• Ugh. Dealing with college tuition and bills is almost as fun as dealing with lawyers, hospitals, and insurance. =:( #
• I cannot brain today. Also, my neck hurts and I have a headache. Blef. #

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Bertjan has already done a very nice job of giving an overview of where we are with this year’s GSOC project and where KPilot is in general. I wanted to add a couple of things to this train of thought too…

First off, this is the second year that I’ve worked with Bertjan on a Google Summer of Code project and I have thoroughly enjoyed both years. Last year, our goal was to create a base conduit framework that could be used to unify KPilot’s conduit code and push down into it all of the synchronization logic that was previously spread across all of the individual conduits. This was a success, and Bertjan also wrote a new Keyring conduit that implemented the new base conduit infrastructure. Unfortunately, these were dark days for KPilot and neither Bertjan nor I nor Adriaan had any more time to give to our little KPilot friend. KPilot was semi-ported to Qt4/KDE4, but none of our KDE PIM conduits worked. And so KPilot languished pretty much untouched and unloved between last year’s GSOC project and this.

This year, Bertjan has built upon last year’s work with our base conduit core code. He’s ported the contacts, addressbook, and todo conduits to use both the new base conduit infrastructure and the new Akonadi back ends that KDE PIM 4.2 will be using. As a satisfying proof of our design work from last year, I don’t believe that we’ve hit any synch algorithm problems, yet. In addition, Bertjan has done the necessary work to finally have 2-way category synchronization working with KPilot and our conduits, YAY!

As Bertjan said, there’s some rough edges still, 2 weeks away from the conclusion of this year’s SOC project, but we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to iron KPilot’s side of these out before 4.2 is released and also hopeful that our KDE PIM apps will be ported to use Akonadi’s back-end so we can again synchronize between our PIM apps and Palm devices.

Now, there’s a few things I’d like to really ask for help with, so if there is still a KDE Palm community as I have seen glimpses of before, now is the time for you to speak up and help us make KPilot a first-class citizen in the KDE4 world. To put it bluntly, we need the KPilot community to help or we won’t make it.

• We need help in testing with devices. Qt4 has changed the way that process threading works and I think I’ve done it right, but have only been able to do very limited testing with a very limited set of devices. I know our configuration/device-detecting wizard is broken and has been for quite some time, so it would be really great if people could help test and send fixes in for this.
• We need help testing our new conduit code. Bertjan has written unit tests (awesome!) and we will be doing ad-hoc testing, but obviously we’ll miss something unless we have the broader KPilot community’s help. If you have time to spare and an old device to test with, please, please help us test the new ToDo, Contacts, and Calendar conduits. The Memofile conduit hasn’t had to change that much, so I’m pretty comfortable with it, but the others are major rewrites.
• We have an awesome little Keyring conduit that we simply don’t have the time to fully test, polish, and support for KDE 4.2, which makes us very sad. It does seem to work, mostly, and Bertjan has even written an almost completely functional Keyring viewer/editor in our KPilot code! But we just don’t have the time and manpower to make it as bullet-proof as we’d like before KDE 4.2 is released. But this is good news! If you use Keyring and would like to help us get this finished, polished, tested, and ready for prime time, we’d LOVE your help! Please let me know!! Unfortunately, if we don’t get the help we need with this, we’ll be forced to disable the Keyring conduit and nobody will know it’s even there. =:(

In addition, let me just add that while Palm devices were once the coolest geek device on the planet (after the Newton went buh-bye, of course), and lots of people were interested in using them and subsequently a higher number of people were interested in coding for and helping out with them, this is definitely not a true statement today. Everybody and their dog is all excited about the iPhone, and I cannot say that I blame them. Palm seems to have totally lost its coolness, geek appeal, good business sense, and anything else that would keep it otherwise relevant in the current technology climate. I won’t digress too much here, but if you’ve ever tried to endure through Opera’s constant crashing of your Treo or Blazer’s general suckiness for a couple of hours while everyone else around you is experiencing pain-free Safari-surfing on their iPhones, you might be able to appreciate the frustration and rage that accompanies said experience.

But back to subject at hand…. The affect that this all has, though, on those of us who are trying to maintain software for the Palm platform (KPilot, here), is that it’s pretty de-motivating when nobody seems to care about the software you’re writing anymore. Synchronization and PIM software is about as un-sexy as you’d want to get, quite honestly, and KPilot seems to be the ugly poster child for it.

So, reiterating my cries for help, if you use and care about KPilot now and in the future, please please please let those of us know who still try to care for the little guy. And if you truly care and have even small amounts of time (and maybe a spare couple of devices to test with), please let us know that too. I’m not asking for people to send me or Bertjan or Adriaan devices. We have some already. What we don’t have is the time and breadth of use cases to adequately test KPilot and make sure that it’s not going to eat your data for lunch, and that’s something we’d really like to not see happen after KPilot is released with KDE 4.2

Thanks for making it through this lengthy post and as a reward, here’s one of Google’s image search results for KPilot (????) =:)

• Meh. If I were king, I’d require Mondays to be a non-work buffer zone between a too-short weekend and a too-abrupt coming back to work. #
• Homemade iced decaf white chocolate mocha latte, ala Starbucks (with the Fontana/Starbucks white chocolate mocha sauce) FTW!!! #

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We had a nasty little electrical storm in our neck of the woods (literally) a couple of nights ago. Power went off for a few hours and all that normal-type nuisance stuff. However, what I did not expect was the damage that happened as a result of a monstrous power surge that ripped through our home. I’m still shelling out $MONEY to try to get back to normal.

I believe what happened was that a surge came through either our phone line or our cable line. And no, I didn’t have any kind of surge protection on the phone or cable lines. Never thought you’d need it, honestly. I do have these lines protected now, though, which is small comfort being that I’ve managed to make it this far in life without said protection unscathed, which means the money I’ve shelled out for the protection likely won’t be needed for another XXX years. But anyway,  however the surge managed to get into my house, it fried my Vonage phone adapter, my cable modem, my Linksys WRT54GS wireless router, my main network switch for the house, all wired ethernet adapters in my computers, all of the phones in our house, and my laptop power adapter (which wasn’t even connected to my laptop, thankfully). Nice, eh?

Cost analysis of recovering from this little electrical hissy fit:

• New Vonage VDV21-VD phone adapter: $80 (with a $70 mail-in rebate, thankfully)
• New Linksys WRT54GL wireless router: $65
• New Rosewill 8-port switch: $15
• New Motorola SB5101 cable modem: $80
• New APC Back-UPS BE650G 8-outlet surge protector, with phone/data and cable surge protection also: $90
• New APC P8VT3 surge protector for new flat-screen TV which I luckily unplugged: $30
• New wired NICs to replace blown-out ones: $75
• New phones for house: $?? Dunno. Not sure if I want to do wireless phones again or just get old, corded, non-electrically-powered phones. But the phones that got fried cost $70, iirc.

All told: $500 or so. Not too bad, I suppose. I’ve certainly heard worse. What’s more frustrating than anything is not having any phone or internet service for a day and therefore knocked out of being able to work. Thankfully, my awesome Cambridge VMware brethren had a replacement power adapter for my work laptop, so that only cost me $40 in gas/parking to drive the 3 hours back/forth to pick it up.

And because I know that you’re all thinking “well yeah, but if you hadn’t been too cheap to buy the $90 surge protector a couple of years ago, none of this would have happened”, I’ll freely admit that you’re absolutely right. =:( Sometimes my cheap nature ends up costing more than it saves. Case in point.

Warning. Random brain dump coming…

Food for thought that I spotted on my lifehacker feed today… Why You’re Better Off Avoiding the iPhone

… this is a hypocrite’s confession. I purchased and use an iPhone, but I hate being locked into Apple’s proprietary system.

Original impetus was 5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G [Free Software Foundation]. Hm. I’m still locked into my Sprint account until October, so I’m on a forced wait regardless of whether I wanted to run out and buy one right now anyway.

In other news, my awesome Summer of Code student, Bertjan, is making great strides in our unstable version of KPilot (trunk, which will be in KDE 4.2). He’s well into the middle of writing a new contacts conduit for KPilot, which will utilize the new Akonadi goodness that will serve as the core of KDE PIM in KDE 4.2 and beyond. Woot! Awesome work Bertjan! We only have 4 weeks left!!! =:D He’s also had to do a bit more cleanup before he could get to this point in his SOC work due to having to fix up category syncing, but I am confident that he’ll pull through and get the Contacts, Calendar, and Todo conduits up and running before the pencils down date. If you care about KPilot and its future, please let Bertjan know you appreciate his hard work!

And after reading a really interesting article about how modern shoes are really not all that good for our feet and legs, I’ve ordered a pair of Vibram Five Fingers KSO shoes, woot! To be honest, I also just really like the way they look, and since a bunch of friends at VMware have them as well as my good Waller friends, and after having tried some on at a nearby shoe store, I’m totally excited about them. Should get them on Tuesday, yay!

Stupid Apple people. “iPhone 3G is coming July 11. Watch the guided tour.” Yay! *click* *click* “Get the Latest QuickTime.” Um. WTF? Do you make that for Linux now?? FAIL!! Is this ignorance, intentional, or just plain, stupid, stinking downright arrogance on Apple’s part? Hm. How about all 3? It’s darned insulting.

The worst of it is that it apparently is working. Don’t give a crap about open standards, cross-platform, reaching the widest audience possible, or anything else. Just worry about yourself and Windows–and Windows only because you have to if you want to keep making money. Ignore Linux users. Who the hell are they anyway? Maybe 3% of the market share? Pfft. Screw ’em. Be intentional about not allowing them to even see the commercials for the products you want their money for. Or better, don’t care about their money because they’re so insignificant.

And yet we keep buying their stuff. Why? Because it’s so sexy. Because they do nice commercials. Because everyone else is buying their stuff and we want the latest cool thing.

Blef.

I’m just sick of it. How is this better than Microsoft again??

P.S. Thanks, Steve! I was seriously being tempted by your ultra sexy new iPhone, but being that you won’t even let me watch the commercial for it without buying a Mac or Windows machine, I think I’ll just tell you to stick it in your ear.

I got asked, via e-mail, today how I went from a retail pharmacy store manager to systems architect and it was such a good brain dumping that I figured I’d blog it too. =:) Here, then, is a brief overview of how I got from .A->.B.

• met the woman I knew I wanted to marry at Taco Bell. realized I couldn’t support a family on Taco Bell wages, so started looking for work elsewhere as I was still trying to finish college.
• started working at a tiny little Thrifty Jr. in Rancho Bernardo, California with my amazing friend Brad Prosek, stocking shelves and scooping ice cream.
• went into shift manager training for Thrifty in Ocean Beach, CA.
• got promoted to second assistant manager.
• got married shortly thereafter, still trying to finish college to be a Math teacher.
• somewhere around here (1994-ish?), I bought my first real home PC (non-Apple) and started getting involved in Open Source.
• accidentally got promoted to first assistant manager.
• had to drop out of college. was told I could either work or go to school, but not both.
• worked for a couple more years as first assistant manager.
• went back to college, trying to finish up last year+ of school.
• accidentally got promoted to store manager.
• had to drop classes in the middle of a semester.
• immediately started asking around if Thrifty/Payless/Rite Aid had entry level computer programmers. took a Wolfe test at Rite Aid and apparently did so well they offered me a position right there and then. had to finish working the rest of the year as store manager in Ramona, CA, to get the store through the Christmas season.
• packed family (wife and 3 very young kiddos) into a (really small) Toyota Tercel and drove for 4 days from sunny San Diego to Harrisburg, PA, in the dead of winter.
• went into Rite Aid’s ELSE (Entry Level Systems Engineer) program. spent 3 months learning COBOL, JCL, DB2, CICS, and other really antiquated technologies.
• graduated out of the Rite Aid ELSE program into the emerging technologies group which was working on a next generation pharmacy dispensing system that, although it was and still is used by Drugstore.com, never went into our stores. had to hit the ground running and pick up systems and languages that I’d never been trained on (visual basic *spit*, PL/SQL, Oracle, C *love*, etc.).
• our group transitioned and took over as the Internet team. I designed and implemented the fault-tolerant Linux cluster that powered the new riteaid.com site and led our team to rewrite the whole site from ASP to PHP. we had 0 downtime and this solution served Rite Aid for 5+ years until they decided to rewrite it in JSP.
• our group transitioned again and started working on the Next Generation pharmacy dispensing system for Rite Aid. this time, we found the right mix of resources, training, company backing, good management vision and strategy, etc., and we landed a hit. I became the expert in Java in our team and also came up to speed on UML and RUP and worked with a couple of other folk to lay down the foundational Java code and system design for the first year or so.
• management wanted everything and yesterday, so they outsourced the coding and pushed me, unwillingly, into a systems architect position. I reviewed every bit of Java code that went into the system, approved every new/change design and mentored the onslaught of new people coming in. I also helped to code, rafactor, performance test, improve, and provide oversight to the entire Java codebase. I was the expert Swing GUI guy, which as it turns out is a pretty rare skill-set.
• we deployed NexGen out to the chain and thanks to the intense focus on getting the requirements, design, performance tuning, and coding done the right way, we had tremendous success.
• a year or so went by and my team began dropping like flies. my manager that I loved working with and for left for better pastures. my best friends left the company. I was continually pushed away from what I loved to do (code and develop) and into the roles that I hated (managerial/oversight/planning/meetings, meetings, meetings/etc.). management was making increasingly stupid and irrational decisions and I was ignored. so I jumped ship. everyone else on my team that hadn’t already left jumped very shortly thereafter.
• I landed at CVS in Rhode Island. what actually won me over was a couple of conversations I had with some higher-ups at CVS that showed me their focus on Linux throughout the chain.
• turns out that I ended up getting sucked into CVS’s next generation pharmacy system, although at a much worse level than I was at Rite Aid… no designing, no coding, no implementing, lots of meetings, lots of unrealistic demands and schedules, lots of insanity. I started feeling very stupid and foolish and started praying that God would provide me with a job where I could work on what I loved: writing code and specifically for the Linux desktop.
• out of the blue, a recruiter calls me from VMware (Hi Antonio!! =:)), and I totally fell in love with the company. I’ve been a VMware workstation user since Workstation 3. I relied on it because I absolutely refused to run Windows on my corporate desktops/laptops, much to the aggravation, irritation, strife, conflict, and chagrin of my managers and directors.
• and now I get to do what I truly love: write code for the Linux desktop, on the Linux desktop.
• the end… well… that’s where I am now anyway…

Note: this is not an attack on Rite Aid or Taco Bell or CVS or outsourcing. I’m sure everyone out there has a similar story if you’ve had any job whatsoever, much less a career in IT.

Well, anyway, there’s my brain dump for the morning. I’m sure that was far more information than you’d have willingly asked for, had you a choice… =;)

I know it’s stealing Firefox3’s thunder, but Opera 9.5 was just released and it is REALLY well done. I have always been amazed at how blazing fast it is and this release continues in that vein.

However…

• Is it just me or does the Gmail “move to trash” / “delete” shortcut (shift+3 or “#”) TOTALLY not stinking work in Opera???? I am just blown away by this. I am trying to not let it irritate me to the point of switching back to Firefox (I mean, there are other things that will probably do it (see below)), but it is increasingly frustrating.
• When editing a wordpress post, if you hit “Enter” in the Visual editor, it pre-pends a newline?? Um, wtf??
• Mouse bindings rock!! Just remember that you need to edit your “Mouse” shortcuts, not your “Keyboard” shortcuts to make “Button8” (at least on my Logitech VX (ROQXORZ!!!) mouse) bind to “Back” and “Button9” bind to “Forward”. Heh. Silly Jason…
• When editing an e-mail in Gmail’s visual editor, “Enter”, “Backspace” and “Delete” can’t seem to interrupt a previous quote and get rid of the preceding “quote” vertical line?? You know… like for inline commenting?? Gr!
• I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I have time for now. =:/
• UPDATE: Webex anyone?? Why can I not launch a webex session from Opera, even if I mask Opera as Firefox?? =:(