My friend, the Chief Deputy

Steve Elliott and I go way back. He hired me as the sysop 0f the AMOS users group back in the late 70's/early 80's. (He also fired me, but that's another story).

He has the most cool 'real' title I've seen in a long time. He recently took a new job as the Chief Deputy of the Treasury Office of Boulder County. Not a trendy startup, we're talking the Boulder County Government here.

I know this is the child in me but they gave him a frakkin badge that says Chief Deputy on it.

Says it, right on there: Chief Deputy.

It has a bite as well. He's the guy that can show up at your door and say: "You haven't paid your taxes, I am seizing your property".

That, somehow elevates it from cool to awesome.

My Friend: Chief Deputy Steve.

And yea, I know, it's silly and I am such a geek.

I don't care. It makes me smile.

Non Compete Agreements- not such a good idea

Bijan Sabet, a general partner with Spark Capital, recently blogged about his belief that non-compete clauses for employee's is a bad idea. One key excerpt:

Can you imagine if employees agreed to a non-compete clause in California? Consider how many new companies would not have been created. How much value would be lost? It would be substantial.

Fred Wilson over at Union Square Ventures disagrees in this blog post. His premise is you should have non-compete clauses in employee contracts, but who a competitor is should be tightly defined. I would say 'good luck with that'.

I have some personal experience with this that has me coming down on the side of Mr. Sabet over Mr. Wilson.

In the mid-90's I was hired by a major Hollywood studio to work as the VP of technology for their interactive media branch in Palo Alto. Within 2 months of being hired, a large New York media company bought this studio and they decided to shut down the Palo Alto facility (gotta squeeze out those expenses to make that leverage buyout work ya know).

The NY company moved the executives to various positions within the company. It wasn't the best fit. Since we'd been hired to do a job that was technology based (largely around creating online media and interactive TV) and this NY company didn't really buy the premise, it was a mismatch to have us there. They gave us the option of taking jobs within the company or, as Fred says 'sitting on the beach', but not working for anyone else in our areas of expertise.

This, for a technology person, is death.

In my case, the employment contract was for 2 years. Since it was clearly defined (my 'area of expertise', i.e. use of technology in media) this meant that I would effectively be paid very well to lose my expertise in an industry that was going at warp speed just as the internet was forming (circa 1994/95).

Ack. Lousy situation. The NY company wouldn't budge on it either. I had to move to NYC and take a job with peers who went, daily, out for 'coffee and a lap dance' at 3pm to the strip joint 2 blocks down (this is not an exaggeration), or retire from working on things I'd been passionate about for close to 10 years just long enough to become hopelessly outdated and useless in my chosen profession.

What I ended up doing was putting together a plan that leveraged the internet in ways they hadn't thought of. I exploited the excel bug of the time: "if we can get 2% of the population to sign up, it's worth BILLIONS". Like everyone else at the time, they bought it and funded me for the remainder of my contract.

I was lucky. I managed to talk them into acting as a VC for an internet startup. I even got the Hollywood studio to back it so they promoted me to SVP, gave me an office in Hollywood and let me set up my operation wherever I wanted (I, of course, set it up in Boulder with offices across from the Walnut Brewery and only had to deal with the Hollywood guys during every other week trips out to CA for 'facetime' with the execs).

This kept me in the game, but it also kept me out of the startup world and in BigCo land for another 10 years. (path of least resistance). When big companies keep offering you big dollars and big titles with grand plans, it's hard to go another route without taking really big risks. I admit it, I was weak. It took until my 40's to get the balls to say no to the BigCo's offers and strike out on my own.

However, If I hadn't had that non-compete clause, I would have simply left and started a company in my 30's. The media companies would have had one more guy out there building something truly useful, tested by the market and something they could then BUY if they wanted it badly enough.

I only regret a few things in my life. One of my main regrets is that I waited so long to do what I should have been doing long ago. That non-compete clause was one of the mechanisms that kept me out of startup land. Not the only one (again, I was weak) but it put me on the path and made it alot easier to take that path of least resistance.

So, I agree with Mr. Sabet. Non-competes have no place in the startup world.

XP rocks

I mean seriously. XP really rocks. At least, compared to my Vista box.

I couldn't take it anymore. Some days it would run fine for the whole day. Other times, every 30 minutes a blue screen of death, memory dump, reboot. No clue why. Could not figure out why. Finally got to the point where I just didn't give a shit why.

The only reason I had the machine was as my TV. I like Media Center. I really liked it on Vista. But not enough to keep Vista.

OK, so, I'll just revert. I tried to find a copy of MCE05 for my 4 core HP monsterbox but, alas, THERE ARE NO XP DRIVERS for this hot little baby. Vista only. Oh man. My most advanced piece of hardware, because of this Vista Trash on it, is effectively, useless.

So, I give up. I go to Newegg.com. I find an old 2006 MCE05 packing Media Center PC and I BUY The damn thing. It's not much more expensive than Vista Ultimate, so what the hell.

Oh My God. I'd forgotten how different XP was from Vista on my home TV watchin PC. It's faster. I mean, alot faster. Seems like, maybe, twice as fast.

Think about that. A 2006 2 core AMD against a 2007 Quad Core Intel chip with 150% of the memory. Twice as fast.

And copying from one hard drive to another... holy cow, it's... well, easy. No confirmation dialogs and 'you don't have privileges to do that' dialogs I have to decipher and then there's Clt/Alt/Del...

The TASK manager just comes up. Poof. Right there. No dimming of the screen and one, two or three 'is it ok to continue' dialogs.

I'd forgotten for a bit what it was like to just use my TV/computer in a way that was fast, simple and friendly. I am not trying to be sarcastic here. This is really what I'm sitting here thinking while using this XP based Media Center PC.

The only word I can think of is 'refreshing'. Now, imagine that. An OS that's what, 6 years old now that's, literally, twice as good as the latest version of the next version of the OS.

What the hell is Microsoft thinking?

No more PC's with Vista. I'm going Mac, Ubuntu or XP (preferably in that order) on all new machines in the future. The first question I'll have for any PC I buy from this day forward is: Does it have XP drivers? No? No thanks.

Goodnight Redmond, and good luck.

Spock.com: a little evil

I just had an disconcerting experience from the website Spock.com. They want to be the 'Google, of People search' according to CEO Jaideep Singh.

But I have my doubts.

Not that it's not a good idea, but more because of the tactics they use to get information.

I signed up for it a few months ago when it first went public. Cool. Interesting. Didn't work very well yet but to be expected for a brand new/beta system.

I checked it out again last night and it had a new 'check for your friends' feature that allows you to import your email address book and find people you know on Spock. Nothing overly odd there, lots of sites do this.

What's not good, is how they misrepresented what they were doing.

I went ahead and had them check my gmail address book. It came back with 'found X profiles on Spock, would you like to connect?'

Not invite, connect. At least, that was the implication (I don't remember the exact phrasing).

Sure.

Well, it proceeded to send out emails to all those people with ME as the sender asking them to join Spock.

Turns out they didn't have accounts already. They just had what appears to be spidered profiles scraped off the internet and aggregated on Spock.

What they did with me was use my name and contact list to 'validate' those profiles and get the users to log into Spock without really telling me what they were doing. They implied that these people already had profiles and I was just adding them to my network.

Instead they effectively conned me into letting them use my name to get a bunch of people to sign up for a service I'm not sure I'll use, let alone recommend. Actually, I can tell you now: I do not recommend them.

This is slightly evil, maybe even a bit more.

So, to my friends and associates: I'm sorry. I was suckered. You can bet it won't happen again.

Goofy Stupid

At first, I just didn't have words for this.

This has been going on for a few weeks now and I've been watching in disbelief.

A couple in Boulder has 'claimed an emotional attachment' to about 1/3 of an empty lot next to their home and have filed (and won!) ownership of 1/3 of that land.

From the Denver Post: " Richard McLean and his wife, attorney Edith Stevens, used an arcane common law called "adverse possession" to claim the land for their own."

This lot was purchased by Don and Susie Kirlin in the early 80's. They planned to someday build their dream home on it. When they went to put up a fence around the property, Mr. McLean (and ex-Boulder Judge, apparently) had a restraining order in hand in under 3 hours.

This is goofy stupid. Since when does someone who owns a plot of land for almost 20 years, and lives 200 yards away, LOSE their right to a big chunk (34% apparently) because someone living next to it used that land (trespassing, effectively) and 'grew attached' to it? This made it pretty much impossible for the Kirlin's to build on the land.

This is goofy stupid. Even for Boulder.

I'm not a hard core land rights guy. I like the open space around Boulder. I think there are times when it the greater good of the community outweigh a single individuals desire to hold onto land for the sake of holding on to it, but this is dumb. This is an empty building lot good for one thing: building a house on. There is no greater good at work here, only selfishness and a well connected and legally slick persons ability to manipulate the system for their own personal gain at another persons personal loss.

One thing I would recommend to anyone who owns an empty lot in Boulder: Build a fence around it. Now. I'd also put a sign that said "No Trespassing. And all Ex Judges and Lawyers be warned.. this is my damned land".

Truly goofy stupid.

The 'great developers' 10 year life span

Reading Niel Robertson's blog today, I got this great nugget:

Vishal basically said, “We don’t measure it [Java adoption] and we don’t care. We are not putting all of our eggs in the Java basket, that’s just what we’re offering for the time being.” And then the most interesting part, “Languages tend to have 10 year timelines - and then they are always outmoded by a new language. So in 10 years we won’t be talking about Java, we’ll be supporting something else.” If you step back and think about it, on the eve of asking a majority of the SAP customer base to embrace Java with open arms, saying in 10 years SAP won’t care (author’s choice of words) about Java anymore is a pretty interesting and ballsy statement. Again, these are paraphrases meant to capture the spirit of his answer (do not take them as verbatim quotes) - please keep reading for a bit more insight into what I think Vishal meant and why this is an important discussion.

Ever notice how your developers, especially the one's that match up with this 10 year observation (which I believe is dead on), are great from the time they graduate (or pick up the hot new language) until 10 or so years later? Say, early 30's, then the creativity and output drop off?

It's true. I used to think it was due to things like family, kids, burnout, etc. and that's all part of it. But not all of it.

I've been observing the 10 year cycle for awhile as well (we're on this curve now with Ruby on Rails about 2 or so years in), and I've noticed that the guys who are still writing code and kicking ass at it into their late 30's, their 40's and beyond, are the one's that are willing to pick up and learn that new language (or languages).

Sadly, most do not.

This is due, I would bet, to how our brains are wired. Learning a new language when you're young is relatively easy, but trying to learn a new spoken language at 50, no so much. It's just too damn hard for most people once they've mastered English, Chinese, French, etc.

Some can do it, but most can't (or won't). "English is just fine fer me, thank you; besides, it's the language of business, everyone else should learn it anyway!"

Sound like your C, Java or ASP/.NET expert?

yea....

I love that rare developer who loves languages, loves learning them (well) and can use different languages in different situations; or better yet, can integrate multiple languages in ways that single language developers just can't do. They are, after all, just tools.

It's a little like trying to build, say, a workbench out of 2x4's. Imagine doing it with just a hammer (just one language). Not so easy. Throw in a saw, tape measure, planer, sander and a few other tools, and you can do alot with a pile of 2x4's.

Those multiple language guys are hard to find though.

The other guy is the one that can drop a dying language like, C, and pick up the 'new' 10 year language.

THESE are the guys that go on being great developers into their 40's, 50's and beyond.

And, these guys are as hard to find as the multiple language guys. And in many ways more valuable because they have many years of experience that they can draw on to build better mousetraps.

Comcast Is Indeed Editing Your Internet Connection

Well, it's verified. Comcast screws around with your internet connection and makes editorial decisions on what you can and can't do with it.

For me, that's a pretty good reason to drop Comcast internet service and find alternative's. For me, it's Qwest (the one phone company that also happens to have told the government to shove it when asked to perform illegal wiretaps, BTW).

From the Associated Press:

Comcast's technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user. Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye."

If my telephone provider told me I was using my unlimited phone service too much, making too many calls to too many people and cut me off because of it (even as they advertised unlimited calls) that's grounds to dump them. Hell, it's grounds for a class action lawsuit if you think about it.

I'm buying internet access from these guys. That means plain old any way I want it to use any program I want to use access. It doesn't mean filtered access. Or access to some things but not other things. As long as I'm not trying to use more of the advertised bandwidth that I'm paying for, I would appreciate you keeping your grubby paws off my bits, thank you very much.

What burns me here is I'm not really much of a P2P user. I don't use bittorrent to find movies and music. I do use Miro to find legal content (and it does use a P2P approach) but that's content that's submitted by the content owners. Is Comcast breaking my connections here to?

I suspect yes. And this is a very legimate, very useful and very well liked (by me) service.

Enough of this crap. Comcast is banned from my house.

Qwest for internet access and Dish Network for TV is the way to go in my book. I may not love Qwest, but I'm reasonably sure they aren't filtering my bits and giving me less than the advertised service I bought based on the services I might use. And Dish give's me more channels with higher quality for less money.

Why didn't I do this sooner?

Everyone should.