When I put "Jeremy Zawodny" in Googlism, here's what it told me.
jeremy zawodny is an engineer at yahoo
jeremy zawodny is an engineer in yahoo
jeremy zawodny is the executive editor of linux magazine
jeremy zawodny is the head mysql guy at yahoo
jeremy zawodny is blogging the o'reilly os x conference
jeremy zawodny is blogging from osxcon
jeremy zawodny is blogging the o'reilly mac os x conference
Neat.
Had multiple meetings and work, a very long phone call, and I still have a fair amount of work to do on the PHPCon presentation for tomorrow. It's gonna be a longish night, I fear.
A presenter just cancelled, so it looks like I will be talking at PHPCon. Now all I have to do is put together a 90 minute talk. Soon. Really soon. Because the talk is Thursday afternoon.
I had a feeling that I should have prepared something "just in case" but decided to ignore it. Murphy, however, was taking careful notes that day.
My talk should be in place of Dan Cowgill's on the schedule.
Mena and Ben have setup a Trackback page for PHPCon. If you're planning to blog PHPCon, feel free to ping one of the categories. Given that it's a small conference and there's no wireless, I don't expect a lot of activity, but you never know.
Thanks to Mena and Ben, as usual. :-)
I haven't written much about work here recently. There hasn't been a lot to say--well sort of. I'm in limbo with the whole "I'm moving to Yahoo! Search sometime soon but not too soon and am waiting on other people" thing going on.
On the slightly interesting front, I've been involved in some interesting discussions about the suitability of XML/XSLT to a major revamp of a the Yahoo! Finance infrastructure. It's really fascinating in a way. This stuff all sounds great in theory. But there are so many little and not-so-little issues that come up when you're considering a major shift toward this relatively "new" technology.
The discussions aren't over yet. In fact, they're really starting to get interesting now. For a while it was a less engaging "status quo vs. PHP vs. XML/XSLT" sort of conversation. Now it's headed along the "what if we decided to adopt this in a major way?" direction. Would that better position us for internal data sharing? Separation of business logic from presentation logic? Web services? And so on...
Strangely, this is the first time in 3 years that I've really felt like many of the engineers in Y! Finance have come together to attack a common strategic problem and really re-think things. We're all so used to just working within the confines of our little sub-groups on tactical problems. There are three sub-groups, if you're curious.
Anyway, I'd write more about it (because I've been thinking a lot about it and what it means for building modern infrastructure), but I fear that it's not terribly interesting stuff to most people.
If you compile your own MySQL server on FreeBSD and link with the LinuxThreads library, make sure to compile with the -DHAVE_BROKEN_REALPATH option.
The short version is that FreeBSD's realpath() isn't thread-safe. That causes badness with LinuxThreads on FreeBSD, because MySQL uses lots of relative paths and globally shared file descriptors may end up pointing to all the wrong places. I'll explain in more detail if I get a chance.
Oh, you could just read my post to the MySQL Internals mailing list, too, I guess. Heh. Sorry I can't link to the original. The web archives are a little funky. Hmm.
Are you planning to blog PHPCon later this week? If so, let me know. I'm trying to get some sort of TrackBack site or something setup to aggregate the discussion. I'll likely link it on the PHPCon web site too.
Oh, there won't be wireless like all those fancy O'Reilly conferences have, so it'll have to be an evening activity. Sorry. It's just too expensive for a first-time conference. Maybe we'll change that at next year's PHPCon...
Oh, it might be fun to play "count the Yahoo employees" at the conference too. There will be many of us there. Heh.
I'm no longer quite sure how I came to find this, but here's a Live Journal entry that offers advice and information to would-be NYC visitors.
I mention it because (1) I've never visited NYC but would like to someday, and (2) I think it's well done for what it is intended to be.
Oh, right. I ran across it in the lengthy discussion here on Jason Kotte's weblog. You see, he's headed to NYC from San Francisco.
(I may be seeing a lot more of San Francisco in the not-too-distant future, but that's a story for another day.)
I like the name "undesign" for a weblog. It just fits.
There was also a reference in the comments to NFT, Not For Tourists and the guides they produce. If I ever get my ass up to NYC, I may find their stuff useful.
Mornings just aren't my best time. Bleary-eyed, brain dead, wishing I was still stretched out in bed. Bleah.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Yet another person I respect saying good things about Ruby:
Ruby has pretty much already got all the bits of Perl 6 I'm excited about, plus the additional bits which I was looking for subconsciously while I was messing with the croc project. I have a few gripes about it, of course, but on the most part, it does the right thing.
It's already on my list of languages to learn soon.
It's about time someone else noticed.
I like ESR, and respect him a lot; when he's talking about software or open source economics. For anything else, he's off the fucking map.
And I couldn't agree more.
Not only did they just strike a deal with Novell, their most recent month of sales hit an all-time high.
Great work, guys!
He sees it and sometimes I feel it.
What to do?
Is it time for a change perhaps? Maybe a big change? Could be.
More on that later. Several interesting things are in the works...
I just noticed a ton of Mac related news. Here are the ones that caught my eye:
Things are shaping up for Mac world.
Woody Harrelson has some excellent things to say in his Guardian article. Go read it. Now.
Here are just a few bits I liked.
The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only - gold. As the natives were showering him with gifts and kindness, he wrote in his diary, "They do not bear arms ... They have no iron ... With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." Columbus is the perfect symbol of US foreign policy to this day.
Same old story. Must conquer. Modern business is the same way. Grow. Exploit. Profit. Repeat.
In a country that lauds its freedom of speech, a word of dissent can cost you your job.
Yeah, it's sad to see how many people have forgotten how to think--preferring to let the talking heads on the TV tell them what to believe.
I read in a paper here about a woman who held out the part of her taxes that would go to the war effort. Something like 17%. I like that idea, though in the US it would have to be more like 50%. If you consider money as a form of energy, then we see half our taxes and half the US government's energy focused on war and weapons of mass destruction. Over the past 30 years, this amounts to more than ten trillion dollars. Imagine that money going to preserving rainforest or contributing to a sustainable economy (as opposed to the dinosaur tit we are currently in the process of sucking dry).
Someday, somehow I hope we'll figure out how to elect someone that actually gives a shit about progress--for the whole planet, not just the bank accounts of his campaign donors.
*sigh*
And no, I'm not just saying that because I work there. It's because it keeps crashing. Presence and status messages are often out of sync. And my friends keep asking my why AOL is so much better than Yahoo at making this work.
Well, I don't know but I'm getting sick of it. Messenger just crashed again on me. Grr.
I hope the folks who work on messenger don't take this personally. I have no idea whose fault it is.
Update: It seems that Russ agrees.
I know this has been going on for a long time, but I generally shop for everything (except food) on-line. So I haven't had to deal with it for several years. I was just at Office Max looking for whiteboard on which I could draw diagrams (figures for my book). I found one I liked and headed to the register to pay for it.
The checkout guy asked "Can I have your zip code?"
What the fuck is with retail establishments asking for my zip code? I know why they want it, but it bugs the hell out of me. How much of their work do they expect me to do?
"No," I said, "you can not have my zip code. Can I have your home address?"
He wasn't happy. But I don't care. He insulted me, so he deserves it.