Jason Copenhaver

Why do I have this website? Mostly for my own benefit. I started the company list back when I was looking for a job in the area. I liked it, so I made it a website so I could easily get the information and I could direct my friends to it. Same thing with the books lists. If I write it down on my website I can always get to it. And since I spend a lot of time on the computer I’m more likely to update it on the website.

A recent comment made a jest about questioning my identity. To let everyone know, I really am Jason Copenhaver. I don’t feel a need to hide my identity, but for those that wish to post comments here I don’t mind if they do.

The comment also asked about commenting on the companies I have listed here. Please do! If you have information about these companies please post it. If you know of another local company that should be listed email me the info and I will post it.

I do not have an offical policy about comments so I’ll just leave it at this:

As the owner I retain control over everything that is posted here. If I find a comment that is inappropriate I will ask that it be edited or removed. I will do my best to make sure that this is only done for ‘inapropriate’ comments and not just ones that I don’t agree with. But at the same time each user of the site is liable for their own comments.

(IANAL so I don’t know if I am covering my butt or not, but at this point I doubt it matters)

P.S. You should be able to figure out my email address from my username and the toplevel domain name of the site.

So in my quest to update all of our GUI apps at work with the new XP Style theme support I need to put the newest MS SDK in the include path. This caused problems with our apps that used msxml.dll (these apps are kind of old). So I just got done changing them all to use the new msxml4.dll and found that some, seemingly useful, types are confined to the MSXML2 namespace. IXML*Ptr, which are COM Safe Pointer wrapped types. Why did they keep these in the MSXML2 namespace? If they took everything else out of the MSXML namespace and stopped exporting it why leaves these in a different namespace? Oh well, it’s done now.

When I left Acterna I did it because I had an opportunity at a new job. Acterna was my first and only job up to this point. I was getting up everyday not wanting to go to work. Being just barely productive enough at work so as not to raise suspicion. After reading this article at Scott Berkun’s website I think I might have just been burned out. The path I took might not have been the best one. A one year stint at a large company and then 5 months at a startup that I really did dread every day. Now thought, I’m back at Acterna and look forward to everyday at work. I’m enjoying the projects I’m working on and communicating what I want even more. I think I am also on the lookout for burnout this time around. When I get stuck at work now I get up and walk around, stop thinking about the problem. I still have a hard time finding music that affects me, but I’ll just keep looking.

Well, I probably can’t help with that. But I have my initial list of Tech companies in the area online so maybe they can help you. I plan on going through and updating names and what not, maybe even making some comments about the companies. Such as the fact that Acterna (my employer) just got bought by JDS Uniphase.

Next I need to import my book reviews. I was kind of liking Alexandria, but now I don’t have to do the export thing, and they will be much easier to edit and arrange here.

Well, I finally broke down and installed Drupal for my personal site. Sor far I am impressed with it. I haven’t bothered to read much documentation, so it took me longer to figure out how to get things the way I want. But I think this is going to serve my needs just fine. It looks better than anything I would have done and it will let me continue to have my book review, my company list, and even a blog. Not that I intend to actually blog, but who knows.. maybe I will…