Tag Archives: Rackspace

A note from my summer intern

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I received an email a couple days ago from one of my summer interns that recently returned to school.

Hey everyone had first day of classes today thought you guys would find the syllabus to one of my classes hilarious.

Goals:

Learn HTML
Learn JSPs
Learn CSS
Learn Struts
Learn Ajax
Learn Javascript
and JMeter (don’t actually know Anything about this one)

Objective: To be able to work on and maintain a web-app running on Apache Tomcat

First Project: Take a webapp that has only in-line styles and set up a CSS page that will make the site look the exact same.

I feel like I Win this class.

Thanks for everything I learned there!

- John C

This intern spent the summer working on an HTML/JSPs/CSS/Struts/Ajax/Javascript web app, the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel. In a couple months, he was able to make significant improvements to our CSS and image sprites, not to mention other enhancements and bug fixes. Rackspace gets a ton of great code out of our interns, while the interns get to work on real products, get paid, and then get easy A’s.

Pretty sweet deal.

Laptops are confusing…

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I recently couldn’t get wireless to find any networks on my work laptop. I contacted our IT Fly Guys and they promptly showed me the wireless switch on the side of the laptop, which I have had for over a year. Needless to say, most of the company promptly received the following email…

Hey team,

Your neighborhood RTS department would like to make a Public Service Announcement. There seems to be a Wireless Switch Fairy floating around the office, turning off everyone’s wireless switch on their laptop.

Please be on the lookout for this Fairy as she has already gotten to one of our most esteemed employees, Brian Hartsock. He was scared, terrified, and completely confused as to what happened to his wireless connection. After some counseling, the RTS dept. was able to calm him down and explain that the Wireless Fairy had gotten to him and his switch. After turning back on his switch, he was able to smile again and become the rockstar he once was.

Once again, please be on the look-out for the Wireless Fairy!! And please console Brian Hartsock if you happen to run into him.

Thank you all for your cooperation in this URGENT matter!

I was even tethering to my phone for internet. I think I need to return my nerd card.

8 signs of a great development environment

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  1. At least one person playing the air-guitar or drums at any given time
  2. Free coffee and soda
  3. Little bit chatter from pairing, conversation, and collaboration
  4. Lots of headphones to drown out the chatter
  5. At least one book on everyone’s desk
  6. The majority of the desks are filled, aka everyone isn’t always in meetings
  7. You can play bingo with the words test, unit, mock, loosely coupled, automate, build, pairing, code review, and powershell (Okay, maybe I threw that last one in there)
  8. Employees ask to come in and work 12 hours on a Saturday for a Hackathon

Next Hackathon, May 9th. High hopes for lots of great things to come out of it.

The essence of Cloud Computing

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Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking, and talking, about Cloud Computing. Describing it to technical and non-technical people alike can be hard. One great resource I have used is Graham Weston’s post on Cloud Confusion, which gives a great analogy to help clarify the definition of cloud computing.

Today, few of us generate our own power. Instead, we buy it from power companies. These companies generate and distribute electricity from massive centralized power plants that can cost over $1bl to build. Once created, the power travels at the speed of light over the power grid to your home. Cloud computing works the same way, but it comes from companies like Rackspace instead. And, the “power” is the power of computing…

The analogy helps to to describe what Cloud Computing is, but why does cloud computing matter? Graham says because “it’s cheaper and better”. I think there is one more reason why cloud computing matters though.

To steal a line from Now, Discover your Strengths and adapt it to technology, focus on your strengths and outsource your weaknesses.

Every minute devoted to a weakness, is taking a time away from your strengths. The goal of every business should be to minimize the things that take you away from the core of your business. For Mailtrust, it was backups. For your business, it might be email or web hosting.

The funny thing is, this argument has been the main selling point for Mailtrust for a while. Here is a quote straight from the hompage.

As an extension of your IT department, Mailtrust manages and maintains your entire email service in our carrier-grade Rackspace data centers. Our business email hosting solutions free up your internal IT resources, allowing them to focus more on your core business strategies. We strive to alleviate your email system burdens, with reliable email and webmail services at a fraction of in-house costs.

Today’s cloud computing ecosystem has really just expanded on the SaaS services we have grown to love, and included more services, that reach even lower level computing needs that weren’t possible 10 years ago (stupid dial-up modems).

I love not having to worry about backups or web hosting. I want to focus on using my data, not how it is backed up. I want to focus on blogging, not what version of Apache I am running.

What is taking you away from your focus?