Month: February 2008

Eating while you are shitting

E-mail received.

I am writing to introduce myself and see if you would be interested in talking with me.

My name is [redacted] and I am in Candidate Generation at Yahoo! for our Engineering, and I wanted to touch base with you to see if you might be open to hearing from us about opportunities we have currently.

I came across your resume on the web and I wanted to check in with you.…

Okay Microsoft is trying to assimilate you, you just fired 10% of your engineers, your top people are leaving, but most of your broken, top-heavy corporate structure is intact… and you are trying to hire me for a low-end developer job at the same time.

You got balls, Yahoo, I’ll give you that.

[my reply after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 6

Why Red States vote red

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”
—Mark Penn, Chief Strategist for the Clinton campaign

By my count, if you are from Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, or the District of Columbia, the Democratic Party establishment thinks you’re insignificant.

Clearly the party is powered by idiots. These guys have won majority of the popular vote only once in the last 27 years! Triangulation my ass.

I’m so glad idiots like these will have been the first ones against the wall when the revolution came.

Parting Shot.

Posted on by tychay 11

Triumphs of the Human Spirit

Blurb is hosting Lunch 2.0 today on Valentine’s Day!

Reading people’s twitter’s I think

Am I the only single person who loves Valentine’s day?

Oh the gifts, flowers, chocolates, singing telegram, and the the restaurant dinner reservation! I love watching the public trauma this day brings to two people in love. Sometimes it is like a romance sped up. Other times it is a romantic comedy in miniature, but mostly it is a complete disaster—still memorable in a “visit the inlaws” sort of way.

To that last one, I remember how my friend Jay broke up with his girlfriend by taking her to McDonald’s for Valentine’s—given how I love fast food, this would probably be my ideal date. 😀

I thank that I never have had to privately experience that public trauma. Historo-mathematically, it should have happened—I know that I’ve been in a relationship during some February 14th of the past, but somehow I’ve been spared any compulsion to participate.

Instead, I normally celebrate it by spamming friends and family with an e-card.

Not this year.

[Triumphs of the Human Spirit]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

PENIS certificate

Received an e-mail today advertising a great example of three rights making a wrong:

Recipe for disaster

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Combine all ingredients.
  2. Spinkle terminology liberally.
  3. Charge $1600.
O'Reilly PHP/SQL Programming Certificate Series

…

Not sure what to think about this, but I’m starting to wish I got rejected from graduate school. When people start charging for what experts in the field do for free, the experts need to sell out.

Time to sell out. 🙂

Posted on by tychay 3

Time to set my phasers on “kill” (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 4/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction:

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?!. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill” <——THIS POST. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

I received this e-mail from someone at Zend:

After the latest tempest in a teacup with CIO Magazine, I am left with the question I always have and I want to ask it of each of you.

We see PHP being used in everything from inTicketing to FaceBook to Wikipedia. These are all “large scale” application but obviously the business community at large defines “enterprise” different from “large scale.” So I’m writing a bunch of you asking the same question. Every person receiving this email is in some way connected to PHP but many of you are not developers. I really want a broad spectrum of answers.

“What exactly is ‘enterprise’ and what does PHP need to be ‘enterprise-ready?’”

Oh yeah, bitches, The kid gloves are off and it’s time for that can o tychay! (Don’t worry, Cal, I already picked on you.) Time to pick on the my favorite punching back of all time!

Enterprise Web Application Development

[Why Enterprise Scalability is Science Fiction after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 6

Sinking a Fleet of Fail (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 3/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction:

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?!. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. <——THIS POST Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill”. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

Onto the second part of the article, where the author shows why PHP, the language used for the busiest sites on the internet, apparently can’t scale it’s way out of a paper bag:

Oh c’mon and get serious. At least read up on a subject before posting an article about so full of holes it could sink the Titanic three times over and have enough left to take out the Japanese whaling fleet.
—Pádraic Brady commenting on the article

Failboat

All aboard the Failboat

[Destroying the myths of thread safety, performance, security, and scalability after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

Even the Pros are Cons (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 2/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction:

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?!. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. <——THIS POST Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill”. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

Looking at the “compliments” served to PHP by the article as “advantages”…

[Takedown Part 1 after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 6

You Used PHP to Troll WHOM?! (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 1/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction. Its five part mission: to explore myths of PHP, to seek out this “Enterprise Scalability”, to boldy go where no web developer would bother going before… *queue music*

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?! <——THIS POST. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill”. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

(I apologize for the book-like length of this article, Paramount wouldn’t buy the movie rights.)

…

Some people have asked me to respond to this article.

Time to whip out the tychay

“Rip this guy a new one, please :-)”—Ben Ramsey

“Yeah, yeah, what Ben Ramsey said! (Make sure you beat him for using a f—ed up title like that too.)”—Elizabeth Naramore

“+1. That dude needs a taste of Terry Chay in the worst, most serious kind of way.”—Robert Gonzalez

This is what I get for being a self-styled PHP Terrorist. *sigh*

Honestly, I don’t know if I have anything to add beyond the total and complete humiliation the author and his editor received in the 50 replies it received.

I suppose this is what it feels like to put down a lame horse.

[Why me? after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 18

Geek. Set. Match…

Just now, Mager messaged me:

“I am excited for Lunch two dot oh—I don’t say “point-oh” anymore.

Flashback.

…

In the summer of 1992, a friend was reading me a geek purity test he got from USENET.

One of the questions was:

Do you pronounce “*.*” as “star-dot-star?”

Of course, since he was reading it aloud, I heard:

Do you pronounce star-dot-star as star-dot-star?

Needless to say, I was quite confused. 😀

[More geek after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 5