Waggle Dance

If your a StumbleUpon addict like myself, chances are, you have gotten “You have seen all your topic here pages. Explore others…” as a result of pecking at the “Stumble!” button like a demented, tic-tac-toe playing chicken.
While reviewing more sites can add a little spark back into your stumbles, it’s a bit of a “cart and horse” problem if the main way you find interesting sites is through StumbleUpon. It seems some alternatives are in order. If you are using Firefox, drag any of the following links to your Bookmarks Toolbar:

1. Random Wikipedia – Wikipedia provides a special link that will pick an interesting article for you to read – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
2. Random Del.icio.us – Del.icio.us provides a link redirecting you to one of it’s more recently added links.
3. Random Google – If you have Google Web History turned on, this link, http://www.google.com/searchhistory/items?op=rec_rd&cd=ifb&hl=en, will take you to a random link related to your previous surfing history. Google provides the same functionality through recent version of their Google Toolbar.

There are also StumbleUpon-like services out there, like SpinSnap and Youlicit, but I like keeping the above links around for a quick, random-link fix.

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One of the facts of life for us IT folks is changing jobs. I joined the folks at my previous job after 10 years with 7 different firms. A little tired of the rat race, I stuck with them for just short of 8 years as a developer and development team leader – a personal record by all accounts.

Well, this weekend, I am unemployed, but it is a short break as I start with a local firm as CTO CIO VP (Update: the title thing is still being worked out) on Monday morning, bright and early!

I have often wondered what it is about the tech world and developers in particular where we change jobs faster than most people change cars. I have heard that the average IT/developer job lasts 18 months. I’m not sure if that is the limit of how long the average company is willing to put up with our geek ways or how long the average geek is willing to live under the rule of any one PHB.

I think the truth is that this is just more of the same: My baby-boomer peers (I was right at the tail end of the boom being born November of ‘64) changed jobs 10.8 times from 18 to 42. Career is now defined by what we choose to do and not by who we do it for. We have to take responsibility for our own training and professional development, shepherd our own retirement funds and insurances.

I don’t really have much of a point or conclusion to this little rant, just that I start a new adventure on Monday and I’m looking forward to it.

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The folks at Mozilla.org have finally pick a release date for Firefox 3.0. As a Ubuntu user, I have been using the betas and release candidates for a while, but, for those not as willing to live on the edge like myself, mark “June 17th” on your calendar as the day to head over to pick up a copy. While your waiting, sign-up to help set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads of a software package in 24 hrs.
Of the tons of enhancements and new features, I would have to say some of my favorites are the faster, more standards compliant rendering engine, one-click bookmarks, and easier plugin searching and installation.
Now, I can’t wait for the new Javascript Just-in-Time compiler (Tamarin) to give some of those rich web apps a kick in the pants.

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Hi, my name is Chris.

I am Ubuntu update-manager addict.

I began innocently enough, sometime back in Febuary, I ran ‘update-manager -d‘ to get a peek at Unbuntu Hardy Heron. Since that time I have been unable to resist the little orange “Updates Available” icon. Checking two or three times a day for improved progams, bug fixes, and new features. Swearing off updates after each bad dependency problem, only to run update again in hopes it will get fixed this time.

My family is tired of the home PCs being tied up running update-manager all the time and I’m not getting much done on my laptop while it’s burning up bandwidth updating the repository indexes. It’s time for an intervention.

I know I can’t break this habit alone, so I’m thinking of starting a 12 step program. I know there are others out there with the same problem so maybe a support group will help, all we have to do is: (more…)

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Contrary to popular opinion, geeks can be romantic, too. Since time is getting short, here are a few things on my wish list (Just in case the the Mrs. is looking at my blog…): (more…)

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