Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

  (Un)usability

I know, I know, a lot of good work has been done on making Linux usable by normal people in the last few years. I'm happy for them.

I'm NOT normal. I miss the features of windows managers like sawfish, E and evilwm. I think window manager development needs to go forwards, not backwards, and a linux desktop that doesn't look like a half assed windows clone is far sexier to some, than others. I got a lot of people hooked on E, at one point.

I wrote this entire blog entry in the time it took for firefox's new whizzy "Choose Helper Application" while I waited, and waited, and waited for it to prettily format all the entries in /usr/bin.

This, on a dual 1.6Ghz opteron!!!!

Yo, developers of nifty new interfaces? Some of us can type. Please - Let us type - please?

All I wanted to do was type "/usr/bin/xmms" so I could listen to "It's a small world after all">.
 
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

  Stars Die

I just got utterly choked up by hearing the audio sample of Nixon's phone call to the moon, embedded at the end of "Stars Die", by Porcupine Trees



 

  Vacillation Road

Today I face an oddity of the new millenium - Two job offers, presented at exactly the same time.

Good offers. Very good offers.

Both offers are roughly equivalent, a slight nod to company #1 for more money
and better benefits, a slight nod to company #2 for more (theoretical) options and a higher projected growth rate.

Company #1 has been around 5+ years, and is stable-ly growing in an established market (embedded Linux)

Company #2 has been around for 2 years, and is entering a high growth mode in a brand new market (voip)

I like mostly everybody, on both sides. They all like me.

I've got every concession I've asked for, from both sides.

I must be a lousy negotiator, because I've been refused very little.

Only a few years ago, I'd have chosen company #2, because I get off on creating startups. These days I've slowed down a bit, and I've been through a bunch of companies like #2, and so company #1 seems more appealing from a stability perspective.

#1 and I have been negotiating for 3 weeks. #2 just leapt back into the picture with something substantial at the very last moment. (a few months back I turned down an offer from them that was very insubstantial, pre-first-round sort of fluffy stuff)

Company #2 leads me closer to my life's goals - at higher risk - offering me a chance to become bi-coastal, among other things. In the voip world, I'm a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, although there are people way better than me, I'm way ahead of the curve of most on understanding how it all fits together.

Company #1 lets me work on issues closer to my engineering heart, in a world that I get around in best. In the Linux world I'm just another very knowledgeable hacker.

I've been doing linux for 13 years, embedded Linux for about 7 years now, voip pretty intensively for the past 2, and embedded Linux/Voip for the past year, so I'm qualified to do either gig.

I've got a little burnt out on voip recently, but I gotta admit I know the code base and want to keep pushing that technology forward, and certainly use it, day to day. That said, recently I've been stuck in the 2.4 kernel and I want to be able to work in 2.6 again....

No matter which company I choose, one will be disappointed. A bunch of brilliant people on both sides have spent a lot of time trying to convince me to work for them.

No matter which company I choose I will wonder if I chose rightly - possibly for years - but I will force myself not to look back, only go forward.

Both are pressing me hard for a decision ASAP. Since this decision is going to direct my life for the next couple years, I'm stalling as much as I can, but I have to decide, today.

I really wish that there was some radical difference between the two offers that would make the choice easy, but there isn't.

I think, after talking more with my gf, that I'm going to go surfing, or take a long walk, and talk to myself a lot more.

And the other thing that has worked so well for me has been to blog about my problems. And perhaps, a clear solution will show itself in a couple hours.
 
David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


Resume,Songs,
My new blog, NeX-6, My facebook page
Orgs I like
The EFF - keeping free speech in the world
Musical stuff I like
Jeff, Rick, Ardour, Jack
Prior Rants - New song: Log Off Now Sharing your home network better in a time of covi... Designing for the disconnect Email lists going down the memory hole Instituting saner, professional source code manage... Wireless and Wifi in 2015 - not what I dreamed of Saving wifi! Fixing Bufferbloat! Fighting the vend... Virgin Media - Fixing the epidemic of bufferbloat ... 49... and trying to find my navel Wheels down on mars!
Best of the blog:
Uncle Bill's Helicopter - A speech I gave to ITT Tech - Chicken soup for engineers
Beating the Brand - A pathological exploration of how branding makes it hard to think straight
Inside the Internet Mind - trying to map the weather within the global supercomputer that consists of humans and google
Sex In Politics - If politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it, it would be a better world
Getting resources from space - An alternative to blowing money on mars using NEAs.
On the Columbia - Why I care about space
Authors I like:
Doc Searls
Where's Cherie?
UrbanAgora
Jerry Pournelle
The Cubic Dog
Evan Hunt
The Bay Area is talking
Brizzled
Zimnoiac Emanations
Eric Raymond
Unlocking The Air
Bob Mage
BroadBand & Me
SpaceCraft
Selenian Boondocks
My Pencil
Transterrestial Musings
Bear Waller Hollar
Callahans
Pajamas Media BlogRoll Member

If you really want to, you can poke through the below links as well.

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