User:Q Linden/Office Hours/2008-01-07

Time	Speaker	Remarks
[7:37]	Ricken Flow	Good Morning Q
[7:38]	Q Linden	o, hai
[7:38]	Q Linden	good morning!
[7:38]	Q Linden	what's up today?
[7:39]	Ricken Flow	just waking up at the moment, My mission this week is to find out what the Lindens do, well the ones that have office hours.
[7:39]	Ricken Flow	and you are up first :-)
[7:40]	Q Linden	heh
[7:40]	Q Linden	that's what I get for being east coast
[7:40]	Ricken Flow	haha nothing wrong with being first!!
[7:41]	Q Linden	ok, sorry, I was being distracted there
[7:41]	Q Linden	now I'm here
[7:41]	Ricken Flow	no problem, you are at work!!
[7:41]	Q Linden	anyway, you want to hear about my job?
[7:41]	Ricken Flow	yes, please
[7:42]	Q Linden	I'm a software developer here at LL
[7:42]	Q Linden	Been on staff about 6 months
[7:42]	Q Linden	Former game developer
[7:42]	Q Linden	Now I focus on two things, primarily
[7:42]	Q Linden	Rearchitecting the viewer to enable us to take it to the next level in terms of user experience and technical capabilities
[7:43]	Q Linden	and focusing on open source so that all that development takes place in public and can leverage the open source community more effectively
[7:43]	Q Linden	Are you a developer?
[7:44]	Ricken Flow	no not yet, I am in college online to become a Technical Writer, so I am sure at some point I will need to know something about software development.
[7:45]	Q Linden	excellent. you might want to talk to Jeremy Linden at his office hours. He's a tech writer who works out of the same office as me sometimes.
[7:45]	Q Linden	oh, I should mention that I intend to post the transcript of this talk, unless you have some objection
[7:45]	Ricken Flow	I have no objecion.
[7:45]	Q Linden	Thanks
[7:46]	Q Linden	My first job out of college was as a tech writer
[7:46]	Ricken Flow	Yes, I sent a note to Jeremy, I did a search on tech writing and his name showed up. I have his office hours later on in the week.
[7:47]	Q Linden	He and Jon post on our main SL blog from time to time
[7:47]	Q Linden	I think it's weekly
[7:47]	Q Linden	You might want to check that out: blog.secondlife.com
[7:48]	Ricken Flow	How did you like Tech Writing?
[7:49]	Ricken Flow	yes thats how i found that they held office hours its not listed on the calender, I read a recent article of theirs.
[7:49]	Q Linden	I liked it. It was sort of accidental, really. I have always considered myself a writer, just not as the thing I wanted to do full time. I got the job sort of accidentally.
[7:49]	Q Linden	I had been applying for jobs as a hardware engineer
[7:49]	Q Linden	And an enterprising headhunter offered to help me find a job. He rewrote my resume to make it look like i was a tech writer (because I'd included all the docs I'd written for other work)
[7:50]	Q Linden	I got an interview that way without realizing what job I was applying for. They hired me.
[7:50]	Q Linden	I later moved on to what I really wanted to do, which was engineering, but I've always written things too. I've co-written a couple of books
[7:51]	Q Linden	It's a good career if you're good at understanding things and organizing them so others can understand.
[7:52]	Ricken Flow	I love writing normally it has been poetry and short stories. I was enrolled in college with my major being Business Administration then I took a Technical Writing course and knew I had to switch.
[7:53]	Q Linden	Cool. You'll be more valuable if you make sure you understand the basics of the tools used these days to do technical publishing -- HTML, various image editors, web site techniques, etc.
[7:54]	Q Linden	Don't get too hung up on being an expert in any one tool, because the tools change over time
[7:54]	Ricken Flow	I am teaching myself XML at the moment and learning Visio
[7:54]	Q Linden	Excellent. THe other thing is -- just write, every day if you can.
[7:54]	Q Linden	Start a blog and commit to updating it at least 5 days a week
[7:54]	Q Linden	Practice is key
[7:56]	Ricken Flow	Hmmm, I never thought about starting a blog but it would help with writing and lessons on making things clear.
[7:56]	Q Linden	Definitely...it's also a place to experiment with formatting and tools
[7:56]	Q Linden	I mean, a diary is as good as a blog, but I think it's valuable to publish it.
[7:57]	Q Linden	The way you'll convince an employer to hire you is to have a portfolio, so save everything you write
[7:59]	Ricken Flow	I have everything from school. Getting ready to create me a simple website with my current work.
[7:59]	Q Linden	Excellent
[7:59]	Ricken Flow	do you still maintain a portfolio or website I would love to see it!
[8:01]	Q Linden	Well...I have a web diary I wrote in 1996 while I lived in France, which still gets a lot of hits.
[8:01]	Q Linden	http://world.std.com/~kentq/frindex.htm
[8:02]	Q Linden	This was a project I worked on last year:
[8:02]	Q Linden	http://www.cognitoy.com/meltingpoint/
[8:02]	Q Linden	whoops, my database is a bit borked
[8:02]	Q Linden	that website needs attention
[8:02]	Q Linden	But now I have A Real Job
[8:03]	Ricken Flow	:-)
[8:03]	Q Linden	But what about you?
[8:03]	Q Linden	I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on SL
[8:03]	Q Linden	What works for you, what doesn't?
[8:04]	Ricken Flow	all in all in works good, a lot of times it will freeze on me sometimes it comes back and sometimes it crashes
[8:05]	Ricken Flow	it does it most of the time if i turn around quickly
[8:05]	Q Linden	Hmmmmm
[8:05]	Q Linden	Are you using the Windlight viewer?
[8:06]	Ricken Flow	I use both viewers but havent been on Windlight much.
[8:06]	Q Linden	I've heard of the "turn around quickly" problem before, but I thought it had been fixed. Trying to find the details.'
[8:07]	Ricken Flow	Also, another issue people have been having on a rare occasion is transporting.
[8:08]	Ricken Flow	A lot of times when we transport it brings up an error and we have to log out
[8:08]	Ricken Flow	and becoming invisible happens but that is rare
[8:09]	Q Linden	yeah, we're working hard on the teleport / region crossing issues
[8:09]	Q Linden	It's a surprisingly complicated problem
[8:09]	Q Linden	heh
[8:09]	Q Linden	hi, lindara
[8:10]	Ricken Flow	yes normally linden seems to work out things pretty quickly but this one seems to be taking a while
[8:10]	Q Linden	that's 'cause it's not "one" -- it's a whole raft of related issues.
[8:10]	Q Linden	when people move from region to region, all sorts of things happen
[8:11]	Q Linden	and it's sensitive to everything from server load to network glitches
[8:12]	Q Linden	But I'm confident we'll work it out -- I think people will see a big improvement in stability as we roll out the Havok 4 servers
[8:13]	Ricken Flow	Well I am happy with the service now i am sure there will still be people that complain they dont realize how complicated everything is.
[8:14]	Q Linden	Heh, thank you for that.
[8:15]	Q Linden	In the ideal world, we wouldn't have to explain how complicated it all is -- but in THIS world, it's a really hard problem.
[8:15]	Ricken Flow	My RL partner is an information architect and my mind hurts just looking at some of the things he does, LOL
[8:16]	Q Linden	Heh. Yeah...it's an interesting field.
[8:16]	Q Linden	Does he use SL too?
[8:17]	Ricken Flow	no, he watches me on it but he does not have an account.
[8:17]	Q Linden	Yeah...my wife has an account but doesn't use it much, pretty much only when I show her around.
[8:20]	Ricken Flow	Yes, some people love it and some don't have much interest but I think there is something here for everyone. You just have to find it.
[8:20]	Q Linden	Heh. I may quote you on that.
[8:21]	Q Linden	Will you excuse me? I have to bolt a few minutes early today.
[8:21]	Ricken Flow	sure no problem Q
[8:21]	Q Linden	Thanks! It was nice to meet you. Enjoy SL!
[8:21]	Ricken Flow	Thank you thanks for sharing!!!!