On Our Online Lives
For as long as I can remember I've resisted the urge to put my life on the internet. I signed up with Facebook just about six years ago, when I was a freshman in college. Back then I delayed signing up while nearly every other college student was signing up. Then when the Twitter craze hit I resisted even more adamantly, deciding that I already spent too much time hunched over a computer or phone.
I subscribe to TechCrunch, a very busy tech blog whose posts I read about 5% of the time, and a recent post inspired me to reconsider my aversion to the online life that so many of my friends have embraced. The post talks about quitting social media, and in the process of reading I realized how much value there is in social media. Today I'm announcing that I will start blogging again, will start using Twitter, and have connected all of these social services together (along with Yelp, TripIt, and others). I know, you can't believe that this blog--idle for just about two years now--will come back. To be honest I've missed writing and am genuinely excited to return to it. Hopefully you feel the same way. And maybe you're wondering what's behind this sudden urge to catch up with the times ...
It all started at the Hadoop Summit this June, where 1000 Hadoop community members got together to chat and listen to relevant talks. Cloudera's product manager, Charles Zedlewski, was giving a keynote announcing the cool new products Cloudera had been working on. All of my coworkers were constantly checking their Twitter searches to see what people were saying on #hadoopsummit, whilst freaking out about the live demo's progress. I was completely intrigued with the real-time aspect of tweeting in this context. I was amazed to see, immediately, how the community reacted to our product announcement.
From that point on I decided that I like to share two types of information: information interesting to one person; and information interesting to an unknown group of people. In the case of the former I'll send a SMS, email, or Facebook wall post to the person or group that would be interested in said information. However, previously I had no good way to communicate the latter case. Twitter and Facebook let us share information with others in such a way that lets the audience decide what to read, watch, or listen to. And I think that's pretty neat.
So wish me luck with my new internet life. May it be valuable to you, the audience, and a learning experience for me.
In other news I've moved my site to alexlod.com (proper redirects are in place), and added a brand new theme. Oh and I'll never do 4square. At least not yet 
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New Macbook Pro: Computer Nirvana
I just got a new Macbook Pro. Wow.
The packaging is unbelievable. Seriously. I wanted to cry when I was opening the box. The computer is just sitting there waiting for you, even staring at you with its puppy dog face. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.
And I thought the packaging was good ... The computer is awesome. Insanely beautiful. Sleek. Mysterious. Exotic. Take every good adjective, add them up, and that sum can only partially describe my first impression of the new Macbook Pro. Apple, the world would not be as beautiful, in reach, or fun without you.
I want to run around the streets of Berlingame (where the Cloudera office is), skipping with glee and joy and excitement, while bumping "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham! on my shoulder mounted boom box.
Apple: Computer Nirvana
Lessons in Hosting
Today is a sad day. Today marks the end of an era for me, an era of rack-mount computers, data centers, nerdom, and fantisticism. Nearly 18 months ago, some friends and I installed a 1U rack-mount in a Seattle data center. I had purchased the machine thinking my social network startup, Cellarspot, would create enough traffic to require a monster machine.
After 18 month of spending $97 each month, not to mention an up-front cost of $2,800, my machine has been unracked and is now waiting to be picked up and sold off, never to be in my life ever again. The pinnacle of my nerdom was installing that baby, and today I feel slightly empty. However, I'm quite excited to be chipping away at my credit card bill. And to be totally honest, purchasing a server, power, and a fire hose was insane overkill and an entirely uneconomic hosting decision.
I tried to sell services such as game server hosting, web hosting, etc, but I didn't get any bites. I will step foot in more data centers as time goes on, and I will have another rack mount at some point. Goodbye, Dell PowerEdge 1950. I will see you, or at least your sisters, brothers, and cousins, again.
With love,
Alex
Awesome Datasets
I've been referred to some really, really awesome datasets. I wish I had known about these while taking data-analysis classes in college.
My personal favorite is the Enron emails of 150 employees, mostly executives. Included are their names, their sent items, inboxes, notes, etc. WOW would I have a blast hacking away at this for hours.
We Need Chrome on Mac
I have to restart Firefox 3 at least a few times a day to avoid having it eat most of my resources. Take a look:
We need Google Chrome on Mac! Why not Safari you ask? I don't like Safari's interface all that much. Perhaps it's because I've been using Firefox so much? I don't know; there's just something about it that turns me away. Give me some Chrome!
Tech Marketers, Meet Your Maker
I've been meaning to write a post about the comedic potential of listening to non-technical marketers talk about technology. I'm only referring to the marketers who speak with such conviction that innocent bystandards might actually believe they know what they're talking about. I've witnessed this many a time when speaking with MBA-types about various web startups. I would normally cite specific examples, but Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has done better than I could ever do. Read this short article about cloud computing and silly marketers who want so badly to be technical but fail miserably. It's like a new Revenge of the Nerds, even though Ellison probably isn't a nerd given how much cash he's rolling around in.
What's curious is that the title of this post is "Larry Ellison's Brilliant Anti-Cloud Computing Rant." That's completely misguiding. This isn't an anti-cloud computing rant; it's an anti-marketer-who-speaks-with-conviction rant.