If you've been following along at home, you probably remember that I've been having ever so much fun with my well-travelled iBook and Apple Repair. At OSCON last week a few people pulled be aside (separately) and told me I should've said something--it would've been taken care of. Which, had I know it was going to be six weeks, I would've.
Well... it's happening again. This time the case screws are carrying a charge when the thing's plugged in, which means I've got something shorting across the case ground. I assume someone tightened some screws down too tightly or crimped a cable or something, but at this point I don't trust this beast for work. Since I do eventually learn from my mistakes, I did the sensible thing and got in touch with one of the folks who very generously offered help at OSCON.
As such, I'd like to very publicly thank George Papa, George Ruhana, and Danny Rosenthal of Peak6 (A Chicago-based equity options market-making firm, one of the largest in the US, to pull the official quote from the website) who've set me up with a Powerbook to replace the iBook. They're heavy Perl 5 users. Quoth George Papa:
We are a smallish trading/market making company (~70 people) doing some very interesting and challenging things. We have had good success using perl5 as a first class application language/environment at the heart of a project to (almost) fully automate the data processing, decision making and messaging necessary to trade and make markets in the entire listed equity options marketplace (options on the 2,000 largest US public companies) in a very unforgiving real time setting are looking forward to using parrot/perl6 as well.I worked, briefly, with George Papa when I did my time at Cantor Fitzgerald (I was starting as he was ending) and he's a good guy. Dunno how many folks who read this trade equity options, but if you do... look these folks up.
Thanks guys--thanks a lot.
Posted by Dan at August 6, 2004 02:07 PM | TrackBack (1)I had the "pleasure" of having an ibook broken like that two years ago. after nearly a year and 4 trys of repairing that thing I traded it in and bought a new one half a year later.
A tip I got from a friend recently: Sometimes the cable that connects the keyboard with the case rips, letting small amounts of electricity float through the case.
Posted by: sb at August 7, 2004 09:21 AMI think the keyboard and case are the only things left on this that haven't been replaced. Makes sense that they're going too. :)
Posted by: Dan at August 7, 2004 09:58 AMOne of the largest in the United States or smallish?
Which is it?
:P
Posted by: eewrw at August 9, 2004 03:02 PMLargest in terms of volume, smallish in number of employees.
Posted by: Dan at August 9, 2004 03:11 PMIt was suprising to me when I started my new job how much of the worlds financial information goes through Perl at some point.
Posted by: perigrin at August 10, 2004 06:43 PM