PolarLava::Blog

For the past three years my job has required me to be available 24/7/365.  Fortunately it's more precautionary than necessary as we're very cautious about things that could disrupt our service.  In any case, the company had provide me a Motorola RAZR with a full data plan so I could text and monitor email.

This setup worked pretty well as I had few meeting that weren't regularly scheduled.  Thus I could accept the invites on our Exchange Server, but then put them on my Google Calendar with alerts to my phone.  Similarly, I rarely had a need to write anything other than a short email reply.  But with my recent move to Engineering Manager - Portal I quickly ran into problems keeping up with email and meetings during the day.  As such, it was time for a new more full featured phone.  And until very recently it would have meant a Samsung Blackjack 2.  I could have had one of these long ago, but I liked the small size of the RAZR and I was getting by with it.  But at my boss's insistence, I needed to upgrade.

I explained why I still had the RAZR and liked it, but realized it was time for me to reluctantly move to a Blackjack.  At this point he told me I could now get an iPhone instead if I wanted.  Thus I embarked upon a mission to talk to a few of the people I knew who had been beta testing their use for the company.  And it didn't take long to learn that it was definitely the way to go unless you do a lot of texting.  The Blackjack's hardware keyboard makes it pretty good for texting.  But my texting needs aren't great as they are largely incoming reminders.  Thus, I opted to join the iPhone Cult as I generally call it.  And?

I have to say, after two days I really can't say enough good things about my new iPhone!  And although I have loaded some music on it, at this point I haven't had a chance to try it as an iPod.  But that's alright, that's not the primary reason I have it.  But I can say this thing is far more than a phone, it's a palm sized computer.  The mail and calendar issues I had have been wiped out.  This means no more double calendar maintenance and likely far less Google Calendar use.  Actually this is unfortunate, because I certainly like it better than Exchange.  Although it's not nearly as bad as Outlook which I still only use on a limited basis because I hate it!  (For desktop email I use Thunderbird.)

Anyhow, the iPhone has proven it's a very powerful tool that is going to help me a great deal.  I still need to work on refining and/or changing My Organizational System (GTD) as I need to rethink some of the things I'm currently doing.  Largely that's because the iPhone should allow me to do more work that I could with the RAZR.  Thus some of the tools I've been connecting to might not be the best.  Offhand, one thing that I'm contemplating is moving from Sandy to Remember The Milk as they offer an iPhone app in their Pro version.  The other negative now to using Sandy is that Jott went premium for access to Sandy.  I don't use it enough to justify the cost so I've quit using it.

So I'm now contemplating how to maximize my new tool to make both my personal and professional lives more manageable.  So I guess I'm in the cult now, although I don't see myself hanging on Steve's every word at the next Apple dog and pony show.  ;)

So once again my career at Synacor has evolved.  As of September 15th I'm now the "Engineering Manager - Portal".

So what does this mean?  In short, I'm now primarily a PHB.  I'm no longer directly involved in system architecture, although I do still have some responsibility for it.  The three direct reports that I had previously (2 - Architecture & Infrastructure, 1 - Code Review Engineer) still report to me and their jobs remain largely the same, although they are available at my discretion for other development.  And that's the other part of this; I now have four engineers reporting to me to do portal development.  Thus I now spend most of my day running to meeting and chasing down answers and making sure stuff in getting done as our priorities change fast and often.

Also, I currently have open requisitions for two additional engineers which I desperately need to fill.  So if you're a top notch programmer with some PHP experience, want to do mostly PHP (with some Perl) and don't mind living in Buffalo, please contact me!  We are a rapidly evolving, highly successful pre-IPO (we have filed) tech company with a wide number of other positions available as well.

I'm a notoriously slow reader.  I drive myself crazy because it takes me months to read most anything.  But not this time!  I've just finished the wondrously insightful In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan.  I found this book incredibly fascinating.  Like, "don't want to put it down because I want to keep reading" fascinating.  As well as actually staying awake and alert enough to do so at bedtime.

As those that really know me should know, I'm somewhat fanatical about health, fitness and exercise.  Although I sometimes don't live up to my own standards, I try to do so and encourage others to do so as well.  If you're serous about learning where we went wrong and (with the U.S. government's help) got our diets off-track (Hello there High Fructose Corn Syrup!) and you're interested in trying to eat healthier, this book is definitely for you.  I really can't say enough positive things about it.

You may also find of interest my previous post of Michael Pollan at Google.

So a few weeks back I came across One Hundred Push Ups.  This site promotes the personal challenge to do 100 push ups.  I filed it a way, came back a couple of weeks ago and printed out the entire program.  I'm going to do this.  I need to do this.  Now I just need to get on-track and start on it.

Shockingly enough when I brought this up at work the video game addicted, junk food eating (mostly) 20-nothings that I work with…was largely a collective yawn.  Disappointing, but not unexpected.  That's OK, I'm nearly twice the age of most of them and I'm certainly in much better shape.  Now I just need to get mentally tough and raise the bar even higher.  …more

I was really bummed out to hear this morning that George Carlin died of heart failure yesterday at 71.  George was a comic genius like none other.  His very matter of fact, casual observations of simple subjects were always insightful and more importantly truthful.  George could find the absurdity of most any situation and most often in ones that the rest of us would take for granted.  We'll all miss you George.