massplastic

25 Best Electronic Albums, Ever. According to Slant.

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:06:00 -0400

25 Best Electronic Albums, Ever. According to Slant.

SproutCore maddness

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:41:55 -0400

Installed and messed around with sproutcore this weekend. But today when I went to use RubiGen (to generate a Rails controller) I found that it had broken it. So, to fix uninstall sproutcore. If you are getting the error “uninitialized constant RubiGen” this will likely fix it if you happend to have installed sproutcore recently.

Farewell Engine Yard

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:35:07 -0400

A project I have been associated with for the past 7 months had initially decided to use Engine Yard as our host. We felt that they had the expertise, clout, and infrastructure to be our eyes and ears when it came time to scale. We were building the app in ruby on rails, and Engine Yard’s employees are some of the biggest and brightest names in the ruby world, so the added expense of an EY deployment was thought to be well worth it.

In fact, it was my sole recommendation to go with them. I felt that it would be better to have the developers worry about development and EY to worry about sysadmin. Too often, especially in the rails world, developers must wear the sysadmin hat, and for this project I wanted to leave that up to the pros.

I’m not going to go into too much detail, but the problem for us came in communication. EY uses support tickets for everything, including changing basic info like your password and email address. For me, the time delay to get things like this done is frustrating. Once, our entire application was accidentally deleted from our staging slice by a tech. I often found our requests were only partially completed, and the last straw came when we ordered a production slice to finally launch our project and was having to make the same support requests I had made for the staging slice. I wasn’t about to go through all that again.

All in all, EY just wasn’t a good fit for our particular project. There have been repeated delays in our project, and our project didn’t fit the typical rails app mold. There is no doubt in my mind that once we got setup into production EY would have been a rock star for us. That’s were I think the real benefit would have kicked in.

Anyway, we moved to Slicehost, which I have used for several smaller projects, and I had all our slices and cap deployments setup within 2 hours. It’s cheaper and more hands on, but I think that is what I like about it.

Disneyland

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:52:31 -0400

I hadn’t been to Disneyland since I was 9, but had a chance to go back this weekend nearly 20 years later. I was honestly surprised at how much fun I had. The production there is amazing. From all the perfectly trimmed hedges and landscape to the parades and fireworks. The rides were great, espeically the ones I had never been on. Disneyland is great, even for (or especially for) adults.

Code on the Side

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:57:32 -0400

When I was in college, I was always struggling to get the class I wanted, at the times I wanted, with the teachers I wanted. I solved a lot of that problem by building a little script for my personal use that would text-message me letting me know someone had dropped a course that was full and I was trying to add.

Anyway, it took me awhile to get the time, but I finally rolled it into a website that I hope other students find useful.

I’m calling it DropMessenger.

Me: When is the update going to be released?

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:36:25 -0400

Me: When is the update going to be released?
Subaru: We don't have a specified time frame.
Me: Why not? Surely someone knows.
Subaru: Sorry, we don't have a specified time frame.
Me: I don't understand. Can't you just ask the guys who are working on it approximately how long it's going to take?
Subaru: We have not been given a specified time frame.
Me: Ok, I get it.
Subaru: We don't have any further information at this time.
Me: I guess there's nothing else I can do.
Subaru: You can call the dealer every month to see if it has been released.
Me: That's it? Just call every month?
Subaru: Sorry, we have no further information at this time.

This is not my dad

Thu, 15 May 2008 13:19:19 -0400

This is not my dad

John McCain is pretty old

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:24:47 -0400

John McCain is pretty old

Things I Want but Cannot HaveProbably my most desired object...

Mon, 12 May 2008 11:09:00 -0400

Things I Want but Cannot Have
Probably my most desired object affection at the moment.

Our wedding site, if you're interested...

Mon, 12 May 2008 11:02:37 -0400

Our wedding site, if you're interested...

13 hour delirium

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:02:56 -0400

If Ruby programmers had their way every method would be 3 lines long, with each class containing no less than 50. Just sayin’. Then you tell them their language/interpreter is slow and lacks thorough documentation, and they say “so what we have blocks.”

Went to Costa Rica last week. Flickr has the pics.

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:21:41 -0400

Went to Costa Rica last week. Flickr has the pics.

A Cool Site for Public Mixtapes

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:09:00 -0400

A Cool Site for Public Mixtapes

A More Perfect Union

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:01:32 -0400

A More Perfect Union

Photo

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:13:31 -0500

Microsoft is listening

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:20:25 -0500

Microsoft is listening

How to tie a knot

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:28:12 -0500

Kyong and I are getting married. I asked and she said yes. I will spare you the mushy details, Interweb, but I am and have been extraordinarily happy.

Knowing is Half the Battle

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:57:50 -0500

Knowing is Half the Battle

The Audacity of Hopelessness

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:56:13 -0500

The Audacity of Hopelessness

Does serving as first lady count as experience?

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:13:55 -0500

Does serving as first lady count as experience?