Jay McGavren's Journal

How a Head First author spends his days off

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2008-11-25

Dinner at Pink Taco in Scottsdale. Sacrelicious!

sn852626.JPG

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2008-11-22

Please wait while we re-program you.

I’m astounded - went back to the XP laptop to clean out a worm (the first that’s ever gotten past our firewall that I know of), and found myself trying to use OS X keyboard shortcuts. Years of conditioning to the Microsoft environment, undone in just a couple weeks.

Some old habits do die hard, though - I still find myself holding Caps Lock on the Mac in a futile effort to activate Enso. I need to visit the Enso mailing list and see how stable it is on OS X.

I’m getting fed up with GUI OSes in general, BTW. The Mac keyboard shortcuts, while slightly more sensible, are still totally random at times. I feel like I’m learning Street Fighter special moves or something. And there’s no way in hell I’m using the mouse.

I’m tired of losing the window I want amid the myriad windows onscreen and having no way to find it except command-tilde (or whatever), and the problem is made worse by the multi-monitor setup at work. I’ll sit there hammering on the keyboard, wondering why it’s not responding, only to realize I’ve barfed random text all over the terminal on the other monitor.

I’m starting to understand the curmudgeons who refuse to leave Emacs all day, I really am.

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2008-11-20

Another hacknight I wish I'd made it to...

…‘cause this time, Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress founder) was here.

Evidently he’s got mad Wii Tennis skills, as evidenced by the “pwned” section of the whiteboard…

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2008-11-18

We're testing a Javascript Jabber client...

[11:28:21] [chris@xmpp.foobar.com] test
[11:28:51] [chris@xmpp.foobar.com] The power of the Internet
[11:28:58] [Jay] internets ftw!
[11:29:42] *** chris@xmpp.foobar.com is Offline
[11:29:55] *** chris@xmpp.foobar.com is Online
[11:30:02] [Jay] miss me?
[11:30:10] [chris@xmpp.foobar.com] No :-)
[11:31:11] *** chris@xmpp.foobar.com is Offline [Replaced by new connection]
[11:31:13] *** chris@xmpp.foobar.com is Online
[11:31:19] [Jay] it's spiffy!!!!
[11:31:24] [Jay] hi ward!
[11:31:44] [chris@xmpp.foobar.com] hello
[11:32:06] *** chris@xmpp.foobar.com is Offline
[11:32:14] *** chris@xmpp.foobar.com is Online
[11:32:20] [Jay] wooo!
[11:33:14] [Jay] Jabber is not a truck.
[11:33:25] [Jay] It's like a series of tubes.
[11:42:34] [chris@xmpp.foobar.com] need to make a friends list
[11:42:45] [Jay] woo! i liek frenz
[11:42:57] [chris@xmpp.foobar.com] I can has friends.

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2008-11-18

Why is it I waited to get a Mac until I hardly even care what OS I’m on? I had Spotlight replicated via Enso. (Enso’s actually better, since it’s quasimodal.) I had a decent equivalent to the BSD core via Cygwin. (Though I’ll now be able to compile some Ruby extensions that I couldn’t on Windows.) Console2 is an excellent alternative to Terminal. I had Textmate covered via E - Texteditor. (Er, wait, that’s not really a satisfactory substitute at this point.)

Well, I had to fight tooth and nail to get those Windows equivalents working properly, and the seams are still showing. The Mac versions work right out of the box, and seem to work marginally better. I hate everything when I first start using it, but I’ve already had some “Hmm, that’s well-designed” moments with OSX. It’s definitely not the panacea I was hoping for, but I think it’s going to grow on me.

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2008-11-15

Just ordered a MacBook...

I’ve been talking about it for over a year, and I finally ordered a MacBook. ($1000 refurbished by Apple, Intel Dual Core, 2GB RAM.)

I made myself wait a week first, but pretty much everyone at work owns one and brings it in to the shop, so I could finally stand it no longer. These guys code with a fleet-fingered ease that I’ll only be able to match if I can practice at home.

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2008-11-10

Spotlight on OSX...

Sweet!

Command-space, "firefox", Enter
Command-space, "textmate", Enter
Command-space, "firef", Enter
Command-space, "term", Enter

Totally think-free. I’m not missing Enso nearly as much now (especially since Spotlight doesn’t care if the app was already open or not).

Time to see if there’s room in the budget for that $850 refurb MacBook…

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2008-11-06

Day 2 at Integrum. I’d have posted before now, but I haven’t really had time. The evening was spent setting up my various accounts (they use web apps for everything) and hanging out with Diana. (Jeremy has the cold that won’t go away, and it’s stressing her out a lot.)

I think this place is gonna be a good fit. Gamers everywhere, and they have similar ideas about development practices. Learning the ropes is gonna take a little time (whatever you might expect, OSX and TextMate aren’t an easy transition), but I’ll get the hang of it. I’ll be a Mac snob in no time. More details as I have time to post ‘em…

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2008-11-04

SMSed a bunch of people to get out and vote; a bunch have already responded that they’re done.

I hear poll lines are huge in Phoenix; Mesa’s less so. Moot point for Diana and I, as we’re signed up to get ballots by mail. (Arizonans can request that service here.)

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2008-11-03

My boss just called me into his office to meet someone - I guess his interviewee is currently working at my old company, and has worked with a bunch of my old Perl libraries. He had been looking forward to meeting me, because a lot of his Perl knowledge had been gleaned from working with my code.

I’m probably one of the Valley’s foremost remaining experts on Perl 5. Not that this is something to be particularly proud of; it’s basically a dead language. Still, it’s nice to know your code is being studied and used.

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