the real Nate Clark

Attention all you recruiters / “staffing specialists” / spammers out there. Here’s an amusing story about some turd named Pradipta Archiputra aka “Max Archie” that should illustrate to you how NOT to search for skilled talent in the Ruby world.

Some time last night I received a brief email from said recruiter. Here’s what it looked like:

I have a couple of Ruby on Rails position, wanted to know if you are interested?

Max Archie
Technical Recruiter
Prodigus Source
Cell: 219-669-9216
Phone: 312-235-2365
Max@prodigussource.com

At first glance, aside from the bad grammar and lack of any real details about the positions available, I almost ignored this one, as I get this type of unsolicited message from some recruiter at least every week. What I quickly noticed was that this message was sent to 400 other people in the To: field of the email. FAIL.

What happened next was truly amazing. First, my Twitter started blowing up with rants from fellow RoR coders who received the same email and noticed the failure of epic proportions in the way the message was sent. Not more than a few minutes later, the Reply All train started … and somehow Pradipshit sparked a worldwide impromptu discussion of 400-odd random technologists.

Less than 20 hours and 89 replies later, a true phenomenon has arisen. A Google Group has been created dubbed Pradipta’s Rolodex for all of us chosen ones to continue ranting and stay in touch. One creative member of Pradipta’s Kids even made a nice logo taken from Prodigus cheesy stock photo on their website. Now we’ve even got a website called The Pradipta 416 and a sexy badge to acknowledge our inclusion:

All I can say is, wow. I have met many recruiters in my days as a technologist … but this guy takes the cake as the sleaziest. Please, if you’re in the recruiting or staffing industry, and insist on spamming to source your talent, at least learn how to use the BCC field or get a proper email list manager.

That’s my rant for the day. Now back to work.

After a very long break, I’ve decided to revive this blog. Today, June 10, is a turning point for me. This morning, I resigned from my senior Rails developer position at a startup in Palo Alto, and I’m wasting no time getting ready for the next career adventure.

Being employed and extremely busy didn’t work well with frequent blogging. Unfortunately, I have done a poor job of writing interesting stuff here. But, now that I’m a free agent, I’ll have more time and motivation to keep the blog going.

As you might guess, I’m now looking for a new Ruby on Rails gig. I live in San Francisco now, and will stay in this area. If you’re looking for a leader and developer with 2+ years experience, I’m your guy. I favor small teams that use Agile or XP principles.

Anyway, as I write this, I’m upgrading my server and updating my resume (simultaneously). Look forward to more frequent articles on more in-depth technical topics.

You may or may not know that Atlanta is in a severe drought right now, and the Governor recently asked Atlantans to cut back their water consumption by 10%. Reminds me of a mantra of an old friend:

When it’s yellow … let it mellow
When it’s brown … flush it down

Yeah, that’s a little gross, but seriously we could do better to conserve water. Especially when taking a leak … it seems like such a waste to use all that water to flush away something that’s already liquid. I read this week that one county’s schools are going to those waterless urinals. A great step in the right direction. Let’s also get these in airports, malls, everywhere.

Also, I recently came back from Paris, where all the toilets have two flush buttons … one that deploys a smaller flush for #1. What a great, simple and effective idea. Why don’t we have these in our homes?

It looks like they’ve caught on in some airports:

Photo by jessamyn on Flickr

Usually, Gmail’s spam filter works great … but this was just funny:

I just found out through a post on Consumerist that my bank of about 6 years, Netbank, went out of business with no warning on Friday.

I never would have thought that my bank would just close up shop, but I guess anything could happen. Thank goodness for the FDIC, which ensures that my deposits of up to $100,000 are insured and immediately accessible. No need to worry, my friends, my bank balance was (far) less than the $100,000 insurance cap, so this ordeal will only be a minor inconvenience for me. The FDIC has already published a comprehensive information page and 24-hour hotline about NetBank’s failure, and the changeover of its accounts to ING Direct. This is one of the few times where I am actually praising a U.S. Government agency for doing their job (and saving my ass). Wouldn’t it be great if the rest of the country operated in such an efficient and responsible manner with the best interests of citizens as their first priority?

I switched to NetBank about 6 years ago because they offered interest bearing checking accounts with no fees (not even ATM fees), were one of the first banks to have online bill-pay, and (my favorite feature) accepted deposits by mail. I’ve heard good things about ING Direct’s interest rates … so I guess this really isn’t a bad thing.

I feel really bad for the 1,500 account holders that had collectively $109 million in deposits that are over the FDIC limit. These poor rich folk stand to lose as much as 50% of their assets just because they chose the wrong bank.

Let this be a lesson learned … when you get rich, keep your excess money stuffed in your mattress or buried under your patio … yeah, that’s much safer.

Several years ago I was in New York city with my mom and my sister, Jacki. While Jacki was taking forever inside H&M, I was wandering through the many street vendors who had set up shop on the sidewalk nearby. A table full of hand-drawn inspirational quotes written in Chinese caught my eye. I spotted this framed poster, and bought it immediately for about 30 bucks.

In case the image is hard to see, the quote reads:

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, and live the life you’ve imagined

I fell in love with this quote. It’s so direct. So assertive. Yet, so inspiring. And, I think Chinese writing looks cool.

When I got home, I hung it on my bathroom wall, directly above the toilet where I was sure to see it every day.

All this time I thought that this quote was some kind of well-known Chinese proverbial wisdom passed down through generations … until a few months ago when I started dating Lavinia, who’s from Taiwan and speaks Chinese natively. She assured me that Chinese to English translation is correct, but she’s never heard the saying before. After a bit of Googling, I find out that this was originally written in English by 19th century American transcendentalist author, Henry David Thoreau. Oh well, that doesn’t make it any less inspiring, and Chinese writing still looks cool.