I’m preparing a list of things to do tomorrow, when it occurs to me:
I wonder if Larry or Sergei ever have to fix their family members’ computers?
If so, that’s got to be the World’s Most Expensive Tech Support.
I wonder how many six(or more)-figure-salary software engineers weekend as the family Geek Squad?
(I am sitting in a presentation on a web framework in our office conference room given by a former employee who is now a consultant. One of my engineers asks the consultant to give an example from experience where he had to modify the framework code itself.)
R—: “Yeah, that happened to me, you know when v was greater than 1 and you are going viral… you know when you are doing a blast? We had a couple sites hit over 40 million users, sure then we had to go in to the CakePHP objects with an optimizer. I don’t know if you still have that at Tagged, but back when I worked there and blasting those times it makes sense to optimize so sure I’ve done it before.”
(One of my engineers, not me): “What company did you consult for hit 40 million users?”
R—: “Umm… (long pause)…I was speaking in hypotheticals. But certainly… v greater than one… I’m talking about the slope, when that happens and a lot of e-mails… No, we’ve worked with some sites that had… umm… (pause) more than 10 million users and that’s umm… what I was talking about, built on Cake and we’ve done that for around 10 million, so it’s certainly doable.”
(I so wanted to ask what site that was with even 10 million regs.)
[Origins after the jump.]Continue reading
“The front office is to your back that way and to your left,” someone says.
The delivery man walks a bit, gets confused, and looks at me across the floor, “Which way from here?” he points.
“It’s right of that.” I shout back.
He points in another direction, “That way?”
“No. Bisect the angle you just created.”
…blank stare…
“Errr…Or something.”
Mathematics is the universal language of science, not FedEx.
My computer has a GPS in it using the same SIRFstar III chipset as my hiking handheld, which also doubles as my cycling GPS.
On the Mac, it appears as a “USB-serial” device whose driver is made by Prolific Technology which, coincidentally, makes the driver for my camera GPS receiver. Like all SIRFstar III GPSs, getting the acquisition took only a second, but a fix took a minute.
Great! Now what to do?
[gps madness after the jump]Continue reading