“If you give me someone who’s nice and who’s passionate, I can teach them everything else. I don’t care what school you went to, I don’t care where you worked before. If you give me someone with those two traits, they will nine out of 10 times be a great success in the company.” – Andy Lansing

Even for companies that do it well, hiring is an inefficient process. And as a company that hires but rarely, RedMonk possesses no special expertise in the area. Our biggest advantage is that we’re able to think about the process creatively. We aren’t restricted to hiring an established analyst, for example; Cote was a developer of IT management products when he came to us.

We hire those who we think will become good analysts, period. Which requires passion. And for our own sake, we look for people we get along with. Everything else is negotiable.

That said, hiring someone who’s nice and passionate and has a Ph.d. in addition to deep expertise in your field doesn’t hurt. Enter Donnie Berkholz, the newest Monk.

Monktoberfest attendees will know him as our closing speaker – a session that got rave reviews. We are hiring Donnie away from the Mayo Clinic, where he’s currently a Research Fellow. While he’s spent the bulk of his professional career as a scientist, he’s got long term exposure to technology, having been deeply involved in the Gentoo Linux project as a developer and council member since 2003. He’s also been a contributor to X.org since 2005, and has administered Google Summer of Code efforts for both.

Donnie’s more than an open source expert, however. As anyone who’s followed his constructive criticism of our analyses is aware, he’s got deeper statistical training than I have and has legitimate programming skills. And if you follow him on Twitter I think you’ll find his insight on everythng from cloud to mobile to big data more than up to the RedMonk standard.

He can also write, and not just for academic journals. His minor in journalism has been put to good use as a regular contributor to LWN.net, the highly regarded open source news source.

With us, he’ll be covering the same broad spectrum of topics that we cover, and with his background as a researcher, we expect his transition to the world of analysis to be smooth. It’s certain to be less complicated than “Applying structure-based drug design to the moonlighting enzyme dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase to target detrimental oxidative stress,” anyway, the focus of one of his 2010 papers (PDF link).

As a former user of Gentoo, Donnie and I have a long history together, having met for the first time at OSCON in 2005. I’ve always had a strong appreciation for his work, and I’m thrilled that he’ll be working on our behalf as of December 1st.

To our clients, we’re happy to schedule introductory calls for you as soon as he’s officially on board. In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Donnie, and if you’re curious, see our interview with him from the conference.

It would be more than presumptuous for me to eulogize an author of Tony Hillerman’s stature, so I promise not to try. Still, I will miss him and his work.

Many of you have heard me disparage the quality of literature commonly found at airports, but Hillerman – whose work was popular enough to appear in them – is one of the exceptions to the rule.

It’s not that he was James Joyce writing mystery novels; he was not, and from what I’ve read about the man, he’d probably be the first to point that out. But apart from crafting himself a very successful career writing about “all that Indian stuff” his first agent advised him to excise, he – like another of my favorites, John D. MacDonald – transcended the genre with some real strengths as a writer.

The most obvious, and most celebrated, is the aforementioned subject matter. Hillerman would ultimately prove to be a far better judge of the public’s appetite for intelligently served observations about a variety of Native American cultures and their contrast with our “American” perspective. Where his agent believed them, apparently, to be a distraction, they ultimately were highly differentiating. At least for this reader.

Hillerman’s novels – mystery novels, even – made the histories of the Navajo, primarily, but to a lesser extent the Anasazi, Hopi, Zuni, Utes and other peoples sufficiently interesting to compel outside research. The resulting lessons were as painful as they were utterly unsurprising. Growing up, I can recall reading a book that my Dad had had when he was a child – a sort of Davy Crockett-style, fictionalized history of the frontiersman Kit Carson. Given that the book in question was probably authored in the early part of the twentieth century, I’m sure you can guess as to whether Carson played the hero or villain. The Navajo perspective, as related by Hillerman, was quite different from what I’d read. And after reading the history of the Long Walk, it’s easy to understand why.

Nor was it just the historical aspects that were compelling: I found – and still find – the Navajo philosophies on a great many things surprisingly well aligned with my own. As my friends and family are, frankly, tired of hearing about. Particularly the one regarding the differing cultural values with respect to interpersonal silence – that one never goes over well.

But although Hillerman was clearly sympathetic to the Native American cause, he was no apologist. I appreciate and recommend his work not because they serviced a naive and utopian view of the cultures of peoples such as the Navajo, but rather because they emphatically did not. Hillerman showed instead a deft touch for exploring the differing values without lapsing into cliche or becoming preachy – a significant challenge indeed. But from the perspective of one who knew little about the subject matter before becoming acquainted with his work, his eye appears keen, the lessons well taken. For all that he seemed to admire the family first economics of the Navajo people, as an example, his stories constantly highlighted the intrinsic difficulties they imposed on a people that – for better or worse – has been integrated into a modern capitalist society.

Indeed, much of the case of characters in the novels could be considered to be cut from the same cloth as Carver’s blue collar lives of “quiet desperation.” And while Hillerman was no Carver, few if any writers have done a better, fairer job of telling the Native American side of the story. A side that has too often been lost, and will sadly be in further jeopardy with his passing.

Besides the unwittingly educational nature of the novels, however, I’ll miss the characters, who will presumably follow Hillerman to wherever he’s now headed. Where someone reading a Tom Clancy novel might reasonably ask why he bothered putting people in the story at all, so much of an afterthought and cardboard cutouts of people did they seem, I often had the opposite reaction when reading Hillerman’s novels. The plot, cunningly crafted though it might be, became little more than a backdrop against which the lives of the characters – never easy or simple – would play out. In many respects, they embodied the tension that suffused Hillerman’s work: where Leaphorn was raised traditionally but had grown distant from his people’s teachings, the younger foil in Chee was struggling to maintain his heritage and religion in a world with less and less room for it.

Thus I lament the passing of another one of my favorite authors, and encourage you – if you haven’t yet had the pleasure – to pick up one of his books. The bad news is that there will be no more now. But the good news is that if you like them, there are quite a few in front of you.

So enjoy, and in the meantime, let me express my sincere condolences to the Hillerman family. I have always been, and will remain, a big fan.

No one – least of all yours truly – would claim that I was a socially precocious child. Not when my parents could conceivably stop by here to contradict me on the subject, anyway. There is, however, one particular arena of interpersonal relationships that I would argue I had a firm grasp on at an early age.

In simple terms, my view was (and is) this: relationship volume and personal time are inversely proportional. As one rises, the other declines, more or less inevitably. In practical terms, this implies that the addition of relationships – be they personal, business or otherwise – unavoidably reduces the amount of time that you might allot to each. While a couple of the people that I’ve discussed this with have taken exception to the idea that interpersonal relationships have much in common with a shared broadband connection – there’s only so much bandwidth to go around, no one as yet has actively refuted it.

There are, of course, a variety of responses to this assertion, assuming that you believe it has some credence. My own has been to artificially limit – both personally and professionally – the number of relationships that I attempt to maintain. Not dramatically, of course: I know and interact with a great many people on a daily basis. But I studiously try and avoid the addition of relationships that I don’t feel that I’ll be able to effectively maintain, because I take the responsibilities that attend them quite seriously.

The advent of digital applications that facilitate the creation of relationships, then, has been very much a mixed bag for me.

Blogging, if you’ll indulge me and loosely group it as a tool with tangential social networking implications, has been a wonderful development. It’s central assumption of a 1:many connection versus the more demanding 1:1 interaction means that it scales exceptionally well across a large audience. Unlike personal relationships, my time is not diminished by the arrival of new readers. Not in a linear fashion, anyhow.

Contrast this with Twitter. Now Twitter fans, relax: the intent here is not to bash your favorite tool – quite the contrary. Twitter is in my view a marvelous tool, virtuous in its simplicity, and against some long odds it has become an integral part of my day to day existence online. That said, it remains a tool that introduces friction from time to time, highlighting some of the conflicts between relationships in an offline world and their online counterparts. Conflicts that, in my view, stem at least in part from different offline philosophies governing interpersonal interaction.

Case in point is this advice from GigaOm writer Larry Chiang:

Reciprocity is also a must. Guy Kawasaki, a top Twitter-er, takes this to the extreme, following every Tweeter who follows him. So do I. Use text message updates to keep tabs on those tweeting you.

In an offline setting, there’s room for ambiguity in relationships. Not so in the binary world of Twitter: you’re either following me, or you’re not, and vice versa. Therein lies the problem, and the compulsive need for many to follow those following them. Because if you don’t, you might offend.

Which I know, because I reciprocate with but a fraction (less than 1 in 5) of my own followers, and a few folks are upset with me because of that. Why am I so selective? Is it because I’m snobby? Because I’m insensitive? Because I’m a dick? Or is it possibly because – per the equation established above – the more Twitterers I follow, the less closely I can follow each one?

You can decide that one for yourself. Just do me a favor and don’t tell me if you choose “he’s a dick.” Especially via Twitter.

What isn’t in question, in any event, is the fact that given a preference to follow each person as closely as possible, the above advice from GigaOm is absolutely and fundamentally incompatible. If you follow 13,543 Twitter users, as one of the examples held up above does, how much time might you be able to spend listening to each one? I’m betting very little.

Which just wouldn’t work for me. One of the first things I do to start my day is page back to the last Twitter I read the night before, catching myself up. If you follow a 130 people, this is easily accomplished. 13,000, not so much.

This probably sounds like evangelism, but trust me: I have no intention whatsoever of trying to persuade you of the merits of my approach at the expense of others, maybe even yours. First, because that’s simply not how I do things, but more importantly because it’s not a popular approach. Near as I can determine, I’m the only one who uses Twitter in this fashion. Tim Bray, for example, clearly views Twitter as a volume tool, saying:

There’s one thing that’s become terribly clear to me: Twitter is inherently a river-of-news; when I come back to my computer after a while offline, I have no urge to look back at the missed tweets. If it’s important, it’ll come back.

So does Ric Hayman, who used almost the exact same wording when trying to persuade Lauren Cooney to Twitter (it worked):

Something to keep in mind – it’s a river of stuff, not a lake. If you miss something, or let it go by unnoticed – that’s OK. If it’s important it will usually come by again.

If I viewed Twitter primarily through a business lens, as a tool to keep me apprised of what might commonly be considered “important” information, I would probably agree with those assertions.

But I do not. Twitter is for me a personal tool first, business tool second. I’m not paging backwards through my Twitter history every morning to learn anything important; I’m paging backwards to learn the spectacularly unimportant. And that almost certainly won’t come around again.

Again, different strokes for different folks. Ric had it exactly right, in my view, when he said says, “there’s no one ‘right way’ or ‘best practice’ – it’s what works for you.” That is true, in my opinion, and should be the end of it. But obviously is not, because of the aforementioned lack of ambiguity in the connections facilitated and the resulting offense you inadvertently and unintentionally trigger simply by being less promiscuous (in the technical sense) with your attention.

And Twitter is but one of many social networking applications. For all that I’ve discussed my approach to Twitter here, the rules vary – often widely from application to application. Or at least they do for me. I’ll accept connections on LinkedIn, as an example, that I would immediately dismiss on Facebook. Mostly because, like Twitter, each additional connection represents a potential drain – however slight – on my attention. And in these days of rampant continuous-partial-attention, I value that fairly highly.

My hope is that, over time, etiquette will evolve – much as it has with phones and subsequently mobile phones – to provide guidelines for what the expectations are on both sides of the social networking divide.

But until then, the social networking tools will continue to introduce some social networking friction for me.

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way before I begin. I know Matt Asay, I like Matt Asay, and I respect Matt Asay. I am, in fact, slated to moderate a panel for him at his upcoming OSBC conference.

But the one area in which we’ve never seen eye to eye is the Linux desktop. I certainly don’t agree that desktop Linux is “utter crap” compared to Mac or Windows, and I’ve disagreed with his statements on desktop Linux for years, particularly in the area of application installation. Matt’s on the record as not liking the Linux desktop, though I’m not sure why, so the fact that we agree to disagree on this subject is not surprising.

After reading this bit, however:

Where Linux could use serious work is in the installation of programs. Granted, I haven’t put myself through the ordeal in three years, but the last time I tried to install something as simple as Firefox was an exercise in senseless frustration. I’m sure things have gotten better since then. If not, none of the above benefits even remotely redresses that grievous installation experience.

I felt compelled to dust off the screencasting bits and document – visually – the process of application installation and uninstallation.

So if you’ve got a few (~8 – I promise the next few will be shorter) minutes to spare, give the video a whirl. For those of you that don’t enjoy video, let’s do a brief Q&A to take a quick look at application installation.

Q: To begin, anything to disclose?
A: Yes. Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu, is a RedMonk client. While this video was shot on Ubuntu and captured and processed on Ubuntu, however, it was neither sponsored nor endorsed by the firm.

Q: Now, to the point: is Linux the best desktop operating system?
A: I cannot answer that because, in my view, it is a wrong question. If you were to ask someone whether a Solid State Drive was their best option, you’d need to consider the context: are they looking for performance? Or is the premium in storage capacity? Answers to those questions must precede a solution to the “best” option for a given hard drive selection. If you’re asking whether I universally and unreservedly recommend Linux on the desktop, the answer is no.

Q: I thought you were a believer in Linux on the desktop, and a user yourself?
A: I am indeed a Linux user, and have employed it as my primary desktop since August of 2004. And I would argue that – depending on the context – Linux is an adequate or more than adequate desktop solution. But “believer” tends to imply that usage is a matter of faith, rather than pragmatism, and I don’t think that’s applicable in my case.

For example, in addition to Linux I also run both OS X and Windows internally, as required for testing purposes or for platform specific tools.

Q: But do you like Linux?
A: For my own purposes? Sure. But that doesn’t have much to do with what might be best for you, or any of the people reading this.

Q: So you also recommend non-Linux operating systems?
A: Of course. It’d be silly not to.

True story: the first week of January, I was invited to attend the birthday party of a two year old. This one, to be precise. And before you ask, yes, the Ortiz shirt was my gift: do I know two year old girls or what?

Anyway, also in attendance were several couples that I’ve gotten to know in the years since I moved to Denver. One of these couples happened to inquire as to what I’d recommend they do about upgrading their PC which was both old and overwhelmed by viral infections. My advice? Get a Mac.

Given their particular needs, which include digital music, digital pictures, and video production, my opinion – professionally and otherwise – was that a Mac would be the simplest and most effective solution for their needs. It’s that simple.

When it comes to technology, as opposed to, say, baseball, I try to be both pragmatic and open minded, and not subscribe to the conventional wisdom regarding any of the technologies in question. Mostly because it’s usually both outdated and irredeemably biased.

All three of Linux, OS X and Windows have strengths, just as they have weaknesses. Making the right choice, to me, should amount to little more than understanding how those map to your particular needs.

Q: So is, as Matt has often claimed, application installation a particular weakness for Linux on the desktop?
A: With an exception that I’ll address in just a moment, my view is that Matt is incorrect. In many respects, in fact, I view the application installation process on Linux as superior to that found on Macs or PCs – though I debate the subject regularly with friends on other OSs.

Q: Before we get to the advantages, how is Linux weaker in application installation than Mac or Windows?
A: Just about every Linux distribution you’ll find has what’s called a package management system available to it: Debian/Ubuntu have apt, Fedora has yum, Gentoo has Portage, and so on. These will handle the installation and configuration of literally tens of thousands of applications and application dependencies for you. For those looking for more detail on the subject, I’ve discussed these systems in extensive detail here.

In spite of the package management systems unmatched breadth, however, there do exist applications that are either not packaged for Linux or not packaged for the distribution you happen to be running. And for these applications, Matt and other critics of the Linux installation process are correct: the process for installation is exceedingly difficult for those unfamiliar with Linux. Even untar-ing the application package will be beyond average users.

Examples of applications I’ve installed myself in this fashion include Jungledisk, Last.fm’s client, and Big Board.

Q: Well, if it’s “exceedingly difficult” to install these applications, why do you persist in believing that application installation is easier on Linux?
A: Because these applications are a tiny minority of those available to the Linux platform. As documented in the above video, just about everything a normal user might want to add to the platform – browser, instant messaging client, office productivity software, even popular Firefox plugins – can be simply and easily installed via a few clicks. No searching, no hunting, no downloading: it’s all centrally collected and made available via the repositories. In other words, there are thousands of applications available for immediate, one click installation via your average Linux distribution.

Whatever your platform of choice happens to be, I think it’s difficult to argue that process demonstrated above is any more difficult than that for Mac or Windows. If anything, I think that because users aren’t required to visit a website and download and installable package, the assertion that the installation process is actually easier is certainly defensible.

Q: But what about packages that are not contained in those repositories?
A: Well, some – as mentioned above – are indeed not contained in a friendly packaging format and are therefore more difficult to install than a .exe file on Windows or .dmg on Mac (though even those are sometimes confusing, as some need to be dragged to the Applications folder and some come with installers).

But again, most of the software aimed at end users will be packaged in a system friendly format. Witness the Amazon MP3 store downloader, which is served up in formats appropriate for the most popular end user Linux distributions in Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu.

What is the experience on Ubuntu? Not terribly different from that on Mac or Windows. You download a .deb file, click it, and are greeted by a visual installer that downloads the necessary dependencies, installs them and the Amazon downloader.

Pretty straightforward, in my view.

Q: What about Matt’s contention that even a basic package like Firefox is difficult to install?
A: Well, Ubuntu and many other distributions tend to include Firefox by default, meaning that installation is something of a moot point. But even if it was not, I’ve yet to see a major package management system that does not include a build for Firefox. Installing it or uninstalling it, therefore, should be simply and easily accomplished via the Add/Remove programs application.

Q: Lastly, a bit of an off topic question: what about the installation of Linux itself? Isn’t that something of a challenge?
A: Well, not really. Most Linux distributions these days provide a Live CD that you can boot off of, and choose to install Linux alongside your existing Windows instance. The partitioning step can be confusing, but I’m not convinced there’s a way around that: carving up a hard drive is non-trivial to simplify.

Some of the installers such as Ubuntu’s will even import your Windows account information during the install, which is pretty slick. Not as seamless as a migration from one OS X instance to another, but not bad given the complexity.

But frankly, as I told Erica Ogg a while back, I think the “Linux-is-too-hard-to-install” bit is something of a red herring anyway: installation of any operating system is a challenge. I laid down Windows 2000 on a Thinkpad equipped with a “Designed for Windows 2000″ sticker a few years ago for a friend, and booted into a laptop where the networking didn’t work and the screen resolution was 600 x 400. I’ve reinstalled Windows at last three times for a friend here in Denver, and there are always a few pieces that don’t work and require manual intervention to fix.

So while the installation of Linux isn’t perfect, neither has it been appreciably worse than some of my experiences on other platforms.

Q: If you had to sum up your desktop operating system recommendations, then, they’d look like…?
A: Entirely depends on the needs. Entirely. Under different circumstances, I have and will continue to recommend all three of the most popular desktop operating systems, and see no reason to change that approach.

Different tools for different jobs, and so on.

Is a tension we’re going to see more of, methinks. A lot more of.

As many of us transition from passively consuming roles to active producers of information, it’s natural that some of that production – even most of it – reflects our respective interests. It’s just as natural for some – even most – of our respective audiences to not share those interests. Hence the tension.

On the one hand, I’m decidedly in the John D. camp (big surprise) that says one should write for oneself first. On the other, I sympathize with an audience that craves relevance.

This tension has been observable within the blogging world for some time now; I’ve witnessed complaints about many popular bloggers for their indulgence of [pick a hobby], and have certainly fielded my own share regarding the Red Sox content here. Personally, I don’t particularly care when someone I like to read posts off topic content, either because the efficiencies of an aggregator make the cost of irrelevant content effectively nil, or because I might learn something. As a result, when folks like Bob Sutor or David Churbuck have – in the past – contemplated a fork in their blog, I’ve voted against. I’m not as big a Dylan fan as Bob, and certainly don’t enjoy clams as much as David, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get anything out of posts on both subjects.

And yet I have in the last few weeks forked my own blog, creating an entirely separate property wherein I feed my Red Sox addiction. As an explanation, I can only offer up that this was as much about me as it was about my audience. With the legitimacy of sports blogs on the rise, it seemed that to be taken seriously I needed to invest more than the occasional off topic post here. But I’d be lying if I claimed that audience needs didn’t come into play; hard as it may be to believe, there were many times last season when I abstained from writing a Red Sox post in this space because I’d recently done just that.

Or take the link posts automatically generated and posted here each night. One friend mentioned that they were borderline noise, and that he was contemplating creating a feed that filtered them (fortunately, I already have one for those of a similar persuasion). But from my standpoint, I generally put effort and thought into every link I make (I certainly don’t link to everything I read) – and thus value the generated linkposts, and curiously enough, a portion of the audience enjoys them as well.

Far more acute, however, is the tension for me on Twitter. Over there, in a stark contrast to my blog, my primary concern is audience. If my blog is about me, Twitter is about thee (in theory). While I’m sure the success rate is abysmal, the intent of virtually every entry – those that aren’t replies, anyway, and even with some of them – is to do one of amuse/entertain/inform/point to something interesting. When it comes to Twitter, I try to adhere to a slight modification of the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything rule,” string substituting the above qualities for “nice.” Some of the content, of course, is just dressed up life mundanity (yes, I made that word up), but the effort to render it at least somewhat amusing or informative is there. Usually.

And speaking of replies, they happen to be a perfect example. Subsequent to the first or second @ reply in a longer running Twitter conversation, there’s always some underlying guilt, driven by an awareness that on some level I’m inflicting this conversation on a wider audience that may but more likely may not be interested in its contents. Why, I often ask myself, am I not direct messaging?

Many, however, apply the mindset I bring to blogging to Twitter – write for yourself first, everyone else second. Who am I to blame them? Isn’t my mantra, after all, that you are your most important audience? And while I might not have any personal affection for the kind of high volume lifestreaming that’s a typical result of that approach, many of its practitioners are enormously popular, so there’s little statistical evidence that my personal qualms are common or even widely held. Several folks I know, in fact, have cut their followers because they didn’t post enough, while I’m the exact reverse: I cull mainly those who post frequently. The cost of following someone who doesn’t post, after all, being nothing. The cost of following those that post mundane details without the veneer of humor is less obvious, but no less real for that.

As is probably obvious by now, I have no answers for you, and more to the point, it seems self-evident to me that what answers are to be found will vary widely from medium to medium. I do believe, however, that the tension, if not its level, will remain a constant, because we’re all complicated creatures, and complicated creatures do not always relate to one another.

Rebranding is never easy, as some of you know far better than I. AT&T will reportedly be spending billions to reimage its newly acquired Cingular business, shortly after its Cingular business spent billions rebranding its newly acquired AT&T Wireless business. Yes, that seriously happened.

Fortunately, it’s usually not quite that costly a challenge for most of us. Case in point is Alex’s recent transition from King Design to Crowd Favorite.

His description of the rebranding effort will be useful, I think, for other businesses or projects that decide (or are compelled, as in the case of Pidgin) to rebrand themselves. It covers theme transitions, URI redirection, and – of course – the actual rebranding (check out the pasted over logo; it’s simple, but clever). And yes, for the technically inclined, it does include the actual mod_rewrite rules.

Alex has demonstrated his expertise in these areas before, of course, as the brains behind RedMonk’s migration from Movable Type to WordPress. But his own efforts are more all-encompassing, and likely to be of interest.

Anyway, if you’re an SMB or project and tasked with a name change, give it a read. And check out Crowd Favorite, formerly King Design.

Following last week’s mentions of open spots at projects as varied as the Hype Machine and the OLPC, I got a couple of pings from clients regarding open spots on their rosters. As we’re continually trying to a.) keep all of you informed of cool new jobs and b.) make our very kind, paying clients happy, I’m only too happy to post things that satisfy both of those requirements. And just for the record, yes, I mean both – I’m not going to post anything here that I don’t think is of particular interest to you folks. These interest me, and therefore might interest some of you.

1. OpenSolaris:
   This one is two open reqs, from what I’m told. There are spots for a.) a kick ass open source marketer and b.) an intern. The upside is that you get to work on an interesting open source project in OpenSolaris; the downside is that Sara takes no guff whatsoever (I’m kidding, she’s excellent). The OpenSolaris project, IMO, has excellent potential but real, existing problems. Fortunately, the majority of the problems – hello, package management – are solvable with some sustained effort. The combination of opportunity and challenges would be a fun gig for the right person. If you’re interested, drop Sara a line directly (she’s not hard to find), or ping me and I’ll connect you.
2. Zend Framework:
   Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last few years, you’ve heard of PHP – the language that powers, well, just about everything these days. And even the least technically aware of you have probably at least heard of Ruby on Rails, the framework that’s taking the world by storm. Well, the Zend Framework is one Rails-like framework – there are several to pick from – available for PHP. And as Andi relates, the Zend folks are looking to hire a Senior Web Developer to help build out that framework. This is a chance, in other words, to be a committer on one of PHP’s answers to Rails – not a bad opportunity, IMO. Drop Andi and co a line if you’re interested and meet the requirements mentioned (PHP (obviously), Ajax, CSS, MVC, OO, and so on), or ping me and I’ll see that your info gets over.

Lastly, I have one private opportunity available, about which I’ll say only that it’s a.) high level and b.) with an open source product. I have a couple of potential candidates in mind that I’ll be sounding out shortly, but if you’re sufficiently experienced and open to new opportunities, drop me a line. If I think there’s a fit (note the “if”), I’ll try and get you in the door.

Usually a week that sees me walk through my door at something close to midnight on a Friday would be characterized as “unpleasant” – if I was feeling charitable. But I’m pleased to report that the past week was quite enjoyable. It’s good to be home, of course, despite the shredded roll of paper towels that Az used to register her displeasure at my long absence, but the past week was excellent on both the business and social fronts.

Sunday saw me drop in to the San Jose airport late, whereupon I immediately rented the first new car I’ve seen in at least 15 years that had neither power locks nor windows. While handicapped in such a fashion, the car was more than adequate for its three primary missions in life: a.) shuttling me to and from the Santa Clara Convention center, b.) getting me absurdly lost on the way back from the Faultline Brewery (which was less than 2 miles from my hotel), and c.) sitting in standstill traffic on 880 on the way up to the Oakland airport. Good times, good times.

Why Oakland, you ask? Direct your questions to Frontier. Despite my repeated requests, they refuse to service my pseudo-hometown, Boston, which is relevant to the discussion only because it was the next stop on my itinerary. So off to Oakland it was. Two important notes for folks traveling out of OAK; 1.) do not expect to find any suitable bar or restaurant outside of security, and 2. expect to be able to pay for your wireless, and then have it immediately dropped.

The trip over from Oakland as uneventful in the extreme, down to the usual lack of sleep for yours truly (I can’t sleep on planes), and I then headed over to Back Bay to begin my stay at the Park Plaza (the Marlowe was full). Or try to. As has happened on occasion before, Hotels.com made the delightful decision to replace the apostrophe in my name with a lower case u, which made it difficult to retrieve my reservations given that my name isn’t actually STEPHEN OuGRADY. With some help from the staff and some subvocal cursing, we got that straightened out and I retired for a morning nap.

After I was able to answer the important questions of where I was and who I was when I woke up from a mere two hours of sleep, I trekked up to the OLPC’s Cambridge offices for their analyst event. You may have read about that here. It’s the rare analyst day that makes a red eye plus short nap worth it, but the OLPC folks were on the ball.

Following the event, I adjourned back to the hotel to meet a work friend for dinner – tapas at Tapeo between Fairfield and Gloucester on Newbury. Following that, I met up with a friend who took me to Top of the Hub and Whiskey Park, in that order. Dressed for neither, the experience at Top of the Hub was at least worth it for the view – it reminds me of the bar on top of the Mandalay Bay in Vegas, with the whole city spread out beneath you. Strange that I’d never been there before. Or perhaps not, given my usual choice of attire.

Anyway, today was an unremarkable day; a couple of calls in the morning, lunch with another friend, an afternoon at M J O’Connors killing a Smithwicks and cranking out the OLPC event writeup, and then closing the day with a call with Sun’s Ian Murdock – still feels weird to write that. One JetBlue flight later – regrettably Sox free as the game wasn’t on ESPN this time (good guys beat the bad guys 11-4) – and, as we’ve already covered, I’m back in Denver.

For a few days anyway. Tomorrow I’ll be up at Cap City seeing a friend who works there, and if the weather’s acceptable I’ll get some fishing in on Sunday (and try not to get burned, like I did last weekend). Monday and Tuesday I’ll be in town, then Wednesday I’m right back to Boston for VMWare’s Analyst Day. Then the week following is CommunityOne/RedMonkOne and JavaOne, then back to Denver, then down to New Orleans for my brother’s bachelor’s party. Some two or so weeks after that I’ll be flying Az out to Maine, flying back, and commencing my annual cross-country roadtrip. Strangely, none of my friends have volunteered to accompany me on a stunningly boring two and a half day transit. It’s weird.

But all in all, it’s another good week in the books. Here’s hoping the one coming up is in cut from the same cloth. In the meantime, enjoy your weekends, whatever your plans are.

Sorry about this, New England. I didn’t ask for this title; it was bestowed upon me most unwillingly by someone with pull. Poseidon‘s my bet. If I’d done enough to merit a Wikipedia entry, I wonder if my Odyssean curse would merit mention. As Bender would say, “Curse you merciful Poseidon!”

In the meantime, just a reminder that I’ll be out of the office and unreachable tomorrow. If you need something from RedMonk, check in with one of my colleagues.

I’ll be back on the job first thing Tuesday, assuming I’ve thawed out by then.

I repeat, I must be stopped:

A furious winter storm is pounding the Northeast this afternoon with everything from heavy snow to serious icing to heavy rain.

In parts of western New York state (Steuben County), the snow already has piled up to two feet. The heaviest snow now is falling from northeastern Pennsylvania into northern New England. Another one to two feet (locally more) is expected to accumulate from northern New York state east-northeastward into northern Maine. Blizzard conditions with blowing and drifting snow may add to the misery at times.

Significant icing is occurring in parts of Connecticut and central and eastern Massachusetts. Heavy rain, meanwhile, is pelting southeastern New England.

As the storm strengthens and moves northeastward over southeastern New England this afternoon and evening, cold air will sweep back eastward. Thus, areas that are being hammered by freezing rain or rain now may see the precipitation change back to snow and sleet. In locations where the temperature is currently above freezing, readings will plunge again and any slush or standing water will turn quickly to ice.

The good news is that I’m not flying tomorrow either; I’m taking the more weather indifferent train. The bad news is that I have to rent a car when I’m there to get to Friday’s event.