Hacker Bits, April 2016

idea of how to implement it so
I decided that would be what I
would work on.
Lean Domain Search’s predecessor — November 2010
to head out on the deployment
knowing that the sites were in
good shape. I also decided not
to work on them at all during
the deployment so that they
wouldn’t distract me from my
job.
A small deployment
side project
During the pre-deployment
training one of our instructors
suggested we pick up a hobby
or something else to work on
during downtime. For example,
some officers use downtime
during their deployments to take
online classes towards a master’s
degree. I wasn’t interested
in that, but decided that I would
try to work on a small software
project when I had time.
Back in 2009 I had another
domain search tool called Domain
Pigeon. I was just getting
started with web development
so I couldn’t figure out at the
time how to do what I really
wanted to do, which was to
allow users to enter a keyword
and pair the keyword with lots
of other terms to generate and
quickly check the availability of
quality domains. Instead, I built
Domain Pigeon, a service that
simply listed interesting available
.com domains.
I eventually shut Domain
Pigeon down to focus on other
projects, but the original idea
stuck in the back of my head. By
the time my deployment came
around, I had a pretty good
My daily schedule
I wound up getting assigned to
lead a team that oversaw communications
(network, radio,
satellite, etc) for the aviation
unit that supported special operations
forces in Iraq.
We worked 12-hour days
every day for the entire deployment
including weekends. I need
roughly 8-9 hours of sleep to
function at full capacity which
left me with about 3-4 hours
at the end of each day to have
a meal, exercise, shower, chat
with my wife, hang out with my
coworkers, unwind and maybe
work on my side project. In
practice, that usually was about
45 minutes per day. Sometimes
more, but often not at all.
Fortunately, there were never
any major issues with my other
projects during the deployment.
A few small bugs surfaced, but
nothing that impacted many
users. I still had access to my
email so I could respond to support
requests when I had time.
And because I was working on
the new domain name generator
locally on my laptop, I could
work on it without worrying that
there would be issues in production.
Piggy-backing on the popular
lean startup movement as
well as the name for my existing
Lean Designs tool, I decided to
call the new domain name generator
Lean Domain Search.
Due to the drawdown of
US forces in Iraq at the end of
2011, I wound up coming home
after 5 months instead of six
— in January 2012 instead of
February 2012 like originally
planned. I had two weeks of
52 hacker bits