PolarLava::Blog

So what does the future hold for PolarBlog?  I recently was reviewing the PolarBlog Users page and checking to see who was still actually using it.  As suspected, there were a couple that have gone off-line and several that have switch to some of the larger blogging softwares.  At the time I found it rather disheartening, but in hindsight, I guess it's the reality of the situation.  PolarBlog certainly isn't for everyone and primarily was done strictly for my own edification.  I only released it publically because I knew the PWL was a dead project and this was a path forward for those who were also running it.

As for those changing to the big blog software, many left some kind comments on their blogs as they moved away from PolarBlog.  Examples would be this, this and this (down at the moment).  The simple fact of the matter is PolarBlog is a one man operation with the occasional input from others.  There is no possible way I can ever compete with the large blogging projects —some of which are built by professional software companies.  They have far greater resources than I can ever muster and will always have a much larger feature set.  My developement cycles are a lot longer and slower, but I'm trying very hard to meet the needs of both myself and those that are still using PolarBlog.  One thing I am proud of it that I have never had any reports of security issues with any of my projects.  There have been bugs, there are bugs and there will always be bugs.  It's the nature of the beast.  But to my knowledge there have been NO critical vulnerabilities in my software.

So what does the future hold?  Well…I'm still working from the PolarBlog: The Road Ahead document.  As previously noted, progress is slow these days.  I'm about 90% complete with the RBL comment integration —a feature that I don't believe any other blogging package offers, and I'm hopeful to finish that up over the next couple of months.  I'm doing what I can when I can.  I'd like to do more, but I simply can't.  I have a real job, I have a family, I have other projects, and I also have other interests.  I can only do so much.  So if there is some feature you really seek in PolarBlog, you need to either tell me or consider moving on.  I'm not quiting, but occasionally I get "when are you going too…" emails from users.  I generally try to address these requests, but my ability to respond has diminished in the past year.  Sorry.  And to those who have stuck around and intend to stick around, thank you for your support and kind words.

At work this past Friday I was informed the Technology Department (about 75% of the company) is being restructured.  As such, my department —Engineering Practices is being disbanded and my employee's reassigned to someone else.  Fear not, Kevin isn't winding up unemployed (yet again), but rather is being moved from his management position to the position of "Senior Architect".  I guess one can view this move as either a) a demotion (removed from management), b) a lateral move (from manager to Sr. technical staff) or c) a promotion (for the same reason).  Personally I believe it to be "b" or "c" as either way this is a tremendous opportunity for me and show somebody believes I know what I am doing.  :)

For more than the past year, my department was responsible for three areas: code review (enforce coding standards and looking for stupid mistakes), release engineering (management of our software and it's distribution) and bug repair (fixing other's mistakes after release).  Over the past several months we have been overwhelmed with the demands from other departments and I had been in discussions with my boss as to how to remedy the situation.   And although I had buy-in from him on how we should fix the problems, other more fundamental issues also needed to be addresses within our organization.  So, in an effort to fix my department's problems and others within Technology, a complete restructuring is being undertaken.

In my new job I will be retaining a portion of the code review responsibilities along with writing technical specifications and determining the overall direction of our software products and how we build them.  This job is in tandem with another Senior Architect who is currently overloaded and will now share responsibilities with me.  In short we are combining my original code review job with his architect job.  Needless to say Kevin is both very excited and scared to death with this opportunity.

From a career perspective this is a very good move for me (baring failure) as this is a very high level software engineering position.  One of the problems in my previous role (through no fault of mine) was my inability to effectively perform both a technical role (code review) and a managerial role.  This change will again allow me again to focus strictly on the technical aspects of my job and the needs of the company and not have to deal with constant interruptions and managing the personnel issues of others.  Time will tell how this all works out.  :)

After much anticipation Synacor finally moved into our new office space.  And Kevin is most happy with his new digs and his lovely waterfront view.  If you start with this picture in my photo gallery you can then navigate through roughly a half dozen shots of my new office.

This past Saturday I walked down stairs to the basement to find my water heater leaking.  Fortuantely it wasn't a major blow out, but over the next couple of days it was slowly increasing in its output.  So this was an issue that needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later…

A couple of months ago Mary Lou and I talked to a guy at the Buffalo home show about tankless water heaters as we liked the idea of endless hot water.  We also liked the idea of moving to the "state of the art" in this exciting technology.  :)  The only tankless systems I had ever seen were smaller point of use units, but a while back I had heard that you could now get whole house units.  So at the show we did find that they were available and learned a bit about them.  This proved to be worth the time as we had to contemplate whether to switch to tankless or buy another standard tank unit.  It really comes down to cost versus life expectancy.  A tankless unit is 2-3 times the cost, but lasts 20-30 years where a standard tank only lasts 10-15 years.  (My tank heater was 12 years old so that seems about right.)  So in the end we opted to take the plunge and go with a Takagi T-K2 Tankless Water Heater.  And as a bonus we will get a $300 energy tax credit.  Only time will tell the wisdom of this choice…

After much annoyance over it, I've take the hour or so required to add the bike description to the default ride information display.  So a quick jaunt over to the latest ride page should illustrate the point.  Eventually there will be a bike page and then a bike maintenance record.  But those aren't likely to happen anytime soon.

Also while adding this feature I found and fixed a bug in the search page.  If you enter a complete "Start Date" (month/day/year) and there is only one ride for that day (as is the case for most days), it should take you directly to that ride.  But there was a bug in the search page logic which would then result in an unbounded search.  This would result in the multiple results found page with all rides in the database listed as matches.  Oops!  This was due to the date being assigned (single equals) instead of evaluated (double equals) in a conditional check.  But it's all better now.  Really…you can try it here.

And this morning's ride exposed another problem…when you enter zero hours for your sleep time, it wouldn't show because heck, who would ride after being up all night?  Me apparently!  This is now fixed as you can see.  :)