updating from Rails 1.2.3 to 2.0.1

So I decided during Christmas downtime to update the site from Rails 1.2.3 to 2.0.1
Wow talk about biting off more than I could chew.

But basically to chronicle the event, I'm using this post to help pay forward any help that I've received in the past.

Quick fixes:
undefined method `extract_options_from_args!' for #
does not work anymore in 2.0.x
instead, replace those lines that have:
options = extract_options_from_args!(args)

with
options = args.extract_options!


Acts_as_Authenticated
change the redirect_to_url to redirect_to

---
other useful links:
http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2007/12/7/rails-2-0-final-released-summary-of-features
http://blog.reciprocallattice.com/2007/12/auto-completion-and-in-place-editor.html
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2007/12/17/rails-2-0-2-some-new-defaults-and-a-few-fixes

Murders and Executions

In the comedy noir "American Psycho", Christian Bale's character Patrick Bateman answers a girl at a club when asked what he does.


"I'm a VP at so and so company."
"What do you do?"
"I'm into Murders and Executions."
"Oh, how do you like it?"
"Like what?"
"Like the work, a lot of my friends in Mergers and Acquisitions hate it..."


In my humble view, startups do a lot of M&E, we murder ideas and execute on the ones that escape our grasp.  At least that's how it is at KaZuum.  It's a sort of natural selection process to find good ideas, kill them off with small prototype tests, basic common sense, convenience surveys, simple market tests, or user stickiness, before attempting to execute on them.

Let's face it, with a 3 guy shop, there's only 504 hours a week available for us to really execute on any particular idea.  It's in our best interest to try to give any idea that crosses our way a dirt nap.

Sure we might be overreacting, sure we might not be working on full 100% complete definite knowledge, and we might kill something that would have been awesome if we had let it grow a bit, but it's a high velocity environment out there, we don't really have that option.  

We're lucky the idea of Craigslist + Ebay + (Insert Social Network of your Choice) = KaZuum is easy to wrap your brain around.  It's easy to explain, and people get it.  Which is great to sell, but it's sorta like...having your first baby.

Everyone who has their first baby is bombarded with advice from everyone else who believe they're qualified to give advice - they were at one point a baby, and obviously know exactly what to do.
Take this eagerness to expound on idea, and add Founders Fanaticism to it, where you think your idea is the greatest thing since sliced bread (actually we believe KaZuum to be BETTER than sliced bread).  We know this because we have actual focus group data confirming this. That we commissioned. With pizza and beer. Lots of beer. But add that zeal to take your idea and make it super-cool, L33T, with LOLCATZ dancing on the boxes, and a satellite uplink to a moon-base uplink. (Think Dilberty Pointy Haired)

We have a ton of ideas that we come up with all the time, most of which end up being shot in the head. Of course you can't be thin skinned about these things, and I think it's one of the greatest assets any founder can have - the ability to tap into iterative creativity like a fire hose and keep those ideas coming. And it's not with a callous brutality that we kill ideas here, we foster an environment that encourages new ideas, no matter how outlandish, strange, or weird. Every idea gets its chance in the Octagon, so to speak, to make its validity and relevance known to us through analysis and decision processing.

In the galaxy of entrepreneurial ideas out there, you're going to find many that will be the same or along the same lines. The differing factors are whether or not they've murdered the same ideas that you have, and how they're executing on the ones they've allowed to live.

My thoughts on executions are for another post.

Time management Techniques

http://wishful.fileburst.com/creativetime.pdf

Mark McGuinness wrote about some of the time management techniques (with my answers in italics):

1. Creating organization, structure, discipline, and habit in one’s daily routine.
Ideally, a structured, organized routine is very nice to have, but interruptions can seriously disrupt a person’s creativity, and a person who is used to a routine will suffer a lot more in an unstructured environment.

2. Prioritizing work that is important but not urgent, instead of spending bulk of time on work that is important and urgent. This is the only way to progress toward your own goals and dreams instead of reacting to what other people throw at you.
Doing work that is important and not urgent. Well, that explains why I am writing this blog rather than working on our new Marketing Requirement Document, which I feel is pretty important and urgent.

3. Pick your most creative time of the day and work in an environment that is ideal for creatively, this could be in the morning before the daily interruptions comes to play.
Usually my most creative time is between 6am to 10pm, 1pm to 5pm, 6pm to 10pm, and 11pm to 2am. In other word, I have a roughly 4 hours worth of battery life after each meals where I am most happy and creative. Then again, I eat TV dinner so I am low maintenance.

4. Avoid the “Sisyphus effect” of endless to-do lists—create a limited list of things to do everyday, so you are more motivated to complete them.
Sisyphus, who was condemned in ancient Greek Underworld with a never-ending task of pushing rock up a hill and watching it roll back down. That might seem boring, at least it is a manual job that doesn’t require too much creativity, and it is nice to be able to live forever. It might seem like a never-ending list of answering emails, but at least you build your network and connection that way. If something that is repetitive and does not contribute toward your goals, why would you be doing them?

5. Do it tomorrow—avoid the endless to-do list, segment tasks like answering email each day, and finish answering a day worth of email at a time rather than trying to answer all the emails at once.
Do it tomorrow? Why not work overtime and do it today? I am sorry, but I was the type of student who tries to guess what will be the math homework 2 weeks from today and try to finish them. Most of the time nowadays though, I cannot do everything I want to do in one day, and I break down my tasks into tiny segments. If miraculous I actually get what I want to do done, I will start (even just write a few line) on tomorrow’s work.

6. Get things off mind—setup “bucket” to put into information, demands, and commitment so you don’t forget them. In-tray, email box, iGTD software, answer phones, text messages to self,
Get things off mind—I try to have at least a record of stuff that needs to be done, if not in more than one location. I also have 3 alarm clocks that set off at 5 minutes intervals in case I don’t get up on time; I am a bit paranoid in that regard.

7. Review commitments—review what is needed to be done before tackling the tasks, and think about how to approach your work. Step back to see the big picture.
I don’t always write my commitments down, unless there are too many to memorize. Against large number of tasks, I do what a good test taker would do, quickly finish up the simple problems that I can do (also helps me to build confidence) while brainstorming for ideas of how to deal with the more difficult problems.

pizza vs banquet frozen dinners

Which of these is worse for you?

that was our lunch debate today - cofounder Alex was eating a banquet frozen dinner, other cofounder Alex eating into the official pizza of the Silicon Valley Startup - Red Baron Frozen Pizza.

Not that we can't appreciate great food, but after just launching OPEN BETA yesterday we're hard at work cracking down on bugs.

So you can find trusted, local services in peace and quiet.

Wow when will people learn?! How Not to make invites, part 2

You figure after the most recent opt-out/in debacle with Facebook's Beacon that people would have learned to respect others' privacy by now.

Obviously that's not true across the social networking scene (I don't dare call it an industry).

Here's the TOS from a site which sent me 2 spam emails this morning:

By registering for Yaari and agreeing to the Terms of Use, you
authorize Yaari to send an email notification to all the contacts
listed in the address book of the email address you provide during
registration. The email will notify your friends that you have
registered for Yaari and will encourage them to register for the site.
Yaari will never store your email password or login to your email
account without your consent. If you do not want Yaari to send an
email notification to your email contacts, do not register for Yaari.

and the emails -------

  ************** wants you to join Yaari!

Is ************** your friend?

Yes, ************** is my friend!      No, ************** isn't my friend.

Please respond or ************** might think you said no :(

Thanks,
The Yaari Team         

Notice:

You have to sign up for both accounts to make them not your friend.

WTF, how annoying/shady/evil is this?

Facebook's $15B valuation

Wow, what can I say.  

I'm of the mindset where you should take what you can, when you can, and obviously Facebook at this time is the web 2.0 darling.  But still, the massive valuation that they received from this deal sets them up for huge expectations.  A downround after this could seriously destroy their credibility.  Not that they really need it with the hundreds of millions of dollars they've received from MSFT as well as other hedge funds.

But with Google hiring up all the fresh talent in the valley, I wonder if they'll be able to actually make good on this investment.  Microsoft's throw in is just a smidge of what they're capable of, it's a great deal for them as they receive dedicated advertisement rates.  Especially granted they're going to be forecasting $150M in revenues.  A 100x revenue valuation on a company that's yet to even post numbers of a profit definitely smells of a bubble to me.

I would hope and dream to have such a huge valuation for KaZuum, but hey, let's be realistic here, we don't have 43M users and a fast growth rate.  Yet. :)

But regardless, in true pirate fashion I herald Facebook - Take what you can, Give nothing back!

How NOT to get new users

Trouble viewing this e-mail - click here

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
has invited you as a friend on Quechup...
...the social networking platform sweeping the globe

Click here to accept XXXXXX's invite

You can use Quechup to meet new people, catch up with old friends, maintain a blog, share videos & photos, chat with other members, play games, and more. It's no wonder Quechup is fast becoming 'The Social Networking site to be on'.

Join W and his friends today:

http://quechup.com/join.php/gwMjU%3D

You received this because W X XXXXXXXXXXXknows and agreed to invite you. You will only receive one invite from XXXXXXXXXXX. Quechup will not spam or sell your email address - privacy policy. © Quechup 2007.
Click here if you do not wish to receive any more emails from Quechup

------------
So basically quechup goes and scans through your email box and then sends an email out to everyone with this information, as if the end user agreed to invite you through their box.

Every website out there has a net amount of social goodwill, the culmination of its positive value and negative drawbacks. In the case of Quechup, this outrageous violation of user trust definitely sinks it in my mind. In fact, it tips it past the inflection point that separates it from being a good website to one of malicious value. Which is why my friend blogged to her friends that she's deleting her user account and focusing her points on how violated she feels by their attempts to spam her friends.

Sort of a good news travels fast, bad news travels faster.

RoR forums with Savage Beast

Part of the fun of developing in RoR is the great community of coders out there. I'm not a serious ruby hacker- I'm more of the lazy/pragmatic type. Thank goodness there's people out there like Jodi at http://the-soup.net/. Jodi's created a plugin version of Josh Grobel and Rick Olson's excellent Beast Forum, called Savage Beast, which promises to let us plug it into KaZuum and give a place for people to complain, comment about our services.

Jodi's excellent writeup is located here, I'll be following it.

Look for an update soon.

oish.

Wow what a busy weekend.

First, my brother in law gets married and I have the honor of DJ'ing his wedding. Everything went well, the bride did not kill me for playing one too many trance tracks, and in fact, she I think she rather enjoyed my transitions from Gloria Estefan's Conga to Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous Girl. But definitely weddings can be a joy and a curse to those throwing them. Having gone through the whole process myself, I can really say that getting married is one of those big hoops that you really just put yourself through in life.

The basest alternative is going down to your local judge and having him do it, and besides that the sky's the limit. You really get to plan out and make it the best experience that you want it to be, it's your chance (rather, it's the bride's chance) to make it her day of days. I'm glad everything turned out well for him and that they're having a blast in Hawaii.

But if you've ever looked for vendors for wedding stuff, the methodologies can be quite tedious and time consuming. When my wife and I started planning our wedding, we relied heavily on friends and family to help give pointers as to who to talk to, which shops to choose, from invitations, to decoration, to chair covers, and musicians. Of course, being the cost conscious and detail oriented woman she is, she managed to get us within budget and within what I consider a splendid ceremony. If we didn't have so much help, so many wedding TV shows, and other resources, I daresay I'd be typing this from a different relationship standpoint.

The second gala was a wonderful baby shower thrown for my wife by some of the awesome girls at our church. Once again I realized what a blessing it is to have so many supportive people helping us celebrate this special time in our lives.

As another week of beta continues, I'm just glad for all these timeouts that remind me why we're trying to do what we're doing here- to make everyone's lives a little bit less stressful, and helping people stop to smell the roses along the way.

First post first post!

TAKE THAT SUCKAS.

oh. You're here. Ahem.

I came to the realization that it was better to have this than try to force a blog to integrated with our RoR environment. Not that we didn't want one, but that we had so many other things to prioritize over this. And we're not great fans of wheel reinvention. Unless it includes spinnahz.

This is the blog here on out for the KaZuum team, we hope to entertain you with our witty musings and messages so you can get to know us and we can hopefully get to know you through commentary. We'll post latest developments and new features of the site here, along with any issues and problems we might have along the way.

So check this place as often as you can, the Google/Blogger team has done a great job of incorporating this sort of thing, so subscribing to the feed will also help keep you informed.

James, our resident codemonkey, er, developer, has never ever kept a blog before, so all this is rather new to him. Feel free to spice up his life.

-alex