I think I’m going to change my technology focus. Now that I’ve stepped outside of my circle of really talented and competent people, I’ve learned that PHP Developers suck. I’ve been trying to hire people for a big project that we’re working on, and I am absolutely amazed by the number of unreliable and/or absolutely terrible programmers that I’ve talked to.

PHP is suitable for “enterprise development”. The problem is, only 1% of everyone who knows PHP actually knows what “enterprise development” is supposed to mean.

Maybe this’ll all have a happy ending, but this has so far been pretty close to the top, if not the top, of my list of “Worst Birthdays Ever” …

From ZDNet, it looks like Microsoft is preparing what they call a “don’t blame Windows” tool. What I found incredibly interesting is the description on what the tool does.

Windows Advisor is an easy-to-use self-help tool that notifies users about problems on their PCs and helps fix them. Windows Advisor scans users’ PCs continuously, notifies them about important issues, and, when possible, suggests easy fix solutions. The program also provides users with self-help solutions, including a 1-click checkup function that enables them to check their PCs whenever they like; tips and tutorials that teach users how to perform certain actions on their PCs; and a toolbox that concentrates the important tools that are found in the operating system into one easy-to-find location.

I feel like I’ve heard of something like this before … but, I can’t for the life of me remember where …

$5 Million seems a lot smaller, now that Microsoft has stepped into this particular game. Only, Microsoft has a much wider scope in mind: “Windows”

I should’ve expected something like this would happen over a year ago. Of course, I also didn’t expect I’d be more successful now. Only … I don’t have VCs to answer to. Wink, wink.

I know what you’re thinking: “You’re kidding, right?” (Okay, maybe that’s just what I thought.)

In some cases, I wish that I was …

So Long … And Thanks for All the Fish

Yahoo responded to the letter from Carl Icahn, but I think this is the lead out before the final nail goes into the coffin. Microsoft has said they’ve moved on, though? What happens if this new board of directors can’t get the software giant to bite? I think Dvorak put it best. This squad looks like a great bunch of sellouts.

If Yahoo can’t fend off Icahn, it’s game over. If Icahn does manage this take over, selling out to Microsoft might actually be the best case scenario. Can anyone spot the irony in that sentence? So, we’re looking at the possibility of Yahoo being sold to Microsoft where the clash of culture and technology is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services … or Yahoo being cut up and sold to the highest bidders … which is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services. I can’t find the win in this situation, can you? Oh right, I’m not a Yahoo shareholder … maybe I should be.

I feel really sorry for some of the more prominent members of the PHP Community who are currently employed at Yahoo. I can’t imagine that they would have any trouble finding a new home, if they decide to leave after whatever ends up happening. Maybe everything will settle down and nothing will happen, then they’ll get to just keep their jobs in peace. Who knows?

Let’s pick on CNET for a while … (more…)

I’m in the market for an RSS Feed Reader. Something light-weight that lives on my PC (sorry Google Reader fans). I’m a huge fan of Opera’s built-in RSS Support, but I’ve been using Firefox again lately. Firefox’s Live Bookmarks just aren’t cutting it for me, anymore. My RSS Feed list has gotten extensive to the point that whenever I start my browser, it will hang for about 2 - 3 minutes while it does a massive update check against all my RSS Feeds.

I’m thinking about giving Thunderbird a shot to see how well it manages feeds. I’ll report back with my feelings on its performance and whatnot. If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know.

If you’ve been keeping up with me like the good stalkers that you are, you’ll notice that I’ve been using Twitter, lately. (You can follow me, if you’re not already.) I didn’t buy into the whole Twitter thing at first, but it is sort of nice to be able to send a text message from my phone to a service that actually updates information in three separate places at once. Don’t follow me on Twitter? That’s fine, you can keep up with my status updates on Facebook. Even if you don’t use Facebook, you can see all of my updates on the widget on the left side of my blog.

What I think is absolutely fascinating (and maybe really, really stupid) is the fact that Twitter is receiving Venture Capital … (more…)

I’m trying out a new time tracking software I ran across the other day. RescueTime drops a little light-weight application onto your computer that monitors what applications and websites you’re in most frequently. I’ve got the widget for my top 10 activities of the last week on the sidebar, now. Keep in mind I just started on Wednesday.

Overall, it’s a relatively accurate little program. It lets you tag your own applications and sites, so you determine what’s referred to as “personal”, “procrastination”, or “work” to take from a few off my list. As you can see, I haven’t been working very much on my computer for the past couple days. I classify “work” as time that I spend doing things for Omega Vortex. Planet AT&T is one of my tags and will probably appear on my top 10 eventually, the more I use my laptop for day-to-day tasks at the store.

My only complaint is it seems to do all of its data management in YAML and it often chokes on various things. It also seems to completely lose the data intended for the request it tried to send when it does choke. Right now, I’ve only got a little over 8 hours logged into RescueTime and I’ve spent way, way, way more time on my computer than that. Edit: As a followup to this, it just tried to process another update and failed because it didn’t like something about the blog. So, it just randomly loses data. The whole last 30 minutes went without being logged. Hurrah. Maybe it’ll lose less data if I make it send updates more often, but they’d probably hate me if I spammed them with updates every 5 - 10 minutes.

Another complaint is that, from the error messages, it seems to be written in Ruby … but, I won’t go there.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with it. It just needs some work on its data delivery and not completely losing data when something goes wrong. I’d be cool if it threw out the offending entry in a parser error, but it seems like it just bails out on the entire request and doesn’t try again.

I’m hoping to use the time tracking in conjunction with my new phone to hopefully get myself more organized. The time tracking will be a motivator to stop procrastinating and doing other things when I should be working. The phone is a very easy way to keep track of important times and dates, because I’m very forgetful. Especially, when I get involved in something and lose track of time.

So, here’s to hopefully becoming more productive. I really need it, about now.

What is with the blog applications that bring entries back to the top of the RSS Feed when they’ve been edited? That has to be the most retarded functionality anyone’s ever come up with.

Case in point, I was reading Planet PHP this morning and a 2-year-old entry that outlined the ongoing childish attitudes some people within the PHP Community have resurfaced. If I hadn’t checked the dates on all of these particular blog entries, I would’ve thought this was new material. Since this entry served as a gateway to another blog entry that was a specific attack on Chris Shiflett, any random passer-by who thinks this is all new stuff is going to a) have negative thoughts about the “whiner” in question; or b) have negative thoughts about Chris over something that’s two freaking years old.

I implore you. If you’re the author of any blog software, stop doing this. Not only is it extremely annoying to get repeats of old crap in my RSS Feeds whenever someone edits something, it can lead to potentially hazardous things like this resurfacing and causing unnecessary damage to one or more people’s reputations.

This could very well be unhealthy … But, I can’t help but think there’s got to be someone out there who’s worse. Much much worse …

I guess it could be worse.

I have to admit that I’m a little concerned about this. Apparently, Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo and threw $44.6 billion at them in an offer.

My question is what does this mean for PHP if Yahoo accepts the offer? Not enough major players use PHP and Yahoo was one of our best aces to throw when people started talking down about the language. What’s Microsoft going to do with Yahoo if they buy them out?

Maybe someone with a little more knowledge on the issue can shed some light somewhere …

Fix it. This is unacceptable. If you want me to continue using your browser, this should never happen again. Period. I wish some of the stuff I used wasn’t so flaky in Opera, or I’d be using it as my main browser.