Author: Tom Ortega II

My purpose in life is to make people happy through the application of technology. My primary way of attaining that purpose is by building wonderful things for clients and myself through my consulting company, OmegaOrtega.com

eBay/PayPal SecurityKey – Bye, Bye, Phishers/Scammers!

I just wanted to drop a quick little note. Everyone needs to sign up for this and pronto. http://www.ebay.com/securitykey is eBay’s newest way to battle Phishers and Scammers. It’s a little token that gives you a code to sign into your eBay and PayPal accounts.

Think of it as an always changing PIN for your accounts. Without that key, there’s no way for the scammers to get access to your account, even if you get tricked by a fake website. If you forget the key, eBay will call your cell phone and give you a temp number to login with! PayPal makes you answer your secret questions. In other words, it’s really, really hard for someone to steal your account.

It’s the best $5 you’ll ever spend. Trust me.

(Yes, I work for eBay but even if I didn’t, I’d be telling you to get this!)

John Wilker’s available for work…hire him! Here’s why.

This is in reference to John’s post at johnwilker.com about being available for work.

I work at eBay and, if you see my earlier post, I love it. There’s only one thing that could make life better at eBay, that’s if John was there. I’ve been in and out of corporate life for 10+ years now. I’ve worked for the likes of Bank of America, The Walt Disney Company, eBay and Ameriquest Mortgage. In all those years and all those work sites, I’ve only met one person like John.

John and I met at Ameriquest. He tried to leave, but I hunted him down and hounded him until he came back. That’s how much fun he is to work with. How many of your co-workers, who left a company, have you tracked down and did everything you could to get that person back? Me…only one, John.

John has technical skills: ColdFusion, Flex, Databases, yada-yada. Every one in Monster.com has those skills. John has two things most people in Monster.com do not have: organization and personality.

In the organization department, John’s topnotch. From the moment your project starts, his organization skillset kicks in. If you let him run with it, you’ll have folders, communications, mailing groups, project sites, time tracking, etc. He’ll make sure you know how to track progress on everything and will ride your bootie when you start to fall behind on the deliverables. He’ll be harsh on that too, but that’s a good thing for you, because that’ll help deliver a better product.

Personality, though, now that’s where he’ll shine. If you have a 1 month project, you’ll see some of it, but not all of it. You need to keep him onboard more long term to fully experience it. When I first met him, we passed each other many, many times for a month or so. We finally started chatting one day, and not a weekday has gone by since in the 5 or so years that we haven’t chatted. Wilker is one of the funniest guys around. He’s not an insulting kind of funny, but one of those calls it as he sees it kind of funny. It’s those views that are funny.

John and I are similar in some things, but total opposites in others. It’s for that reason that he’s been on my short list of possible business partners. He’ll agrue til he’s blue in the face for things that I can’t see at the time. Usually, as the weeks go by, I find myself saying, “Hey, you were right about that thing.” He never makes me feel bad when I do that too, when he could totally rub my face in it if he wanted.

John is 1/3 of the 360Flex Conference committee. When the conference is over and everybody’s yammering about how great it was, it will be because of John. If they leave complaining about something missing/gone awry, I’ll most likely be typing over IM to John, “Ya know, I guess you were right about that one thing.”

One more thing, if you wonder if he knows a particular skill for your project, just ask him. He’ll tell you the truth. If the answer is no, don’t worry, hire him anyway. Tech skills are learnable by buying a book, but personality…like MasterCard says, “Some things, money can’t buy.”

The Flex Team has spoken… build more components!

I went to the “Meet the Flex Team” event last night. How friggin’ awesome is that? Flex 2 and Apollo are creating a revolution in the web space. Not only do we have the chance to participate in the revolution, but we have the power to alter the gameplan.

I’m amazed at the transparency of this group. I can only remember one other time where I was able to chat with a program team. It was for a small product from American Express and the results were amazing. To be able to influence how a program will be built is truly a one of a kind experience. If you weren’t there last night, you missed a chance to help build something special.

After we gave our list of demands, I asked what we, the community, could do to help out. Besides the obvious donations of mad cash (which, strangely, I’m all out of), the biggest thing they want from us is custom components. I know y’all are clamoring for new components and want the Flex Team to make ’em for us, but it’s time we stepped up. Let’s answer the call to duty. Ted’s already ahead of the curve and has set up a Y! group for component builders. Sign up and start answering the call.

PlayStation3

Yes, I was one of those nuts who waited for a PlayStation3 on launch day. I chose the Metreon in San Francisco as my spot, and that was luxurious until midnight when they stopped feeding us. All in all, a 24 hour wait in line ’til I left with my black PlayStation3 bags.

Like my good friend Miguel put it, “But why did you do that? You don’t even game.” To prove his point even more, launch day was almost a month ago and it’s taken me this long to start messing with my PS3. Before tonight, I watched the free Blu-Ray movie and checked out the photo slideshow, but that was about it.

Today, I tried out Resistance: Fall of Man. I have to admit. It was pretty fun. The graphics are nice, but not mind blowing. I haven’t gotten very far, but there’s some fun things in the game already like controlling a tank and taking over some mega-guns to shoot the enemies. The online gaming feature was fun too, but that’s not why I bought a PS3.

Instead, I’m excited for something I ordered today: Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3. I’m excited about this for many reasons. This will be my first tinkering with Linux. More importantly though, I’ll get to program for the Cell processor. Now, I’m not sure how much of the processor I’ll be able to program for (I keep reading conflicting stories), but I hope all of it. For some reason, the Cell processor just has this pull on me.

Another neat thing too is that the PS3 runs Flash from the GameOS. I’m trying to figure out which version so I can build stuff for it. I’m know it’s not version 9, but I hope they get a v9 player soon. I’d like to develop some Flex stuff to browse from the PS3.

All in all, pretty exciting stuff…as far as a computer nerd is concerned. LOL

360Flex – A Brief History

360Flex, our lil Flex conference, is open for registration. It’s hard to believe that less than 2 months ago, the idea for 360Flex wasn’t even there. One day while chatting with John Wilker I said, “You know, we need a Flex conference. MAX is good and all, but we need a conference dedicated just to Flex and nothing else.” John agreed and we decided to have a conference. Now, John will be the first to tell you that I tend to have Pie-in-the-Sky ideas and this sounded right up that alley. He probably thought I might bring it up once or twice afterwards, but it would more likely than not drop to the wayside.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I’m chatting with Ted Patrick. We’re just about to announce the whole Free Flex Training ditty. I tell Ted, “You know, we really need to take this to the next level.” Ted nods. “We need to have a full fledged Flex Conference.” Ted says he was thinking of the same thing. Ted and I are smart guys, relatively speaking. =) We realize that having two competing Flex Conferences would be pointless. Therefore, we decide to combine our efforts. I introduce Ted to John and the committee is born.

None of us had really done a conference before, so we just sort of asked people we know who do conferences for some pointers. I ask Doug and Dave of Mashup Camp fame for some pointers. Fate puts me next to Michael Smith of CFUnited fame at the MAX UGM dinner, so I pester him with some questions. I’m not sure who Ted and John talked to, but from there we had our base from which to jump.

October 17th 2006, we have our inaugural virtual meeting. December 6th 2006, the registration site goes live. March 5th 2007, the conference begins. I don’t know how fast most conferences go, but I think we’ve done pretty good for ourselves.

Luckily, I had Silvafug to bounce ideas off of. If you’re a UGM, don’t overlook the valuable resource that is your group. Throw things at them and see what sticks. They’ll let you know what’s good (free Flex Training, Flex Conferences) and what’s not (matching UG t-shirts to wear at MAX). I still think matching shirts woulda rocked! =)

My 1st Year Anniversary with eBay

It’s hard to believe that a full year has gone by since I started at eBay. I can still remember flying in for the interview and being all starry-eyed as I walked through the eBay Park Campus. This place, both physical and metaphorical, is where history happened. The world changed when eBay went live and it’s never going to be the same. Luckily, a lil of that life changing magic rubbed off on me.

I came to eBay a bit unsure of myself. I had begun to doubt whether or not I was a good employee. My last job made me feel pretty much useless, despite being the senior member on the team. I thought it was me. eBay saw something in me, so that boosted my spirits a bit. It took a good few months before I finally broke out of my “shell”. While my first day of work was November 29, 2006, my first real day as a True eBay Employee in the utmost sense wasn’t until March. I became involved with the “NOC Workbench” project and jumped headlong into the Flex 2 Beta. Out of the Flex 2 beta, I got involved with Silvafug. Out of Silvafug, I got involved with Free Flex Training. Out of Free Flex Training, I got involved with 360Flex.

All in all, not a bad year’s worth of work. And yes, just in case you’re wondering, I still walk around the eBay campus with starry eyes. To be honest, I probably always will.

Notes on Flex Training

For those of you who participated in the training tonight, I’m glad you were there. Now, it’s time for feedback.

There’s two items I must apologize for.

  1. I should have checked to make sure my debugger was working before the training
  2. I should have not ventured into unscheduled territory when my debugger broke.

The debugger caught me completely off guard. I had planned on spending a good amount of time on the debugger. When it didn’t work, I had to improvise. This led to me trying to hardcode data. I have not done that in a few months and it showed. Live and learn. Next time, just end the session early. =)

Other than those two bombs, I think the training went fairly well. I’d like to hear your feedback though. Tell me what I did wrong and what I need to improve. Be brutally honest here folks. I’m a big boy, so I can take it. Plus, there’s no use in me continuing to do this if I do a poor job. Help me improve so you can learn more. It’s in your hands. =)

Free Flex Training

That’s right. Your eyes ain’t deceiving ya. This is bonafide, real-deal training on Adobe’s Flex Product line. The training will be performed by me, so take it with a grain of salt, cuz it ain’t my day job. However, it’s absolutely and completely free! Stay for the meeting afterwards and you’ll even get free pizza and drinks to boot! How sweet is that?

I’m very excited to be able to provide this to the community. My employer, eBay, has given me their support and Adobe has volunteered to help any way they can. Lastly, roundpeg is going to be there to pick up the training where I leave off. If you’re curious about Flex and serious about learning it, then you need to be there. More details can be found at http://www.silvafug.org .

I know that some of the local boys (eBay, Yahoo, Google) are jumping on the Flex bandwagon. If you work there, be sure to post the flier (found at http://www.silvafug.org/docs/free_flex_training.pdf ) around the office and take advantage of this opportunity.

See you there!

Silicon Valley Flex User Group Meeting on October 12

I just wanted to drop a quick note to say that the Silvafug is having their next meeting on Thursday, October 12.  Since I’m the manager, I should be talking and hyping up the group more and more.  I will and this blog will be a venue for me to do so.

You can find out details of the meeting at http://www.silvafug.org .

There is going to be a huge announcement at the meeting.  We’re going to be announcing a new activity for the group that I think all User Groups should try to mimic.  I’m still working out the details with those involved, but believe me, it’ s going to be exciting news for the (growing) Flex community here in Silicon Valley.