Entries filed under Work

Grepping through repo directories (aka the ".svn/" problem)

03 November 2008

It's super annoying when you're looking for a string in your code, so you do a recursive grep, only to get a ton of matches within svn's ".svn" directories.

Here's a solution:

Inside your ~/.bash_profile, insert this line:

  1. alias rgrep="find . -follow \( -name ".svn" \) -prune -o -print | xargs grep -Hn"

Save it, then log out and back in. Now instead of

  1. grep -ir "sprintf" *

do
  1. rgrep sprintf

Cake!

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SMART Project Management

09 August 2008

When I was in high-school, I worked at an office supply chain in the "Business Machines" department. I sold computers, adding machines, Palm Pilots (the first revision!), printers, cables, you name it. Aside from helping customers, I had to stock those items on the floor, take daily inventory, complete cleaning/organizing projects, set up new displays to specs (Planograms) and take on whatever other tasks my managers wanted me to finish. Eventually, I was promoted to "Business Machines Lead" -- which came with a sweet $0.75/hr raise.

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jQuery tab background template

05 August 2008

Like a lot of you, I've had to create many many backgrounds for jQuery tabs.

I've mocked up a little template in Photoshop which should help make creation super-simple and fast. An example gradient is also included!

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Komodo 5 sluggishness in OSX

17 November 2008

Komodo is a great cross-platform IDE. But I've noticed that as file size increases, Komodo's performance slows to a crawl, becoming practically unusable once files hit 2.5k lines or so.

I opened a thread about it on ActiveState's community site (which happens to be running Drupal!). It seems this is a known issue on OSX and they're looking into it.

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Awesome week coming!

03 August 2009

Lots of good stuff coming this week!

First, I'm still working on our super-secret project at WorkHabit. When this thing launches, it's going to change the face of... this one industry that I can't really talk about for now. It's a TON of work, and some really cool stuff is going into it, and I'll be sure and throw up some really cool examples once it's public and we can talk about it. I'm getting to work closely with Aaron again, which is a lot of fun as always.

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How to count back change: a beginner's guide

21 August 2009

Last week I paid for my coffee with a $100 bill and got shorted $10. I doubt the cashier was risking getting fired over $10, so I have to assume she just didn't know how to count change. This morning, a cashier at Arco surprised the crap out of me and counted back my change properly. It doesn't seem to be related to the "classiness" of the shop, or even the age of the cashier -- properly counting back change has somehow become a lost art.

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What is "acting like an owner"?

28 August 2009

In almost every job I've had -- from Staples in high school to WorkHabit now -- someone's told me to "act like an owner." It's this big push about building company culture and getting employees to do more than clock in at 8 and clock out at 5, there are at least a few books written on it. I'm not exactly sure where I stand on this concept, but I'm leaning toward "it's total BS." First, I don't have access to the company's books or cashflow, so any financial decisions are right out the window. I don't have access to client projects that aren't mine, so decisions about those are out.

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Everything I Know About Life I Learned From Poker

09 October 2009

Over the last two years, I've been realizing how similar poker, business, and life are. Here are 5 nuggets of wisdom I've been noodling on:

1. Don't operate from a position of fear
Fear is a natural reaction to the unknown. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of disappointing people, the fear that you might go broke -- these are all pretty normal things to be afraid of. But when you start making decisions out of fear, your judgement gets tainted by that fear. When you get to a tough decision, ask yourself, "how is the fear of X affecting this?"

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