Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/11/17/yelp-seeks-sysadmin-developer/
Since July, I have been working at Yelp, a hip young Internet startup located just South-of-Market in San Francisco. We provide an Internet-based Yellow Pages service that is really cool because along with basic business information, you can see reviews written by other customers, which gives you a better “feel” for a place when you’re figuring out where to go.
Now, this has been done before, but one of the things we’ve done really well is to help build a community spirit among the folks who write reviews on our web site. These “Yelpers” tend to be young, urban professionals who enjoy going out, and they enjoy writing about their experiences: the good, the bad, the funny, the odd. They socialize on our message boards, meet up for weekly happy hours, and we invite the “Elite” members to spectacular parties every couple of months.
I am a fan. It is more rewarding to work at a company whose service I enjoy!
Anyhow, the reason I am writing just now is to see if anyone who reads my blog is, or knows, a good Unix SysAdmin, or perhaps a great Object-Oriented web developer. The Unix position requires a senior-level, well-rounded generalist who is comfortable with Linux, tiered network infrastructure, and a the variety of challenges offered by a rapidly-growing startup. The web developer should know how to build awesome web sites, while talking to a MySQL database efficiently. There will be further detail posted online, but I would be happy to talk to friends about these positions, especially the SysAdmin, with whom I will be working very closely.
(Anyway, back to the variety of challenges on my plate for the day.)
Cheers,
-danny
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/10/25/yelp-2/
My take on Yelp:
When it comes to social networking, I prefer to interact with articulate people. Grammar is one benchmark. Style and panache go a long way too. Passion is another element of good writing. So, yeah, Yelpers will tend to embody some combination of erudition, style, panache, and passion, and that stuff makes me hot!
I like that Yelp is not MySpace. There’s a “cover charge” here and that is comfort with written self-expression.
-danny
Of course, this is my personal view. I am not speaking for my employer.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/05/02/google-subscribe-button/
I was talking to a co-worker about how awesome the Google Personalized home page is. There’s an advanced interface where you can paste in just about any URL and get it aggregated on the page. How neat is that? Well, it would be even neater if there was a button in the web browser, so you could just visit a web site, and add it to your Google Home Page.
Well, I have done this before … I didn’t invent it, but this little JavaScript bookmark does the trick: (more…)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/04/04/benefits-of-dst/
I got up at 6AM today, which is what I do on my good days. Not only was it rainy and cold, but since 6AM now comes at 5AM, it was fricking dark too. So I went back to bed, got up at 8:30, and drove in.
So, uhm, no daylight here, and increased fuel consumption. (If I wake up at 6 or 7, I have enough time for breakfast at home and a walk to the bus station.)
But I am just a crank.
This crazy mega-rain chaff my hide.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/03/29/ruptured-hyphen/
Am I the last English speaker on this planet who reads “sundried tomatoes” as “mixed tomatoes?”
People! Please! Hyphen! Sun-dash-dried . . . dried-by-the-sun! Sundried reads as “to have made sundry” and “sundry” means “miscellaneous, mixed stuff.”
Sundried! PAH! Sun-dried!
Thanks.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/03/07/customer-service-rant/
So, we use Bugzilla at work, and our users are mostly comfortable with it. On the other hand, there’s a popular “ticket tracking” system that is designed to track IT-type issues, which are considerably different from, although similar to, bugs. So, I have been asking around for advice . . . one reason I like RT is that it is simple for the user to send an e-mail directly into the system. A response was “well, then you don’t get enough information to solve the problem, so making the user fill out all the information in a web interface is better.” This . . . this, is one of my peet peeves:
Ah, personally, I HATE any system that makes “reporting a bug” any more cumbersome than absolutely needed. You need to make it as easy as possible to record that “something is wrong” and then query your customer for missing data as needed. All these “customer service” forms that have ever forced me to supply 5, ten, fifty pieces of frequently irrelevant data, and then ask me to explain my problem in a tiny little window . . .
No. Tools need to accomodate customer needs, and customer needs low barrier to entry. My cynical take on requiring the user to answer twenty questions is that you gain “efficiency” by making it sufficiently cumbersome for a user to report trouble such that the user will simply tolerate all but the very biggest problems, meanwhile cursing the jackasses over in the support organization with their “talk to our dumb*ss web interface” mentality.
A good compromise is to capture the user inquiry, and then, if there’s a standard questionnaire that needs filling out, have them fill it out.
Just, ah, my 2c. :)
I am so exhausted right now. Where has all my energy gone? Grr!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/02/13/winter-olympics/
Man, I’m not going to poop on the Olympics. I mean, as an American, especially one without TV, its not like I even pay attention. But someone on the radio recently explained something that has always subconsciously bugged me about the Winter Olympics.
He said that the Summer Games are the real Olympics, because sports like running are something that people throughout the world can compete in. The Winter Olympics self-select for those who have access to Winter, or, more likely, those who have access to copius amounts of air conditioning. I mean, Michelle Kwan, who thoroughly rocks . . . she’s from L.A. She lives in a desert! And, her parents would drive her, in a car, which most people don’t have, to an ice rink, which most people don’t have, and she competes in the “sport” of ice skating, which, however gratifying to watch, is more of an “artistic physical endeavor” than a “sport” . . .
And ice skating is more democratic than stuff like skiing, which is an activity pretty much reserved for the upper middle class of developed Northern countries. I . . . well, I have just enough flatlander proleteriat pinko in me that I have always avoided opportunities to finally go skiing. Not like I’m about to storm the ski slopes and burn down the cabins or whatever, it is just that the whole thing is ever so slightly too bourgeois for my blood. (And I am an upper-income culture snob who doesn’t own a TV.)
. . . the summer Olympics, these are the ones where the barefoot Africans show up from impoverished countries you have never heard of to take home Gold Medals, because however poor their backgrounds, there is no denying that they can run fast. We have high-precision clocks that say so.
All the same, I’ll give the Winter Olympics its due . . . a lot of people from a lot of countries get together to compete, in the Olympic spirit. And since they staggered the Winter games into the years between the summer games, it is kind of a nice “side show” to tide the fans over ’til the next every-fourth-year event.
3 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/02/09/advice-for-salespeople/
“There’s two kinds of vendors in this world, my friend. There are those that, when I ask for a quote, send me an Excel spreadsheet, and those that are likely to get my business.”
It is more complicated than that, but:
- If I check “I prefer to be contacted by e-mail” on the form, don’t call me.
- If I have already filled out my company’s name, you are not allowed to mis-spell it.
- If you are a Data Center company named “Colo(Whatever)” then don’t send me a quote for “collocation” services. Paper documents are collated, servers are co-located.
- If I ask for 1 unit of bandwidth, don’t raise your price by sneaking in a second unit of bandwidth.
- Dude, who offers Data Center tours twice a week?
- SysAdmins don’t always have ready access to Microsoft Excel, and Word documents can break when you e-mail them to a customer running a different version. Nobody wants to pay “Err: 5” for services. Text or PDF or death!!
By the way, I need to hire a SysAdmin . . .
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/09/ikea-emeryville-bah/
IKEA Flags, San Diego (Thanks,
Juan23)
Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I love shopping at IKEA . . . the drive to the mega-store, the search for parking, the endless meandering through furniture and accoutrements, only to find yourself facing the stark reality of a giant warehouse, asking yourself if the Black-Brown BILLY bookshelf, which looks so black in the warehouse, is really the same color you were looking at in the showroom, and standing in line, wondering just what kind of crap they put in a 50c hot dog. But once you pay, and you’re rolling out the door, you know you’re not far from the actual joy of wrangling your heavy flat-packed furniture up the stairs and getting busy with the allen wrench.
But yesterday . . . well, I have officially given up on the Emeryville, CA IKEA. Here is my tale, as told in the call-and-response format that passes for “customer service” via the “Internet” these days: (more…)
9 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/29/i-am-lame/
So, I discovered yesterday, that if one goes to Google, and types i am lame, then my web site is the first hit. Don’t that make me feel special?
But I didn’t drag you here for my inverse ego thing, here’s some cool videos that I have seen recently:
Internet Musical — World of Warcraft Monsters praise the Internet, in song. Best. Video. Ever!
Climbing Russian Kids — Man, talk about making good use of a post-utopian wasteland. Hollywood should steal these kids for stuntmen.
Sushi Documentary — Everything you shouldn’t know about sushi.
Devil Dogs — Lucian Reed went to Iraq to take photographs. This video is a valuable glimpse at how our folks are doing over there.
I have decided that Google Video is mostly tolerable. It’s not standard CODECs in files . . . probably they have some decent reasons, but unlike RealVideo, or QuickTime, they don’t require you to install spyware on your computer and watch the video in a little 2″ window. So, well, okay, maybe forcing you to stream . . . why? Maybe that is somewhat evil, but it is definitely less evil than “Video on the Internet” that has come before, and easier for the masses than Bittorrent . . . though it’d be neat . . . give it time . . .
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/28/red-hat-rant/
Ahhh, so in my getting to grips with, I have a few gripes about Linux. Some day I may cultivate these into a well-formed, coherent technical explanation, but just now . . . just now, I’ll share with you a special favorite rant of mine.
New install, right? By default, it wants to check the install media (who cares?) then there’s a screen that says “welcome to <version of Red Hat>” where you get the chance to say “ohhh, wrong CD …” then you move on to disk partitioning, and you have to intentionally select that yes you want to erase all data, and enter a bunch of other parameters … network … firewall, SE-Linux … altogether 10-15 minutes if you know what you are doing. Nothing onerous. Lots of “yes, a firewall, and these other things, these are all a good ideas, I’ll just mostly agree to what you suggest.” (more…)
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/23/akita-sushi-buffet/
It would seem that the dinner sushi buffet is back for Walnut Creek, on weeknights, for a limited time only. When it first opened, the dinner sushi buffet was a wonder to behold! Giant servings of raw, delicious fish. It was too good to be true, and indeed when they realized how much money they were losing, they stopped it.
Well, tonight I was thinking “spicy tuna roll” and found the buffet back in action. But it is a far cry from “too good to be true” . . . more like “dude, what do you expect from a sushi buffet? Fool!” Oh well. Maybe Gourmet Sushi will actually re-open soon. The sign says he will open before Christmas, but last I seen, the windows were still covered with newspapers and there was an envelope from the IRS sticking out of the mail slot. If he skips town . . . well, restaurants come and restaurants go, but that guy has this intense aura about him that kind of reminds me of Basil Fawly, except with inscrutable Asian powers. I’m going to miss that guy.
I’m not feeling too good . . . but if I survive the indigestion I get to fly to Chicago tomorrow, and see the fam.
Happy Solstice Holidays to you!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/20/utahs-memorial-crosses/
The January 6, 2006 issue of _The Week_ reports that:
“Atheists are suing the Utah Highway Patrol to remove roadside crosses erected to honor fallen officers. At issue are 14 12-foot-high crosses, each bearing the name of an officer killed in the line of duty. All the fallen officers were Christian, and their families are unanimously opposed to the crosses’ removal.”
(more…)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/07/starbucks-not-evil/
I am not a big fan of Starbucks. It’s not merely that I’m anti-trendy, but it just isn’t my idea of a nice coffee shop. (My idea of coffee doesn’t encompass “twenty ounces served in a paper cup with a plastic lid,” unless I’m stopping at a gas station on the Interstate.) But they give benefits to part-time employees, and as far as I have ever heard, the company conducts itself in a decent manner uncharacteristic of many greedy megacorporations. The latest evidence comes from AP / Yahoo: (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/05/sony-is-fony/
In Sony’s defense, they are renting the walls that they are defacing:
Coming on the heels of widely publicized news that Sony music CDs infected customers’ computers with security-hole-inducing spyware, Sony has hired graffiti artists in major urban areas to spray-paint buildings with simple, totemic images of kids playing with the [PSP].
dannyman says:
Corporations who think they have Street Cred are kind of lame an awkward, like White People who think they can Rap. I’ll grant you, there may be a Corporate analog to Eminem, but it aint Sony.
Feedback Welcome
« Newer Stuff . . . Older Stuff »
Site Archive
