I always forget this, how to place a process in the background after it is already running

So you started this process in your terminal and it is taking a really long time to complete. You want that terminal back but it seems too late to kill the process and rerun it with the '&' to detach it into the background. Well there is hope. You can complete the following to place the process in the background and get your terminal back.

1. From the terminal in question, the one where you do not have a prompt because the application is still running, hit Ctrl-z (this signals the process to pause, but not stop, it can be picked up again right where it left off)
2. Then type 'jobs', if you only have one job on that terminal (you most likely do), then this stopped job will be '1'.
3. Then type 'bg 1' or whatever the jobs output was. Blamo, you have restarted your process into the background.
update:
4. If you logout of the terminal (pty) which launched the process, you are essentially orphaning the process. This will cause the process to zombie (which means the process will never end/die because it is waiting on a signal from the parent that it received its result code) when the process finally does end. Also, if the process outputs to stdout/stderr, then there will be no pty parent associated with it, so Linux will cleanup this process.
5. Thanks to Charles Jones for pointing out that you can issue a 'disown %1' where 1 is the job number.

Reimplementation is back on!

Exciting news over the past week. I have been given the opportunity to lead the IT department at the company I work for. This is good news because it gives me a chance to take the department in the direction I want (which includes updating the suite of tools.) I am excited about this because because Jade Meskill is finally free to fully devote his time to his own company, Integrum.

Looks like the reimplementation is off

Looks like the company that employs me has decided not to upgrade the software they use. This is unfortunate. I will need to reevaluate how this book might get written. There will be no empirical data to include for the domain of the book.

socialDrinkr

We just started on a new beer rating site. By we, I mean myself and 3 other people from work. Socialdrinkr is an experiment for those who love beer and would like to share their thoughts about the brews they love. We hope to make it useful for anyone. This is definitely a labor of love. All four of the developers have keen domain knowledge as well the knowledge to build the site. Alright time to get back hacking on socialdrinkr.

Writing a book!

I have been given a great opportunity to write a book. My employer is giving me the opportunity to implement enterprise-level software using Ruby on Rails. I am very fortunate to be a part of this plan. Rails is new and exciting, but needs to be proven. We need to prove concepts like REST (representational state transfer) can work running a multiple million dollar operation. We need to implement a distributed database. Most importantly, we need Rails to work with legacy systems and data. This book will be a practicum of sorts, chronically the entire process from bidding the system to the client through to the "maintenance phase".

Going to Rails Conf!

Excited = 'Yes'. I would really like to hear David A. Black speak as well as Dave Thomas (no not the Wendys guy), the Ruby guy. Myself and 6 others from Integrum will be going on May 16th. This should be a good time and a chance to show Integrum's colors in Planet Argon's backyard.

Living the dream

Sipping a latte
Typing with one hand smartly
Igoring those around me