No es la primera vez que publico un post como este; en todos los lugares donde estuve siempre se piden referidos cuando hay búsquedas, y obviamente Despegar no es la excepción.

Recuerden que el lugar donde trabajan tiene que ser su elección, y no al revés, tenemos nuestros derechos!

La verdad es que trabajar en Despegar IT tiene varios beneficios: buenos sueldos, proyectos divertidos, variedad de tecnologías (.NET, Java, Oracle, SQL Server, DJango, Grails, y cualquier cosa que se proponga se evalúa), afters cada 2 semanas (con consumiciones incluídas), descuentos en pasajes, buena onda, flexibilidad razonable, etc, etc, etc.

En fin, se dan una idea. Si les interesa que acerque sus CVs a recursos humanos, me pueden contactar y enviármelo (el requisito es que los tengo que conocer de algún lado, no me parece correcto recomendar gente completamente desconocida).

Las búsquedas abiertas son (click para tamaño original):

stackoverflow was a huge success, and after almost 2 years from its launch, it only made sense to open the engine to other topics.

They’d already done it with serverfault.com, superuser.com, and a short lived paid version, which is now closed.

StackExchange 2.0 is a place where you can propose new sites (that’ll use the stackoverflow engine) and let the community build them (without owning it yourself, like in the paid version) and make them great.

I’ve already proposed 3 sites that I feel are totally needed:

• Gaming: Why stop in the game itself? Head over there and ask how to achieve 100% completion on a particular game, the differences between a console and a computer game, or just answer other people questions and have fun. If you’re like me (totally addicted to gaming) and you don’t get enough from the games by just playing them, this site is for you.
• Writing: I’ve always wanted to write, but I have way too many questions as a beginner. I’m hoping this site will help me make it more than a hobby, and perhaps help other people in the same situation too.
• Science Fiction: What is there to say? Q&A on science fiction… which geek wouldn’t want this?

You can help make them a reality by following and committing to them, click on the links on the proposals names and start participating, the whole world could benefit from it!

I just finished reading The simple twitter book by Brent Ozar (available free online).

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW... told to you in a funny, friendly voice.

I thought it really accomplished its goal: being a simple and concise twitter beginner's guide. It’s very to-the-point, some of the tips are obvious but you didn’t really think about them until you read them, and it’s really funny.

It starts off with what everyone (familiar with the platform or not) would like to know: What is twitter for? Just seeing that was enough to get me hooked, and furthermore, seeing the first reason there was no turning back: Get better at what you love to do.

I bet right now there’s something you love doing - running, writing, building, whatever - and you wish you could do it better. Cyclists get motivated by seeing what’s going on in Lance Armstrong’s head. Writers would love to hear what Stephen King’s day is like. Programmers want to know about the latest techniques. Twitter helps us share this information easier and faster.

It then goes on explaining the basics: choosing a name, how to create a good profile page, how to get followers, who to follow, what to share, etc, all the way to more advanced stuff, like how to promote your business (successfully and without sucking) using twitter, passing through general tips and recommendations.

It was a a little satisfying to find that the top 10 reasons the author follows people (and the top 10 reasons he doesn’t) are pretty much the same ones I have; I unconsciously checked most of those things when evaluating a new account to follow.

These reasons are (for more detail, download and read the book!):

10. Your tweets show a sense of humor.
9. You have an awesome profile photo or name.
8. I know you in real life.
7. I’m friends with your spouse.
6. You tweet often and show pictures now and then.
5. You have a lot more followers than friends.
4. You’re interacting with other people I know.
3. You suddenly follow me on other social networking sites.
2. You’re using Twitter to announce your blog posts.
Reason #1: You’re doing cool stuff.

Among his recommendations, he says you should always try to reply at people that talk to you, it’s nice to see he follows his own advice (and fast too, look at the times!):

After finding the book I started following the author, at first I found he tweeted a bit too much, but I think he was just excited with a SQL Server release, we’ll see what the future holds for this unilateral relationship!

I strongly recommend you read this book, it’s very easy to read, clear, and with a lot of helper pictures to illustrate points, which makes it funny and relaxed.

Head over to Brent’s site and get it now! Limited offer!

http://www.brentozar.com/twitter/

En las últimas elecciones del 26 de Junio del 2009 me di cuenta demasiado tarde que a las autoridades de mesa se les olvidó sellarme el DNI, dejando constancia que había asistido a la votación. Como ahora es necesario tenerlos para casi cualquier trámite (y porque tengo que renovar mi pasaporte), me preocupaba esta cuestión, al punto de pensar en hacer el dni nuevo.

Me comentaron que se podría ir a la junta electoral, ya que ellos tienen constancia de las votaciones, a pedir el sello.

Hoy fui, y no puedo creer lo fácil que fue el trámite! Como no encontré nada de información en internet, quiero dejar este post para que alguien en la misma situación se beneficie en el futuro (ahí mismo me comentaron que esto pasa más seguido de lo que uno piensa).

Hay que ir directamente, sin turno, sin nada, al palacio de tribunales, por la entrada de Tucumán de 7:30 a 13:30 hs. En el mostrador que se ve bajando una escalerita, hay un señor muy amable el que, explicándole la situación, te indica a que oficina ir (al final del pasillo hacia nuestra derecha, doblar a la izquierda, y es la última oficina: Consulta de Padrones).

En la consulta de padrones, hay unas mujeres, también increíblemente amables, que te piden el DNI, la escuela donde votaste (que yo no sabía así que lo consultaron en un libro), se fijan en los registros, y te agregan el sello.

Todo el trámite fue menos de 15 minutos, versus hacer el DNI de nuevo, que lleva 2 meses de anticipación para pedir el turno, más llevar toda la documentación necesaria, más pagar los $35, más la espera de la confección.

Ya tengo mi DNI actualizado, y ya puedo seguir con mis trámites. Siempre recuerden verificar el DNI luego de votar!

I had a particular problem with my e-mails. I belong to multiple mailing lists at work, so when someone sends an e-mail to all of them, I get several copies, like the following picture illustrates

There was no way of fixing it with rules, as they are n different e-mails, not the same one.

After a little search, I couldn’t find anything to fix this, so I programmed a little add-in to deal with it (you can download both the binaries and the source at the end).

It works like this:

• You provide a list of addresses by priority
• If an e-mail is from one of those addresses (evaluated in order), and one recipient is in the list above the current one, the mail is deleted (as you have already received it with that previous address)

Easy! So easy, I may be missing something, if so, please let me know.

To install it, download the binaries and double-click the MailingListFilter.vsto file (you need to have the Visual Studio Tools for Office installed), if that doesn’t work, you can go to Tools –> Trust Center –> Add-ins –> Go…, there you can add it manually. Perhaps I’ll add an installer later.

To configure it, go to Tools –> Mailing List Filter…

Remember to specify them in priority order (it’s a good idea to add your personal address first).

The code is based on this example.
You are free to download and modify the code, if you publish a modification, a link here would be nice.

Known Issues

Despite the documentation claiming the event I use (NewMailEx) is guaranteed to fire, I found that this is not always true. There are certain cases of race conditions with Outlook rules, and if you have one set to move mails to subfolders, the event may not fire. So in order for this add in to work, you shouldn’t have rules to move the eligible mails to subfolders; it’s kind of annoying, so I’ll post a fix if I ever find one.

Downloads

Sure, there’s nothing officially wrong with trying to write multithreaded code in C++ on Windows using COM. But it’s prone to disastrous bugs, the kind of bugs that only happen under very specific timing scenarios, because our brains are not, honestly, good enough to write this kind of code. Mediocre programmers are, frankly, defensive about this, and they don’t want to admit that they’re not able to write this super-complicated code, so they let the bullies on their team plow away with some godforsaken template architecture in C++ because otherwise they’d have to admit that they just don’t feel smart enough to use what would otherwise be a perfectly good programming technique FOR SPOCK. Duct tape programmers don’t give a shit what you think about them. They stick to simple basic and easy to use tools and use the extra brainpower that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers.

From Joel Spolsky’s blog

According to this article, there is no question at all… the answer is not to delete. It could all also be summarize as “learn Domain Driven Design”, try not to always think technically and understand the business behind things.

As they say

I know it doesn’t show up as nicely on your resume as “3 years WXF”, but “saved the company $4 million in wasted inventory” does speak volumes.

Interesting read

You may have noticed that this blog was very slow.

Well, it had a reason… I was working hard on graduating!

(If you are not from around here, don’t be alarmed, throwing crap all over people is a tradition here when you graduate… and oh my, did all that crap smell)

I almost can’t believe that 5 years went by, all that effort and investment finally paid off, as it was predicted a year and half ago :)

I’ll try to start blogging again now that I have more free time, although I’m about to start a new project with which I hope to become a millionaire (and have even more time to blog) as well as becoming a parent, which won’t be an easy task.

Write to you soon!

Perdón por la demora. Acá les dejo los replays y logs de la última competencia en la UP.

Los ganadores fueron

Felicitaciones a los ganadores, nos vemos en la próxima!

Lately I’ve been reading an interesting blog about a girl that sees the world pretty much as I’d like to see it, and one excerpt from the latest post caught my attention

(…)

Even though there was an extremely slim chance of me and my place being in any danger, I packed up my stuff and evacuated. The way people are saved in huge disasters is through prompt and thorough reactions. If I had waited until I was in danger, I would have contributed to clogging the single freeway, lost more of my stuff, and put others in danger too. The proper response to an emergency is not denial, not panic, but rational, precautionary steps.

Emphasis mine.

That’s one piece of advise we could extrapolate to everything, I think, and I’d like to bring it to my field: Programming.

How many projects have you worked on, where it’s very smooth and quiet at the beginning, just to plunge into chaos towards the end? I know I have worked on many. Don’t you think it would be better to take that approach? Not falling in denial and panic, but taking steps to guarantee the success, or at least minimize loses. There are some books on that topic that are very interesting.

What about if you are in a job you don’t like? Are you going to wait until it’s unbearable and you have to go job hunting in a hurry because you can’t take it anymore? No. Rational, precautionary steps. Start slow, start searching when you have the time to search well, research, compare, decide with facts.

What about any other aspect of life?