Paul Tyma is my new frenemy.
It all started when my server crashed. I was trying to re-build it as quickly as possible, and fussing with apache, trying to get it working. I wasn’t familiar with Debian Linux, so it was tough going even though I’m very familiar with apache’s somewhat cryptic configuration file format. While I was looking at the server logs, I could see that my dearly departed resume was getting quite a bit of traffic. This was strange, as I hadn’t updated it or posted it to monster or anything. Well, I was using the combined log format, which includes the referer(yes, that’s spelled correctly), and all the hits to my resume came from this page. If you read the article (which has since been updated), I’m “Steve”, which isn’t a good thing.
So who was this guy mocking me? I did a little digging, and when I have detractors, I have detractors. Paul is the chief scientist at PreEmptive Solutions who make a Java bytecode obfuscator, which makes compiled Java code difficult to read. I also remembered Paul being mentioned a couple of times by Robert X. Cringely, who hosts a show on PBS and made the excellent documentary Triumph of the Nerds. So why would someone with such credentials blast me on his blog? Well, I did a bit of digging around the internet and my house, and Paul taught a Struts class at OfficeMax in early 2000. I’d been playing around with Struts since early 1999, and thought it was a huge improvement over what we were doing at the time, and suggested Struts training for all of our team members. Amazingly enough, management agreed and set up the training.
Paul was our trainer, and I remember him being very bright and knowledgeable. The training was conducted on Windows XP machines, and not knowing windows, I really had a hard time with the environment. Apparently this made an impression on Paul, since he wrote this rant about that. So it’s obvious that Paul holds me in low esteem, but what do I do about it? Being me, I grabbed the bull by the horns and sent him an email. To my surprise, he wrote back, said he was going to be in Cleveland the next week, and invited me to lunch. I accepted, telling him that I’d be the tall skinny guy with bright red hair and a huge chip on my shoulder (as I was described in his article).
We met for lunch, where he made great pains not to apologize, but he admitted that he failed to see the context of my quote. We talked about tech, Java, Microsoft and how terrible Cleveland is. It was a really great time, and I left feeling very good that I emailed him. A couple of days after we met, he amended his blog to go a little easier on me and we’ve been emailing back and forth ever since. He even invited me to New York for the weekend (I couldn’t go because it was too expensive, and he’s since moved). He has intentions of moving to San Francisco in the near future, which will be really cool, since I’ll already be there. It’ll be funny for two Cleveland boys to meet back up at the other end of the country.
So that’s the twisted story of my frenemy, Paul. It just goes to show you that you can make friends under the most interesting circumstances, even people that are ripping you on their blogs.
Oh, and one more thing: You’d think a guy with a PhD and a graphic designer wife would be able to re-size the pictures on his damn blog.