I still love you all!

Wow, its been six months at FaceTwit. Boy I have had to learn so much and had so much to un-learn. I though Hank Commerce had prepared me for the next big internet adventure, but wow, dealing with the scalability issues at FaceTwit... blows my mind. And forget about the reliability and uptime. Phew. It makes my head hurt.

First of all I get to write Java. Lots of it. Then I get to re-write stuff I don't like. My manager says "Sure, go for it. Just make sure the regressions pass". And then I just do it. No HoMo's to get approval, so psycho Ops nazi's to push the code, just peer checked and then roll out with the next iteration. We have continuous deployment during the day, its automatically picks a small set of the farm to deploy to and then, BAM... your code is live and being used and making a difference. Its wonderful. Our customers love us, we don't need surveys, just the every growing user base.

I've bumped into a few old friends from Hank Commerce in Mission bars from time to time. They look older and grayer, as if Henry has leached the last of their life force from them. Those who have left, well, they are smiling, lost a lot of weight and stress and look ready to rock the world again. Its great to see them all re-juvinated. Constantine, Euro-Fool, Stan and the rest of the "ex" all survived. Rock on brothers and sisters.

Back at the mothership, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is still the old thug he always was so I'm told. Can't collaborate, does his own thing and then forces it on everybody else. Its a shame, nice guy, unemployable anywhere else in the valley according to some. Henry is managing to keep up his tan, which is great for him but lousy for the shareholders. Somehow Lonely-James has managed to grow his team just so that an irreverent link based on a tiny data set gets super high prominence on the landing page. I know that will swing the company valuation. What a waste of real estate. Stacy and the iPhone. Sure, its coming in the fall with bells on this time. Got to feel sorry for Franks-Mom, having to keep the pirate ship sailing, if she gets it sailing up and to the right then the true hero will emerge.

Apart from working, what have I been doing? Well, got this freaky phone call. Well it started with an email. I thought it was totally a hoax, but for sure its totally real. There's an agent in L.A., works with all the top names. Wants me to turn my blog into a screenplay. He says that it touches everything in the human condition, the personalities are so hyper vivid that he thinks it could be the first geek-buster movie that will make money. Everybody wants to laugh at geeks, this is going to be the one! He wants me to change a few things, but I'm totally up for the challenge. He wants to keep Can-I-Have-A-Latter-Sir "as is", thinks Ed Norton might be interested in an option, potentially Zooey Deschanel as Geek-Babe if she is available. If nothing else, I've hung out at some cool parties in L.A.

In the short term, I've been editing down the blog into a slim book. A friend asked me for a signed copy, so I put one together and it made me think that it could be a great parting gift for anybody else leaving the hallowed shored of Hank Commerce. I'll post a link when its ready.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : More of a wine man these days
Shots : I've cut down, really I have
Dinner : I cook at home with my girlfriend these days, its all organic and really heathy
Weight : 168 lbs ... lost 31 lbs