how i work

dave rosenberg has been doing a series of “how i work” interviews and asked for more submissions. here is mine.

what is your role? i believe my title is still maintenance engineer, but i’m now actually a proper server developer at mysql. right now i’m doing some falcon-related work, but i hope to get back to working on pluggable authentication and authorization soon.

what is your computer setup? my desktop is a mac mini (powerpc), hooked up to a 20" apple cinema display. my development box, which runs headless and i just access with ssh, is an amd64 running ubuntu. i also have a 12" powerbook that i use when on the road (which isn’t often). my plan is to replace the mac mini and powerbook with a new macbook pro at some point down the line. this site also runs off a colo server.

what desktop software applications do you use daily? when i am working, i’m always running safari, terminal, itunes (plus synergy classic), colloquy (irc client), and the stickies application. i also have antirsi running to remind me to take breaks. i use mutt, running on my colo server, for all of my email.

what websites do you visit every day? i have my own rss aggregator that i use for reading various news feeds, and it has a blo.gs-based sidebar that lets me know when the various weblogs i am interested in get updated. i read planet apache, planet php, planet perl, planet mysql, and planet intertwingly regularly.

what mobile device or cell phone do you use? i have a motorola razr, and i sync my address book over bluetooth. i recently started using bluephoneelite, which lets me send sms from my computer, and also pops up caller information when i get a call on my cell.

do you use im? i went back to using ichat after dabbling with adium, but now that my fiancée celia is working from my couch, i haven’t even had a need to keep ichat running.

do you use a voip phone? every once in a while i’ll fire up sjphone to use the company’s internal voip network, and i’ll fire up skype once in a while.

do you have a personal organization/time management theory? not really. i use the stickies application to keep track of what i’ve done this week, and my short to-do list for work. my incoming email gets sorted into three folders: personal, work, and the mysql mailing lists (i’m subscribed to all of them). i try to keep the personal and work inbox to under thirty messages (generally successfully — they currently have nine and ten, respecitively), and i flush out the mailing list inbox regularly. we have a couple of monthly calendars on the fridge to keep track of upcoming events.

anything else? the whole cult of “gettings things done” creeps me out.