Here goes another poll 🙂
Poll Closed
Update: I’ve made a minor adjustment to the link colour following Robert’s suggestion. I like the new link colour 🙂
You and me both, Dave!
Dave Hyatt, the developer who worked on browsers such as Mozilla, Firebird, Camino, and Safari, tries to describe the difficulties an online application project has to deal with.
This is very similar to what my project is going through right now. The client’s QA group is performing browsers/OSes compatibility testings and the sort of things our web application has to cope with are phenomenal! In fact, the actual permutations work out to something in the thousands, and the client QA is running around 10,000 test scripts. Each combination presents some slightly different behavior, especially regarding JavaScripts. The most trouble we are having is with Netscape 4.7x and WinME, though not necessarily in that combination.
It does not help that we are using ASP.NET to produce DHTML to implement a page design that is cool but not necessarily backward compatible with older browsers (i.e. NS4.7x).
DIY Halime
I was sad to find out that one of the best OS X newsreader, Halime, is no longer being developed by its creator, Imdat Solak.
Unfortunately, due to a lot of reasons, I am giving up developing a PUBLIC version of Halime from now on. Please feel free to download the source code above, which represents the latest version of Halime.
Fortunately, the source is now available to the public under GPL and I have re-compiled it in Panther using Xcode 1.0.1. I will be testing it to see whether it is faster under GCC 3.3 and do some performance benchmarking next week between the last public release and my own compilation. This is because the internet connection in the hotel I am staying this week blocks the NNTP port so I can’t access the USENET.
The West Wing – TNG
CNN runs a very good article – Matthew Perry, a good thing on ‘Wing’ – about how The West Wing is as good, if not better, after the series creator and producer, Aaron Sorkin, departed from the series since last season.
I was worried that the dialogue quality would suffer but that is not the case, and I enjoy this new ‘style’ just as much. It is not better or worse, just different.
So… what do you do for a living?
After being in the work force for over 6 years since I left college, most of my family and friends still do not have a clue what I do for a living. This is especially true for my current job in the U.S. Even my wife can’t tell her friends exactly what my job is.
I don’t blame them really as first I am not the best communicator as far as describing what I do. It does not help that my job as software engineer contains technical terms and something non-physical, namely software. It wasn’t like I was selling software, or fixing hardware. I was programming software, and now I am not even programming for over a year and a half.
So what do I do everyday in the office? Well, as the project technical lead I was involved in the project, which has to do with online banking, right from the beginning. Thus, I was working on-site with the client to gather their business requirements and worked out what can be done and what can’t.
Then I was instrumental in laying out the overall design of the system and acted as the repository of requirement information during the development phase. This was especially important as my company is based near Portland, Oregon, while the client is in New York, NY. During all these time I was the primary technical interface with the client as I work on-site. And now as the project is near the end of the testing phase, once again I am in Oregon helping to speed up the bug fixing process.
The project is due to be launched to the public in early January 2004 and not a moment too soon. On one hand it would be so satisfying to see the labour of my last year and a half comes to fruition. But at the same time, this project has been one of the most difficult and stressful job I have ever did in my life. The lack of support from my own company and a inflexible development team make it almost impossible to work with the client, who is pretty accommodating. If it were not for my desire to follow through with my work and see it to the end, as well as my current immigration status, I would have left the company long ago. There are plenty of people in New York who will appreciate my skills and expertise.
Anyway, this is what I do and I am not ashamed to say I am pretty good at it. All I want now is a company that value me.
Lost in Colonisation 