Wow, it’s been a while.

“The difference between a tolerable programmer and a great programmer is not how many programming languages they know, and it’s not whether they prefer Python or Java. It’s whether they can communicate their ideas. By persuading other people, they get leverage. By writing clear comments and technical specs, they let other programmers understand their code, which means other programmers can use and work with their code instead of rewriting it. Absent this, their code is worthless.”

While this article centers around software engineering, ineffective communication is a dysfunctional impediment not limited to the programming or technology realm, but to all businesses in every industry. Where ever humans have to effectively grasp, and convey conceptual knowledge, i.e., virtually every endeavor involving more than one individual working in coordination for some productive goal, a failure to do so effectively will cost time and money. In fields utilizing specialized knowledge of complex or intricate topics, poor communication can grind productivity to stagnation, but even more simple arenas such as taking a customer’s order at a fast food restaurant can impose drastic consequences on customer service, and inevitably the bottom line.

Seek out and support those individuals who share your values and can communicate, even simple ideas, in a clear and efficient manner - they are segues to productive achievement.

As part of a promotion at audible.com, several books are on sale including the unabridged version of Atlas Shrugged.

I highly recommend the audio book version. Not only has it proven to be a very convenient format for enjoying the story, but also a way to share the story with others. I keep the stack of 50 CD’s in a case that I leave in my car and occasionally will put on my desk at work. I’ve loaned it out on two separate occasions - both of which were facilitated by the format of the media.

To get this life-changing novel for $4.95 is a incredible value.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, I just realized that you must be a member to get the sale price. This fact was conveniently excluded from their add as well as the site. Still a great deal if you were to join for 3 months (minimum) @ $7.95/month, which would allow you three books at no additional charge plus the sale price on Atlas. Essentially, one could get 4 books for $28.80 total.

A potential answer for all the screams for fuel efficiency will likely never meet Americas highways.

Ford’s 2009 Fiesta ECOnetic goes on sale in November. But here’s the catch: Despite the car’s potential to transform Ford’s image and help it compete with Toyota Motor ™ and Honda Motor (HMC) in its home market, the company will sell the little fuel sipper only in Europe. “We know it’s an awesome vehicle,” says Ford America President Mark Fields. “But there are business reasons why we can’t sell it in the U.S.” The main one: The Fiesta ECOnetic runs on diesel.

………………..

Yet while half of all cars sold in Europe last year ran on diesel, the U.S. market remains relatively unfriendly to the fuel. Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline.

Other sources cite the tremendous costs and technical changes Ford would face trying to meet EPA approval. To put it in other terms - Ford can’t build and sell a product according to their terms, because the US Government violates property rights.

With the arrival of Fall, my favorite season, I’ve turned a new technical leaf.

My web hosting requirements have outgrown my shared environment of 6 years (who seems more concerned with marketing their carbon neutrality than offering competitive hosting value), so I started looking into options for a more performance oriented setup. After a good bit of research I decided to go with a pair of Linode 720 Virtual Private Servers (VPS). I’m now hosting several sites as well as facilitating quite a few web-based utilities on one production and another development oriented server.

Linode offers several tiers of hosting based on dedicated allotments of memory, disk space and bandwidth - ranging from $20/month for their smallest package to $160/month for a monster with 3GB of RAM and nearly 100GB of disc. In addition, they also offer an a la carte upgrade system where you can add even more memory, disk space, bandwidth or static IP’s. They offer 16 different Linux distributions to cater to those who prefer a particular variant.

The trade-off is the environments are unmanaged. They keep the power on, the net accessible and the disks from croaking - other than that, you’re on your own. The reality of assuming responsibility for security, configuration and backups can be intimidating at first, but anyone familiar with Linux and networking fundamentals can setup a fairly reliable and secure server, especially considering the wealth of online documentation and how-to information. I spent about a week migrating my sites over, setting up security, backup jobs, SSL keys/certs, Apache/MySQL/PHP configuration, DNS setup and testing.

The luxury of tweaking the LAMP stack for applications such as Drupal and Wordpress enables substantial performance gains - especially the former. My largest site, ResoNation was limping along sluggishly in the shared environment. The flexibility of custom configuration along with advanced caching optimizations cut page load times by ~75%.

I increased my monthly hosting bill by $30. For the extra money I upgraded from 4GB of disc space to 48GB, from 240GB of monthly transfer to 800GB, and I increased the performance of all sites involved significantly. Additionally, I now have a fully redundant source code repository, a development mirror of the production environment and plenty of on-site storage for media content. At the current loads I have more than enough hardware to host several additional sites.

If you’re looking to step up from the restrictions of a shared environment, you can checkout Linode’s offering with a 7 day trial. By the way, their sign up process, billing and setup processes are flawlessly executed. You can pay month to month and they prorate fees at signup. So far, this has been a completely positive experience and I highly recommend Linode VPS.

Black Friday is the newly hip name for the massive day-after-thanksgiving shopping frenzy in America. One of the single most lucrative days in our economy is an extravagant display of the remnants of our Capitalist economy. It’s a celebration of disposable-income and the unyielding willpower to dispose of it. This is a celebration of the true beauty of America - the ability, sanctity and results of individual thought and action.

Game consoles, HDTVs, and jeans from GAP — all trophies for nearly 145 million free individuals enjoying the fruits of their labor.

The origin of Black Friday comes from the shift to profitability during the holiday season, when retailers depart from the red into the glorious blackness of profit.

Please remember to celebrate two holidays this week. Thanksgiving, a time to reflect on those who mean the most to you, and Black Friday, a time to champion Capitalism and pump even more money into our thriving economy.