Asymptomatic

I'm currently at the airport in Las Vegas, awaiting a flight that starts boarding in 45 minutes or so. I figured I would take the time to write this now, because if I don't then I'll just say "forget it" like I always do, and then literally forget everything.

While I was in Las Vegas this weekend, I visited Blog World Expo. I don't even really know what Blog World Expo is. I mean, I know what it's supposed to be, but I'm not really convinced that it is what it purports.

I wouldn't be so bold as to say that social media is an illusion. That's very much not true, but I do think that people are prospecting in this space, not really knowing how to organize the people who are involved. Largely, they're preaching to the choir, or they're so paradoxically self-involved that they can't even see the "social" aspect of the industry that they're trying to form....

Over the past weekend, we took the usual summer pilgrimage to Johnstown. This time, Berta's sister Therese was in the process of moving, so while they packed up some of their things, I watched the kids. This turned out not too unpleasant. During the time going out and while the kids were entertaining themselves amicably, I was able to do some more reading.

When last Pat as in town, he loaded up my Kindle with a few sample books. I started reading one by Vernor Vinge called "A Fire Upon the Deep". It was both interesting and strange. We also started listening to an audiobook prequel to the Tales of the Otori trilogy, "Heaven's Net is Wide", by Lian Hearn.

A Fire Upon the Deep is, as I said, strange. It's been a while since I've read true space sci-fi, and this certainly qualifies. It will be difficult to explain some of the many layered characteristics of this book, which set to establish axioms by which Vinge's world operates....

Over the weekend, I visited Columbus, not just to hang out with skippy at ComFest and buy too much crap at Origins, but to attend and lead a session at PodCamp Ohio.

The side dishes to this entrée are actually better than the meat, but the meat was the point of the dinner, so that's what I'll talk about here. I'm all about focus here. Focus.

I showed up right on time for the welcome session on Saturday and checked in. I hadn't been able to show up for the Friday night meetup because of the previously mentioned "side dishes". I checked in and was shown to the "Speaker Lounge", marked off by signs with martini glasses (with olive!). After a brief welcome from another couple of session leaders in the lounge, we all shuffled down to Room A for the introduction.

I'm not going to do a play-by-play of the rest of the day, because that's already feeling tedious. Let me cover briefly a couple of sessions I did attend, and my overall impression of the camp. more

I've had the occasion over the past few years in my capacity as a long-time developer to interview candidates for jobs within my company and for clients I've contracted for. As a result, I've had some time to formulate some opinions about what questions to ask developers who are applying for a position, and the types of answers to expect from a candidate that you'd want to hire.

Sadly, I think the market of good developers is far, far too small. I do subscribe to the philosophy that great developers are born, not made, although I also believe that you can produce adequate developers with good training and persistent oversight. It is really unfortunate that coders who want to get jobs aren't as versed in what makes a great developer great, and it's a frequent topic of discussion when hiring rounds begin.

I'd like to share a few of the qualities I like to look for in a web developer to both educate would-be coders as to what I expect, and educate would-be interviewers who wouldn't know a good developer if he hacked into his bank account and stole all his cash. ...

I've had so much to say over the past two weeks, and no desire at all to write about any of it. It seems like I should do a dictation or something, and have my secretary write out my blog posts for me. Perhaps I will look into a service soon -- I've always thought that my blog entries would sound better if I read them instead of writing them. In any case, here's a brief summary of topics of things that I should have written about but didn't.

I got a shave two weeks ago - a real one in a barber's chair with a straight razor. I actually did write about this, but I wasn't near the internet when I did it, and I'm not sure where my notebook is at the moment. I'm sure that post will appear when I finally stumble across the notebook bag.

On that same day, I attended the PhillyCHI design slam. It was an interesting event in which we were broken up into small random groups and given the task to create a "table management system" for a fictional restaurant. Our group didn't do very well primarily because there was no cohesion between our members. We had some pretty good ideas, but they weren't realized because everyone wanted to go separate directions. Kind of stupid, really....