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Dakim is Hiring! Know any great geeks?

Posted 07 March 2008 † schof § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0)

Weight Loss Update

204 pounds this morning. Less than 20 pounds away from my goal of 188 in 2008.

(Let’s not forget, I started at 255.)

And I’m up to 8 miles of strenuous hiking — did my house to Parker Mesa last weekend; doing a 7-miler with 1400 feet of elevation gain next weekend.

And I think it’s time to get back into Krav Maga. I’m in good enough shape now that I could get through a session without dying.

Posted 06 March 2008 † schof § fatblogging ‡ Comments (0)

How To Deal With Recruiters

I’m about to place an ad on Craigslist (Dakim is hiring; I’ll post a link to the ad here when it’s up.) and every time I post an ad, I get 200 calls from obnoxious recruiters. This is an snippet of an actual conversation that actually happened:

Me: I’m sorry, Dakim has a policy of not hiring from recruiters. Have a nice day.

Him: John John John JOHN! This guy was a .NET star at Disney! You’ve got to talk to him!

Me: We don’t use .NET.

Him: We’ve got a GREAT Java programmer from BofA.

Me: We don’t use Java. Goodbye.

I’ve had recruiters try every scummy thing they can think of — a common tactic appears to be lying to the receptionist (telling her you’re a client) to try to get through to me.

We’re rethinking the policy of not hiring from recruiters (although we’re still in the air), so I thought up a way I can deal with them without wasting a whole lot of my time. I’ll update you later as to how well it actually works. (If this appears a little harsh, remember that this is NOT recruiters we’re hiring to help us find candidates — this is recruiters cold calling because they saw our ad on Craigslist. When they call, I’ll simply ask for their e-mail, and get off the phone and send them this.)

Dakim, Inc.
2121 Cloverfield, Suite 205
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Dear Recruiter:

Thank you for your interest in providing recruitment help to Dakim. We welcome your involvement in making Dakim a better, bigger company.

However, to avoid wasting either of our time, we’ve developed a few ground rules that make the recruiter/client relationship go more smoothly.

1) All initial communication will be via e-mail. I’ll call you when it’s time to get on the phone.

2) All e-mails providing information on a candidate MUST also provide the fee your company will take if we hire the individual.

3) Dakim has no problem finding decent candidates. We have a serious problem finding spectacular ones. You may send us up to three candidates, period. (If we make one of them an offer, the count resets to zero.) But if you’ve sent us three jerks, you’re obviously using the shotgun approach, and it’s a waste of your time, our time, and the candidates’ time.

The positions currently open are:
*
*
*

Thanks very much for your interest in recruiting for Dakim!

Sincerely,

John Schofield
Director, Information Technology

Posted 05 March 2008 † schof § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0)

An Epiphany, and My Technical Goals

First, the epiphany — despite all the fires, and multiple top priorities, and projects, and all the other fireballs of stress that scream over my desk — there is nothing I can do for Dakim that’s more important than hiring. Over the next two years, I’m probably going to add significant headcount to my department — and nothing is more important than making sure I have the right people when I need them. (With strong emphasis on RIGHT. We’re looking for rockstars.)

I need to start going to conventions, user group meetings, etc. — immediately I’m going to start attending the Los Angeles Linux User Group meetings and the local Python SIG. I’m not sure what else I’m going to do, but it’s becoming obvious that I don’t scale — that the long-term solution is NOT for me to increase my skills, as I’ve been doing, but to hire people who have the skills.

That said, in the short term, it’s clear that there’s three technical areas where I must improve my skills:

  1. I need to be a world-class guru in apt-based package management.
  2. I need to greatly improve my skills at low-level TCP/IP issues — packet captures, diagnosis of networking problems, etc.
  3. I need to greatly improve my skills at dealing the Linux kernel, on all levels — compiling, kernel options, loadable modules & drivers, etc.

I guess it’s good to have a clear vision of where I need to go. Now I need to get there.

Posted 05 March 2008 † schof § Dakim § Linux ‡ Comments (0)

Dakim Secures $10.6 Million In Funding

The press release will be hitting the wires shortly, (It’s only up at the Senior Research Alliance now.)  but Dakim just got a $10.6 million shot on the arm. Many of you know I’ve been stressed lately but didn’t know why; this is why. {grin}

We’re now going to be able to focus on growth and moving forward; this will remove a huge number of the roadblocks that have been holding us back.  It’s big news.

(Unfortunately for my friends, it probably doesn’t mean I’ll be spending less time at work — we’re leaping into action like a sprinter leaving the blocks.)

Posted 20 February 2008 † schof § Autobiography § John Mark Schofield Meta ‡ Comments (0)

Working on the spec for SPBS

I’ve been working on the spec for SPBS — it’s slow going, as my real job has been taking most of my focus. But I realized that in designing the templating system for the blog, I’m actually designing a domain-specific mini-language. I think I’m going to reread that chapter of The Art of Unix Programming.

But in general, I’m finding SPBS both challenging and a hell of a lot of fun. It’s turning into a bigger project than I expected — or perhaps, a better way of saying it is that SPBS is slowly revealing its complexity to me. I could get this done a lot fast by adapting pyBloxsom. But where’s the fun in that? {grin}

Posted 08 February 2008 † schof § Python § SPBS ‡ Comments (0)

Announcing The Launch Of SPBS — the Simplest Possible Blogging System

And by “Launch,” I mean “I’m starting to write it.” There’s a long way between that and a completed program. But you can check my progress at SPBS’ Google Code site: http://code.google.com/p/spbs/

I’ve written an introduction to SPBS, and the reasons I’m writing it here, at http://code.google.com/p/spbs/wiki/SPBSIntroduction

Posted 07 February 2008 † schof § CSS § Computers § John Mark Schofield Meta § Linux § Python § Subversion § Web § Web Hosting § security ‡ Comments (0)

A Rough Weekend

I just feel the need to whine for a moment — please indulge me. (Or skip to the next post.)

My house flooded on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’ve already cleaned up twice; there’s mud on my floor right now, on Monday morning. In addition, we’re late on a big project at the office. I worked 11 hours on Saturday and 9 hours on Sunday.

And we didn’t accomplish the thing that we spent all weekend working to accomplish.

If it looks like it won’t rain for a while, I may mop my floor tonight and clean up the mud for the third time.

(Oh, and my up-hill neighbor built a sandbag dike that sent a WALL of water down past (and into) my house, knocking down a fence, covering my brick patio and a small grass lawn with a layer of mud, and killing the fish in the fishpond.)

Posted 28 January 2008 † schof § Autobiography § Broken § John Mark Schofield Meta § Rants ‡ Comments (0)

A River Runs Through It…

My mountain cabin / hippie shack is built into the side of Topanga Canyon. It’s TOTALLY not-up-to-code. Tonight, in the middle of the biggest rainstorm of the year, water started pouring from the WALL on the bottom floor that’s built into the hill. It washed about a pound of silt onto my floor, and got to a depth of about two inches in places.

I got my landlord (he lives next door) and we went out to investigate. There was a big pool caused by debris against one side of the house, apparently that was seeping down next to the boulder and somehow into the house. When we cleared the debries and caused the pool to drain, the water stopped pouring through the THREE INCH HOLE in my wall. (Pictures to follow.)

Now, about that boulder. There’s a BIG rock, and apparently the hippies who built my house couldn’t move or blast it, so they just built the house around it. The boulder sticks into my house and is just plastered over. (There’s actually steps in it leading up to a little reading nook.) And as far as I can tell, the boulder is the only thing holding the house up. (I asked my landlord if the house was built on a slab foundation. His response? “Are you fucking kidding? It’s sticks on dirt. A couple of cinderblocks. And believe it or not, the place is legal. It’s old enough that it’s registered as a real residence!”)

He brought over a bunch of towels, and we swept up most of the mud on the bottom floor — thus far, my second floor has been blissfully immune to water problems. (Other than a few leaks, which just sprang up.)

Oh, one more thing. When I put my ear down near the boulder, I hear the sound of rushing water. And against the hillside wall of my house. Rushing water.

If I’ve struck some kind of underground stream, can I open a bottling plant? Want to drink Topanga Water?

Posted 05 January 2008 † schof § Autobiography § John Mark Schofield Meta § Santa Monica Mountains § Topanga ‡ Comments (6)

BioWiki — A new project

Although I’m not at all sure about the “BioWiki” name. And “AutoBioWiki” is even worse. But in the fine tradition of Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft,” here’s

http://biowiki.sudosu.net

(I’m keeping the shitty first draft to myself, at least for now.)

Posted 26 December 2007 † schof § Autobiography § Sudosu.net Meta § Web ‡ Comments (0)