Ben Benner’s Blog

But counting in a good way.

I thought about having the title for this post be “23 days and the grass is still greener”, but I didn’t want to start this post out on an implied negative tone. (Notably, I might have just planted that seed by referencing, what I wasn’t going to do, but let’s gloss over that for now.)

If by chance you have a keen eye, you will notice that is a Jaduka business card on my desk. I had a few in my laptop bag and needed to ’shim’ up my laptop and monitor as to level out things.

I had to count up the number of days on the job here at Unwired, as I haven’t been keeping track really. I cannot get into details about everything that I have been working on, NDAs and all, but needless to say I am enjoying myself. I have been having the opportunity to do what I love best, a little bit of everything.

I have done some coding, some writing (documentation), some product management, systems architecting, some server configuration tweaking, chair assembly (bought myself a chair from IKEA).

I have learned that every Tuesday is ‘Chicken Day’, no not a day where we all run in fear and hide, but a day that we celebrate our victory over the chickens in that great war that no one seems to recall. Chicken Day is celebrated at Pluckers, where they serve up the losers of the great war in a variety of fashions.

(Note: While the back-story on this sounds like something I might have come up with in High School, no this is not my storyline, this is the story as it has been told to me by Jim, one of my new co-workers.)

Wednesday’s is sometimes referred to as ‘Taco Day’ or just “Maudie’s Day (but not fancy Maudie’s on 360, the other one, you know on Lamar”. There is no fabled war to speak of in terms of Taco Day, just good Mexican food.

I like to think that I am fitting in well with my new co-workers, this change in jobs for me is made a little bit easier than I think most folks find a change of company, as I met most of the folks I am working with a few years back and have run into them at social gatherings since that time.

Unwired is in the Austin Tech Incubator, which is part of The University of Texas, the building we are in is technically an university building, which is one of the reasons I bought my own chair, the ones they have here are not that great and considering I have been spending 8-12 hours a day sitting in it, I wanted something that would be kind to me and not break the bank.

I sit down the hall from the rest of the crew, but I have stocked my office with snacks and sodas, so I get the occasional visitor who has come to snag a soda or talk about something related to the current project.

For the first week or so I did not have my ID, which meant that I had to sign-in with the front-desk guy, Mark. Mark was very nice during the whole ordeal, but me not having my ID for a week, definitely seemed to bug him, as he asked me about it every day.

When the day finally came for me to get my ID, I headed downtown to campus had my picture taken (I think it is fine, but I have been told I made a dumb face) and grabbed lunch with Jeremy, who works downtown. I had the chance to see his office, he works for FGSQUARED, they are located on 6th St about two blocks west of I-35. After that, I have been able to come and go from the building at will, is a nice feeling.

This past weekend Jeremy and I knocked out a quick little coding contract, the gig was to build a couple of IVR call flows using Twilio, these call flows were interactive and used the database of the rest of the project that a former co-worker is building. After I hear that the site has gone live, I will post a note about what the site is, but until then, mums the word. The first call flow was pretty easy and we got that finished up pretty quick, the 2nd one took a bit longer to do (which is understandable as it had more functionality/logic to it).

We got stuck on the way in which Kohana 3 handles ‘routing’ vs the way Kohana 2 handles it. (Jeremy is the Kohana expert between the two of us, so I helped as much as I could, but it was him that got it working in the end.) But that isn’t to say we missed any deadlines, having lots of experience doing estimates for call flows, I made sure to estimate time in there for integration testing and tweaking. I had spent some time Friday night getting familiar with the site’s database and some of the code structure, practiced setting it up on my local dev box and then on our Server Beach server. The coding was pretty much all knocked out on Saturday. I made a few edits on Sunday, as I tweaked verbiage here and there, while writing up some documentation for the project manager on the gig.

It was fun, I definitely would like to do a couple of small coding contracts per month. The extra money is nice, but nothing I will get rich from, a big part of it is the chance to practice my coding on stuff that isn’t my day job, you know the ‘ever learning’ type of approach.

I definitely would like to do some more Twilio oriented projects, I think my years of experience at Jaduka, NetworkIP and Simplified have given me a significant amount of invaluable experience in designing good user-experience for telephone based interactive applications and helps me to figure out what the test scenarios are for that type of thing easily (almost like second nature).

I do wish the Twilio Text-to-Speech was a little bit better, at Jaduka we had licensed a TTS engine that was good and not too expensive, but for an implementation like Twilio’s, the cost would likely be prohibitive to implement, but then again if one is REALLY concerned about quality, then you pay for the professionally recorded prompts, so I can appreciate Twilio offering TTS that is not the best sounding in the world, because the offer the option to use professionally recorded prompts as well (you must get them recorded yourself.)

Well I best get back to it.

bdbenner programming, work contract, Jaduka, job, programming, twilio, unwired, work

For those of you that have not yet heard, my darling wife is starting a new job, very soon, this Monday actually. She had her last day in the Austin office last Friday. This week she has been in Longview. She will be starting her new job at the Humane Society of Williamson County as their “Rescue and Animal Care Supervisor”.

As part of her adventure, I have as I usually do, pushed her to write about it, I set her up a blog and choose a theme that I thought she would like. You can read about her adventures at ShelterStartup.com, I will be pushing her to blog regularly and if she doesn’t, then I might just use my journalism talents to blog on her behalf.

Gina has already volunteered (it was only half a day, but it counts) at the Humane Society and based upon what she told me, I have not doubt she will do a fantastic job there.

There are a few other things that are changing, but that will have to wait until the official announcements are sent out, I would love to scoop the story, but I’d rather not. I’ll post a follow-up in a few days.

However, I can say that work has been going well, one of my main focuses has been to expand my team. We found a great hire, Roger Le, he started with us last Thursday and has been picking up on how we do things pretty well. He has a lot to learn, but thus far I believe he will do just fine.

I continue to enjoy my Camp Gladiator workouts, though I do need to get back to a more consistent schedule, but thus far I have managed to get in two sessions a week. In the two and a half months of doing Camp Gladiator I have lost about 10 lbs, which on it’s face value isn’t great, but I have been adding some muscle, so it is all evens out. My clothes are fitting better and I find that all of the manual labor (yard work, demolition, etc) I have been doing in the last month has been easier to do.

I can jog about a quarter mile without stopping these day, my goal is to be able to go a full mile at a decent jog pace. I bought a heart monitor watch, to help me understand what my maximum heart rate is and it has the added benefit of telling me approximately how many calories I burn during my workouts.

In between this Camp Gladiator and the previous one, we had a week off. During that week I did three sessions of jogging at a soccer field near the house. I didn’t burn nearly as many calories as I do during one session of Camp Gladiator, but I do believe that I managed to increase my jogging stamina, I really want to start getting at least a thirty minute session in after (or before) work in addition to Camp Gladiator, just need to work it into my routine.

Well, I best get back to the grind, my late lunch hour is about five minutes from being done and I need to finish putting lunch stuff away.

Laterz

bdbenner exercise, gina, work bootcamp, camp gladiator, change, gina, work

… the more they stay the same.

Let’s see, updates on what has been going on.

1) The Benner family has gotten a new bunny. I am not referring to Zoe, who joined the family back in June. I am referring to ‘Wash’, yup his name is Wash. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of Wash, but Gina has been snapping plenty of photos.

2) Gina got an early X-mas gift. She got a Canon Rebel EOS XSi. She has long been into photography, but her old 35mm Canon cameras need to be repaired. You might think that the reason I got her a digital is purely due to my love of technology, it is not purely due to my love of technology. She has really liked her digital cameras in the past and has scanned several pictures for web posting or reprinting. It just seemed like the best logical progression.

(note: Gina will tell you that I also got it for her, so that she would have a hobby. I prefer to think of it in terms of helping her find a creative outlet, mine lately is bread.)

3) I got a Mac. John bought a new Mac Pro (desktop) and cut me a great deal on his old 13″ Mac Book Pro. I have made the conversion from my HP laptop to the Mac. There are A LOT of things that I like (Exposé for instance - it is FANTASTIC) , but there are some thing that I am still getting used to. Like the fact that the ‘control’ key doesn’t do anything I want it to do anymore, meaning I have not yet finished the training myself to use the ‘command’ key yet.

4) Work has been extremely busy. There has been the normal fare, the day-to-day stuff that always takes up time. But we have also been knocking out a few new things here and there. One of our customer’s Oddcast had us work with them on a project for Whataburger. If you are from/in Texas then you definitely know the name, from what I am told other southern states have this unique burger chain as well, but anyone from Michigan will likely be a bit clueless.

The Whataburger project itself is a variation on a few different projects we have done for Oddcast in the past, but there was a spark of genius in the way in which we implemented this project that I hope to leverage for all future projects like it, in terms of fluidity and efficiency I would dare say that the underlying work represents a 10x increase in both areas. That project launched on Nov 9th and runs until Dec 21st, which reminds me the entire dev team will be heading to Whataburger to get ourselves an A1 Thick and Hearty Burger here either on Friday or Monday.

With the new team that I have assembled to work on web applications for the parent company, we launched a new web app for a customer. Unfortunately, I cannot state who that customer is at this time. I do want to note that Kevin and Daniel (the two senior developers on the team) played a big part in completing this project for a timely launch. We have found (and corrected) some bugs here and there, which is to be expected with as quickly as we rushed it into production. But along the way we have also made some enhancements that I feel really proud of. We will be re-using parts of what we have done on other parent company projects in the future.

The other notable project/product that we have been working has recently launched a pilot with a retailer that I think everyone would know the name of, but at least right now I cannot state who that retailer is. The product is CommentFunnel. (Jaduka blog post)

We took some of the telephony tech that we had created for Oddcast in the past and reworked it a little bit here and there to allow for a comment recorded by a customer can be immediately be emailed to the store’s management and we also provide a dashboard that allows for reporting and reviewing comments right on the web. As we move beyond the pilot phase we will be upgrading the telephony and the web aspects of CommentFunnel. We will look to add in text (sms) messaging for mobile couponing and look at transcription technologies to allow us to make the audio comments searchable.

5) I fixed Gina’s big red chair. Had I not lost the IKEA receipt for the chair, this item would read ‘I got a replacement for Gina’s big red chair.’ The Chair’s ’spring’ supports had broken away from the frame, causing you to sink into the chair. After much contemplation (which sounds better than, ‘I was being lazy’), I finally devised a solution for the chair. A square piece of 1/2″ plywood, some metal ‘L’ brackets, many wood screws, my trusty Black&Decker drill, some muslin and my Powershot staple gun. After a couple of hours in the garage, the chair was ready to be put back into the living room. I used the muslin and staple gun to replace the fabric covering the bottom of the chair, and unfortunately hiding my handy work.

I am sure there are mundane things that I could list out here, but I will leave that for another blog post.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner apple, gina, mac, work bunny, commenfunnel, gina, Jaduka, mac, oddcast, update, whataburger, work

… a whole lot of bread and php!

I have not blogged in a while. It is not due to a lack of stuff to talk about. But more so that ever nagging lack of time to write. There are many out there that would aptly (justly and most likely with righteous fervor) say that I need to MAKE the time. To which I have but one simple answer (excuse).

I cannot make anymore time.

I have managed to find time to practice some new bread recipes (which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t take nearly as much time as some might think), I have written several small applications (in php) for side projects, been assisting with some home renovations and to boot attempting to keep my stress level (and sanity in check).

Work has changed up quite a bit in the last 60 days, I am no longer the VP of Product Development, I am also the VP of Product Management and Development. Thirteen little letters added to my title have added at this point countless hours at the office after the normal quitting time. I say countless because well I am salaried, so at some point counting them all up is too aggravating.

I don’t want to paint a picture that I am there until midnight or anything, but I do believe the latest I have been at the office has been about 10pm, and if memory serves I got into the office early that day and more or less clocked a 12 hour day.

It is the age-old tale of “Doing more with less”, there was some re-organization and I got a title change and once again have staff (the Jaduka development team reports directly to me). I was immediately tasked with hiring two new developers to work on some web applications. Can’t go into the details just yet, but when we launch I will make sure to post some more information.

The search took some time, but I managed to find some good additions to the team. We threw them into the deep end and we are about 3 weeks into their first project. Things are moving along well, but we have had quite a few other projects creep up in October that were not originally planned for, these projects are customer related, so that means that it is NEW business. And new business is always a GOOD thing.

I had gotten into the habit for the last few weeks of once or twice a week bringing bread into the office. I haven’t done that yet this week, but I think I will be able to line that up for Friday. I have done some experimenting.

There is of course my Sans Raisin Bread, my Gingerbread squared (Gingerbread bread) and my Great Pumpkin bread. The last batch of Great Pumpkin I think turned out very well, everyone in the office felt the second batch was better than the first. The secret was to add a second can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, ‘raw’ canned pumpkin). There was also my attempt at Log Cabin bread, which just didn’t have enough maple syrup flavor, not quite sure how to overcome that without having to put like 2-3 cups of maple syrup in, which keep in mind is A LOT of maple syrup. (talking about the real stuff, not that corn syrup junk)

I enjoy bringing in bread and getting feedback from folks on the taste, texture, etc. I also enjoy stealing what I think are the best two pieces for myself. I am not sure what will be next on the list for bread. I will likely make something ‘boring’ like buttermilk bread, but it is an old standby at this point. I use the buttermilk recipe as the base for most of my experiments.

We cleaned out the garage this past Sunday. If you have to clean out a garage or are planning any sort of home renovation project that will produce any significant amount of construction waste/debris, I highly recommend that you see if your can use TheBagster (www.thebagster.com), we used it to get rid of all the junk (mostly construction waste/debris) that had accumulated in the garage after the various other projects that we had done.

Last night I hung a new ceiling fan in Gina’s office. I also installed new closet doors and a bi-fold door in the hallway entrance to the laundry room. I did the demo(lition) and room prep for Gina’s office, clearing out the old carpet and baseboards.

John installed the laminate flooring the other weekend and put in the new base boards. Gina caulked everything and painted the trim, spackled some spots in the drywall. It has been quite a little renovation of Gina’s office.

We hit up IKEA and she got herself a new desk and some new wall hangings. Everything isn’t quite  back together yet, I think that is on the agenda for tomorrow night.

This evening I came home, wrote up some specifications, got my laptop rigged up to run the code for the latest web project we are doing at work and poked around in the repository to see how the guys have been doing.

On Monday I fly out to Reston, VA to attend a user conference (tradeshow) that is hosted by Appian, a company that Jaduka is partnered with. I will be out there to demonstrate our integration and discuss with the attendees how we can help improve the efficiency of their Appian installations with Jaduka’s services.

It has been a VERY, VERY busy October, thus far.

I really want to try and knock out a batch of Pumpernickel, but I think that will need to wait until I get back from my trip next week.

Oh, did I mention that I also managed to catch that cold that has been going around Austin (particularly our office)?

Well, I need to get to bed I am supposed to be into the office early tomorrow as to help ensure that I can leave at a decent time.

Laterz

bdbenner work bread, floors, garage, PHP, programming, renovation, the bagster, thebagster, travel, work

Well technically day 3 for me, or 4 depending upon when you start the timer.

But it is day 2 of the conference.

I gave my first public presentation yesterday. I think it went pretty well, I had a couple of people ask for my contact information after I was done, so I am pretty sure that offsets the fact that a couple of people got up and left while I was talking.

I am not taking it personal, I think the conference session was a bit vague and they probably were expecting different information about Serena’s mashup exchange.

I also tried to keep the presentation from being a commercial for Jaduka. I had a slide in there that described Jaduka and NetworkIP, the regular sort of we do 15 billion phonecalls a year and have a database of over 780 860 Million user accounts, etc. I glossed over that and made a joke about how it was a slide that marketing required.

I glossed over the slide, because I overheard a few folks in the audience complaining about attending a couple of sessions that were commercials and did not contain useful information. In football terms, I believe that is called an ‘audible’. At the next Serena even I am pretty sure we will be able to give a detailed presentation of a Serena-Jaduka mashup.

I have been having an enjoyable time meeting and talking with the Serena executives, staff and various Serena Partners.

Back to the keynote.

Laterz

bdbenner travel, work conference, san jose, serena, travel, work

My flight leaves at 3pm this afternoon. I will be out in San Jose for most of the week attending and presenting at the <Tag> conference. I am looking forward to meeting the folks from Serena.

Back to packing and what not.

I have a couple of half finished posts that I will try to complete after I settle into the hotel.

Laterz

bdbenner travel, work san jose, serena, travel, work

And I don’t have any real plans.

I need to get the house straightened up, finish doing some laundry and what not.

I just got the call that my new glasses are ready, my prescription changed a little, like -.25 or something in each eye. I was almost talked into getting these black plastic frames with little skulls on the sides. However, I think that would only work if I was in a band or was back in college.

I am debating about what to do with my current glasses. I could keep them as a spare pair, or I could get new lenses (tinted) put in them for about $70. Because, I would really like to have a pair of sun glasses again, though I am quite used to being blinded when I go outside.

The Corolla needed an oil change so I dropped it off this morning. However, a couple of days ago the engine started to sound really LOUD, at first I thought maybe it was just because it needed an oil change, but the volume was significantly higher than just a rough idle.

I could smell just a wee bit of exhaust fume from when you open the hood, so after some searching on the Internet and Jeremy hearing it too, I am convinced it is something to do with the exhaust assembly in the engine area. I am really hoping that it is just something that has come loose. But more likely something has a hole in it.

Which makes me think that a 14 year old car back in Michigan would like be on at least it’s second muffler and likely it’s third one. I have never replaced a muffler on it and the car was only 4 years old when I bought it so it is unlikely that was replaced back then either.

I am awaiting the call from Brake Specialists to let me know how much it is going to cost.

In the meantime I am installing Asterisk 1.4 for a work project. Fun, Fun I love installing from source.

(I really mean that, btw)

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner Cars, corolla, travel, work Cars, gina, travel, work