gtuhl: startup IT and software development

Just got back from Startup Riot. I found it to be a lot of fun and I think it turned out really well. I met a lot of new people, reconnected with people I knew or had met during my Georgia Tech days, found out about several startups I had not previously heard of, got some resumes, and in general made a number of great new connections.

I personally wasn’t thrilled with my pitch but I suppose my pitching skills can be expected to have degraded after a year or so of heads down cranking instead of pitching. I stumbled twice due to tweaking the script and order of things right up until my slot and I somehow managed to run long despite my tendency to speak quickly in front of crowds and had to cut the last slide, the most important one, short.

In any case it was definitely worth attending. I thought the atmosphere was fantastic, the venue was ideal, and everyone was just there to talk, share, and connect. I didn’t get pitched by anyone but startups (no vendors, service providers, recruiters, or similar) which really was great and I think it changed the whole feel of the event. No dealing with high school girls peddling hosting plans they know nothing about as I have endured elsewhere.

Major props to Sanjay Parekh for putting it all together. The after party turned out wonderful as well. The rooftop deck (and office in general) of Nelson Mullins was pretty sick. Though I would have preferred to have a stout or porter to choose from there is absolutely nothing real to complain about.

Hopefully by the time the next one rolls around we’ll be able to assist as a sponsor.

So it turns out I have been pronouncing Hoegaarden incorrectly for a very long time. Just wanted to throw up a post to make my small contribution to letting everyone know.

The pronunciation was actually on the 6-pack packaging, and the wikipedia page pronunciation backs it up. In short the “Hoe” portion is pronounced as “Who”.

I attended Barcamp Atlanta this past weekend and found it to be a great deal of fun. I met a lot of interesting people and heard some great content. I found the sessions lead by Stephen Fleming to be particularly excellent. For my own session I guess introductory database admin/tuning just isn’t very inspiring, i’ll do something appropriately cooler next time. Much of the late night discussion (which unfortunately corresponded in time to a big production issue I had to be distracted by - see previous post if you care to know what issue I hit) was Startup Weekend Atlanta specific and left me wishing i’d known about the signups sooner. I just joined the wait list as a backend developer and/or sysadmin.

There was a fair amount of discussion about the Atlanta startup environment in general and thoughts on what factors prevent it from being better. Though I may not have the year and company counts that more experienced area entrepreneurs hold I have co-founded 2 startups and been employed by 2 more in the last 4ish years and have a lot of thoughts about this. I also realize I have a tremendous amount to learn through future experience.

The biggest issue we’ve faced is finding and keeping talent. We’ve managed to succeed with a mixture of contract and full-time help but in general I think qualified people are in short supply here. Obviously this is not a problem isolated to our company as we’ve lost a few to poaching by other startups. Perhaps going forward we’ll be able to collect advice and guidance from these older/wiser area entrepreneurs instead of painfully unwanted profit increases - they aren’t always a good thing

I rarely talk about work directly here, but as the newly crowned Minister of Libations at my company, i’d like to mention that we are looking to make several hires in both development and QA. Check out our website at wethecitizens.com and if you might be interested shoot me an e-mail at juhl [at] wethecitizens [dot] com. The code involves Java 1.5, Spring, Hibernate, and DWR (lots of Ajax) running against a stout PostgreSQL database. The interfaces are a mixture of publicly-accessible webpages and a more powerful application exposed to certain users that is delivered through webrunner.

It is a startup and while the work can be tough I also find it to be particularly rewarding. We work on a lot of nontrivial problems and interact with front-page customers and the opportunities ahead are excellent. We’ve been around for a few years, are well funded, have a committed and dedicated board, and as a startup actually have substantive revenue. Competitive salary, stock options, benefits (health and dental), flexible hours, snacks and drinks, proper workstations (Aerons while supplies last + Dual Screen + Laptop or Desktop), beer on Friday at close of business, and a committed core group of people make this a pretty great place to work in my opinion.

It has been a bit too long since the last post and I hope to make up for it with the particularly “startup” taste of this one.

When we got started as a company we didn’t have a lot of hardware of the server variety to worry about. We had a production web/application server, production database server, a corporate mail server, and a couple development servers meant to mimic the production environment. Such a small number of machines is easy to keep track of and there was no need to create names more unique that “prodweb”, “proddb”, etc.

Though we still couldn’t fill a full rack with equipment the machine count did get large enough that a better naming scheme was necessary. After a fairly short brainstorming session we unanimously agreed that beer provided the best namespace for new machines. With that decision made we refined the naming scheme by assigning regions to machine roles. A few samples:

• Database servers, generally the strongest and best, are named after Belgian beers
• Web/Application servers are named after English beers
• Servers for QA purposes are named after cheap American Macrobrews

The naming scheme alone is pretty excellent but a few weeks later we came up with a further refinement of the system. Thus far our servers have come from Dell. The price combined with the availability of 2 - 4 hr hardware replacement (Silver and Gold support packages can generally be negotiated to low or no cost) make up most of that decision. The reason the vendor matters here is that Dell servers ship with sharp looking gray bezels that snap into the front of the servers and cover the inputs and drives to give a rack of machines a consistent, clean look. Here is a picture of one if you are unfamiliar with Dell servers.

The Dell logo in their center is almost exactly the same diameter as the cap from a beer bottle. The reason this is wonderful should be obvious. We realized we could remove the Dell logos, replace them with the beer bottle caps matching individual server names and have unique, physical identifiers for our servers. Here is the approach:

Step 1: Remove the Dell logo

The logos are glued to a ring of rubber-like material that itself is glued to the bezel. The best way to remove them is to flip the bezel over and insert a screw driver through the larger of the slots behind the logo. Pressing firmly here will separate the logo partly from the rubber. Next flip the bezel back over and use the screw driver to pry the logo away fully. It doesn’t matter if the rubber ring remains or not as the bottle caps will fit over it fine.

Step2: Attach the bottle cap

The best adhesive for attaching a bottle cap appears to be rubber cement. It avoids taking the stronger step of using super glue and dries clear. You will need to apply a solid layer and let the cap sit in place for several minutes before picking up the bezel and placing it back on the machine.

Here are a few of our servers now:

It is possible that a similar naming and labeling scheme wouldn’t be allowed in some environments but we’ve enjoyed it significantly enough that we couldn’t hoard the idea. You could take the same approach with most of Dell’s equipment but the logos placed on some of their products are larger and the bottle cap can look out of place.

I don’t know a ton about beer but I do know that one of my favorite hobbies is seeking out beers that I have never heard of and giving them a try. Sometimes I taste something that doesn’t sit well, but have never disliked a beer to the point of not finishing the bottle or pint. I try to remain aware of regions, breweries, and terminology but prefer to spend more time finding varieties I have not yet tried and giving them a shot.

One consistently true fact of trying different beers is that Belgian beers truly are a cut above the rest. I don’t know that I have ever tried a Belgian beer that I wouldn’t place in my top 20% of beers I enjoy most.

That said, here are a list of some Belgian brews that I enjoy enormously and that are easy to find in the US. In Atlanta all of these can be found at liquor stores and even at the grocery stores in the city.

• Chimay - all varieties
• Gulden Draak (favorite on this list, not in grocery stores but can find it at liquor stores)
• Hoegaarden
• Leffe Blonde
• Stella Artois
• Three Philosophers (technically brewed in the US but is really fantastic)

Costco sometimes sells a Belgian beer 18 pack with Hoegaarden, Leffe Blonde, and Stella. Check out this site for more information about specific breweries and styles. I am especially fond of the Abbey / Trappist ales both for the taste and for the coolness of the history behind them. Here is the brewery that produces Three Philosophers.

I once worked very briefly (couple dozen hours) on the website 80beers.com. Though it isn’t perfect, it does have some pretty extensive beer listings and might be worth browsing through. It would have been a neat site to help with for a more substantial period of time but my full-time job really started to heat up and I ended all existing contract work as quickly as my contracts permitted. The only work I was really able to do was development of an administration panel.

EDIT: I made my first trip to The Brick Store Pub last week. If you live in the Atlanta area you owe it to yourself to visit this fantastic place. Their Belgian beer list will put any other establishment to shame and they serve everything correctly.