Hacker @Rackspace, Prof at Franklin U. Rubyist, Metal/Punk, George Carlin.
“Developer Advocate” is one of those terms that is ambiguous; much like “Cloud” or “DevOps”? What do those terms mean? Even folks in the industry can’t agree on a definition. Hopefully I can clean some things up with this post.
“Cloud” simply means someone else’s network — someone else’s storage. That’s all. It’s not magic. The “Cloud” is just…
If you’re a Rubyist and also deal with the cloud, you’ve likely heard of the Fog gem. It’s a great bit of code that refines cloud infrastructure chores between providers and presents a unified interface.
Today, Fog has removed support for Rackspace and moved it into a provider gem named “fog-rackspace”. This is a coordinated effort to make Fog…
On 9/25/14 I was hired by Rackspace.com.
On 10/10/14 I was part of the family.
What’s the difference? What kind of lip-service is “family” in a corporate environment?
Let’s back up a bit.
I’ve spent the last few years in consulting and the startup minefield. Projects come and go, team members are…
Recently I had the honor of participating in an Honor Flight and I would love to share my experiences in the hopes that others choose to volunteer their time and efforts. I volunteered because I was never able to say “Thank you” to my Grandfather for his service in WWII. My wife volunteered for the same reason; her Grandfather was a Silver Star recipient.
As an educator, user group leader, and senior programmer I’m asked often what it takes to get your foot in the programming door. Recently I received an email and I thought it would be worthwhile to share my response and thoughts.
The fellow asked me the three following questions:
How good does one have to be? — Good enough. Part of “good…
Jim Weirich was a gentle, brilliant man, and the world is a much dimmer place without him.
When I first interviewed at EdgeCase years back I was in awe of him; simply as an outsider being aware of his contributions.
I walked in my first day, stopping just short to take a breath and when I turned the corner, Jim was sitting right there. He sprang up…
One of my favorite things to do is to give away all that I know to anyone that will listen.
Re-read that sentence.
In what industry or profession is that true? What other profession approaches beginners with open arms? What other industry holds meetings just to inspire others into learning what they know with no monetary reward…
Back in 2007 I was a lone PHP developer sitting in my office, heads down and plugging away. I went to an unmentioned PHP conference that year by myself and attempted to meet some people in their community. While I met a few nice people, the people that really impressed me were really not nice. They were actually kind of mean when talking about the language. I…
Recently someone noticed the line “Luckiest Guy on Earth” on my site and asked for an explanation. It’s a story that I love to tell and I hope it will serve as inspiration for someone out there.
I grew up somewhat poor. I lived in a trailer for a while and when the loan company took that and our only car, we moved into an upstairs apartment above my…
At the wonderful KalamazooX conference this year, the amazing Elizabeth Naramore spoke on the nature of your time, how you spend it, and to know when is when. She said something that struck me — “Everything has an expiration date”.
As of June 1st, I will be leaving Neo.
