Work has sent me out for some offline experience- and I report to you all now from Quincy, Massachusetts. The ride wasn’t bad from NY- took only about 4 and something hours- coworker Lee took the ride with me, so we rocked the iPod and made fun of people in other cars to pass the time. Man, he really lays into those people from Connecticut. The Marriott is where we are staying and the home base for the training- the view ain’t much, but I suspect some of those lights to the north might actually be Boston. Amazingly, they refer to Boston as the city around here- but I am doing my best to explain the NYC is the city, and Boston is just a city.

Ron West of PaperThin is training us, which is cool, knowing him from our original CommonSpot training made it instantly more comfortable. Lee and I are 2 of 8 people who are here for the training, so we are getting more than enough attention for questions and individual development. Overall if days 2 and 3 prove to be as interesting as day 1, this training is right on the level for my personal development- the basics are covered quickly, and the advanced topics are right up our alley, which will prove useful in the coming development year. I suspect most people reading this aren’t interested in what we learned about our system’s cache, the base template infrastructure, or authenticating off a directory server- so I’ll just link to the agenda in pdf format and leave the questions for those in need for when I get back home.

Speaking of which, Michelle tells me the dog has been behaving oddly, and has been looking for me. If anyone sees my schnauzer, please tell him I’ll be home soon. On the flipside, the web server at work is of course on the fritz (simply because Lee has left the building, it never fails)- and of course there is no apparent solution, as usual. Most signs point to some sort of network latency, but I am under the impression that everyone needs to freak out, endure severe headaches, and disprove unsuspicious candidates as causes for at least another couple of months before we identify the cause. Lee and I had the opportunity to vent some of our frustration on Ron, and at least that was helpful. Note to self via Ron: check out reactor diagnosis tool to analyze some of the ColdFusion performance questions.

Of note; despite the pitfalls, it seems as though our CommonSpot development and experience is more than respectable, and considering what we’ve accomplished in the last 6 months, we’re really pushing the enevelope when it comes to a 3 developer shop with given resources. There’s definetly some pride to be had there- sometimes it’s difficult to find it when there are so many demands on the development table. I can only imagine what we will be capable when we have more than a year’s experience with this product. Well, assuming our blade doesn’t catch on fire by then.

I’ll cap this tired rant off- I ordered a New England clam chowder with dinner last night… and I was really expecting it to be- as they say up here with their bass ackaward accents- wicked awesome- just because I’m in MA, right? Well, I’ve had better in Manhattan- Ron told me Boston would be a good place for it instead- but hell, why would I go to a city when I can just go home to the city to dig on some chowder? Isn’t all the chowder supposed to be good up here? Dang!

Filed under: Web Development