mattezell

Joined 17 years ago

Karma
97
Submissions
69
Member since
Aug 20
I am a tech enthusiast - by trade and by passion...

I earn my bread and my butter, currently writing widely used banking software - with an odd and end job sprinkled on to add flavor as needed...

In a prior life, I was a web developer - working with everything from Nodejs to .Net (and many, many things in between)... Though no longer my day job, I still make an honest effort to stay up to date with the 'latest and greatest', often starting (though, admittedly, less often finishing) hobby projects to 'get my feet wet' or to 'cut my teeth'.

Let's see... What else? Well, I like to read - mostly the ramblings of other tech junkies.. I have also recently began somewhat of a personal video game revival and so when I have "free time", you may very well be pawning me on Steam, Live or PSN...

Feel free to get at me on Twitter (same name), my site (same name + .info) or any other avenue that you can track me down on (except IRL - that would be a little creepy, you stalker)...

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Recent submissions

Comment · 5 months ago
Project Glasswing found 10,000+ vulns; maintainers asked Anthropic to slow down
Comment · 1 year ago
cDc will always hold a special nostalgic place with me. Takes me back to middle school and high school in the 90s, well before I knew that I was going to become a programmer - sharing software on floppies and later burnt CDs... Dialing up BBSes... Learning the way of the early web via Webcrawler, Infoseek, ICQ, Usenet, Gopher and the other long forgotten protocols and services. I was obsessed with the idea of hacking... Me and my fellow nerd friends were always coming up with sneaky new ways to infect each other's and the school's PCs with Netbus or Back Orifice... Spreading the good word of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs around town by way of home printed pamphlets so that all may know of Slack. I often miss that earlier time in technology - before the masses could easily "sign on", so long as they have a tablet or smartphone...
Comment · 3 years ago
Fortunately for me, I didn't walk away from my last gig empty handed, and so have been afforded a bit of time to figure out what's next.

As others have said, hiring really slows down in Nov and Dec. You have quarter end, the year's budget is running low, project priorities are being shifted with anticipation of the new year, etc.,. Having been on the hiring end many times over the last several years, I know that higher ups often push you to fill a position - but just as soon as you settle on a candidate during this time of year, they almost always pump the brakes on actually hiring until new year.

Knowing this, I'd initially planned no not looking for a new gig until 2023, but once folks hear your back on the market, you basically can't avoid people trying to play matchmaker for your next job (which is a good problem to have, I suppose).

Not wanting to pass up a potential opportunity, I accepted a few interview requests that came about from my personal network in Nov. After going through 2-3 rounds of ultimately fruitless interviews with 3 different companies since mid-Nov, I've decided to just wait and enjoy the downtime. Each company I interviewed with essentially signaled "you're perfect for our needs and will be moving quickly with you" during the interview process, then would go radio silent - only to have them follow up a couple weeks later with "some of our internal needs have changed with the end of year approaching, but we'll be in touch".

So I figured for my sanity and so that I could enjoy a little bit of my funemployment, that I'd just be upfront with them and set some boundaries. Now, I've basically just been communicating "I appreciate your interest, but this is a bad time of year for bringing on new hires when considering year's end, so let's plan on touching base in January". We will see if this works out in my benefit or not - but if they can't respect that, and aren't capable of acknowledging the reality of things, I'd probably not want to work with them anyways.

Comment · 3 years ago
Yup! Knowing this, I'd intended to put off seeking for a new gig, but once recruiters know you're on the market in any capacity, they start beating down the door - I assume to stay busy, meet their quotas/goals, and to build up a list of potentials for when hiring actually picks back up.

After going through 2-3 rounds of interviews with 3 different companies since mid-Nov, all of which signaled "we love you and will be moving quickly with you" during the interview process, only to have them finally follow up with "some of our internal needs have changed with the end of year approaching, but we'll be in touch", I figured for my sanity and so that I could enjoy a little bit of my funemployment, that I'd just be upfront with them and set some boundaries.

Now, I've basically just been communicating "I appreciate your interest, but this is a bad time of year for bringing on new hires when considering year's end, so let's plan on touching base in January". We will see if this works out in my benefit or not - but it quickly became clear that we were all just wasting each others time going through multiple rounds of calls and exercises during the end of Nov and Dec.

Comment · 9 years ago
Got ya... As someone who's worked in hybrid since ~2014, I completely understand where you're coming from - we've come a long way. Hybrid is an interesting dev space currently - so much tooling (Ionic's Creator, View, Deploy products, for example), flexibility and near-native experience in most applications. Anywhos. Thanks again!
Comment · 9 years ago
Thanks for the writeup, @EO-IO. As other have said, it's a 'skeezy model', but as you've said, you know this and were sharing for the lessons learned more than to promote this model - which I can certainly appreciate. All in all, I found it to be a pretty good read - and a peak into a world of generating revenue that I may have not otherwise been as aware of.

I do have a question. As I read, it does seem that you're driving the point of 'native app' pretty heavily without substantiating the emphasis; as if it's a large feature/benefit/sales-point. So, "Why native?" As primarily a hybrid developer currently (Angular 4 + Cordova / some Ionic), there have been leaps and bounds made in the arena of hybrid dev - and arguably the entry point for hybrid dev is much lower than it is for native. Of course you could still have created the same business with either stack, but since the article seems to be promoting 'native', I was hoping you could share some insight into what made native superior to hybrid here?

Thanks!

Comment · 9 years ago
Perhaps I'm just lazy or missing something... While I don't often use it directly, I do find that adding a ref to it makes my life easier when I'm working in AngularJS.
Comment · 10 years ago
"From that fateful day when stinking bits of slime first crawled from the sea and shouted to the cold stars, "I am man.", our greatest dread has always been the knowledge of our mortality. But tonight, we shall hurl the gauntlet of science into the frightful face of death itself. Tonight, we shall ascend into the heavens. We shall mock the earthquake. We shall command the thunders, and penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself." -Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein.
Comment · 10 years ago
Does anyone ever actually experience greater emulator performance under Windows? Each time an update is pushed, I am excited to always see "XX faster emulator" listed as an improvement - but never do I see a notable improvement... So far, the only usable "emulator" that I've found is actually virtualization using Xamarin's Android Player...
Comment · 11 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
"...and for being cheap."

Admittedly, I am ignorant to many of the TLDs available today... But having primarily dealt with .com and .net TDLs previously (and their <$20USD price tag), is there something else at play when considering the cost/value ratio of an .io domain? Something that would make sense to refer to it as 'being cheap', despite it's costing 100%+ more than a 'traditional' TLD?

I get that 'io' is two letters rather than three and so it's "cool"... And that an io domain has potential for "domain hacks" (I assume they are talking about a neat looking URL, where the 'io' has significance in the brand and URL)... But is 'cheap' accurate?

Just curious - honest question... When I read 'cheap' as one of the primary bullet points (of the few cited bullet points) for the io TLD, I thought "There must be a lot that I don't know about io TLDs - let's ask".

Thanks!

Comment · 12 years ago
Agreed. This is picking up the shares on Facebook, that's for sure. I just don't belive the tech is here - yet. I don't think it's far off, but the biggest names in tech (largest R&D budgets on the planet) can't give me these features in a 3x5x.25 inch package that will last even a 24hr stint (ex:Samsung Galaxy S5)... so with that in mind (call my cynical),I just have a hard time believing the guys with a pulled indiegigo and a WordPress site asking for (free as in beer)donations are going to be the ones who bring the game changer to us. Here's to hoping I have to eat my hat.
Comment · 12 years ago
I don't know if I was just lucky or what, but I've always had far worse experiences with Seagates than WDs.

I got into building PCs on the side in about '96 or so and did break/fix support through college - it always seemed (I didn't keep records - I can't quantify) that Seagates accounted for more than their share of the "it won't start and is making a clicking noise" cases. So much so, that I have recommended against Seagates and towards WDs for as long as I can remember (15+yrs).

I've only had a small amount of direct experience with Hitachi drives, so I can't speak to them too much.. Though I do have a Hitachi in an enclosure that's been kicking around since about 2004, so I guess that says something...

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