{"id":140,"date":"2005-07-21T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-21T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/wp-test\/?p=140"},"modified":"2010-06-30T02:06:57","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T02:06:57","slug":"ah-how-times-change-or-why-i-love-open-source-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/blog\/ah-how-times-change-or-why-i-love-open-source-projects","title":{"rendered":"Ah, how times change … Or Why I love Open Source projects …"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, I began working at a little company called Alphatech, Inc<\/a>. Less than 400 people but on the rise. When I sat down on day 1 at my machine, I began poking around to see what software I would be working with. IT loaded me up with all sorts of stuff. Eudora 5.2, JBuilder 8 (despite JBuilder 9 having just been released), Together Soft, … And all of it was loaded onto my C drive. Despite the fact that my D: drive had over 30 gigs free. Then, after some persistence, I got IT to install Java 1.4.1_03. <\/p>\n

You see, despite being a computer professional, the average user had no powers on their desktop machine. For all installs, one has to email IT. If I had an issue with Eudora, I would have to call them. Turn around time was usually a minimum of a few days for most issues. (Note: two weeks ago, I received an email from IT asking me about a help log that was never closed out. The person wanted to know if I still needed Remote Desktop set up on a certain machine. Turns out, I had finished the project that required that machine over three<\/b> months ago. Also, that machine no longer existed. It was re ghosted, and renamed. Sigh<\/i>).<\/p>\n

In the years I have been working here, my machine has never been defragged. Not once. Now, Legato will attempt to backup every night. I say “attempt” because it always fails on one or two log files, which then throws up a HUGE warning. Yeah, I think I will survive if my legato.log file isn’t backed up properly. Sigh<\/i> number two. Today, and for the last few weeks, my machine has been running like a 16 year old dog that had just had it’s windpipe nearly crushed by a bigger dog (True story: happened to Melissa’s aunt’s dog just the other day). I had to call in my friend who managed to eek out admin permissions on his group’s machines. So, while defrag plugs away, I’ll let you in on some other notes.<\/p>\n

Two years later, I still have JBuilder 8, Eudora 5.2 and the old TogetherSoft. Oddly enough, the company no longer uses the Together password server because we upgraded to Architect. It took IT a week or two to install Architect, but they failed to uninstall the old TogetherSoft. Yeah, that’s a gig of worthless app on my crammed C drive. Sigh<\/i> number three. <\/p>\n

So where is everything at today? Well, JBuilder 2005<\/a> was released back in 02\/2005 and Eudora 6.2.3<\/a> was released in 06\/2005. Yeah, we’re a little behind the times on those upgrades. Somehow, IT realized having IE 5.05 wasn’t going to cover it, and upgraded us a few months back to IE 6.0. But then again, IE sucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, do not fear. Where IT is tight fisted on spending money on software upgrades, I gladly march out and find hot Open Source products. And hey, guess what? I don’t need IT to install most Open Source<\/a> software for me. Hurray! <\/p>\n

For instance, we all know how much JBuilder 8 sucked and how tedious installation and working with it was. Luckily, Eclipse 3.1<\/a> is here to rescue me. I have no idea how I survived without this little guy. Seriously, refactoring is a breeze. It can be integrated seamlessly with both Clearcase and CVS. And best of all, I can move menus to my heart’s content. That won me over right there. How many times did I shake my fist at JBuilder 8 when I wanted to view both variable and stack information?<\/p>\n

As for IE, I avoid it like the plague. I have been a happy Firefox<\/a> user for months now. Thank god for Firefox and its plugins. You can see my write up on Firefox in the archives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next up for me? Thunderbird 1.0.6<\/a>. I haven’t braved this yet, but I’m moving there.<\/p>\n

One last note: while I defragged my machine, I was forced to use IE from the other login. I posted this Blog message sans spell checking. Yeap, no Firefox Spellbound<\/a> plugin meant no spell checks. So now I’m editing the message and with the help of the plugin, found 2 stupid spelling mistakes. What the hell is “degrag” anyway?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, I began working at a little company called Alphatech, Inc. Less than 400 people but on the rise. When I sat down on day 1 at my machine, I began poking around to see what software I would be working with. IT loaded me up with all sorts of stuff. Eudora 5.2, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ah, how times change … Or Why I love Open Source projects …”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howsyouredge.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}