Introduce Yourself

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  • Wow... I'm gone for a bit and this thread explodes with awesome new people. Welcome awesome new people (that means EVERYONE).
  • edited March 2008
    My name is Hollie, and I'm 33. I live in Seattle with my hubby, no kids, just a dog and a cat. I am a relatively new JoCo convert. I heard him a year or so ago, and loved his music, but I'm fairly scatterbrained, so I promptly forget about it. I was reminded of him watching the Code Monkeys 8 bit cartoon on... G4? I think it's on G4, that bastard station that ruined TechTV and The Screensavers (I've never forgiven them for that.) But, again, life was fairly busy... so I didn't take the time to investigate. Yesterday, I was listening to the TWIT podcast while fairly bored at work, and guess who was on? And that is what made me come out here and sign up. Third time is a charm, I suppose.

    I have heard the Portal song, but I had no idea it was a JoCo song. I actually haven't had a chance to play Portal, yet, as my husband has been monopolizing the game since I bought it for myself. We each have our own 360, and usually buy two copies of a game we both want to play, but he assured me he had no desire to play The Orange Box. Next thing I know, he's hunkered over his 360, and my Orange Box is nowhere to be seen. Ah well, I have other games to play, and I'll get back The Orange Box eventually. Or I'll buy my own.

    Professionally, I am a Code Monkey. I do Web Application Development (it looks so much more impressive when you capitalize all the words). Right now I'm working in .NET, but I've worked in other languages in the past. Never C++, though. It's always been Web specific languages. I started out in ASP/VB, then went into JSP/Java, then took some time off from Web Development for a while in order to stay employed (during the dot com bust), and now I'm in .NET. I've been thinking of picking up Ruby on Rails in my spare time, but there's been some concern recently over the stability. I may still do it. Or, I my just say screw it all and make cheese, instead (kidding).

    When I'm not in front of a computer, I'm usually in front of a camera. If you're interested, you can see my work on Flickr here. Yes, being a Web Developer, I should have my own site... but I just haven't gotten around to it. I have a site built in my head, though. Does that count? No, I suppose it doesn't. I do own several domains, and have owned them for a long time, but they're sitting empty, waiting for me to fill them.

    My husband and I just moved to Seattle from Florida late last year (where we had only been living for a few years after moving from our hometown in Ohio), and we're both having a tough time adjusting. But, well... we'll get there. You know what would really help, though? A second JoCo show next month... The first one was sold out a few days before I realized it existed. Very bad timing on my part. We'd love to have something else to do in this new, scary city. ;-)

    Anyway, I'm also very verbose at times... can you tell? I'm glad to be here, and hello to everyone!
  • BryBry
    edited March 2008
    Welcome, Hollie! If you're on the JoCo mailing list, you may have heard already, but you're in luck!

    From an e-mail JoCo sent an hour ago over the mailing list:
    New shows have been added in Philadelphia, Northampton, Portland and Phoenix. I'm coming back to San Fran for the 826 Valencia Comedy Night on 4/29. Plus the Seattle show on 4/26 sold out and we added a second show on the 27th. And did I tell you I'm playing in London on March 20 (holy cow)?
    ...
    Saturday April 26 at 8 PM - SOLD OUT!
    The Triple Door (Seattle, WA) with Paul and Storm
    Tickets here: http://tinyurl.com/2kdy2l

    Sunday April 27 at 8 PM - SECOND SHOW ADDED!
    The Triple Door (Seattle, WA) with Paul and Storm
    Tickets here: http://tinyurl.com/2edvmt
  • Hey Hollie, welcome to the forums.

    Can anyone think of some tips as to make welcomes more interesting, I seem to say "Hey" a lot, and it's becoming almost mechanic, and that's not how it should be...
  • I don't think there's anything wrong with your saying, "Hey," Jon. (At least it's natural - if you want mechanical, try "roll a die and react with 'Hey,' 'Hi,' 'Hello,' 'Welcome,' 'How are you,' or 'Nice to meet you.'")
  • I suppose you're right Bry.
  • Hey OnlyThis/Hollie,

    Good to see another .NET Code Monkey. :D (Though admittedly I am not of the .NET persuasion by choice, I'm learning to like certain things about it.)
    Interesting photos you have there, and I totally know what you mean about the parked domains and the website in your head.
    And you really need to play Portal, even it means buying your own copy. I bought the Orange Box yesterday just for Portal, and I stayed up way too late finishing it, but there was just no way I was going to bed with that game half-done.
  • @Bry - Yeah, I saw that shortly after I posted, as I am on the mailing list. I've already bought our tickets. Thanks for the welcome and the heads up, though!

    @Jon - Well, you could write a welcome haiku and customize it for each new member... haikus are easy/but sometimes they don't make sense/refrigerator... ok, just kidding. (That quote was taken from a shirt I purchased on threadless.com. I didn't make it up, just so everyone is clear.) I don't think there is anything wrong with just saying "Hey". How else does one say hello in a non formal way? Hey back atcha, and thank you for the welcome.
  • "Greetings! It's a [rolls dice] pleasure to meet you!" ;-)

    [My favorite quote from that episode has to be Al Gore saying, "I'm a tenth level vice president!"]
  • Oh, no, not haiku!

    Haiku are trivi
    Al exercises in coun
    Ting-slash-tedium.

    (replace "slash" with "stroke" if you're not American)
  • @Kero - Yah, I'm planning on playing Portal once my husband lets me. We could buy another copy, I suppose, and we may, but I can be patient. He's almost done, I think. I'm keeping busy with Oblivion. I played the crap out of Oblivion a long time ago, and bought Shivering Isles and never finished it (as much as one can finish Oblivion). So, I'm getting back into that a bit. I'm kind of between games. I have Assassin's Creed, but it sort of annoys me. I don't know if I'll continue with that one. The controls are just too buggy/new/not my style. Already finished BioShock and Halo 3 and Mass Effect and Guitar Hero and lots of others I'm not thinking of right now... those are just some of the most recent ones. I know Army of Two is out. Might pick that one up. Anyhoo, I digress... sorry.

    I don't use .NET the way I'm supposed to, and it wasn't my choice, either. Basically, my job originally was to support a site written in classic ASP, and since writing in classic ASP is like sticking forks in my eyes, I convinced them to let me upgrade it all to .NET. Although it's not all upgraded, I'm releasing new stuff in .NET, and I'm slowly converting parts of the behemoth ASP to .NET. However, as I said, I don't use .NET the way I'm supposed to. I don't drag and drop anything, and I never use the Design view. I basically use the Intellisense and code everything by hand. I know that's not how you're supposed to use it, and I'm ignoring so much of its potential, but I'm just so anal about how my source code is organized and written, and I have a hard time doing it the WYSIWYG way.

    And thanks about the photos, I think. lol. I had to go back and convert my post to HTML so that the link worked. I missed that bit at the bottom of the post that gives me the option of one or the other. Most boards are all HTML, all the time. I didn't notice.
  • @Bry - lol on the haiku.

    Wander onto board
    click type laugh click shuffle leave
    interweb mocks me
  • Such innocent fun:
    Like open flame to a moth
    The forum beckons.
  • BryBry
    edited March 2008
    Roses are red,
    Violets are blue,
    Here is the thread
    For posting haiku.
    (if you must)

    ETA: To toot my own horn, I was in eighth grade when I came up with the similarly ABAB
    Violets are blue,
    Roses are red,
    If I were you
    I'd wish I were dead.
    I'm surprised I've gone this long in this forum without ever mentioning that before.
  • (replace "slash" with "stroke" if you're not American)
    Bry, I don't know about the other Brits, but I normally say slash, not stroke.
  • Bah, Haikus are nothing. While in college, I *twice* had an assignment to write a Sestina. My second one was about how inane it is to write Sestinas.
  • Bry, I don't know about the other Brits, but I normally say slash, not stroke.
    Oh, really? That's actually interesting -- I'd never thought so much about it, except that I'd always heard it "stroke" from the few Brits I've known / heard perform. Christophano, have you heard both used, or do both sound familiar? Most Americans, I believe, have only heard "slash."
    Bah, Haikus are nothing.
    A-men.
  • Yeah, haven't you come across www.strokefullstop.co.uk?
  • Gina - Your "Weird" Al story is the BEST!!! The closest I ever came to any of them (Al and the band) was after the PA show - we ended up staying that night at the same hotel the band had stayed at the night before (I confirmed this with the hotel front desk when I walked back in) and we were standing ouside when they came in to check out after the show (Bermuda and Al's guitar player - can't remember his name right now). They walked right by us - I was so stunned to see them walking in I couldn't even say anything! We then stayed outside and watched the tour bus pack up and leave... I still insist that you are a lucky, lucky woman!!! (I just happen to believe that Al is a smart, funny and very intelligent man whom any woman would be lucky to have met, let alone dated!)

    I had remarked to my kids and husband right after the DC show that I really like the cheerleaders in this show compared to the PA show that I thought that Al had decided to make the routine they did better and that the performance was MUCH more polished and improved and that I enjoyed it much more than at the PA show. lol :-)

    The fact that Al listens to JoCo is the coolest too! I know my writing here is filled with very simple adjectives; I am feeling like a total fan girl writing this to you who has dated greatness... lol

    Shruti - If it was intentional it was sub-concious!

    Angelastic - lol :-)

    Gina - Thank you for sharing your Al story. You did a great job at the JoCo show. I will start looking for you now on stage any time I attend a concert!
  • Christophano, have you heard both used, or do both sound familiar? Most Americans, I believe, have only heard "slash."
    I've heard and used both, but would mainly use slash nowadays. That's probably personal preference (and perhaps the influence of American television, eek!) but you do hear it more and more now.
  • So Christophano, in order to retain symmetry, do you go to the men's room to have a stroke?
  • So Christophano, in order to retain symmetry, do you go to the men's room to have a stroke?
    /blush

    For shame, Borba! For shame!
  • FWIW, in the movie Brazil, "stroke" is used to refer to a hyphen.
  • @OnlyThis:

    Don't feel bad about not using the Visual Studio design view... I find that to get any kind of real work done, I have to use the raw source view. Your use of .NET sounds a lot like mine. I'm also porting part of an existing ASP app to ASP.NET. The other web dev in my company wanted to move to .NET for some reason, yet his idea of "porting" involved copy/pasting the old code into a .NET project, and changing things around when Visual Studio complained. So everything is a nightmare of spaghetti code. I'm trying hard to avoid that path, and I actually use the .NET controls, but I'm finding the learning curve to be pretty steep. The whole Model View Control thing just doesn't feel right to me... I'm used to scripted functional programming.
  • I suppose I should say "Hi All you new People" before I launch into a technical discussion.

    My impression was that if you are doing computationally expensive things with your web code, C/C++ is the way to go. A compiled binary should typically be significantly more efficient than using an interpreted language such as PHP or Perl.

    For example, the site OK Cupid (a geeky dating/social site) describes in their FAQ how they use C because of the computational nature of their site. Also because it's cool. Darn geeks. (BTW, their FAAAQ describes their totally mathematically interesting algorithm which seems very smart. If I were single, I would use this site.)
  • "Hi, all you new people!"

    Binaries can be faster, but fork/exec overhead can be significant. The benefit depends on how computationally expensive the operations are. It doesn't necessarily make sense to write an external program in C and then run it at every iteration of the inner loop. Now, if you can write a shared library, wrap that in your web language of choice, and call into that instead of doing a fork/exec, you can more readily see an advantage. That's not even talking about using shared libraries to avoid reinventing the wheel, since that often involves off-the-shelf shared libraries for which the web developer only needs to know the API of the relevant binding, and C/C++ programming experience is useless in that context. The same holds for database management systems; they're generally written in C or C++, and they're utilized extensively in web programming, but web programmers who use them aren't normally exposed to the C/C++ inner workings.
  • @OnlyThis - I love Threadless; that's where I get all my t-shirts, pretty much. My friend has the refrigerator haiku one.

    @MitchO - Yeah, I had to write two sestinas last year - one for my AP English class, one for my creative writing class. They're the most god awful poems I've ever experienced.

    @Bry and others - I've certainly never heard anything other than "slash" to mean - well, a slash. And I've never lived outside America, so I'm confirming half of your theory, I suppose.

    @Colleen - the movie "Brazil"?? I've never seen it, but my friend - she of the Threadless refrigerator haiku t-shirt, actually - was just mentioning that today, though I don't remember in what context. She was also mentioning "The Boys From Brazil," which is not the same movie apparently involves cloning Hitler. Or something.
  • Laurelli - The guitarist is Jim West, the bassist Steve Jay, the keyboardist Ruben Valtierra.
    you are a lucky, lucky woman!!! (I just happen to believe that Al is a smart, funny and very intelligent man whom any woman would be lucky to have met, let alone dated!)
    I concur. :)

    About the cheerleaders - they are hired by the venue or promoter. A new set every night. If they don't really know what they are in for, they come in the day of the show and are given a tape and a few hours to work something up. You make up your own routine. My friend and I rehearsed in advance, so we had it down pretty good. Fortunately for me my mistakes are covered up by the flashing lights in the video!

    Thanks for the compliment on the JoCo show. At first I was hoping a video would turn up, which it hasn't, but then I started thinking about what I did and I think maybe I don't really want to see it. My friends all said I was great, and so did a couple of strangers, but I was really nervous (not so much being on stage, but how to perform the part). I didn't really think JoCo was going to do that song (I mean it's nowhere near Xmas) but I figured I'd try to get picked if he did. Then I forgot to rehearse for it, which I was thinking of doing just in case, after hearing about the great Andy Bates.

    Oh, and Al is touring again this summer, and he has already said I can cheerlead for him anytime. So there is a pretty good chance I will be doing it at the Warner Theater again, July 12th! Yay!
  • @SaintPeter - I met blackcatbonifide (my fiance) via OKcupid :)

    I haven't done much web programming, but I would think for the most part CPU is not enough of a bottleneck to justify the pain of trying to do a lot of string processing in C\C++. These days I mostly program in higher level languages like OCaml (which actually still has quite good performance) and Python and rewrite the slow parts as C modules callable from those as necessary. Most of my programming is academic prototype stuff where my first concern is getting something up and running quickly though.

    Aaaaand, I just went back and realized mtgordon already made the same point :)
  • @sporksmith


    I absolutely loved you in that video!! Thank you so much for taking the time for what was clearly a very successful project.


    As far as the C/C++ string processing issue goes the point is moot. Network device driver latency for a typical ethernet card runs around 65ms. String processing implemented in the crappiest language is much faster (needless to say).
  • Welcome everyone! Wow, it has taken me days to get caught up with all the forum news. I was just gone for a week or so. Deadlines, you know.

    Hollie, if you are going to be at the Saturday Seattle show, I'll be there with a big group of family. If not, be sure to go to the Sunday show. The Triple Door is a great venue and JoCo is incredible in person. I'm actually going to the Friday Portland show and then driving up for the the Saturday one. I think I'll pass on Sunday although I am tempted.
  • @shruti: You must see Brazil. I think it would appeal to your sensibilities. It's a wonderful satire from the brilliant mind of Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python fame). Warning though, this film isn't really "ha-ha" funny. It's surreal and absurd.
  • @Randy - thanks, glad you liked the video! :)

    I think we are in violent agreement regarding C\C++. By the pain of string processing, I meant the programmer's pain in trying to get it right without buffer overflows etc (somewhat mitigated by C++'s string library, but still, ugh). For 'simple' web apps that just paste some data together, you might as well use a high level language- the core string and database libraries themselves are likely implemented as C modules anyways. Likewise if you are doing something heavy weight enough that performance is an issue (such as perhaps OKcupid's matching algorithm), you could just implement that part as a C module callable from a high level language.
  • I strongly agree with Colleenky's recommendation. It's one of my favorite movies. I've described it as a hybrid of 1984, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
  • Hi, i'm Pyro (Darren if you'd rather).

    It's been a while since i was last on forums of any sort, so it should be interesting.

    -i'm a student studying Computing, hopefully going to uni next year, enjoy it loads.
    - i like Older computer games, my amstrad was my baby till it broke but obviously i like my newer ones too :P
    - i like drawing mostly anime, but i scribble all sorts of things,or i used to been busy lately.
    - probably drink a little much but well see.
    - play a little bit of guitar.
    - and live in a rented room with my girlfriend.

    So thats pretty much me wether it's a good thing i can put my entire life in bullet points or not i'm looking forward to posting some more.

    may be few and far between due to college but i'm looking forward :P
  • Welcome, Pyro!

    I like the "probably drink a little much but well see" part. :P
  • Hello Pyro! I think you're the only new guy since my last post-if not I apologise sincerely to you whom I have missed.
  • Having heard so much about how Google treats its employees, I hesitate to ask how you like your job, as anything less than raving will be a disappointment. ;)
    Bry, it's as awesome as they say... but they bought the spam filtering (message security and compliance, to be "correct" about it) I work for and we're in Austin, not Mountain View, so we don't have a lot of the cool little perks they have. We do have awesome benefits (which are even better if you have kids, are planning to have kids, have just had a kid or are adopting - but I'm not any of those things), we get free lunches, we have Razer scooters in the office, balance balls (the yoga ones, I think) all over the place for chairs, etc, yearly company trips (this year was a ski trip for our region, CA got to go camping or to Disneyland), a full calendar of holidays, 15 days of vacation time a year, free sick time (as long as you don't abuse it, if you're sick and stay home, you get paid - no sick leave time charged to vacation time)... and a host of things I'm just not remembering right now.

    My personal favorite thing is the lack of a dress code. I can wear whatever I feel like as long as it's not obscene (not that I have anything like that...) I saw one guy wearing the XKCD.com shirt that says "Science. It works, bitches." My boss would have cats if I wore that to work, regardless of the dress code, but she's a little wound up anyway. Bad enough that I wear a cap every day (I hate fluorescent lights, they give me headaches) and tennis shoes. She'd probably send me home.

    The only thing I don't like is that because Google's only renting space here in Austin, I can't bring my dog to work.

    So yeah, it's an awesome place to work and I hope to one day move out to CA and work in the main offices at Mountain View (although I hear the NY office compares favorably.)

    (also, I got really lucky that they bought Postini. I don't have the education to even get them to look at my resume and I doubt I'd survive the first interview. I'm smart, but I'm not Google smart and this can be a little intimidating.)
  • haha thanks jon who:P
    i like that web comic only seen it a few times, i'v seen a funny flow chart on that before.
    and wow bugdog i wish i could work for google, haha wish i knew enough to work for google XD

    @KeroHazel haha i do drink an awful lot i'm acctually drinking just now :S, cheap bourbon and diet coke, i keep trying to cut down cos it's making me fat :O
  • hey pyro... Any specific reason you chose that name?
  • Hi everyone. I'm Athene. I was the one who posted the videos of the Austin concert (and who you can probably hear laughing/singing along in the background).

    I'm a grad student at U. Texas in Information and Library Scince and am currently writing this post as a away of avoiding writing a paper on Convergence Culture...
  • @Jon Who - I haven't been there 256 days yet ;)
  • You probably already said that didn't you...
  • Since I'm in 'link to the classics' mode, here's The Programmer Hierarchy for anybody who hasn't yet seen it. My favorite entry is "people who refuse to use the word Ajax".

    @athene: Welcome, welcome! You know what you're in for...
  • Hey Athene, I would test your great wisdom and warrior abilities, but this is neither the place nor is it necessary at all other than or me to fill comment space.
  • @# monkeybiznis1 one day i just liked the name and i think it's because my mum always called my a piromaniac so i thought i'd make a variant. it was pyroz boris before but it just changed one day ^^

    that programmer Hierarchy was funny thanks for posting it, haha, i felt the ruby on rails bit was so true XDXD
    I'm learning C i always considered it lower than C++ tho, just because thats how my friends looked at it >.> and hi everyone i forgot to say hi to due to the shinyness of being on a forum again!

    oh and i'm 18 and from scotland.(forgot to mention it in my bullet points)
  • That's really cool, bugdog. :)

    Athene, thanks so much for the Austin videos! Thought it was interesting how you shot less of the crowd than I'm used to seeing in videos, which isn't a complaint really, just an observation. And as Jinx mentioned in the "Austin Show" thread, you included the intros to the songs, which I absolutely loved. And hook 'em, 'Horns.

    Welcome, pyro! Knowing very little about the UKish educational system, I have to ask -- at what level are you studying now, before uni?
  • I'll second that Bry, thanks for including the chatter/intro's too Athene, it was very interesting.
  • @pyro: You said "from" Scotland. Are you still in Scotland? If so, where about? My sister-in-law and her husband are in St. Andrews, where he works at the university.
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