Month: August 2010

Plaxo Office Space

When I worked at Plaxo’s offices on Crittenden (now part of the GooglePlex), there was a door to our server closet inside the handicap stall men’s bathroom of the third floor.

Plaxo Crittenden Bathroom Layout

I can picture this like a scene in the movie: You are minding their own business, taking a shit on the toilet when the mysterious door opens, a sysadmin walks into the stall, says to you, “Oh, Excuse me, our wifi was down.” He then opens your stall door and leaves.

PC Load Letter

One day a VP went to print something out, and started shouting, “PC Load Letter? PC Load Letter! What the heck does that mean? PC Load Letter?! Does anyone know what that means?”

He was deadly serious—the entire office was busting up because unlike him, they had actually seen this movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ8SefiNEcs

Posted on by tychay 5

Nikon D3100

Last month, a friend asked me purchasing advice on a Nikon D5000. I told him, “Don’t. Nikon will be introducing a new D3000 replacement before Photokina.”

Today, Nikon has officially announced the Nikon D3100 entry level dSLR camera.

353_25472_D3100_front

If you recall the big spreadsheet in my complete guide to purchasing an entry dSLR camera (etc), the big specification upgrades are: 14 megapixel, 1080p video and continuous AF.

Two other overlooked features of the D3100 are the improved ergonomics: the shooting mode is now chosen with a dial, and a lever now activates the movie mode. Both are going to be very welcome (for reasons I explained in my guide above).

Continue reading About the D3100 after the jump

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Weapons-grade wingnut

The comments on Balloon Juice can get quite witty. I love the imagery and alliteration in the following:

Wow. That’s some real weapons-grade Wingnut there.

That was used when talking about a purity purge going on over the “ground zero mosque” which is actually a community center with a prayer space. Another commenter wrote:

Calling this a mosque is like calling a casino in Las Vegas a cathedral because it has a wedding chapel.

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Cisco looking for PHP engineer

Kristen sent me this job posting:

Cisco has a small team that focuses on building a hosted social-networking/media platform (Cisco Eos) for media companies and the fans. They are looking for an experienced PHP developer to help lead the technology development of their advertising platform. This is a big opportunity with enormous reach and importance. The platform you help craft will be responsible for monetizing the future of content delivery — and more — for the biggest music artists, TV shows, movies and sports sites in the world. This a fun, start-up kind of mentality team with the backing of Cisco. This project is the direction that Cisco wants to move towards.

If you like to write software that scales, addresses atypical challenges, helps the world be more entertained, and is even revenue-producing, this is a dream job.

Continue reading responsibilities and requirements after the jump.

Posted on by tychay 1