Exceedingly tentative 2009 travel schedule.

Initial estimate: 75736 miles

Current total estimate: 82264

Miles flown to date: 36228

I've moved my technical blogging over to http://blog.fsck.com.

Right now, I'm going on and on about getting a shell on my Kindle 2

I will be more productive.

As currently planned: 140657 miles. Updated 12/12/08.

I swore to myself that I wouldn't get a T-Mobile G1. That..didn't work so well. I picked mine up after lunch on release day.

I knew I wasn't going to be happy with the stock mail client, but I had no idea how....not ready it was.

The total dealbreaker for me was that it didn't have keybindings for simple things like delete.

"No problem. I'll just build a patched copy and submit the changes upstream," I thought. So, I dusted off my Java, hauled down the SDK and the source for the core Email application. Once I got it to build, it was really only about 15 minutes of fiddling around until I could reliably crash the application on the emulator by hitting the delete key. 5 more minutes and I had what I wanted.

...and then I discovered that the Email application doesn't yet know how to propagate message deletion back to an IMAP server.

15 more minutes of hacking and that, too, was sorted out.

The moment of truth arrived. I tried to install it on my phone.

No go.

It turns out you can't replace system applications.

So, I did what any self-respecting hacker would. I complained about it on twitter....and then I registered for the Android Marketplace. It took 5 minutes and cost $25.

I set up a google code project, checked in the 'Email' app's original source code and started in with a regex-shaped chainsaw. When I was done K-9 was born.

While I hope to eventually get some fixes contributed back to the core Android 'Email' app, I want to get a bit of active development going on a more usable mail application right now. And yeah, there's a bit of me that's curious about how the community is going to handle forked bits of the core Android platform. If you'd like a commit bit, just ask.

Right now, K-9 has reasonable keybindings for message lists and individual messages as well as the delete fixes I mentioned. I've released 3 versions in the span of 6 hours. It's been downloaded by about 200 people.

Tomorrow, I expect to add a setting to let me set an always-Bcc address....unless one of you beat me to it.

If you are in London, we should have breakfast on Monday. (And, possibly, you should let me sleep on your spare bed Sunday night)

If you are in Copenhagen, we should have a beer at the Globe on Monday evening.

If you are in Lund, Sweden, I'll be there next tuesday, wednesday and thursday. We should hang out.

So. 4 counts Palin. 4 counts Ike. 4 counts Lehman. 2 counts Bush. 1 count telephone dog. 1 count dancing stormtrooper. (Not shown: 1 count OJ. Ok. one count armed robbery).

I'd like my news cycle back. Perhaps even some good news.

So, I need to be in Madrid on 24 and 25 November.

It appears that it's a good deal cheaper and more comfortable for me to leave the US on Friday, 21 November.

My time on the 22nd and 23rd is entirely unscheduled at the moment.

It appears that it would cost about the same to:

Spend two nights in the UK
Spend a night in the UK and an night day in Madrid
Spend a night in the UK and a night in Lisbon
Spend a night in the UK and a night in Barcelona

...and probably cost about the same to spend a night elsewhere in Europe on my way to Madrid.

So. Where shall I go?

I gave a 5 minute talk at Ignite Boston this evening. The basic premise, for those of you who don't do flash or don't feel like clicking through is this: If you don't own your tools, you're going to be in a whole mess of trouble. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But one day, you're going to be very, very unhappy with the fact that you've given up your right to software self-determination.

I'm looking to get a quick read of what folks are using for bug tracking. I'm NOT looking for advocacy and this has nothing to do with getting anybody to 'switch' bug trackers.

Poll #1184292 A brief survey of bug-tracker usage
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which bug tracking systems do you use? (Just browsing the web interface as an anonymous guest doesn't count for the purpose of this survey)

Something not listed above (Specify)

See photo: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/freedom_s_choice.

Today is Earth Day. I did my part by flying from Amsterdam to Boston, burning approximately 1 ton of CO2.

I'm going to be in London for breakfast on Friday. If you're free, ping me in comments and I'll shoot you mail with details.

I'm going to be in Amsterdam for the weekend. If you're interested in Dim Sum on Sunday, leave me a comment and I'll make sure to tell you what the plan is.

If you're in London or Amsterdam (or will be this weekend) and feel like meeting up, but neither of these quite works, tell me and we'll figure something else out.

CL and I went to Hawaii for spring break. We spent 10 hours a day sitting in a cafe coding, averaging about one thousand lines of code per day for a week. It was, without a doubt, the best spring break ever. And I'm bringing home the best souvenir ever: a peer-to-peer replicated database with near-magical conflict resolution.

I can use livejournal as if it were Twitter!

Oh no! Twitter is down. However will I post my one-line life updates?

(This goes to craigslist tomorrow, but I'd rather end up with a referral from a friend than with a total stranger)


ABOUT US

We're a small software company located in Somerville, Mass. Our primary product is RT (Request Tracker), an open-source issue tracking system.  It's used by thousands of organizations around the world.  We also make a distributed version control system called SVK and a web-based todo list system called Hiveminder (http://hiveminder.com) We make software and sell support, training, consulting and custom development.

We've been around since fall of 2001 and are entirely bootstrap funded. Things just keep getting busier.


ABOUT THE JOB

Our beloved office manager is leaving us this spring to pursue a career in massage therapy. We're looking for a bright, talented individual to help keep us organized. It's very important that you be able to keep on top of both long-term projects and day-to-day details without someone looking over your shoulder. On the other hand, you need to know when to ask for help or direction.


You'll report directly to the corporate boss-type-person. As his assistant, you'll be responsible for making sure that things get dealt with - everything from making sure the office stays clean and well stocked with copy-paper and free snacks to doing payroll.

Day-to-day, you'll be dealing with staff (not all of whom are local or even in the country), vendors and customers. You need excellent written and verbal communications skills (for dealing with customers) even if most of the time you're slumming with the rest of us who aren't so hot with our capitalization and punctuation.

We're a small company and the boss is typically overextended. He travels a fair bit and when he's not traveling, he can be pretty busy. You should be comfortable working independently, prioritizing tasks on your own, and juggling tasks & projects. We know that we're not going to find an office manager who reads minds, but if you can fake it well enough to make sure that things get done before they become crises, we'll be thrilled (that means you should be proactive).

You need to be comfortable using a computer running Mac OS X or some variant of Unix. You should know how to use an email client, a web browser, a spreadsheet, a word processor and Quickbooks.   We do just about everything online and on the phone. You should be comfortable using email and instant messaging systems to collaborate and get work done.


You shouldn't be frustrated by computers or computer geeks. Just about everyone here is a computer geek (though we all have other interests). You don't need to know how to program in Perl or have a shelf full of O'Reilly books, but it's helpful if you already know that Perl is a programming language and that O'Reilly books are the ones with animals on the cover.

Most of the time, you'll be working from our office in lovely Davis Sq, Somerville, though you'll end up swinging by the boss's house in Porter once or twice a week to deal with bills and other minor home-office arcana.


RESPONSIBILITIES

Below, you'll find a rough breakdown of what the job entails. This breakdown is over the course of the year, not what you'll have to do every week. Being a small company, things do shift around and new things will come up, but this should be a pretty good snapshot.

Financial Management - about a third of your time

* Accounts Payable - pay vendor bills
* Accounts Receivable - invoice customers; process incoming payments
* Payroll – submit payroll to specialists & pay independent contractors
* Bank account reconciliation
* Maintenance of records
* Tax preparation for accountant

Office Management - maybe a third of your time

* Pick up mail from post office box in Davis Sq.
* Open and organize mail
* Correspondence - email, fax, and letters
* Mail/ship correspondence & packages
* Order office/computer supplies
* Keep Office and Bathroom Clean
* Stock Office with drinks, snacks and necessities
* Oversee all non-sales contracts

Special Projects - a small bit

* Research
* Setting up new employees
* Assist the Sales Team

Event Planning - less than a quarter of your time

* Research and select hotels for training sessions around the world
* Coordinate with hotels
* Communicate with attendees
* Invoice attendees, track payments, issue receipts
* Order books

Household Management - little bits here and there

* Open and organize mail
* Pay bills
* Collect rent

Other - as needed

* Arrange travel for the boss-type person
* Manage relationships with independent contractors
* Deal with things that need dealing with


BENEFITS AND COMPENSATION

The position is full-time.
Salary: $30,000 - $35,000 per year, depending on experience
Health, dental from day 1.
Fairly liberal vacation policy.
MacBook. Work cellphone.
Flexible hours & a little bit of telecommuting.
Relaxed office atmosphere - No dress code.


HOW TO APPLY FOR THE JOB

Please send a cover letter and resume to: resumes@bestpractical.com

Real people will read your cover letter. We'd love to know a bit about who you are, where you went to college, where you've worked and what sorts of things you're interested in, rather than just that you've seen our job posting and are sure that you'd be a fine match for the position. If you have a website or blog you'd like to share with us, please send a link.

While we can probably read any resume format you can throw at us, we'd appreciate it a lot if you can send it as plain text or HTML. If you can't do that, PDF. If you can't generate a PDF, Word is okay.

We have a new build and distribution tool called 'Shipwright.' It basically takes the pain out of distributing perl applications with all their dependencies. (It also lets you version the dependencies, build relocatable binary distributions with one command and actually imports packages and their dependencies into version control with a single command).

( So, this is what Hiveminder's Shipwright repository looks like. It took me 3 commands to check all of these into version control: )

( And this is the order they need to be built in: (It took 0 manual commands to work that out) )

Hiveminder Pro launches today

Today, we're releasing Hiveminder Pro, a major update to our online task management system. Here at Best Practical, we're addicted to Hiveminder's slick, simple task tracking and sharing, but that's not too surprising-- we built Hiveminder to be the shared todo list we always wanted.You don't have to take it from us, though. Sarah Linder of the Austin American-Statesman writes:

"I am crazy about Hiveminder. I started using the online to-do list a little more than a year ago, and we're very content together. I had been lost, adrift -- trying different ways to track my stuff, but never settling down. Hiveminder made me less flaky, less absent-minded, less likely to wake up at 3 a.m. realizing I had forgotten something important. Hiveminder, you complete me."