be buying one of these.
Mark Cuban puts the smack down out there with The definition of insanity.. The Music Industry. This might just be the best comprehensive review of why and how the music industry, and more specifically the RIAA, don’t seem to understand basic economics, or the model their industry is shifting to specifically.
Best of Dashboard for web developers edition lists some excellent widgets for the Web person. I have really not gotten too enamored with Dashboard. It takes forever to load. I swear I can command-tab over to my web browser and grab whatever information I am seeking faster on the Web itself. That is not to say that the potential of Dashboard is lost on me. I think I might use it more when it works well.
For one such as myself who enjoys an egg and cheese sandwich better than virtually all other foodstuffs, the Back to Basics Egg and Muffin Toaster looks like it could be the world’s most perfect kitchen appliance. I’m wondering how hard to clean this bad boy will be. Guess I have to wait until September to find out.
HP no longer doing the iPod thing. I have no idea what “great products” Greg is referring to that HP makes in his post. Seems to me that they don’t make high quality anything anymore. I could be wrong.
A Microsoft developer’s first impressions of IE7. His comments about their tabbed browser implementation are not particularly encouraging. I giggled a little at his comments at the end of his post. He obviously hasn’t used a browser that supports tabs previous to this test drive.
Dave Chappelle loves World of Warcraft. I don’t blame Dave. I confess that I too love this video game, perhaps a little more than I should. I have played this game more than any other game I have ever played over the last eight months. Lately, I have realized that I need to tone it down a bit, as I have been dedicating many nights to playing the game that I used to dedicate to other things. This should take care of itself with the start of two softball leagues this week and the advent of the super busy season at work.
SiliconBeat: Behold, the new Yahoo Mail. I was one of the early users/subscribers to Oddpost. It was, for it’s time, an incredible Web application. Since Yahoo bought Oddpost, I’ve been wondering what they were going to do with the technology. Well, the news looks good, although I have not been a tester or anything, so I have no hands on experience to base my enthusiasm on.
Tonight is the monthly meeting of The Atlanta Flickr Meetup Group, which , as far as I know, is the oldest group of Flickr users who actually meet IRL. In addition, Lori’s monthly Atlanta blogger get together/drink off is tonight. We have combined these into one uber meeting/rumble. Should be fun and interesting. Come out to the Highlander at 7:30 tonight and join us for some social fun afk. Directions and all the information you need are on the page linked above.
Mr. Gruber does a fine job of analyzing the situation. “The question is not whether sales are going to be hurt; the question is how badly. Especially as we get closer to the release of Intel-based Macs next year, sales are going to drop.”
Google Sitemap Protocol. It’s interesting because this is somewhat similar, albeit simpler, to a personal project I had been working on. I’ve been working on defining an XML standard for modeling and prototyping Web sites. Although the intended usage is very different, both take advantage of the generally hierarchical nature of Web sites. Hopefully, I will make more progress on my project now that Google got me thinking about it again.
Well, a 24 hour site outage that started early Monday morning came to end last night. Over the last day, lots of ideas and opinions about Apple deciding to switch to Intel chips over the next two years. It’s one of those concepts that is hard for you to wrap your head around and feel like you have a good understanding of how things may play out. My personal analysis keeps getting interrupted by “I wonders.” So much of how this affects the marketplace and Apple itself depends on decisions they will make as they make the transition. In reading other people’s opinions, I try and keep in mind that people generally are not fond of change. Gizmodo has a little roundup of stories around the Web that is a good starting point for further reading.
Had a phenomenal weekend, my good friends Mark and Sarah Richards got married. It was nice to see two people so right for each other embark on their “official” life together. Many out of town friends all came in for the wedding, and much fun was had as a result of this. I have put up about a third of the wedding pictures that are good enough to be seen publicly on Flickr, and hope to get the rest up tonight, assuming that our softball game is rained out, which looks pretty definite. The bachelor party was also fun, from what I remember. The weekend also included trips to both The Majestic and Waffle House.
So, in other news, Adam and Melisa are engaged! Adam is a good friend of mine who moved to Chicago last summer from Atlanta. We certainly miss having him here in Atlanta, but it has been for a good cause (Melissa). Anyway, I can remember the very night that these two met. I could go on and on about how great each of them are, but I really can’t think of many couples who mesh better and who complement each other so well. In summary, I send my best wishes to the both of you, together.
I wonder what impact this deal will have on Flickr? Would be cool, now that we have a Target right down the street to be able to get copies of my pictures from Flickr and pick them up locally.
I’ve seen a few posts pointing to this Macromedia job opening for a Interactive/Web Production Designer. Before I go down this road, let me say first that this post is not meant to single Macromedia out or anything. I mean, rather, to indict corporate human resources procedures as they relate to our industry. It amuses me that people were pointing to this posting. I imagine that most, if not all folks, who pointed to it did not read through the entire posting. I’m sure they saw the title, which sounds grandiose and interesting, and thought it was worth pointing out.
If they did read through the entire listing, they would have run into a list of bullet points under the "requirements" section. These requirements lead me to believe that the job is basically one where this person designs html emails to be sent out to customers. The title of the job doesn't say this at all. I believe that this disconnect, the job title that sounds good but says nothing about the job, is a huge issue in corporate America. Let me single out a couple of specific bullet points for your enjoyment. There is one that says "Skills in web publishing, FTP, etc." What does this mean exactly? Why include something so incredibly general? Do my skills building pages in Microsoft FrontPage and uploading them to a server count? (To be fair they did mention hand coding in another bullet point.) How about this fine bullet point? "Experience working in a marketing environment a plus." I'd imagine that "marketing environments vary greatly, just as Web Development ones do. Don't they do a massive disservice to both themselves and people who might apply for the job? If you want to receive a couple of hundred resumes instead of thousands wouldn't you make things a tad less general? The last bullet point under requirements says, "Demonstratable, strong verbal and grammatical skills." I checked a couple of dictionaries here, and could not find "Demonstratable" in any of them. It's ironic that the bullet point that calls for written communication skills contains a word that doesn't exist. I believe they mean Demonstrable.
It seems to me that the purpose of human resources departments is to speed the time it takes to hire employees, and to find the right resource for each individual position. In practice, I find that the lack of understanding of the actual position being hired for, and the internal processes by which HR departments tend to run and use to filter resumes, not only slow the hiring process to a crawl, but also make it very unlikely that a person with the correct qualifications will be found and interviewed. I could be wrong about this, but my anecdotal observations are that the hires I make myself/have made myself through industry networking tend to be much better fits for positions than anyone who staffing companies, technical recruiters or human resource departments manage to find me. In ten years of working in this industry, I struggle to think of a single person that has been hired through the "established channels" whose performance and skills matched those who I went outside these channels to hire. How do we fix this? How do we correct things so that a position for an "HTML Email Developer" says that, and doesn't create false expectations for the hire, or a pseudo-false entry on that person's resume in the future?
Finally, this brings me to another bullet point in the requirements section. It says "High degree of productivity and accuracy in a work setting that's characterized by frequent change, shifting priorities, delays, unexpected events, meeting commitments, and changing deadlines." As one of my co-workers here said, "Good Lord, why would anyone want to apply for that job after reading that?" It sounds as if they are apologizing in advance for a broken set of workplace processes. To some extent, this is a description of any production environment, but including it in the actual job posting is suspect in my opinion. Wouldn't it be more productive to evaluate this, and communicate it, at the interview stage of the hiring process?
I again apologize for singling this one job posting out. I make this post with the best of intentions, and I mean it to represent an issue that is very general and systemic, in my opinion. I don't mean to offend anyone in Macromedia HR. I'm sure I could have searched on Monster and found hundreds of other job postings with similar faults. It's the system in corporations that generates these faults, not the people themselves, and I recognize that fact. I'm interested in hearing other folks comments about this topic. I could be way off, and my experience could be a rare negative one. I would be happy to hear that, because the alternative is very depressing.