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

Its almost a New Year!

The last company meeting of the year was lead by the Three-Amigos. I think Franks-Mom had to put them up on a pedestal in order to keep some kind of control over them. They did a round up of what's going on in each of their areas. I know that a bunch of people had to control their mouths as they went through their slides. Basically they slammed Constantine and Euro-Fool for all the architectural flaws, wrong direction on the technical roadmap, over commitment and under delivery. They did not do this by name, just implied it but it was so shallow that any body could see thought it.

And then I thought, what was the point of that. Yes you won, perhaps by means that will not put you in good standing for the rest of your careers, since who the f**k is going to hire you again or recommend you when a VC comes calling. And I thought about it more, at the end of the day its Monday Morning Quarterbacking, something they seemed to have picked up from Henry. Don't say anything at the time, say that you "had to go along with it", don't actually make the effort to get it working and delivered right and then blame everybody else when it does go to shit. You know, a lot of Nazis were rounded up and shot after World War II for that type of behavior, what could the modern day equivalent be? Post your answers in the comments section.

In other news, we had a site outage for three nights (unplanned). Apparently, to add some more capacity to our Kodak SAN, they had to do a firmware upgrade. With our kick ass staff, on the third attempt we got it right. Sweet, we added another 30GB of disk. Yes I did say GB and not TB, our site really does not generate enough transactions to need a 1TB drive from Fry's. Probably cheaper and probably would have worked out of the box.

Why does it have to be so friggin' hard at this place? God, I need a drink. Happy New Year.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 13 (no more official drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 195 lbs

Euro-fool leaves!

Wow. I have never seen Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir so happy. You could see he smile all the way from the East Bay where he lives. I'm super happy about Euro-fool leaving, he was such an arrogant guy, always thought we has better than all of us. So what if he had a cool clothes and a Porsche Cayman.

I went drinking in the city with the "Three-Amigos" to celebrate, they got shit faced. Stacy was so wasted he picked a fight with some Mission hipster (and lost) and that was just after three beers. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir went around hugging everybody in the bar like they were all some long lost friends, Lonely-James drank a Miller Lite by himself at the end of the bar. He can't take his beer either. Had some Indian food after the beers, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said it was the worst he had, and then phoned up Constantine to say that he was so sorry for the shit he did to him. You could hear the reply of "Go F**k yourself" from across the bar.

It came out that they had forced Euro-fool to quit, they now have Franks-Mom in the right place so that they can continue to enjoy their lives and f**k around and she gets to carry the can. When the next shit hits the fan they will use the same story with Henry, that she is out of touch, does not get it, their passion shows their commitment, staff aren't behind her etc. The key is that they stick together and back each other up, if Henry tries to fire one of them then the others say they will go as well. Its one sweet deal.

I know who is really running this place!

The good news is that I think the Platform team will finally report into us, which makes perfect sense and I know that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir always wanted this.

So things are finally looking up, at least for the Three-Amigos.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 18 (death of euro-fool celebration!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 195 lbs

Constatine leaves!

Never seen a guy so happy in my life. People say that this was "how he used to be". I guess working for Henry can be tough, he's a task master most extreme.

But wow. What a shock. We all though he was in for life, without parole, plenty of long term benefit but lots of short term effort and stress. He's said he would stick around for a month to hand over to the new guy. No word on who that may be. I'm thinking Euro-Fool, which Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir would be pissed at, but that would make the most sense. Despite his garlic breath he has actually worked on platforms and infra-structures for decent sized and successful companies. I pray to Jesus that we don't have an Applications person run the team, that would totally take us down a path of zero interesting architecture work. It would be totally like, dude, put your head in the sand.

Saw Constantine a day or so after it was announced. He looked angry and then he totally vanished. Apparently there was some big shouting match in Henry's office and "Fuck you asshole", slamming doors and he was gone. Saw Henry and he brushed it off. Apparently there are lawyers and everything. That's some bad shit for it to end up like like after all the effort and success Constantine has brought the team. I'm sure they both have their reasons but it feels totally rudderless with Constantine's guiding light.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 16 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, we don't even have a VP)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 192 lbs

Office move!

Another office move. I'm not sure that this is a great use of the investors money, but it kind of makes sense. With the trim down last year and the constant departures it no longer makes sense to be on three floors. Stacy put the plan together and we all packed our crates. The floor plan makes no sense, basically its puts our team at an opposite end to Euro-Fools platform team. It may mean we just get more exercise having to walk down there, but it may also mean that we can just ignore those idiots!

Euro-Fool has been under fire, Mega Enterprise is running so late its making the rest of us look great! Truth be told its nothing to do with the code that was written for Mega Enterprise, its all down to getting the product through QA. I think all the directors are relying on Apps to be the long pole so that they can fix up all their code without Constantine knowing anything about it, just blame Apps. Its an easy target but a great target! There also seems to be less Apps QA people as well these days.

So its weird being back in the new old office. I see where I was interviewed, where I sat in those first few formative months when I started, the place where I got my first build to work, the smashed wall where Beam-Me-Up punched a hole with his bare fist and the first time I saw Geek-Babe. Ah those memories.

Since then they have painted in the new corporate look for Mega Enterprise, Hank Orange Soda (tm), its pretty sweet if you don't have a hang over. I did notice that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir now gets in even later, probably working really diligently with Ops I guess.

Seen Stacy, Lonely-James and Cab-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir (aka Three-Amigos) in a bunch of meetings. Weird group to have together, sometimes Zen-Dude is there, sometime not. Not just in the office, but at Una-Mass and at Starbucks. Probably some product planning or something big and important for Hank Commerce.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 7 (I can remember why I drink, but I do)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs

Super secret meeting!

There is some weird shit going on. An odd collection of managers were taken to one side, and had a meeting with all the executives minus Henry and Arnold the SVP of Sales.

Henry, one of the board directors, basically asked the people "why does Hank Commerce suck". Now, I just heard this from Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir, so don't know how much of this is true. What apparently then took place was that everybody started to bitch and moan about how the company was being run, lack of leadership especially by Henry, never making the revenue goals and loosing people on a daily basis.

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said that he was the only one to defend Henry and said that everybody else in the room were traitors for even thinking some of this stuff, and he was going to tell Henry all about it. Apparently Euro-Fool told him stop kissing Henry's ass. I heard from somebody else that they had to be separated again.

I don't know what this means. It could be a bunch of BS or … I bear to think what this could really mean. We have all read Barbarians at the Gate to know what happens, but really Henry must be on a solid foundation especially with the board. There can't possibly be a take-over?

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

Finger pointing!

It was awesome, I have never seen anything like this before. In the middle of the floor Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir and Euro-Fool were in a ice hockey brawl in-front of everybody. It was so out of control, but very cool to see that raw energy and passion.

Apparently, very unreasonable, Euro-Fool wanted to get a plan of what work was needed to complete Mega Enterprise and which resources were assigned to which tasks. I mean, its so last century to put together a resource plan and then resource level it! We are agile, we don't do that shit! Its the whole point of SCRUM, we do everything in small increments, we adapt as we go along, we don't even need designs because we formulate our ideas as we progress. It does away with all that unnecessary time spent spec writing, reviews, allocating resource and all the stuff in the IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo! handbook. We are not burdened with all the old skool stuff.

Lonely-James tried to inject himself and calm the situation down, but was told to "Fuck off, arm pits". Not very complimentary in my view. Finally Constantine came in and calmed the situation down. I'm not sure that the putting them both in an arm lock was the best idea, but he had to do something, there was going to be murder otherwise.

So I think its a clash of cultures. The ad-hoc "we are agile and we know best, trust us" versus the "old school plan, plan, plan and TPS reports".

The empire may have struck back, but Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir so got one over Euro-Fool!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 182 lbs

Margarita blend off!

It was the dope man. I mean, the company went crazy for it, it was just like spring break in 2003 with my frat pals on Miami beach. Crazy, crazy time.

Most of HR was either rift'ed or quit, so one of the recruiters has been running the show. Old-Dude-In-HR-That's-Cool seem pretty savvy. So somehow he got Henry to sign off on a Margarita blend off.

Our team had practiced for weeks on various combinations, developing our simple syrups and infusions. Boy, we got so out of our minds most nights trying to get the perfect mix. Finally it was the afternoon of the event. There were a whole bunch of stands, costumes and more liquor than a Patricks Day parade!

We called ours the "Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir-But-Make-It-A-Margarita-Margarita". It was the bomb. It was so strong that we limited everybody to two cups only. We were assured of victory.

Henry was there with the rest of his H-Staff, he looked great after his two week vacation in the Bahamas, all bronzed and relaxed. Wish he could have changed out of the flip flops though.

First up in front of the judges was Euro-Fools team. Man, he is so full of it and made the worst mistake. It wasn't even a Margarita the dumb ass. We went on about hand crafted, bla-bla-bla. Who gives man! It was some sort of rum punch, I had some it sucked!

Then the Mexican-Wrestles came up from the Applications team. I was scared, they looked like left overs from Gay Pride, weird. Theres was pretty good, but too fruity for me.

Then there was a bunch of marketing people, they talked a lot but their drink lacked any substance. Looked nice though. A couple of the Ops team had something that looked like a roadkill and probably was.

Last up, and this was Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir's master stroke was our team. He gave an very motivating speech, something about his humble upbringing and how it owes everything to Henry but he's sorry about this pictures he took of Henry and that Russian, err "Model". It was moving.

By this time, H-Staff were wasted. They handed over the score cards to Henry's "assistant". Some time past. Then some more time passed. More drinks were had. Then finally, the results came through. It had been a pretty tough task to add up all those numbers, but she had done it.

It was shocking, you could hear the sharp intake of breath. Euro-Fool had won, and it hadn't even been a f**king Margarita! Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir was pissed and got in it face to face with Henry. Next thing I hear is the sound of breaking glass and blood everywhere. It not clear what had happened. Some say Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir swung at Henry and missed, others say that Beam-Me-Up was so drunk he just fell through the window. All I know is that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir grabbed his helmet and hit the road.

It was a shocking end to an amazing day!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!))
Shots : 16 (it was the blend off)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 183 lbs

Death by twitter!

It was so lame. I've been attending the daily stand ups that Euro-Fool has been running for "Mega Enterprise". Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir has been going crazy because Constantine put Euro-Fool in command rather then him. So he attended for a while and then stopped showing up. Euro-Fool, I guess, then got Constantine all riled up to shout at Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir so he started showing up again. Now I'm his delegate. The only cool thing in this sorry story is the Geek-Babe attends, which is very cool, so I hang out with her for 27 minutes each day.

The idea is that its cross functional, so along with Product Management, Program Management, Eng & QA there is also Marketing. Henry has said that "Mega Enterprise" is going to be key for contributing to the bottom line because we are in control and don't have to chew the costs and late launch that we do with American City Bank. The trouble is that Marketing are a little weird. First they dress weird (how do you say "Gay!"), they talk weird (its all about positioning, drone, drone, drone) and they also cannot keep their mouths shut.

Henry says that "Mega Enterprise" has to be kept secret so that we can make a huge splash and totally change the market. So what does Fresh-New-Marketing-Dude do? He starts twittering about it to start some "buzz".

Henry went ballistic, well that's what at least Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir told me. So our cover has been broken and everybody in the industry knows about it. There was some chatter on Techbyte but Henry got M.Arrington to take down the post and the comments. Their kids go to school with each other and M.Arrington owed Henry after the incident at the school with the new first grade teacher. Apparently she was not as cute as BayGossip claimed.

So Fresh-New-Marketing-Dude is trying his luck at another company, Henry fired his ass right out to left field in a matter of seconds of finding out. Well, in fact the twittering had been going on for weeks, but Henry does not Twitter so it took his assistant to blog about it before he was in the loop.

Sad. Nice guy. Bad taste in dress shirts.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 177 lbs

Mega Enterprise!

After the disappointment of the Shopping Cart being canned I was switched to the "Mega Enterprise" initiative. Basically what we are doing is slim down the product to focus on the Mega Enterprises, you know the Morgan Stanley, GE, Countrywide Financial etc. Its a bit like Salesforce, not everybody needs all that complexity and customization. We slim down what we have to appeal to parts of their business and then grow from within. Trojan horse on steroids. Makes sense, lets sell what we have rather than build what we don't need.

So I'm actually working for the platform team and for Euro-Fool. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is super suspicious since he is the enemy, but a few weeks here and I have found they are a decent bunch. They have a social every Friday, bread, cheese, roasted garlic etc. They used to do wine before prohibition started.

Not a single American in the team, but will not hold that against them.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 181 lbs

Apple's are cool, Apple's for management is bogus!

So Apple makes some sexy product, no doubt. The iPod was cool, despite being a re-package of what a zillion other companies have done. Yes, it needed that Newton inspired magic that only Apple can provide, but its still a hard disk and it could only play music. So they took it to the next level, went solid state and put in a phone, and then allowed a select few to develop application for it. Ok, so its cool.

Now the laptops? Ultra, mega cool. They are all very aluminum and cool. I have a IBM Thinkpad, which is black and very uncool. I think its a Leveno so even uncooler, its not even an American product, designed and made by Americans!

So Iron-Mike got me at the interview by saying essentially "Apple for everyone". Wow, I thought what an amazing and insightful company, putting its engineers first and not only giving them a cool laptop but BSD instead of Linux and Windows. How forward thinking. How progressive.

First I wanted to fit and and show everybody my true value to the organization. I think I'm there. So last week I ask Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir whether I could order an Apple. He turned around and said, and I'm quoting directly "Go f*king buy one yourself, only management get Apple's here". Thanks I thought, thanks a bunch. Then I scanned around me.

Of course Constantine has one, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir obviously, but also Lonely-James, Stacy and Euro-Fool‚ he even has a MacBook Air, what a f*king pointless device that it, the poseur! And what do they use them for? Well Constantine does write code, the others just do email, IM, update bugs and PowerPoint, but mostly surf tech blogs and job sites. What a waste!

You know, I'm happy with my Leveno and I'm going to show them that.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 4 (down 4 from last week)
Shots : 4 (down 4 from last week)
Dinner : 5 nights (5 x pizza)
Weight : 185 lbs

Sacre bleu, Euro-Fool is bogus!

Another week, another tech-sess. This week, Constantine's new "golden" boy presented. I am starting to understand why my boss, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir really hates this guy. Basically he spent 90 minutes talking about dynamic and scriptable systems, extracting configuration into the hands of the Ops teams and Support etc.

Afterwards, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir almost blew another fuse. He was ranting and raving about how we have been doing that for years, how we already learnt to scale this better than YahBay (where I think Euro-Fool came from) and why he should be running the platform team as well. I saw him later that day, tears running down his face, in a conference room with Constantine. I guess he was really showing his passion for the company and the mission. Just hope that Constantine was listening, we can afford to loose him!

Also, I was pulled into Can-I-Have-A-Latter-Sirs inner circle this week. He's pulled together a crack team and wants me to join. They are re-writing the build system to use something called "Raven". Its something really cool for the creator of "Git" that will blow away anything that Euro-Fool and the Platform team can do!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : zero bottles (same as last week)
Shots : 6 (6 up from week)
Dinner : 3 nights (3 x pizza)
Weight : 181 lbs

Bogus euro dude!

Bogus, bogus, bogus. I can see it already. Constantine our VPE has brought in some new management. Its some French dude, dressed too well and too much aftershave. I think he's real name is Francois, but people have been calling him Frank. Apparently he gets super annoyed if you do that. My boss, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir, is really pissed. Looks like they will give Frank the platform team, which I thought was the team I worked in. After Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir stormed out of the building, I caught up with him the next day. Apparently we are now the Architecture team and we lay the ground for everybody above us, including the Platform team. So sticking one finger in the air to Frank already.

I have grown to love Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir, we did not see eye to eye to begin with. But I'm learning my lesson and not judging a book by its cover. He really knows his way around the code and the system, and I should have respected that. I can see he super loves us in that I-will-beat-you-but-its-for-your-own-good sort of way.

Now I just need to finish that shopping cart feature.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 2 bottles (down 13 from last week)
Shots : 2 x Bourbon Shots (down 8 from last week)
Dinner : 5 nights (1 x Thai, 1 x Una Mass, 3 x Pizza)
Weight : 178 lbs