Joe Alicata: The ArmChair Technologist » Stuff

Let’s play foursquare

Joe — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:40:39 +0000

It’s the next big, cool, hip thing. Simply put foursquare is a location based tool/game that let’s you see where your friends are and earn badges for all sorts of challenges.

So why the fascination? I can do this via txt, email, twitter, facebook, right!? Not really. It’s the location piece that makes foursquare unique. I know exactly what business my friend is in and not just some confusing GPS coordinates or a dot on a google map. Bars are beginning to use this as a tool to bring in crowds with notes like “the mayor drinks free.” What is the mayor? This is the fun part. The person that visits the location the most is automatically awarded the mayorship. Don’t worry that isn’t the only award there are tons of badges you earn for all kinds of things like the gym rat and school night when you are out past 3am on a week night.

Grab the iPhone app and see what all the cool kids are talking about.

Sneakily Making Crappy Things Better

Zach — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:37:31 +0000

Today is Friday. No-change Friday, to be more specific. And not because we don’t like to work (although I’ll confess that we like to slack as much as the next guy). Today is no-change Friday because Fridays are special. Fridays are for Sneakily Making Crappy Things Better.

Now, that might just lead to a whole host of new questions in your mind. Things like “Why are things crappy,” or “Why would you have to sneak improvements.” Well, if you have to ask any of those things then you’ve probably never worked in Operations.

Things are crappy here for the same reason they are everywhere else–our work is never “done.” Projects begin and end, events come and go, but no matter what we still have work to do. The core services we support are still around and they can be better. Now, that’s not to say that they’re in such bad shape today; crappy is a relative term. But they can always be better.

And as for the sneaking, well, sometimes there just isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. Any there’s nothing sexy about fixing old problems or iteratively improving performance. So, you do it quietly and while no one is watching.

And that’s what Fridays are for. Spending time trying to make things better. Sometimes that’s adding some fancy new monitoring widget, other times it’s sitting down as a team and talking through some piece of architecture. This afternoon it seems to be finally updating this blog. So, whatever you do today ask yourself: am I sneakily making crappy things better?

Weekly Top Three or Four

Mistamista — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 01:40:49 +0000

Operations Catch Phrases:

4. That’s just like that Seinfield episode where Jerry said…

3. Mainstreaming Web 2.0 Trends

2. I’m no network engineer, but…

1. Magic buckets of goodness

Where did the name come from?

Joe — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 16:20:30 +0000

Last Friday as soon as Zach and I got into the office we started discussing a pile of issues we had been having with a certain unnamed network load balancing piece of hardware. Part of our frustration has been that that the vendors product is this “magic bucket of goodness” that they hold very close to their heart and we have little insight into the specific architecture of the device. This puts us at the mercy of the vendors support, and our social engineering skills, when we have a issue as nasty as the one we have been dealing with.