Mouths Wide Shut

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some stories about growing up.

Halle writes about talking too much. It’s funny because I think the last time I had dinner with her, we talked too much about just that—how we both talk too much.

I talk so much that people have to remind me to finish eating. Heck, it’s probably why I’m so thin—my mouth is always open, but nothing is coming in.

Pownce Launch Party by magerleagues

The chewing gum in my mouth is the closest I can come to Freud’s “oral fixation” theory of talking.

Continue reading about on talking too much after the jump

Posted on May 8, 2009 by tychay 0

Writing and speaking

I can’t find the conference speaker badges so this will have to do. The fact that it feeds my ego doesn’t hurt either!

Paul wrote something nice about me. In fact, it’s so very nice, that I can (almost) forgive him for listing me sixth. 😉

Reading his description reminds me how grateful I am every time someone reads my articles. Writing is a craft that I’m not very good at and have to work at constantly. I hope my logorrhea has, in a small way, created a little context for you and perhaps inspired some of you to blog more.

Because when I’m not trolling the internets for my name, I’m reading your blog… and growing.

Mad talks

Paul also mentioned my that I’m a conference speaker.

In light of this, I better mention that in a couple weeks in Chicago at PHP|tek, I’ll be bookending the opening keynote of Andrei, my (a)cross-street rival, with the closing keynote. I have no idea what I’ll be talking about so this should be interesting!

After that, I’ll be racing to Berlin to catch up with Andrei, in order to give two completely different talks at the International PHP Conference. I’m noticed that Thies Artzen will be there—I’ll finally get to see if the rumors of him mellowing out are true.

Maybe Keith Casey will let me dry run my Berlin talks at the PHP|tek Unconference (I hope so). Even if not, I should probably participate in the Pecha Kucha—my speaking skills have deteriorated noticeably.

What killed the whom

Finally I noticed that in an interview, Andi Gutmans, the “nd” in Zend mentioned my company:

The Java disruption by PHP is well under way. PHP is everywhere, and Zend’s solutions are being used in business-critical deployments by companies such as Tagged, Fiat, BNP Paribas, and Fox Interactive Media, to name a few. The strategic adoption of Zend in larger accounts, often in favor of Java, is related to our strong return on investment and shorter time to market.

(I guess this means I’ll finally have to figure out the difference between him and Zeev, the “Ze” in Zend.)

One thing the writer, a Java developer, doesn’t notice is that a significant fraction of Tagged is Java. This wasn’t the case when I joined the company, but it was an architectural system I made because there are some things PHP isn’t good at.

If I had to guess, when Andi is saying “Java disruption,” I think he really means “Java/J2EE” disruption. It’s a minor distinction…and one of which I’ve been attacked for when I say “Ruby” and really mean “Rails.”

Posted on May 7, 2009 by tychay 1

401K

Two interesting programs about 401ks: FRONTLINE: Can you afford to retire? and60 Minutes: The 401K Fallout.

The big thing I learned is that our retirement system is heavily biased to people like me—not very egalitarian, not very American.

Posted on May 7, 2009 by tychay 1

Affirmative Action™ figure

Many people see affirmative action as a slippery slope to Harrison Bergeron. In light of a previous article and in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that twice in my life I’ve been an Affirmative Action™ figure.

Here they are:
Continue reading about Terry Chay affirmative action figure after the jump

Posted on May 6, 2009 by tychay 2

How much does a date() cost?

One of the fringe benefits of open sourcing an existing code base is that you have an opportunity to set error_reporting to E_ALL | E_STRICT, or perhaps rather to 2147483647. When you do that you find small problems with your code base you missed the first time you sloppily wrote it.

In my case, I noticed that date() was throwing strict errors. For example

error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
ini_set('date.timezone',false);
echo date('c');

shows you

I’m sure if you’re Derick, you are intimate with date()ing, but I had forgotten about this wasted guess_timezone() sys call and the suppressed strict error (which still takes time in PHP 5).

I sent an e-mail with this bug, along with the one line fix to the php.ini, to site operations…and promptly forgot about it. That is until the ticket was sent back with the message that it needed to be “tested in dev and stage before making it to production.”

(The younger, less-tolerant terry would have blown a fuse at this point.) The older, jaded terry simply became curious about what the costs of date() really are.
Continue reading about Benchmarking date() after the jump

Posted on May 6, 2009 by tychay 14

Affirmative Action my ass

A position has opened up on the Supreme Court and no one has been nominated yet. But that doesn’t stop people from smearing someone and shouting “Affirmative Action™” from the rooftops just in case she might be. I guess if you’re not an old white dude, it must be affirmative action, because everyone knows only old white dudes are qualified.

This reverse discrimination reminds me of something my brother mentioned the other day about the Ivy League and its presidents:

Harvard: a woman
Yale
University of Pennsylvania: a woman
Princeton: a woman
Columbia
Brown: an African American woman
Dartmouth: a Korean-American
Cornell

But we all know that the only reason that the leaders of most prestigious academic institutions of this nation are 25% minorities and half women is only because of Affirmative Action™.

It seems to me that the only people out of touch with “regular Americans” are the bigots who still see gender and race as a defining trait. If people are going to attack this person based on her gender and race, they actually make the case on why we need affirmative action—after all isn’t the reason it exists is as a balance to such bigotry?

The Southern Strategy was a loser in the last election and will remain a loser indefinitely. These people need to wake up before they get run over.

Posted on May 5, 2009 by tychay 5

I want a PWNy

Someone has a problem with their “WAP” installation…

Posted on May 4, 2009 by tychay 9

Price is a bad thing in recessions

I’ve mentioned the Laptop Hunter ads before. And, if you haven’t gathered, I think it is the first smart campaign from Microsoft in a long time. The reasoning is that portraying Mac owners as “style over substance” and “too cool” hits the right polarizing note during tough economic times.

Sure it’s offensive and not always true, but you have to give them props for being clever.

It is possible, however, to go too far.

What’s wrong with the Laptop Hunter campaign? Well there are arguments about “the facts” (low resolution, slower RAM, etc), but it’s hard to ding Microsoft for that and not say that similar over-simplifications don’t occur in Apple’s Get A Mac campaign. There’s also the issue that the ads seem more about selling HP products, than Microsoft ones. But it’s their money. 🙂

Besides, television advertising has never been about the facts, it’s basically an appeal to emotion.

Instead, the weakness of the campaign centers around a disturbing trend among these ads: they focus on cost, not value.

Continue reading about Understanding downturns after the jump

Posted on May 2, 2009 by tychay 3

See ya!

The GOP just discovered something…

Who care’s about the first 100 days? I’m wondering where a later 365 of them is going to go.

I finally figured it out. 2011 is the year we get raptured. As a Christian, all I have to say is “See ya, bitches! Enjoy in the final five years of the Anti-Christ’s administration.” Ahh, schadenfreude never tasted so sweet!

Reality? Bahh, it has a well-known liberal bias.

Posted on May 1, 2009 by tychay 3

The Woodwork

You tell that other boy, not to touch the woodwork