Viewing profile — stewiecat

The only thing I work on that my job provided is the laptop, which they purchased for me after realizing my own was a bit too old. External monitor, mouse, keyboard, stand, etc. al…

Even in shops where software is the business I've been given a standard Dell laptop for development. The IT folks didn't want to bother with procuring different laptops for differe…

It could be abrasive if the rapport isn't there. But a good manager will build that over time until the point were blunt honest questions can be answered bluntly and honestly with …

I use both. Time machine in my home to back up mine and the wife's macs and Arq to offsite backup a subset of my home directory (docs, music, photos, settings).

Google has the same thing. Larry, Sergey, Eric all have shares that carry 10x the votes of regular Class A shares so they can still exercise control if their holdings fall below 50…

It's 3 committees + Larry. This was the case in December 2009 when I interviewed there. Local hiring committee, regional hiring committee, HQ hiring committee then final sign-off b…

In the book "Voyager : seeking newer worlds in the third great age of discovery" they said that as the crafts got further out they had to use large radio antenna's in Spain, Hawaii…

I worked for a guy that called us all "button pushers".

This is the battle I fight every day. I'd rather have a workload that's 110% of my capacity than be at 50%, which I generously where I'm at now. We're an "agile" shop that grossly …

Indeed it is. At home I don't have my office neighbor yelling questions through the wall at me.

Retirement savings is the longest-term of all long-term investments. My 401K got torn to pieces during this recession. My first reaction was "How can I buy more?". That's when I st…

* 401(k) through employer, maxed out (or close to) every year. * Additional $200/month into a (taxable) mutual fund * Whole life insurance through a solid insurer (Northwestern Mut…

I prefer Textual. Open source if you want to build it yourself or throw the dev's 5 bucks and get it from the mac app store.

Here's a side-project I've been working off and on during evenings/weekends. It's called MacGist, a simple menubar application for OS X that allows users to copy selected text in a…

Here's a side-project I've been working off and on during evenings/weekends. It's called MacGist and allows users to copy selected text in any MacOS application to a (public, for n…

Same here. My alma mater, Stevens Institue of Technology, isn't listed on the site anywhere and it's a pure engineering and science school.

I've seen similar things with my gmail being fast while my lower-volume hosted gmail accounts are slow. The converse also happens at random times.

We did this in high school back in '95. We got the regular chemistry teacher to sign it to the chagrin of our AP chemistry teacher.

My employer's been trying to hire a tech writer for two months now. You happen to be located in Philly?

I did a pseudo-agile process for a project where I was the solo developer. A lot of agile practices scale down quite nicely: defined scope, sprints, unit testing, etc. The key is t…

Yup, in Mahwah area, up Route 17 near the NY border. The NYSE built a massive data center there specifically for colocation of high frequency trading operations, even going so far …

I got screwed by a policy like that years ago when I moved from the DoD back into the private sector. I was honest (and naive) when filling out the HR paperwork and listed my low g…

I can't wait to see the DHH post on the 37signals blog about this one. http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-...

I lived in Hoboken and worked in Manhattan for years with a shorter commute than most folks who either lived in Manhattan or Brooklyn. 10 minutes apartment->PATH, 11 mins PATH (Hob…

Hoboken is crime-ridden?? I spent 6 years there from 1996-2002 and have friends that still live there and can say that crime is not an issue in almost all of Hoboken. Sure, if you …