I have been back at Sun for almost a year now. Still, there are a few things that I have yet to take care of. Things like unsubscribing from the Sun Alumni Yahoo! group. Or moving my RSS feed back to blogs.sun.com.

Well, one of these things have been taken care of since I am now syndicated on blogs.sun.com instead of alumni.sun.com. It will be interesting to see how this affects my FeedBurner numbers...

I just couldn't wait... I looked up my tracking number on the Fedex web site and realized that the package had arrived at Sun's Broomfield campus. I locked my screen, made my way to the mail center and picked the boxes. One of these boxes contained my very own copy of Leopard.

I debated for a while whether to wait or install it. The excitement got the best of me so I loaded the DVD and started the installation.

It's only afterward that I realized that a very important piece was missing: Java 6. It wasn't there! Even the old preview didn't work anymore.

Like many others, I ranted, spammed Apple's feedback URL and bug submission web pages with comments about this very important missing component. And now, I'm adding my vote to the blogogpshere:

13949712720901ForOSX

13949712720901 is the decimal notation for 0xCAFEBABE. This is the first 4 bytes in the files that contains the Java classes. I'm joined by Henry Story, David Van Couvering and others in spreading the word.

Not having Java 6 on my Mac forces me to do things like run Solaris under VMWare on my Mac. All of this so I can participate in the project that I'm working on. It's workable, but it's certainly foreign. It's certainly a lot less elegant than I would like it to be.

Obviously, I can't certainly make a big difference by myself. All you need to do to participate is to add

13949712720901ForOSX

to your blog to show support for Java 6 on Leopard.

Parallels is a very nice way to run more than one operating system at once on any Intel based Mac. You do need a fair amount of memory to be able to run it comfortably. Still, going to an after-market retailer for the extra memory is well worth the investment. This is especially true for web developers who have to test against multiple versions of multiple browsers. Or simply the bane of my existence: Internet Explorer.

I have a couple of virtual machines that run Windows XP Professional. One has IE6 installed while the other has IE7. This helps ensure that my markup, JavaScript and styling does work for the browsers that we are targeting. Apparently, our target users haven't converted to Mac OS X or at least upgraded to Firefox. It's a shame really...

A nice thing with Parallels is that the host computer has a relatively stable address that is accessible to the guests OS. You still have to figure out what it is though. It's not really hard, but I would rather remember a name than an IP address.

Apple's Bonjour networking helps a lot. It uses a technique called Multicast DNS (mDNS) to resolve host names that aren't defined in a formal DNS server. You don't even need a DHCP server to get this to work. All Macs have a name. My MacBook Pro is called Defiant. mDNS host names lives in the .local top level domain. So, to get to the HTTP web server on Defiant, I can point my browser to http://defiant.local/ and get a web page.

Microsoft doesn't quite support mDNS. Well, they don't support Apple's implementation of mDNS to be precise. Apple does provide a download of Bonjour for Windows which fills that gap. Installing it is as easy as downloading the file and running an installation wizard. You don't even have to reboot (which is a rarity under Windows). At that point, I am also able to open up IE in a virtual machine and point it to http://defiant.local/ to retrieve the same web page. No more guessing at IP addresses for me.

I have a few friends at Sun who are working on projects that I never thought I would see at Sun. The kind of projects that I left Sun to pursue. They are excited about their work. They have a manager that gets it with a management chain that is willing to give them the flexibility that they need to be able to get the job done. Best of all, they believe that I would be a great addition to their team. They have told me so over the last few months. I finally listened. I'll be joining their team on April 23rd.

I don't know yet how much have been announced, so I'm not going to go into details about the project itself. I can say that the Sun I am going to join isn't the Sun I left. Dynamic languages are now getting public support in NetBeans as well as within Sun's management. A lot of the overhead that was frustrating me doesn't seem to be an issue any more. We are talking about a company that is excited and exciting again. Big changes have happened that I didn't thought would be possible at the time.

I am sad to leave my TransZap colleagues behind. This is a team of good people with a product that solves a big problem in their industry. I'll miss them. I'll also miss the foosball matches as well as hearing the scooter whizzing in the hallway. I wish them the best of luck and success.

I like to keep a distinction between my personal computing and the office computing. As a result, I tend to bring my Mac with me when I work. It's convenient to have all my music, personal email and RSS news feed subscriptions at hand. I even keep an iCurve stand at work so I can bring it up to eye level. Of course, that makes the trackpad and keyboard harder to reach. So I also kept a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to compensate. The problem is that my current office setup doesn't work very well. I can certainly feel the strain in my wrists and arms.

At home, I have a KVM switch that I use to share my monitor, mouse and keyboard between my PowerBook and an even older PC. This works pretty good for me. I didn't want to invest in a KVM for work though. There's no point for me to share the display. I just wanted to share the mouse and keyboard.

That's where Synergy comes in play. Synergy runs on Windows PCs, Unix, Linux and, yep, even Macs. I just installed the software on my work PC, which is acting as the server. I then installed SynergyKM on the PowerBook and configured it as a client. I can now move the mouse back and forth between the PC and the Mac without having to reach over the desk to reach either mouse or keyboard. Best of all, it's all free since both tools are released as open source software.

The LifeHacker blog has pretty good guide to configuring Synergy on both PC and Macs. It was a very helpful starting point to get this working. I'll have to see how things go and whether this helps relieve the strain on my wrists.

Last weekend, TransZap moved from our old offices near Denver's Civic center to our new location at 1999 Broadway. The new offices are definitively a step up from the previous ones (which were actually pretty decent to start with). The new offices are located into a very nice office tower located at the northern edge of downtown. Yet, we are still really close to the 16th street mall. This move generated a lot of excitement at TransZap, and it went very well with only a few minor issues.

The new building is in the middle of a major renovation. The common areas will be completely redecorated. There's going to be a cafe and a workout area on the second floor. I intend to avoid the first and use the second. I can certainly use the exercise. A few other nice amenities are that a light rail line stops next to the building and that there's a Wahoo's Fish Tacos restaurant within a few blocks.

One of the result of the move is that every one has their own office, each with a window. It's a big improvement from working in the hallway. I have a pretty decent view out of the window. On a good day, the brown cloud isn't too bad and I can almost see the King Suppers near my house. If I twist just right, I can even see the Flat Irons.

Mollie and I now carpool to work. Mollie is now starting a little later than she used to. She gets to sleep a little more, I don't have to wake up any earlier. Carpooling allows us to ride the HOV lane into downtown, which allows us to avoid the I-25 parking lot. I do get to the office a little earlier than I used to, but it also means that I can leave earlier than I used to. At the end of the day, we both meet at her parking garage and ride out.

Last weekend, TransZap moved from our old offices near Denver's Civic center to our new location at 1999 Broadway. The new offices are definitively a step up from the previous ones (which were actually pretty decent to start with). The new offices are located into a very nice office tower located at the northern edge of downtown. Yet, we are still really close to the 16th street mall. This move generated a lot of excitement at TransZap, and it went very well with only a few minor issues.

The new building is in the middle of a major renovation. The common areas will be completely redecorated. There's going to be a cafe and a workout area on the second floor. I intend to avoid the first and use the second. I can certainly use the exercise. A few other nice amenities are that a light rail line stops next to the building and that there's a Wahoo's Fish Tacos restaurant within a few blocks.

One of the result of the move is that every one has their own office, each with a window. It's a big improvement from working in the hallway. I have a pretty decent view out of the window. On a good day, the brown cloud isn't too bad and I can almost see the King Suppers near my house. If I twist just right, I can even see the Flat Irons.

Mollie and I now carpool to work. Mollie is now starting a little later than she used to. She gets to sleep a little more, I don't have to wake up any earlier. Carpooling allows us to ride the HOV lane into downtown, which allows us to avoid the I-25 parking lot. I do get to the office a little earlier than I used to, but it also means that I can leave earlier than I used to. At the end of the day, we both meet at her parking garage and ride out.

Yahoo! is making a few classes on Javascript available through their YUI Theater blog. The classes are given by Douglas Crockford, who is Yahoo!'s Javascript Architect. I took sometime this evening to go through the "Javascript Programming Language" presentation and learned a great deal about the language, which is going to be directly applicable to the work that I am currently doing at TransZap. I would recommend this presentation to anyone who is going to do extensive work using Javascript, which is essentially anyone doing Ajax or Web 2.0 work.

I was setting up my blog so I could use it as my OpenID identity when I realized that I hadn't posted in almost 3 weeks. An update on the new job is simply long overdue.

TransZap is turning out to be a good place to work at. The engineers are sharp and an engaging group of people. The whole company have welcomed me warmly. I am starting to find my way around both the company and the code base, which is a pretty good thing.

I still don't have my own private office. I did move from the cube that I occupied to an open space closer to the other developers. I have found this to be a good move since I am now in the middle of the action. I have started to participate in the near daily foosball matches, I can ask questions and get back to my desk quickly rather than trekking through the office to get with my team. The office situation will be resolved once we move to our new offices. The whole company is excited about the move.

Commuting to downtown Denver has proven to be a lot easier than I thought at first. I simply drive to the nearest park and ride and take the bus downtown. I have a few bus options. One drops me almost next to the current office building but has to deal with more traffic. Another one drops me near the other end of the 16th mall, but the mall has a free shuttle that gets me near our current office pretty quickly. The new offices will also be close to the mall and has a light rail stop right next to it.

So that's the quick job update. I'll will try to keep up with the blog and possibly talk about what TransZap does.

I lost my job a couple weeks ago. It wasn't such a bad thing since I was trying already job hunting. Of course, I was hoping to have a new job lined up before leaving. The good news is that loosing my job allowed me to switch to full time job hunting, focussing on networking with recruiters and getting interviews. I did learn a few things in the process.

First, you should not wait until you are in need of a job before networking. My regular attendance to the local Java Users Groups and other geek gatherings turned out to be very helpful. I got a few very good leads through people that I met at the Boulder and Denver JUGs. It also helped getting access to recruiters since my name was already familiar to a few.

Second is that Holidays aren't such a bad time to look for work. Yes, many people are taking vacation time. Many are hiring managers actively looking for people to fill positions. Others are the recruiters that they are talking to. There are still many actively looking. The first few days on the hunt were filled with calls to recruiters, returning calls to recruiters and even a phone interview. Even a blizzard didn't quite stop the activity.

Third, that Holidays can limit the opportunities you have access to. A applied to a few interesting positions through friends, only to learn that the hiring managers would be in vacation for up to a few weeks. I therefore had to make a choice: would I be willing to wait for the manager to come back? Should I pass on good, solid opportunities in order to wait for the managers or HR to contact me? Truth is that I realized that I really wanted to get back to work even after a few days of unemployment.

Finally, know what and where you are looking for. I got many calls from recruiters who wanted me to apply to positions in the DTC, in Chicago and even one in Arizona. Living in Thornton would have made all of these a little difficult to get to. So I was insistent that I was looking for work within a certain geographical area of Denver. I also had to decide early on what kind of work I was looking for. I did apply to Google and other high tech startups, but I didn't fare so well. Turns out that having a computer sciences degree was very important to the recruiters. So I did change my focus to target positions where having a CS degree wasn't so critical.

So, through the holidays and a couple snow storms I ended up receiving an offer from TransZap. TransZap is a small company based in downtown Denver focussing on providing billing services to the oil and gas industry. I was impressed by the people that I met through the interview and I did like their pragmatic approach to the development process. I'll be joining TransZap on January 3rd. This looks like a solid company, with a good product and good people. I am excited to join such a team.