[Getting OT] Re: [vox-jobs] Lots of places to talk to; little response, so far

[Bill Kendrick]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 07:52:04AM -0800, Rod Roark wrote:
<snip>
> 
> I'm also looking for work, but have pretty much given up on
> being an employee - instead focusing on looking for clients
> that want to outsource software projects.

Hehe, if you're ever looking for programmers... ;^)


<snip>
> Right now I'm filling in time by working on a browser-based
> gaming service.

Cool!  I've done that! :^)  I was living off of advertising revenue,
back during the boom!  Then that dried up and my ISP started _actually_
charging for the immense bandwidth I was using on my colo.

It's evened out now (there's a TINY bit of advertising... like, 1/20th of
the most I made in a month... plus, I've set up mod_throttle on my colo,
which helps _immensely_), but last year I actually went back and
calculated a loss.

This ended up meaning I put too much into taxes last year while I was
working, so I'm actually owed a refund for once in my life!
It seems I inadvertently used the government as a rainy-day-savings-account.
(Sucky part is that it's of course an interest-free loan to the government,
AND an non-interest-earning kind of 'savings account' :^) ... The good part
is, though, I'm sure I would've spent it unwisely if I hadn't been
accidentally paying it in to taxes.)


> We're talking parlor games here, not arcade.

Cool! :^)  Check out:  http://www.billsgames.com/
(Just, like, click on a banner or two while you're there ;^) )


> I have the guts of a backgammon client working now,
> which interacts with a well-known public backgammon server.

Nice.  I've wanted to look into using GNU's chess engine, or something,
as the back-end to a chess game, since I doubt I'd _ever_ be able to
write something that anyone would ever want to bother playing. :^)

I haven't had time (or, frankly, inclination, due to the costs of traffic)
to add anything new to that site, though.


<snip>
> But the really interesting part is the client-side
> JavaScript.

Ah, a luxury I can't depend on.  A good 60% of my visitors are WebTV users.
(Sorry, MSNTV users... man, what a stupid name.)

Sure, they have JavaScript.  But it's flakey.  I use it in ONE place on
the whole site, as a countdown timer.  And I'm always getting complaints
that the timer isn't on the screen, or isn't available as an option when
they go to start a game.  (I use JavaScript itself to tack on the
"JavaScript Timer" option in a form...  seems like an obvious thing to do,
right?  And it is!  Too bad other web developers don't think of simple
sh*t like this!  >:^(   BTW, I was a long-time Lynx user.  Can you tell? :^) )


> You can do some very cool things with a
> reasonably current web browser - stuff that looks like Java
> applets but is not.
<snip>

I have to admit, some of this newfangled CSS and JavaScript stuff that I
see out there (when it works for me... I prefer Konq, but use Galeon a lot
now, too) does _look_ pretty cool.

(I bet Peter just fainted ;) )


-bill!

-- 
bill@newbreedsoftware.com                                            Hire me!
http://newbreedsoftware.com/bill/    http://newbreedsoftware.com/bill/resume/