Author Archives: M. Dave Auayan

Clearing out cobwebs

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In classic blogger form, I apologize for the length between actual posts. I long ago set up automated posts that compiles my activity on various services, but I doubt anyone actually reads them. I mean, I doubt anyone is reading these posts but, I digress.

In time since I last posted, Nicole and I managed to not only find a house for sale, but we also bought it. We’ve started renovating it preparing for our move with happens in a couple days. We’ve even started a blog about the process.

I’m still working at the awesome Substantial, though at the rate they’re growing, it feels like I haven’t met even half the people that now work there. I’m also still working for Wizards of the Coast, albeit even less than I was previously, as I’ve requested to be put on the back burner while we work on the house and try to get moved in. I’m also still doing work for Nology Media at times, and their growth rate is probably double that of Substantial’s. In any case, all that adds up to me being incredibly busy. Any free time I have lately is filled now with playing Black Ops, usually for an hour or so, just to get me away from a keyboard and mouse (Magic Trackpad, actually, but you get my point).

Because of how busy I am, many of my side projects are suffering greatly:

  • TweetMe.TV has barely left the planning stage1.
  • TweetMe.me has been in barely maintenance mode.
  • Prototype Apps barely has a working alpha, and I’ve already considered switching technology.
  • Seek and Destroy is also undergoing a technology change.
  • Validate on Save has had more work done by contributors than myself lately (yay open source!)
  • and there’s a bunch more (probably on my github that I haven’t touched in a long while.

Ah well, maybe I’ll be able to get to some of those this summer2.

In other news: I started drinking this Peanut Passion smoothie from Emerald City Smoothies for lunch. They’re ridiculously good. Nicole put together a recipe so I could make them at home. It goes something like:

  • 1 banana
  • 1 half pint of strawberry yogurt
  • 1 half pint of milk
  • 2 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter
  • 2 tablespoons of granola or cereal

Blend together until smooth. The measurements aren’t exact, you could practically use any amount you want, it will most likely come out good. I usually throw in a tablespoon of grape or strawberry jelly as well. A coworker at Substantial, Shawn, suggested we get a hand immersion blender; we did that, and we basically just toss everything into a large enough cup and blend away.

  1. Developing for Twitter lately seems to be hit and miss. My guess is they’re making it harder for Twitter clients to compete, but anyone else wanting to use the Twitter platform is getting caught in the dragnet. ↩

  2. hahahah! ↩

On Front End Engineers

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I ran across a link to a blog entry titled Hiring Front-End Engineers and gave it a quick read. The entire time, I kept thinking, “This dude’s describing me! Surely this is some sort of trick?”

He broke it down into 5 points:

  • Good front-end engineers rarely have a computer science degree.
    I ended up leaving college to work in the design department of a newspaper.
  • Good front-end engineers cannot be forged from back-end engineers.
    I started with html, css, and javascript years before I started dabbling with back-end techonology.
  • Good front-end engineers list Javascript on their resume, not jQuery. John Resig (creator of jQuery) was about 12 years old when I started writing Javascript.
  • Good front-end engineers are artists.
    I’ve been in several bands, own a ton of camera equipment, and love to draw and paint (though I haven’t done any of that in years).
  • If you want to find good front-end engineers, look to the newspaper and print industry.
    I worked for two years doing advertising design at the newspaper (one of my first jobs).

The last point practically guarantees my status as a rare-breed with the print industry (and newspapers, specifically) imploding. If only there was a way to forward this to every prospective employer.

Comcast’s New Enhanced Security

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Comcast added some extra security measures recently that practically blocked us out of our own account. It’s a long story, and while I’m sure you’d love hearing me complain about it, I’m just going to skip it.

In any case, I got this sent to my comcast.net email address this morning:

Dear MATTHEW AUAYAN,

Our records show that you recently changed the email password on your account. If you did not authorize this change, please call Comcast at 1-800-COMCAST and we’ll be happy to assist in any way we can.

Your security is top priority at Comcast! To learn more, visit our FAQs at www.comcast.com.

Best regards, The Comcast Team\r\n[EventId:60097249:/EventId]

I bet when my Comcast phone service goes out, they diligently call me on my Comcast phone line to notify me of the interruption of service1.

  1. After getting home yesterday, it turns out our modem resets if you try to make any calls or receive any calls. I called in to report it, and scheduled for a tech to come down and replace it. I hung up, thought that was that, until I got a voicemail from Comcast saying they couldn’t confirm the appointment, so while being sarcastic in the previous paragraph, I wasn’t too far off. Luckily, I had my number changed to my cell phone, but unfortunately I have spotty reception (AT&T *cough*) at the house (hence the Comcast voice service), so it got kicked directly to Google voice, née GrandCentral. ↩