One of the benefits of working for a small company is the ability to get in on the ground floor and make your voice heard.  I’ve had a lot of say in the way that the company is run, and my boss (the only one that I have) listens to me and gives me good feedback.

Since I started, I’ve worked on graphics, marketing, IT, and UX design, to name a few.  I once was freelance, am now full time, and working primarily in project management.  It’s a good thing that I like having a lot of variety in my tasks — I never get bored!  At the end of the day, I can say that I worked my ass off to get a job that I love, and that I look forward to working my ass off again tomorrow.

Learning a profitable skill for the sake of getting a good job isn’t a bad idea — gotta pay the rent, right?  Just make sure that you’re not painting yourself into a corner.  I’ve known a lot of people who have found themselves making a lot of money in jobs that they hate, and that is one of the worst places to be.  It’s hard to leap from the top of your money pile and faceplant into poverty, even if it means getting to do something that you really love.

Does that mean that you’re lucky to be underemployed?  Possibly.  If you don’t like what you’re doing AND you’re not getting paid enough for it, the way out is to follow your dreams.

Sounds cheesy, right?  Like something you’d have to pay $500 to get into the Toyota Center to hear Tony Robbins regurgitate?  I don’t disagree; it’s easy for anyone to tell you to follow your dreams.  They’re not you. They don’t have to follow through.  All they have to do is drop this earth-shattering knowledge on you, guru-on-the-mountain-style.  Then, if you do follow your dreams and open up new potential, they feel entitled to pass your name around as though you were their protege, and they were your mentor.

Classy.

Beneath the layers of self-aggrandizement, there’s a nugget of wisdom.  If you work hard enough at your passions, you’ll become an expert.  With a little bit of savvy, you can turn expertise into a job you’ll love.

I was in that boat — I was overworked/underpaid/underappreciated.  I started making websites for myself because I wanted websites.  Then I started making websites for my friends for free, because I liked doing it and I wanted to build a portfolio.  My friend Ross let me work for him for free for his company, saying that he’d pay me someday if the money became available.

Here’s the difference between an ambitious person and an unambitious one: an ambitious person would recognize this as an opportunity to gain experience.  An unambitious one would see it as a drain on video game time.  Sure, doing market research was less fun than climbing the leaderboards on Xbox Live; but if you choose video games now, you’re choosing them for the rest of your life.

I worked my 40 hours a week at work, then I worked another 40 for free.  The result?  A 20% pay increase and a job that I love; and I’ve got plenty of time to catch up on the leaderboards now.

It wasn’t so bad, actually.  I used the BlackBerry Manager software to do a full backup, then used the wipe command by going to Menu –> Options –> Security Options –> General Settings –> Menu –> Wipe Handheld, and I was back to defaults within a few minutes.  When I applied the backup, I got everything except my apps back.  I reconnected to my preferred WiFi hotspot here at the office right away!  Not sure what was wrong there,but I was back on track.

My next stop was ÜberTwitter to reinstall my most-used app.  So far, so good!  Then I reinstalled WhatsApp (the chat app that my girlfriend and I have been using), and my WiFi died again shortly thereafter.  I uninstalled it after awhile, and my WiFi eventually started behaving again.

I’m not sure if WhatsApp actually killed my WiFi, but the app and my WiFi certainly seem incompatible.

I’m currently installing Opera Mini to replace the (essentially worthless) built-in BlackBerry browser.  I apologize for the alliteration.

In more exciting news, the BlackBerry Torch featuring BlackBerry 6 touchscreen OS is now available!  I’ve made the decision to jump from T-Mobile’s poor network coverage (well worth the $200 to break the contract), and until recently, was resigned to getting an iPhone; but with this sexy new darling from RIM on the market, I just might remain a BB user.  I’ll make my decision this weekend, when I go to a store for a demo.

For the last few years, tech forums have been sprinkled with people reporting that periodically, they can get to any website they want, unless it’s a Google-owned site (Gmail, YouTube, etc.).  The problem usually resolves itself after a couple of hours.

What’s going on?

If my thoughts on the subject are to be believed, the ISPs are periodically blocking their DNS servers from redirecting to Google-owned sites.  This reduces the amount of data flowing across their networks, saving them money.

ISPs provide service to their customers in the hopes that they will not utilize high amounts of bandwidth.  Think in terms of an all-you-can-eat buffet: if you pay full price and eat one plate of food, you’ve given the restaurant a higher profit than the World-Hot-Dog-Eating-Champion who can skeletonize a bucket of fried chicken faster than I can come up with a metaphor.

What do I do?

First, set your router to use a Google Public DNS server.  (Due to the variety of commercially available routers, I cannot give you instructions for this — apologies.  Consult the manual that came with your router.  You DO have the manual, don’t you?)

If you’re having trouble reaching Google because you’re presently a victim of this atrocity, they have two server addresses: 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8.  You can also use other public DNS servers, but I can guarantee that these will be able to find Google!

Once you’re back up and running, email your ISP and demand an explanation.  You contracted with them to provide a service, and if they are unable or unwilling to provide the service that they promised, you should be entitled to a credit on your bill.

(Good luck with actually getting a credit, but you’ll be standing up for fair practices when you tell your ISP that you won’t sit idly by while they take your money for nothing!)

What’s going on?

This is typically referred to as the box model problem.  IE and FF interpret the padding element differently.  Chances are you’ve pulled up this article in a teeth-grinding search to correct the problem, so I’ll just make with the solution:

Add another <div> for your padding.

<div class=”TheStuffYouAlreadyHave”>
  <div class=”ThePaddingYouSeparated”>
    Content
  </div>
</div>

Support web standards! Go to WebStandards.org, educate yourself, and prevent articles like this from being necessary!

If you’re not sure why this is cool, lemme ‘splain.  When your web browser opens a page, it can only use the fonts that are installed on your computer to display the text it contains.  When designing a page, web designers are largely limited to web-safe fonts — fonts that are installed on (more or less) every computer.

We can specify alternates.  We can tell the browser to use Helvetica, but Verdana’s okay if Helvetica’s not installed.  No Verdana?  Use Arial, or any sans-serif font.  By the time it gets to the end of the list, we’re pretty much willing to take anything, just so long as you can read it.

In cases where we really, really want you to see the page just how we envisioned it, we can link the font on the main page so you can download and install it… but will you?  Sounds like a lot of work…

If we really insist, we can make a graphic of whatever text we simply must have displayed in Haettenschweiler, and have the page display that; but that’s a lot of work for us, and it makes pages a pain to update.

With @font-face, our worries are over.  We install the font on the server hosting the page, and your browser loads the text looking exactly how it was designed.  It’s still a working draft — they have to set it so that fonts will only be available for the page for which they’re intended, lest everyone be able to snatch pay-to-use fonts from the web with abandon… but I’m excited to start playing with it.

Want to have more reasons to dislike Internet Explorer?  Trip on over to When Can I Use to see how little interest Microsoft apparently has in supporting new features.  Why, exactly, is IE6 still alive?

I’m presently using an internet terminal in the Amsterdam airport, because I accidentally left my Blackberry in Houston.  Off to Dublin in a couple of hours, and I’ll be back home next week.  I’m sure I’ll have something interesting about which I can blog by then.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

1: The “F” in WiFi does not mean “Free”.

If I had a nickel for every time someone insisted that “WiFi” means “Wireles Internet, Free internet,” I’d need help lifting my huge bag of nickels.

“WiFi” is a play on the term “HiFi,” which means “High Fidelity” and applies to audio recording technology.  While some free public WiFi networks do exist, there are a large number of paid services available in coffee shops, airports, hotels and other places.

You have to pay for internet at home — is it really so unbelievable that you’d have to pay for it elsewhere?

2: The maximum reach of 802.11g WiFi is 300 feet.

That’s 300 feet outdoors, with no interference.  For indoor access points, the recognized average is 120 feet.  If you live next door to a coffee shop that provides WiFi, chances are that there’s too much steel, wood, concrete, insulation and drywall between you and the wireless router for you to get a reliable signal.

Furthermore, the wireless antenna built into your laptop is not very powerful.  You can use a utility like Netstumbler to survey the wireless networks available to you, and assess what signal strength and quality you can expect to receive from them.

Generally speaking, if you’re looking to receive WiFi in your home, you’re going to have to get a cable or DSL connection and set up a wireless router.  With the exception of a few cities that provide municipal WiFi networks, WiFi is not something that you can receive in your home from an outside source; and the municipal networks can be sketchy — I don’t recommend them.

3: Almost everything interferes with WiFi.

WiFi operates at 2.4 GHz — just like most cordless phones, Bluetooth, some RF signals, and a host of other electronic communications devices.

WiFi will go through one or two walls without much degradation, but it can be interrupted by microwaves, CRT televisions, reflective surfaces, other computers using WiFi, other WiFi signals broadcast on the same channel… the list goes on.

This shouldn’t dissuade you from using WiFi altogether!  If you have a wireless router in your house, you’ll probably get great reception from it — WiFi is primarily intended for short-range, single-building connectivity.  It is possible to stretch it farther with high-gain equipment, but that can become costly (and if you’re going to shell out the money, why not get a cable or DSL connection instead?).

4: Business Class service for your business.

There is a reason that businesses pay extra for business class service.  Business class connections come with things like guaranteed uptime and redundant circuits — ISPs prioritize outages for business class customers, and have extra measures in place to meet their needs.

Basically, you may be able to run your business on residential service or public WiFi if you require intermittent connectivity to the internet; but if the possibility of 3-5 days’ downtime would cripple your business or shut you down completely, you need business class.

5: Free WiFi in apartment complexes is worth every penny.

If you’re moving into a new apartment and the offer Free WiFi, be suspicious.  Depending on which apartment you get, the signal may not reach into your unit very well.  You may have to sit on your patio to get online.  For the amount that they add to your rent, you could probably get a DSL connection of your own.

Furthermore, even if you get a good signal and the hotspot equipment is working fine, the bandwidth available to the service is split between everybody who’s using it; and if one of your fellow tenants is downloading torrents with wild abandon, it can severely slow down your connection — or worse, the management might have opted for a low-bandwidth plan, or may be blocking some ports or services.

If you’re considering an apartment with free WiFi, at least ask questions:

• How much total bandwidth is available?
• Is there a cap on my bandwidth or usage?
• Are any sites/ports/services blocked?
• Who provides the service, and do they offer competent technical support?
• Can I opt out?

Whether you can opt out or not, you should still be able to get your own DSL or cable connection.  Make sure you know all of your options.

6: All connections are NOT created equal.

While a WiFi connection may be suitable for checking your email or looking up movie times, if you’re trying to stream HD video, be prepared for disappointment.  No WiFi provider is going to guarantee any minimum level of bandwidth or speed.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily apply to the wireless router in your house running on your cable or DSL connection; this unobstructed, unshared signal can be just as reliable as plugging a cable directly from the modem into your computer.

7: Bandwidth vs. WiFi transfer rate

802.11g has a maximum transfer rate of 54 Mb per second.  That’s megabits, not megabytes — there are 8 bits in a byte, so wireless-G is capable of transferring up to 7 MB per second.  The newest standard, 802.11n, doubles that: 108Mb/14MB per second, under optimal conditions.

This does NOT mean that you’ll be able to download at this rate.  A standard DSL connection will run anywhere from 3-7 Mbps, so you can download from a website at almost 1MB per second (optimally).  Cable connections typically run from 5-15 Mbps, so you may be able to get close to 2MB per second from the web — assuming, of course, that the web server from which you’re downloading makes that speed available to you.

In short, a 54 Mbps WiFi connection should not lead you to believe that you can download a 1-gigabyte file in under a minute.  Remember:

1. Know the difference between bits and bytes
2. Your router’s transfer rate is limited by your connection’s bandwidth
3. Your download rate may be capped by the server providing the files

Public WiFi is great for checking your email or looking up web pages, but it’s not reliable as a constant connection.  The best description of the service you’ll get?  Results May Vary.

To understand how DNS works, you need to know one simple concept: humans like words, computers like numbers.  For example, if you type either of the following into the address bar of your web browser, you’ll get to the same place:

• 208.17.81.60
• www.salon.com

208.17.81.60 is the IP address for the online news site Salon.com.  When you type www.salon.com into your browser, the browser queries a DNS server (“do you know where this is?”).  The DNS server will either tell the browser where it is, or forward the request to another DNS server (“I dunno, go ask that guy”).  Within a few hops, your web browser will learn that “www.salon.com” means “208.17.81.60″, and bring up the page for you.

This is how sites “spider” onto the internet.  If your primary DNS server doesn’t know a particular address, it sends the request along to other DNS servers; in most cases, when the query is finally answered by a DNS server that knows what you’re looking for , the servers that sent the request along will overhear the response that your browser receives, and record the record in its own database.  This way, if anyone else asks for it, the server will be able to offer up the information without having to pass the request along.

If DNS servers didn’t operate this way, it could take a very long time for you to reach ANY websites.  Imagine what would happen if only one DNS server in the world knew how to get to Google!  You’d have to stand in a very long line to check your Gmail.

If you have a home internet connection, your ISP is providing you with a DNS server or two (or three).  Some companies provide public DNS servers — Google, for example, provides 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8.  If you mysteriously find yourself able to get to some websites but not others, and you know where in your network your DHCP servers are set (usually in your router), you can try replacing your primary DNS server with a public DNS server to see if it fixes the issue.

For quick and easy DNS tests, you can go to DNSsy.com.

Amazon Ponies Up to Microsoft for Linux Rights (Click to read the story at TechNewsWorld.com)

In summary, Microsoft and Amazon are involved in some cross-patent action.  They’re patenting the technology by which the Kindle grabs content from Linux-based servers, and Amazon pays Microsoft for the privilege.  Microsoft has asserted in the past that Linux infringes on their patents, so this patent carries some troubling connotations.

Xerox sues Google, Yahoo over search patents (Click to read the story at CNET News)

So Xerox is seeking an injunction against Google, because they thought up the idea for a “System for Automatically Generating Queries” and a “Method and Apparatus for the Integration of Information and Knowledge.”

The article references the two patents that Xerox is waving around.  I took a minute to scan them, and I’ll give the fine folks at Xerox credit for commiting to the creation of such a long document.  I further praise their ability to wax rhetorical, at length, about not much at all.

In 2001, they came up with a theoretical framework for a search engine. Though it made references to the use of technologies like HTML and XML, neither mentioned the use of PHP, which is really the backbone of the Google search engine (which, for those counting at home, was launched in 1997).

The long-and-short of it, if you believe the assertions of all involved, is that Xerox came up with an idea and sat on it for 10 years, whereas Google delivered a product, from which the entire world has benefitted, that was fundamentally similar to Xerox’ idea.

My Two Cents

I’m going to propose a radical new concept, which I would characterize as both idealistic and pragmatic.  In the name of the forward progress of technology, I call upon the technology community to unite and deliver this message unto the corporate mega-giants: Screw Your Patent.

By getting a rubber stamp on a vague idea, and then using your “ownership” of that idea to hinder the efforts of people who take action and create products, you become the wrench in the gears; and while everyone involved could be directing their efforts toward further innovation, you’d rather they all stop and pay atention to you, while you insist on receiving money that you’ve done nothing to earn.

I say we do away with patents.  Having a good idea is fine and all, but if you produce nothing beneficial from that idea, it’s worthless in a practical sense.  Open source is the way and the light — let’s all start announcing our ideas to the world, and see what happens.  We can still take credit for the things that we produce, and make mad profits — but ideas are worthless without execution.

(My apologies to the person or entity who first thought of doing away with patents and rewarding actual progress — please don’t sue me, I promise it’s not worth your time.)