Words you wouldn't expect to be in a spell checker

I was typing an email a few minutes ago, and used the word 'automagically'. Much to my surprise, in Chrome and Safari, the spellchecker didn't fire, but the one in Firefox did.

I guess Firefox is for spelling conservatives and Chrome/Safari are on the other side of the aisle. You'd think that there would be some kind of standard for a single shared spell-checking resource on a person's computer.

Oops, I Did It Again

Decided to post another Netflix based screed over on Seeking Alpha.

Why do I keep doing it? I think it's because of all the closed-minded opinions that I keep seeing blathered all over the interwebs.

Of course, how am I really that different with the blathering, except that I'm blathering in a positive vein, and I'm hoping that sharing my past experiences inside the company will help someone understand that there's really something new going on here.

Of course, it could all come crashing down tomorrow, and then won't I look foolish...

What I Like about DC

One of the great things about being in Washington DC is that there are many moment of "oh! that's cool!"

For example, when I was walking to dinner on my last trip out in December, I came across the NPR building. Just your basic stell and glass office building with the lower-case 'npr' all lit up on the side. I heard in my head the voices of the radio personalities and I smiled.

Today, walking back from the Metro, in the block before I got to my hotel, I looked in to a lobby and saw the logo for the American Dental Association, which was exactly the same as the logo that I've been seeing on my tubes of Crest toothpaste since I was a child.

There've been a lot of these kind of moments: National Education Association, Daughters of the American Revolution, Monday's run past the USAID/Customs shared building.

There is something very special about our nation's capital. Just wish it wasn't quite so cold.

Another article on Seeking Alpha

I wrote another little article over on SA. It was about Netflix's change in policy towards releasing results and conference call questions.

I think it's a great step forward, and it generated some interesting discussion about whether it is a step forward, or whether it just gores the oxen of the "establishment".

Back in DC again

I got to DC yesterday for another week near the Nation's Capitol. Happenings in the fabulous Arlington office of OPOWER include:

• Innovation Day
  
• Company Meeting
  
• Novajug presentation by Google on launching scalable apps
  
• Test engineering team night out
  

And other hilarious hijinks.

Went running this morning. From 14th & M down to the Mall and back. Very cold outside, but this time (unlike in December) I brought along some sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Still forgot a hat. Duh. Things noticed:

1. Customs & Border Protection shares a building with USAID (US Agency for International Development). Seems strange to have one building that says "Here, we'll help you develop your own economy, as long as you stay away from us."
   
2. You can see both the White House and the Capitol Building as you stand on Freedom Plaza crossing Pennsylvania Avenue.
   
3. The Washington Monument is really pretty when lit up in the dark of the early morning hours.
   

And finally, on the bus to work this morning (track maintenance on the Metro) I saw the Potomac crusted over with ice. It makes perfect sense, but it was shocking to actually see it.

I'm a Published Author Now!

You may have noticed the 'Seeking Alpha Certified' seal in the right margin. It means that I wrote something they consider sufficiently clever to share with their broader audience as an article. I wrote a short piece about how I really think that Netflix doesn't have any direct competition at this point. It got picked up in the Yahoo 'news' feed for their NFLX stock page. Some interesting comments and conversations arose from it.

I also heard back from a couple of folks at Netflix who saw it picked up as 'news'. One guy, based on just the title, was about to forward it to me as an example of how at least one Wall Street analyst finally 'gets it', but then he realized that I was the author.

So, now that I'm a contributor at Seeking Alpha, apparently I can get press credentials to financial conferences, get free books to review for Seeking Alpha, and other stuff.

I was actually kind of amazed to see that the article I wrote got over 3,000 page views. I'm sure not more than 100 of those were my checking back to see comments and respond to them. :)

Prune Juice. WTF *is* Prune Juice?

As I was shaving this morning, I thought about prune juice. My mind arrived there as a result of a conversation between me and my wife about root beer. She'd seen some celebrity drinking a root beer in one of the weeklies, and she said "I guess 'x' likes root beer."

I replied, "Maybe that's all that they had?"

She said, "You don't do that with root beer. Oh, that's all that's left, I'll have a root beer. You have to like it."

I considered that. "Just like you think that Dr. Pepper has prune juice in it?"

Then I thought about prune juice. A prune is a dried plum. If it's been dried, then where do they get any juice from? It's not like you can drink 'raisin juice'.
Of course, wikipedia knows all.

Prune juice is made by softening prunes through steaming and then putting them through a pulper to create a watery puree.

Interestingly enough, that page also points out that the Dr. Pepper assertion is a long-standing urban myth.
So, prune juice is actually a dried plum puree. Enjoy!

Hey Look! Someone Likes What I Said!

I was chiming in on the Netflix Tech Blog in response to some comments about Netflix+AWS lessons learned, and someone really liked this quote of mine:

The scarcest compute resource in any organization is the one found between the ears. We have a horribly constrained limit on how many things we can pay attention to and focus on. Anything that liberates an engineering team from paying attention to anything other than delivering the next big thing is worth almost any cost.

Unfortunately, their name is also "Rob" and their profile was blocked, so people couldn't easily see that it wasn't me just praising myself.

Oh well, take the strokes where you find them. Thanks, Other Rob for the kind words.

September 11th on September 15th

On my daily run, I ran by the Pentagon this morning, and I visited the September 11 memorial there.

It's a large, gravel paved, open space with some concrete paths, and surrounded by planters with different grasses and shrubs.

Diagonnally striped across the space are narrow channels defined by strips of stainless steel set into the ground. The channels are each labelled with a year, starting with 1930 towards the back of the area and ending with 1998 at the front. In each channel, for each person who died, there is a four or five foot long raised section that looks as if the gravel surface of the ground were peeled up. Engraved on the end of the peeled up strip is the name of the person who died. Underneath each of these elevated sections is a small pool and fountain.

There were five children visiting the Pentagon that day. As I first walked into the space, and I saw the markers and I saw the years, when I kneeled down to look at the marker next to 1998, I cried.

The memorial was surprisingly effective at conveying the scope and scale of the tragedy. As I'm writing this, I'm recalling watching on television the live coverage of the events of September 11, 2001, and realizing that these memories were from nine years, two jobs, and three children ago. It feels like it's been both forever and just yesterday. Some things affect you so deeply, that you don't even recognize that everything has changed until you look back from a distance.

Just What is a Software Engineer in Test?

Sheesh. Just realized I didn't post the fact that I've left Netflix and joined OPOWER as their San Francisco office's test engineering manager. As a matter of fact, I'm helping to build the dev/test team in that office from scratch, and I'm looking for Software Engineers in Test. As part of that search, I have recently written a post to the OPOWER dev blog discussing the question of Just What is a Software Engineer in Test.

Let me know what you think.

Playing around with Chatroulette

Much to my mild embarrassment, I must admit to having mucked about with Chatroulette, even though I'm not:

1. In college
2. drunk
3. naked and masturbating

There have been a number of articles describing the phenomenon, and there has been at least one on-line sighting of the application's creator.

Anyway. My approach was to use CamTwist to display a black surface that I could draw on, and then offer to draw the person in the other window:

Here's a sample of my artistic encounters:

Google Testing Blog: Testing in the Data Center (Manufacturing No More)

Someone at work pointed me at the Google Testing Blog: Testing in the Data Center (Manufacturing No More). Pretty insightful article, and a very healthy perspective on the process of delivering working software.

It was a very a-ha moment for me as far as how well this resonates with many of the testing practices used here at Netflix for the website. However, it really only focuses on applications delivered via the web. The analogy breaks down for packaged and embedded software.

I guess an extention of this metaphor for shrinkwrap and embedded would be like a person who is born, and is then shipped off in a capsule out into space. It can only rely on the resources sent on the journey with it, even though telemetry can still be sent home about how well it's doing.

Very interesting read, though, and quite thought provoking in general.

air hockey w Eloise and Lucy

Hm. I think that I sent a video of Eloise and Lucy playing air hockey, but I don't see it. Hm.

Well, here's the link from YouTube.

Halloween Parade

Pictures from the Halloween Parade at BCS last October

Isaac loves lamb chops

Tonight, Isaac ate his first lamb chop off the bone. He was quite enthusiastic.

  
  

Did I really write that?

On my profile page, it has one of those 'wacky' questions that apparently I answered.

Please describe how you could take the peel off an apple all in one go:

1. Core the apple, 2. Pack core with something explosive, 3. Remove peel (and apple, I suppose)

Did I really write that? Odd.

I cried last night

Isaac is getting older. That's not why I cried. He's just past sixteen months, and he's still sleeping in our bedroom in his crib. He wakes up every morning at 6am on the dot, even on the weekends. That's not why I cried. I have my office in the room of our house that we call Venice. It's called Venice because it's covered in photo-wallpaper with scenes of Venice. The wallpaper is inside the closet and it's a picture of what you'd see if you opened the doors that are in the picture that are on the outside of the doors of the closet. It came with the house. Jen and I don't necessarily like it. That's not why I cried.

We want to move Isaac's crib and changing table into Venice, and that means I have to move my office/computer/stuff down-downstairs. There's a fair bit of stuff to move. That's not why I cried. There's a bunch of stuff that I brought back from Phoenix from my dad's house after he passed away this spring. I have to move that stuff too. I had been dreading moving the stuff down-downstairs because I didn't really want to handle the stuff.

I did, however, suck it up last night and started moving things before I could think too much about it. I was able to move the six or so boxes of things down-downstairs without incident. Then, I gathered a few miscellaneous things: a small grey metal lockbox, a handful of CDs and DVDs and three manila file folders. One of the folders was labeled "Phyllis 66". I didn't know if that meant "66th Birthday" or was a reference to the "Route 66" themed motorhome that my mother and father had owned.

I stood there with these things in my hands and let the folder flop open. I saw an accounting of the dinner party celebrating my mother's 66th birthday in March of 2004 at Outback Steakhouse, including details and outcome of a dispute over how many adults were present and how many entrees were charged for and the fact that "Andrea" would be submitting a credit for $20 to "our Visa account". I also saw a printed poem read at her memorial in March of 2005. I saw the small, pink "Do Not Resuscitate" ID card, dated January 2004 with her neatly written signature. I thought about my mom. I thought about my dad. I thought about them together and I thought about being apart from them. Forever.

That's when I cried. It was quite loud. It was for several minutes. Almost a wail if I think back and try to evaluate it objectively. I didn't feel good when I was done, but I felt better.

Isaac and The Pelican

Seeing if this send-a-picture-from-the-phone thingy works. Isaac and I took a walk down the Santa Cruz Pier today. I'm thinking the thing below might be a picture from that excursion. Maybe not, though.


P.S. I posted and took a look, and it appears to be successful!

A Eulogy for Harvey Fagen

This was delivered May 3, 2009 at the memorial service for my father.

---

Harvey Fagen.

There are many attributes that come to my mind when I remember Harvey Fagen:

Dedicated.
Hardworking.
Caring.
Considerate.
Loving.
Human.
Fortunate.

And most important to me, Father.

When I think about Dedicated and Hardworking, I think about a time when we were living in Akron, Ohio. I had to have been five or six years old. We lived in a townhouse with a large common back-yard. One winter, I recall that Harvey built an ice rink for Jeff and me. He shoveled the snow into low walls surrounding a flat space that feels enormous in my memory, but was probably no more than 10 or 15 feet on a side. To my mind, the entire process looked like he made the walls then filled up the well with water from the hose, and in the morning we had a place to skate. I found out much later that the real process is a little more involved. He would be up all night, spraying a thin layer of water and waiting for it to freeze over and over again, until it was built up and thick enough to skate on. I marveled at the idea when I first heard the true story of the ice rink. I felt loved and I felt that I understood a little more clearly exactly where my instincts to provide for my own family came from.

When I think about Caring and Considerate, I think about how he has taken care of so many of the people in my life. He loved my mother deeply, stayed with her and helped her through some very dark times in her life. He was there to help my Grandmother Lil through her many trials until she too passed away. He has always been there to either help or just listen when I've had problems that loomed over me. He had advice, but he also understood the power of just being there and listening.

When I think about Loving and Human, I think about a man for whom family was foremost. I think about a man who traveled to be with those he loved for events both happy and sad. I remember one happy event, the wedding of one of my cousins back in Cleveland, Ohio. Of course, before we got to the wedding, we had to have the bachelor party. It was held at The Schvitz -- a steam room and bath house much beloved for its male bonding environment. As most bachelor parties go, this one had its share of alcohol present, and at some point, my dad got into something resembling a drinking contest with someone much younger and with a bit more bulk to handle the booze. Let's just say that Harvey wasn't the winner in this exchange of shots. My brother Jeff and I were part of the processional that poured him into the car and got him back to my aunt's house. When she saw what condition he was in, we were directed to deposit him on the lawn furniture in the screened in porch in back along with some blankets and a bucket, just in case. Having to help take care of the man who had taken care of me all my life was when I learned he was Human. Of course, after only a few hours of sleep (and a few glasses of water) he was up and around to attend the wedding with a spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye. The groomsman that he went toe-to-toe with wasn't in nearly as good a shape. That's when Harvey moved a couple of pegs back closer to Super Human in the eyes of us twenty-somethings.

When I think about Fortunate, I remember how he loved to go to Las Vegas and play blackjack, and how he always seemed to come back a winner. More importantly, I think about how lucky he was to have found Judy. The last four and a half years were a great adventure for him with a terrific partner as part of this wonderful community. A partner and a community that I saw pull together and ease him through the stages of a devastating illness. A partner and a community who helped him keep his spirits high even as his body was laid low.

As I think about these things that my father was, I think about the most important thing to me that he was, and that is that he was my father, and that I love him dearly, and that I will miss him terribly.

Harvey Fagen, Rest In Peace

My father passed away today at 3:18 p.m. in Phoenix, Arizona. He was suffering from malignant metastatic melanoma that had spread to several different areas of his body. He was with his wife Judy and had just spoken to my brother Jeff by cell phone. Jeff was planning on arriving in Phoenix tomorrow. I had visited him this last weekend.

He was under hospice care, so he was comfortable and peaceful. After saying goodbye to my brother, my father drew three more breaths and then he stopped.

He will be remembered, he will be missed. He was a good man with a great heart who was loved by many, including me. We lit a candle for him under Grace's tree tonight where I explained to Eloise and Lucy what had happened to their grandfather. I've cried a little, and I expect to cry much more.