Guild of Writers

I am in the same boat as katreeny: I'm interested, but my job in the Financial Sector eats my life at times (especially right now). I also now have a life outside that, which includes exercise via a local MMA school. Oh, and have I mentioned in the past that my hours are 3rd Shift, US/Eastern (7 years and counting at that position with the company)?

However, I do have skills that could be invaluable, if they can find a way to get back on UNIX:

System Administraton: Solaris - 13 years and counting. Linux - off and on for 7 years and counting.
-->Specializing in Backup/DR/BR, Scripting on short deadlines while having good quality (usually csh), and diagnosis of weird problems (usually hardware)
Database Admin/Manage: Sybase, 13 years and counting (including parameter tuning for various hardware). Solaris and Linux only.
--> Oracle: Some passing knowledge, in particular the RAC and ASM subsystems. would require reading up on some things, but could probably look at it.
--> MySQL: again, passing knowledge (which is sad, given my site is on a LAMP stack). I've been poking at that through work, as a couple DBs are on dev servers.
--> I can be a *very* wicked SQL writer at times, but require at least passable documentation on the tables to do it.
Bug tracking software: Experience with varying types, including Bugzilla (2 years collectively), Remedy (2 yrs), and Jira (6 mos).

One of my responsibilities is to maintain the various in-house monitoring apps used in the Sol/Lin boxes - mostly scripts, but one 'central' app has a compiled C component for speed.

I do have some Windows experience (thanks to some early work with libsecondlife) but prefer to stay firmly in UNIX, thank you. :p

--TSK

* Average number of hours per week that you can devote to MORE development = 14+ (I DO have more free time but I'd like to use some of that for age-building )
* Whether you are a student, employed (part/full time), or both = student
* Number of months/years experience in the following areas:
o General programming (C++/Python) = about one month on C++ and graphics programming (doing some complex stuff with it right now), 4 years of Python.
o Plasma engine = 1 year
o Database management = 6 months
o Bug tracking software = 4 months
o "e-Commerce"/online payment systems = 0
o Server software engineer = (not sure what this means but I've been running my own apache server ~9 months and write php stuff for it etc.)
o Networking or multiplayer gaming systems = researched this for a few months
o System administrator = my own systems. Windows XP, Mac (a bit), Linux
o Quality assurance testing = 4 months


RTR: This was a fun idea. I was thinking of the "cheap(free) interns for MORE" thing as well.

I don't know if I can help in coding, but if you need someone to help stress out the code, I am like there, sledge hammer in hand as well.

Neat idea Robert, have you talked to Chogon about it?

Robert The Rebuilder wrote:

• Average number of hours per week that you can devote to MORE development : 15
• Whether you are a student, employed (part/full time), or both : student
• Number of months/years experience in the following areas: (all the following are in years (and are very rough guesses/approximations))
  
  • General programming (C++/Python) : {C++ : 3, Python : 1, General : 7}
  • Plasma engine : 3
  • Database management : 0.2
  • Bug tracking software : 1
  • "e-Commerce"/online payment systems : 0
  • Server software engineer : 0.1
  • Networking or multiplayer gaming systems : 2
  • System administrator : 3
  • Quality assurance testing : 1

Of course, I must note that Cyan can't and won't accept any coding 'help' without pay. The legal stuff has been mentioned already.

Interesting topic.

• Average number of hours per week that you can devote to MORE development - 8
• Whether you are a student, employed (part/full time), or both - full-time employed
• Number of months/years experience in the following areas: (I'm not sure if time alone is a useful measure of experience. If I've done something five times in the last five years, does that give me more experience than if I've done something every day for the last two years?)
  
  • General programming - 15 yrs; C++ and Python - 3 yrs full-time
  • Plasma engine - approximately none (barely enough to get me on the PyPRP contributor list )
  • Database management - sporadic use of MySQL for web applications; 5 yrs of part-time FileMaker development
  • Bug tracking software - 4 yrs
  • "e-Commerce"/online payment systems - none
  • Server software engineer - none
  • Networking or multiplayer gaming systems - marginal, mostly theoretic, knowledge of TCP/IP
  • System administrator - Mac OS X & Linux moderate experience, Windows low experience, low interest
  • Quality assurance testing - 1 yr

Christian Walther wrote:(I'm not sure if time alone is a useful measure of experience. If I've done something five times in the last five years, does that give me more experience than if I've done something every day for the last two years?)

That's why I basically scrapped the requested list and only specified my biggest strengths, along with related experience in each area.

It's questionable to say if I'm a 'programmer' - Most of my biggest and longest-lasting work has been with short-timeframe scripts (1-5 days work) written in csh. But some of my scripts head into 'I can't believe that was possible' territory (for our internal architecture, not UNIX). We're starting to use Python at work so that may change soon...

--TSK

I am interested, but only if the work involved open and relevant skill sets. By relevant, I mean current and applicable to other opportunities available today. Just like I no longer develop DOS applications, working on a dying and proprietary platform has no purpose for a professional - especially an unpaid professional. If Cyan Open Sourced the Uru engine (server and client) and at least brought to market a Plasma SDK, if not Open Sourced it completely, then it might be relevant. Otherwise, it is not. If something is relevant only to a single company on a proprietary technology with no future, I would have to be a highly paid employee because of my risk of becoming a dinosaur. I don't expect an offer anytime soon.

Relevance should guide your decisions as well.

yes a Mercenary not a Dinosaur as they were only successful for circa 62,000,000 years.

With Cyan making Uru open source, this thread of Robert's seems pertinent.

In discussion on the 'System Concepts' project forum, rarified suggested an outline of what needed to happen to get a working sample running. The first step was:

1) Inventory assets:
People (skills, time/opportunity)
Hardware/Facilities
Prerequisite Software (DB, Developer tools (compilers, SDKs, etc))

It struck me that Robert's thread could well help with the first step, so here's a link to a parallel thread on the Open Uru site: http://forums.openuru.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=35

If anyone would like to work with others with equivalent skills and knowledge in an open, focused, guild-neutral format, they would be very welcome. In fact, some GoW members are already making valuable contributions to discussions there -- for which, many thanks.