Ed's Blog

In the back of my mind, I knew it was going to happen eventually. I didn't know when, exactly. And I didn't know who, precisely. But I knew it was coming.

The when ended up being a couple days ago. The who ended up being Michael, as he announced that he'd been looking over everyone's blog here at rPath. He called my name and, as I turned toward him, said one word:

"August?"

Instantly just about everyone in Engineering made the "you did it" sound. You know the sound -- it's that sound that everyone in Mrs. Morash's second-grade room made when, after Mrs. Morash left the room for a moment, you decided to perform a goofy impression of Mrs. Morash at her desk except, as you went to shake your finger at Stewie Martin to stop picking his nose, your hand accidentally (really!) knocked her favorite little ceramic doggie off the desk and onto the floor, where it smashed into about a bajillion pieces, and then everbody made the sound, and Mrs. Morash came back in and...

Ahem.

Anyway, everybody made the sound, and I knew that I hadn't been doing my part on the blogging front.

(Side note: It's not like there's some sort of "blog every N days or else" checklist at rPath. It's just that we all felt it was time for us to start letting people know a bit more about who we are, and just how incredibly cool this stuff we're building really is. We figured the best way to do that would just be for everyone to blog about stuff that comes up as part of their day-to-day work.)

Given that my last blog entry was back in August (early August, at that), I clearly had some catching up to do.

So I'm sorry about the silence over the past four months (dang, that sounds bad), but here's what's been keeping me busy during that time (in no particular order, and just touching on the high points):

All sorts of random work on what was then known as "the website" but is now called rBuilder Online. This random work included everything from acting as clueless newbie (ok, maybe not so much acting) to help determine what parts of rBuilder Online could be streamlined, to writing some of the various snippets of text on the site, to even hacking a bit on some of the templates here and there.
Feeling the pain of being a bit too close to the bleeding edge with respect to the software on my laptop.
Reinstalling said laptop after vowing that anything pushed to our public Conary repository was more than sufficiently "bleeding edge" for me, thank you very much. And yes, my laptop has been much happier since taking this vow. Thanks for asking!
Acting as a second set of eyes reviewing various Conary announcements.
Working with a web design firm retained to help us make rBuilder Online look better than a group of engineers with no real artistic talent ever could.
Participating in discussions that eventually led to the documenting of a process for generating and deploying keys for the signing of packages by rPath employees.
Submitting and/or contributing to various Bugzilla reports related to rBuilder Online.
Running out and buying a Windows box so we can test rBuilder Online on more than just Linux boxes running Firefox.
Reading many resumes, interviewing many candidates, and attending many meetings concerning said candidates. Need I mention that we're hiring?
Working on a document introducing Conary to sysadmins with Conary-based systems. (Coming soon to a website near you!)
Getting horribly sick and being out for a couple weeks, followed by another month of "The Sinusitus From the Black Lagoon". No, it wasn't as fun as it sounds...
Learning more about wikis, and how we might improve ours.

Those of you that had stumbled over my wiki page might think that the amount of actual writing listed above is pretty slim for someone billing themselves as "the company's resident wordsmith", and you'd be right. The reason for my dearth of writing output is that I was asked to lead the team of developers working on rBuilder Online, which was an honor I could not pass up. I mean, these guys are incredibly sharp, and just a lot of fun to work with -- how could I say no?

What does this mean for rPath's writing needs? Well, did I mention that we're hiring?

Post details: Blogging as an Act of Contrition

12/19/05

05:37:29 pm Blogging as an Act of Contrition

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