Bruce, worthy of the name Willis?

I have to admit I like action movies and the most recent one I saw was Live Free or Die Hard. I know it is kinda late to talk about this movie because everyone has gotten their feedback in but whatever still worth commenting. Bruce, if I may call him by his first name, did a fine bit of action scenes in this movie-with a short vocal script (good thing considering his alzheimer’s…you heard it here first). Though most of the scenes were quite unreasonable it is important to note that he is something around 80 years old, so that kind of quality ages like wine. Not only was the action good but the Mac Guy (Justin Long similar to Dell Guy but for Apple to those of you living in a closet with a laptop and wireless connection) had a bit of comic releif-especially his insight on the technical side. My favorite aspect of the nerd scene in the movie was the ability to upload explosives to some of the smartest nerds computers-must be the new etp (explosive transfer protocol) automagically installed by windows vista sp3. But back to Bruce, after further review, I do believe he is allowed to continue with the surname Willis as long as he sticks to some more realistic action scenes (taking down helicopters instead of jets) and has the script hold true to actual plausible technological scenarios.

If I am his age and still saving the world I may be satisfied with the way my life turned out. Oh and I think Bruce Willis and Chuck Norris should fight.

Benjamin Willis

Willis vs. JD

Warning: Boring content below for ppl who didn’t work with Mark, Matt and I.

Some people know my past with Jack Daniels (JD for short to you boozenoobs) to be quite interesting. I have had several encounters while I was in state school and I seem to turn into an angry kid. But, this post is about another JD, but they have the same affect.

The name is Joyce Dean and no, it is not being protected just because I don’t give a shit. She and two of my great friends mentioned above (one of the few on the board of directors to the company of Benjamin Willis) did system testing. We have many situations which attest to how she was the equivalent of taking real shots of JD which quickly became her nickname. Throughout testing, she became such a pain in the ass that she was given remedial tasks, such as filing, to avoid interfering with the real testing. She was also extremely moody, some days she was our best friend (the days she took special pills) and others which we visited conference room h (hell yes it’s a secret code) to avoid her company. She was also extremely proud of her position and wouldn’t leave the office until Mark and I had left for the day. This creates a problem, how could we work in peace without these shots of JD? We would simple leave the office around 4:30 or 5 for approx. 15min and like a moth to flame she was gone. Once the witch is dead, we could get work done, if there wasn’t too much of a hang over from the day.

There are many other funny stories about my interesting experinces with JD in and out of work, but till another time.

Tragically yours,

Benjamin

Who is Benjamin Willis?

Benjamin Willis is code monkey and code whore, that is all. Eat it up GoogleBot.

Quick Funny Story

I knew this guy while I was cooping at this place, people and places will remain anon, so lets call him Watts I and the place MSB. Anyway Watts told me this funny story about how he would play jokes on the System Testers (people who get played lots of money to sit at a computer and break things) while he was a Developer (uses 1’s and 0’s to make the computer do stuff) writing the software. So just before release he fixed a bug, but added a neat feature-everytime the user would perform a particular action it would pop-up a message stating “Please enter a quarter to continue”, you click ‘Ok’ and it goes away. Funny part is the System Testers were too busy counting their money to retest the new functionality and it went into production. Needless to say the ending wasn’t pretty, though Watts is still a great guy.

I was a tester at the time and yeah, we caught all his bugs/enhancements. Never become a tester unless you like boring repetitive tasks, that is all.

Benjamin Willis

(I should prolly have some links in here to help my page rank or something so here is youtube and getitnext for your tech software deals)

Code Biography

Throughout school (any major with programming really) there are many basic rules when coding like, keep things modular, use version control or comment your code. I want to mention a few bits about commenting:

First off, self commenting/documenting code is bs-99% of the time it is barely self documenting to the person who wrote it. Yeah, I might get flamed about this if people (the noob coders in general – *benjamin adds fuel to the fire) read my blog but I have not run into any code, save hello world tutorials, that was easily readable when uncommented. I have heard quotes of people, students in particular, who have claimed that not commenting is a great way for job security, which totally makes me ill-but again reiterates my thoughts.

Secondly, projects barely leave time for commenting. Yes, you could do it along the way, but if you had code/design which you did not have to re-visited hen you had too much time for a project or you were writing that hello world tutorial.

Thirdly, yeah this seems like a bitch and moan post, but there is something I do like about the little commenting that is done within a project. The best part about it is the personal notes which are put into the code, I know I do it all the time. Funnier quotes are those which claim a function isn’t working correctly and you don’t know if the function isn’t working or it wasn’t ever taken out-be it you or code you are maintaining. The error messages which state “Please Contact your Administrator” are always good for a laugh if you are not tearing your hair out atm. In web programming I have had my share of angry (now humorous) comments with browser compatibility, but I won’t name names (cough…IE…).

So, in closing-I think the left over comments are great fun seeing the life of a project (good luck maintaining them), perfect comments for the easy code that was written the first week of development, shifty-sometimes outright wrong comments for the majority of the code and those special functions that don’t ever seem to work right /* son of a #@*#@# i hate this &*!^@%# job*/.

Benjamin Willis

P.S. Overcommenting is teh suck.

P.S.S. Teachers don’t understand industry (yes, i did generalize the entire educational world)

Shenanigans

I have found that this word is excellent in describing many situations, not to mention it’s hella fun to say. Made popular to me by the hilarious movie Super Troopers-I decided to look up the origins of the word. So, according to wiki (if you believe in the wikiality):

“The origin of the word is unknown but possibly originates from the Irish sionnachuighim, meaning “I play the fox.”

Try saying sionnachuighim without choking on your tongue. And if that wasn’t interesting enough here is the scene from Super Troopers :

My SEO champ, Colin Angel, mentioned I need to include my name in my blog postings, so without further adue :

Ben Willis, Benjamin Willis, Willis, Benjamin J. Willis, Benjamin Joseph Willis, ‘Jamin, Wild Willis, Ben ‘Jamin, Willie…ok enough of my schenanigans-out.

Fat Tuesdays

Since coming to Ottawa, CA we have visited several bars looking for great entertainment and this Saturday we were introduced to Dueling Pianos. It was at a fine dining location in the market called Fat Tuesdays, but the credit due was to the musicians. We got personally introduced to Tyler Kealey who is on the piano and vocals and soon heard the reason why he is so popular. Tyler performs with Jeff Rogers on guitar and Dave Kalil on another piano/vocals who just blew us away. Overall it was a great performance and great atmosphere-highly recommended. See each of the individuals sites for their excellent music.

Good Night,

Ben(ny and the Jets (yeah they played it))

Truth Be Told…

I have been working for about the last year for a start-up called getitnext I think the site really came out great, especially considering I was one of the main developers on the site . Since launching in June 2007 we have been planning some advertising and blogging to get our site known across the web. This has sparked a question in my head, how do you get recognized on the web and more specifically, how do you get a search engine, like Google, to notice you? Seems to be a common question many men in the technical field face when it comes to women-and actually the topics may not be that different.

The formal name of what I’m talking about is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are many technical details throughout the web and basic voodoo (links, content, expensive presents) to get said attention. So, I have taken it as a challenge to get my content (blog, linkedin, etc.) to appear as no. 1 in Google search results with the query : ‘benjamin willis‘ . Currently, at the time of posting there is another Benjamin Willis (Character Animator) at number 1 and nothing about me actually appears until the end of the page . Keep an eye out as I attempt to move up in the rankings (fingers crossed) by wining and dining teh Google.

B3N

Ping-Pong Props

I had to make a quick note on Ping-Pong (Table Tennis). It wasn’t until recently that I had access to a Ping-Pong table and some friends who were interested to give it a real shot. The game is probably not meant to be a humorous as when I play it-but I have been enjoying it. What we found more interesting is the videos of real people playing on youtube :

The only actual exposure I had gotten before was Forest Gump, and then I thought that any idiot could play. Obviously, I was wrong and have a new found respect for this, yes seriously, sport.

Cheers,
Ben

One Site, One Woot

Recently at work my colleagues have been dabbling over a site called woot.com. It’s a site that normally follows the slogan ‘One deal, One day’, being that they only post one item and will only sell that item all day. What if it sells out-tough luck, several Woot! deals are known to sell out within seconds of the posting (starting at 1am EST). There are special deals and other interesting selling strategies that Woot! uses to promote it’s products, such as 2-for-Tuesdays, Bag ‘O Crap and Woot-Offs (see many more details of woot on wiki). There has been a two day Woot-Off (1 item at a time until it sells out, then a new one is posted) that just ended with the promotion of shirt.woot.com, a new sub-domain site that is for t-shirts (wine.woot.com is also another sub-domain).

I have been savy to Woot! since the summer it premiered, (July 2004) while I was working with Matt and Mark at BMS (LinkedIn). It’s funny now to see the constant refresh of the pages, waiting for the boring deals to become sold out, the same as we did back in the day. As well it’s amazing to still see the number of responses in the forum about the products-well into the thousands of postings. Woot! has lost it’s touch with me, but for those of you who are suckered in with the impulse buy, like my co-worker Mark who dropped 100$ on the site after just discovering it 2 days ago-should check it out.

For those who are original wooters, we still miss those deals on the 5.1 Dell Speakers for $30 that made Woot! famous-seems like they finally got to that all time low price.

Happy Wooting, have a ribs day!

Ben