Disqus - Latest Comments for cglee

Re: Is your Passenger App hung? Here’s how to SIGABRT it and investigate

cglee — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:37:20 -0000

This is really useful! We actually used this to solve a critical problem in a production app. In order to protect the innocent, I won't be naming names on who wrote the offending code.

Re: Being Successful as a Distributed Team

cglee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:40:21 -0000

Great write up Brad! I worked from China during the Olympics while working for Squeejee and it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

I think the two main ingredients break down to communication and trust.

We have many tools to facilitate communication (as Brad mentioned), but the trust was built up over time. It was built up from many face to face meetings and debugging sessions. To further make the experience as seamless as possible to my coworkers and clients, I worked on US time, which meant working from 9pm-5am Beijing time.

I also had to deal with the limitations of international travel, especially to a country like China. For example, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Feedburner, Wikipedia, etc would be randomly banned and unbanned. If something was down, you never knew if it was the Great Firewall of China or if the site was really down. And who could forget working from Starbucks for a week while my internet was being set up.

There were many many hiccups, but I mention these things just to point out that even if you use all the tools, it still comes down to an accommodating employer who is willing to put up with those hiccups. If you're fortunate enough to be in that type of environment, you can make it work.

Re: On #fowaspeak

cglee — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:46:39 -0000

As a minority, I absolutely agree with you. On the other hand, I think I understand where they were coming from. (Note: I didn't attend fowa, but I've seen plenty of this sort of pandering in other arenas - please excuse if I'm assuming things). The argument for Black History Month or Asian Heritage Month and any other means of drawing special means to minorities is that every month is white male month. The supposition is that the (white male) mind defaults to white males when considering people in power or prestige.

The problem is that the special treatment is making an assumption that may or may not be real.

As an Asian American, I'll say that discrimination and racism is real. I feel it every day. It may not be overt and it may not be blatant, but just little comments here or there in normal conversation. Just the other day someone mentioned off hand "You're not a real American anyway". "Really?" I thought to myself. No harm, no foul, we played it cool - he's a friend, actually. But it does happen - a lot more than people who don't face it realize. Over time, it tends to have a cumulative effect of building a feeling of being an "outsider". So I understand and appreciate those who try to address this.

However, I personally do not feel it's a big deal in the geek, startup, open source communities. Here, it's mostly about your skills. It's a place where meritocracy trumps all over variables. The geekdom is full of self-made individuals, not those who rode on the coattails of their privileged last name.

So yes, I do agree with your article, but, as a minority, I also appreciate Halvorson, Messina, and Carson at least trying to do the right thing.

Re: Muxlim, Like Second Life but With Jihad

cglee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:09:46 -0000

"the Muslim world", as you put it != Islam or Muslims, just as the Catholic church in the 16th century != Christianity or Christians

There are many non-extremist Muslims in the world and just as there are Christian social networks or dating sites, I don't see anything wrong with a Muslim one. I'm not sure why that should be singled out for ridicule.

Re: McHypocrisy

cglee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:27:10 -0000

Seems Palin is less concerned with supporting McCain and more with her own run in 2012.

Re: Muxlim, Like Second Life but With Jihad

cglee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:25:24 -0000

You're equating Muslims with terrorists. The jokes would be funny if it was a virtual world for terrorists (or extremists/racists/etc), but it's not.