Rants

Time for another re-invention I think… but what next?

TehGrumpyCoder — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:19:27 GMT

My own very recent personal experience mirrors this blog post:

Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age

So what do I do to deal with that? Looking at Vivek’s advice, item number 1 is to move into management … yikes… I firmly believe that if someone thought I had the chops to be a manager it would have happened 20 years ago… nobody wants to make me a boss, trust me :) besides which, I like coding!

Item 2 sucks… and goes totally against the American Dream of continually moving up… expect to earn less?

And Item 3 is even worse… the implication is that you may not even be able to code in later years… how about this quote: “To be writing code for a living when you’re 50, you will need to be a rock-star developer and be able to out-code the new kids on the block.” … so since I’m writing code for a living at age 62 – WTF does *that* mean?

I consider all ‘re-inventions’ to be versions.

You’re sort of in version 1.0 as you go through K-12, since not everyone goes to college, but if I consider V1.0 to be a continuation of education, then mine took a side-step when I played guitar for a living, drove a truck for a living, and spent 3 years in the Army (70-73)… I think those were probably V2.0 and then actually getting back to school and earning a B.S. and M.S. (Electrical Engineering) probably was V1.5, but we branched the codebase on that one.

So V3.0 was finally hitting the working world as a hardware engineer in January of ‘77. I always did software, so switching completely to software in ‘81 was V4.0 That began yet another progression of Assembler, Pascal, C, then Windows and C++, then I broke out of the large company corporate world for the 3rd time in ‘95 and went with smaller companies doing Windows coding, call that V4.5 since it was still part of the progression.

But then one of the common problems happened… I was happy, doing good stuff, being productive, getting accolades and improving my chops, but I was still doing win32 desktop while all the young guys were learning .NET and the web.

Blam… I find myself out of work in 2005, and I have to very quickly churn out Me V5.0 to support .NET web database apps. This version went out fast… no Unit Tests, no QA, just get the version out the door, so although I’m doing the work, my knowledge is only “work deep”.

But I’m feeling pretty good as I’m hitting my stride on that one… I’m doing WPF/E then Silverlight (all on the side), get MVP (4 times so far), but what I’m doing all day is .NET web database code out to Oracle, Oracle Stored Procs, and MS Access still as a hold-over from when Me V5.0 was released.

Blam… now I find myself not out of work, but out of *that* work and I’m sort of at a loss as to what V6.0 is… or is it V5.5? … I’m too young to be V.Retired.

My company has some design documents they expect me to review while waiting for an embedded C contract to open up… them: “do you know C?” me wondering WTF… “…well, I’ve done C# for 5 years although there’s a guy downtown will swear I don’t know it (reference the post last week about my interview). I did C++ for 10 years prior to that, and oh yeah… so 15 years ago I did a stint in C for a couple years, so yeah… I know C” … embedded C… I’ve been doing UI since 1981… now reference the article at the top of the page.

Is that the ‘suck it up’ point? is V6.0 really sucking up the fact that I’m going to maybe finish off this career by strapping on the WABAC machine and writing embedded C? because how long could I really do that before I wouldn’t be able to get a job doing .NET stuff anymore … but that may be rhetoric based on that last interview anyway.

In some respects I feel my blog has taken up space that could have been filled by really learning more, but at the same time, it’s taken on a life of it’s own and is almost like a 2nd job. I don’t want to abandon that and all the readers, yet there’s only so many hours in the day… and speaking of that, I’ll be driving farther now.

Friday I walked past the courtyard at my client’s facility and there were a couple guys out there drinking coffee and smoking and talking on a break. I thought it would be nice to have a job like that… one that you knew you could work for 30 years and then pack it in… but then I realized the flaw in that whole concept is that I’m not like that… I want to learn new stuff, and keep learning… and that’s what got me into this whole Revolting Development.

Silverlight, WP7, Lightswitch, MVVM, UnitTesting, and on and on… it’s a never-ending stream of knowledge and information. You either pick one and hope you can ride it for as long as you need, or you keep chasing it all and try to hang on. You pays your dime, you takes your chances… or maybe as B.B. King sings “Nobody loves you but your mama, and she might be jivin’ too” … or maybe it’s too late on a Saturday night at the end of a really crappy 2 week run…

But I do know one sure thing… on Monday morning I’ll be driving about 40 miles to an office I don’t know wherethehellitis… to be doing ihavenoclue… or forhowlongitwilllast… and that worries me.

Professional Insult

TehGrumpyCoder — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:29:06 GMT

I’ve worked at the same client for 5 years. I’ve had a really good relationship with the two managers I interface with regularly. Unfortunately, during this ‘dial-down’ situation we’re in, I find myself around the edges of a manager that within days of my arrival in 2005 proved to be someone I had no respect for.

Unless my company pulls a rabbit out of a hat, Friday will probably be my last day, and I can already see the writing on the wall.

His right-hand ‘man’ mandated that the company PC in my cubicle will be transferred to it’s Monday destination on Wednesday of this week. It’s quieter where I sit, and out of the traffic area associated with his folks, and makes no sense. I’m told that having it over there will ‘ensure that nothing is broken before I leave on Friday’ … in other words somehow having me and the PC over there will make sure I don’t tank the software.

They’re also pushing pretty hard on one of the people replacing me to get the code into their version control system ASAP.

There’s some things that just rub me the wrong way and making assumptions that I will do something unprofessional is one.

I’m also expecting a ‘surprise’ perp-walk out of the building shortly after lunch on Friday rather than wait until quitting time.

When shit like this happens, I always assume that the guy mandating it assumes everyone is just like him.

So I’m going in early tomorrow, and when he and his right-hand man show up, I’m going to suggest we just start the dance then…

What a place…

Another attempt at interviewing... sigh...

TehGrumpyCoder — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:35:43 GMT

Well... I should have known better than to try to interview for a new job, but it was a Windows Phone gig... and could have been a career-extender.

Not to even think about the crap that's going on at work right now, this would be a sweet deal.

But... I don't interview well. I've proved that to myself and others multiple times. I work on .NET 2.0 web database software connected to Oracle, Oracle Stored Procs, and Microsoft Access 8 or 9 hours a day. The stuff's not tricky by any means, it's mostly a sort-of DBMS to the data populated by other processes.

So, I don't know the tricky shit about C# or .NET. This is 93 webforms a lot of which were there when I inherited the job and I just don't need all that to do this work. So even though I'm programming C#/.NET most of the day, you can play stump-the-band with me quite easily.

However, how many devs interviewing for a Windows Phone gig know how to build a dynamic query in an Oracle Stored Proc, get the results in an output cursor and then manipulate that into a DataSet that you can bind to a control, huh? huh? ... oh well...

So... I got past the phone interview this time, got all the way to a face-to-face with two guys late on a Friday. Both were very nice. The first is quite a good liar (in the nicest way)... he actually had me convinced while I was there that it was ok that I didn't know much. The second one kept saying "no worries" sort of like you'd tell your kid "no worries, just try again 'CAT, CAT' ... what makes the 'Tuh' sound?"

They validated my parking stub, so at least there was that. Sort of like losing the old Space Quest game and getting the screen that says "Thanks for playing, as usual you've been a real pant-load"

If you think about it, and I *did* mention this to them yesterday... at my age, being able to actually get another job is tricky, so I would not put myself at risk of being out of work unless I thought I could produce the work required, and I can.

I suppose the fat lady actually hasn't sung on this yet, but I swear I can hear her clearing the phlem out of her throat as I type...

Since I mentioned it above, I may as well say what's going on at work... I'm the only .NET dev that works for my company, servicing this contract at my client's facility. It's a big lumbering government outfit. Their customer for this gig is actually paying the freight, and is a couple of the acronym-named government agencies.

Like all large companies, someone got a wild hair and decided they wanted to do something and ran with it. In this case, the finance department decided to get rid of all contractors. That includes me even though the only thing the company covers for me is a crappy chair, a warm room to sit in, a very nice PC, one crappy monitor, and one very nice monitor.

Someone outside the department I work for mandated that I be gone and gutted the hours out of the purchase order... to the point that I came within 1/2 hour of being gone last Tuesday at 4:30 when I got a 'stay of execution' to continue through the 27th. So I have been training my replacements.. yes that is plural.

5 years ago when I walked into the building, a certain gentleman (and I use the term very loosely) told his devs to not support me when I needed assistance in finding information about Manufacturing data coming from a segment of Oracle that I do not have direct access to.

Karma came full circle, jumped up on his desk, and took a nice warm dump about a week ago because he was the lucky winner that got tagged with supporting this project that not only didn't fail without his support, but has flourished. So they have me talking to 3 of his people... one that studied .NET in school, one that may or may not do the Access work because none of them have Access experience, and one that is to do the database work even though the type of things I've asked them questions on (under the covers) over the years, they haven't known the answers to anyway.

It's bad news for the project and the many people that use it because in my opinion it's going to wither away from lack of support.

And me... on the 30th I show up at the office that I haven't been to since October 26th of 2008, and I know for a fact they have no .NET work ... so I'm thinking the plan is for me to work on some embedded C even though I've been doing user interface work for the last 33-1/2 years. I suppose I might also get tagged to help the guys at the other building review design documents... that would be 'fun'. My boss is an ex military colonel and believes the KFC thing about parts-is-parts, so we're all just pluggable entities... I'm a 'programmer', so hey, assign him there.

Honestly, I have no clue what I'm going to do if I really am assigned one of those two jobs... since I don't interview for shit, I may end up the only Silverlight MVP that's working the door at Wal*Mart.

Most Unprofessional Workplace

TehGrumpyCoder — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:08:02 GMT

I've worked lots of places in lots of roles: Delivery truck driver, Boilermaker, antenna rigger, Professional Musician, Electronic Technician, Electrical Engineer, and for most of my career: Software Turkey.

I want to say this large company is the most unprofessional place I've ever worked, but then I think about other jobs such as TTI that stiffed us all for 10 months salary -- or had us work 2-1/2 years at 66% however you want to look at it, or maybe NeoPlanet with a cast from a bad sitcom running the show, I could go on, but I digress (as usual).

So maybe this place isn't the *most* unprofessional, but the personnel rank up there.

I'm in a small room off a factory. There are 3 managerial offices, and 36 common-folk of various skill-sets in a variety of single to quad cubicles. No matter where you sit though, because of the layout and location, you've got a hard wall as one wall of your cubicle.

Because of that hard wall, everything echoes. I get off the phone, and the guy in the next cubicle makes a comment in response to my phone conversation... I hate that it can be heard and I hate that they do that!

These people have no problem yelling from cube to cube to carry on running conversations some of which are actually work-related. There's a lady two cubes away that talks so loud I can clearly hear every phone conversation she has... all work-related but still...

Then the one in the next cubicle must have been raised on a farm because there's only one volume setting: LOUD... "HEY MARGE, CAN I GET IN FOR A QUICK APPOINTMENT AFTER WORK TONIGHT?" ... sigh

Also that cube is the 'party cube' so that's where all the candy, cake, donuts, and leftovers sits. Anything MzLoud brings in has to have a verbal recipe associated with it at least 10 times during the day, and of course at volume.

I've had running conversations over the top of my cube from people in the next one on each side.

The weird thing is... the boss sits with an open door closer to this whole fiasco than me.

So I wear a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones, and crank up Kenny Burrell, Herb Ellis, Wes Montgomery, or Jimmy Smith to the point I can't hear the racket... what the heck, I already have a hearing loss from playing guitar.

Perfect End to a Bad Day

TehGrumpyCoder — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:44:50 GMT

Yesterday's post about A Bad Day at Work actually had an addendum to it.

There were apparently a bunch of guys on ice skates last night competing in some sport way the hell and gone over on the other side of the valley, and enough people couldn't live without seeing them that they had all major arteries heading west honked. I mean honked... the traffic guy reported the 101 had 16 miles of backup... yikes.

Since I worked downtown for a number of years, my fallback is to cut across the city on surface streets to get to one of my old 'haunts' and just drive it home from there. Of course with the 101 backed up, then I17 would logically be as well, so I kept the news on rather than my Zune and heard where the bad stuff was going North. I popped out on the freeway about 7 miles south of my exit.

Got to the exit which is about a mile from the house without killing or maiming me or anyone else. Waited patiently at the light in the inside lane to make a left and go under the freeway proceeding West. The light changed, I had full green, I started through and whoa... I've got someone in a little rat car crossing my bow!

A little explanation... I drive a 3/4 ton pickup with a V-10, extended cab and shell on the back. It's not jacked up, but it sits up pretty good and is longer than any parking place I've ever tried to put it into. I consider this truck to be the consolation prize for paying uninsured motorist coverage for 45 years and having Pilar Martinez totally destroy a 3/4 ton Silverado on March 1, 2007 by plowing into me at traffic speed while I was stopped at a light. If you pay for uninsured motorist coverage, ask your insurance agent *exactly* what that means... I bet it's different than what you think it means. But I digress, sorry...

So here I am with a car that is shorter from top to road than the hood on my truck, and the driver thought it would be safe to run a red light and see if they could get past me before I got into the lane. The right side of my front bumper was almost into the driver's window when I hit the brakes and wheeled it left. Fortunately for all involved, I saw it soon enough, and pulled into the 2nd lane for making a left to go back South. I looked in my mirror, signalled a move, then moved over behind the yuck in the rat car.

I then punched it, and the future hood ornament and I both made it through the next light. I pulled alongside to let her know that she was DEFINITELY Number 1 in my book, and it's a middle-age woman looking at me with a "sorry, it was an accident" show of pouty face and arms held up. Tough $hit lady... that may have worked when you were 18, but it's not working anymore, and it wasn't an accident... you ran a freakin' red light and almost got yourself killed.

That just about put a bow on the day... I was home later than usual, pissed off about work stuff, pissed off at traffic, and now that. I ate dinner, watched a little TV, and was asleep about 9:30 exhausted.

Hope today is better.

A Bad Day at Work

TehGrumpyCoder — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:47:34 GMT

There's lots of ways of having a bad day at work... I suppose for many people, just being *at* work makes it a bad day, but I happen to be one of those people that found a way to do something I like for a living.

I've always said "if you're not having fun, what's the point?" ... on the latest Zune podcast, they were interviewing someone from the WP7 team and he said ~~they're~~ their (sigh) mantra is "It's not done until it's fun" ... I like that too.

But, even when you're doing what you like for a living, it can get tedious. There were times that I didn't look forward to going out and playing guitar on a Friday or Saturday night, and some nights I was looking at my watch just waiting for it to be over.

Well, that was today... like Steve Martin in "The Jerk" ... the first hour was like a regular hour, but then the rest of the morning was like a day, and the afternoon has been like a week.

I've got a list of stuff I need to get into my head, and it's tough when the highest technology you have during 9 hours of your day is .NET 2.0 and you can only run what IT installed.

I get wrapped around the power take-off reading something and dearly want to write some code to try, but with the state of technology here, it's like trying to teach jazz chords to someone that showed up for their lesson with that stupid plastic guitar from Guitar Hero.

I tried to watch a training video... downloaded it zipped so maybe it wouldn't be noticed like it might if I streamed it. Then nothing on this machine would play the video... dang!

Well, if someone doesn't take me out on the drive tonight or back in tomorrow, maybe it'll be a better day... or maybe I'll d/l a bunch of training videos in a different format, or bring in a decent viewer, or download them to my Zune maybe... that would work.

I suppose at age 61 there are worse things than feeling stifled... for instance, so far I've lived 2 years longer than my father... but at the same time, he's the one that pointed out that in my first letter home from Boot Camp "He's complaining, he's fine"... guess he had my number :)

I think he'd appreciate "Teh Grumpy Coder"

Back-To-Work-Itis

TehGrumpyCoder — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:54:15 GMT

Got a bad case of "Return-to-work-itis" going here after breathing air of a different blend for a week.

It's only quarter to 9 and already I've got the headset cranked because motor-mouth in the next cubicle can't constrain herself.

The self-important drivers in the HOV lane, the idiot that wouldn't turn into what is clearly a turn lane built to let people get off the 101 onto McDowell easily, the guard that inspected my bag because I don't have an employee badge -- these are a few of my 'unfavorite' things so far today.

"My Favorite Things" ... typically a Christmas song, but what a great jazz chart that can be... played that with a small group in '67 at University of Illinois... the piano player was awesome... he could play everydamninstrument in the group as well as we could! <-- that had nothing to do with this post, just a freebie

I know where the IT department tracking files live on this box, and yesterday I noticed they actually tried to install Silverlight 3... really! ... I was impressed, but I also noticed that it failed because I've got the public Silverlight 4 beta on here. Surprised I haven't heard about that yet, I'm sure it's sitting in a report on someone's desk.

Last week there were employees running all over the place with notebooks open, sitting down in open areas and coding. Sharing information via social networks of all sorts. In general collaborating and being productive.

This week I'm back to "oh no you don't"... the only portable device like that has to be owned by the company, heaven forbid you bring in a personal one. Social Networking... WTF is that? and collaboration only exists within the silo you're a part of.

#GetYourAssBackToWork

Dear Health Net, thanks for Nothing

TehGrumpyCoder — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:50:24 GMT

All this healthcare 'reform' talk scares the living shit out of me because the corporations do such a crappy job that why should I expect it to get better if the government gets involved?

Appropriately a week and a bit before Valentine's Day, I got a 'love note' from Health Net yesterday. Sort of like the Dear John letter where they guy tells his ex girlfriend that he wrote her name and phone number in 27 men's rooms over the weekend. But instead of writing my name and phone number somewhere, the Health Net assholes let some low-life walk out of their facility with a hard disk with my name, address, social security number, and health-care information on it!

But... since it was "just scanned images", they figured the risk wasn't that great, so they didn't bother to tell me for 9 months. And to show how munificent they are, they are proving me with a $10/month credit monitoring service for 2 years... Maybe they should have taken a couple monts of that money and invested in an internal drive, or a lock on the door, or a security guard with cajones. It pisses me off that Health Net believes my identity is only worth $240 and that they don't need to let me know about the problem for 9 months. I mean, you can actually fabricate an entire human being in that amount of time!

I have to jump through hoops to get information from the insurance company... and I have all sorts of laws and regulations I have to follow, but WTF are they doing? Nothing... so thanks for nothing Health Net... you sucked when I had you as a provider, and you apparently haven't changed.

A reminder why I don't work for a large corporation...

TehGrumpyCoder — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:42:59 GMT

I don't go to many meetings, and that's actually a good thing.

But yesterday I got roped into one hosted by the erstwhile IT department at my client's facility. They are in the last 6 months of probably a year project surrounding a $3Million dollar upgrade to what I consider a DBMS tool.

Yeah... that wasn't a typo... and the 80s are calling wanting this sucker back too, at least the old one. No field validation so data I get propogated into the part of Oracle I have access to is all honked because the people in the factory type whatevertheydamnwellplease and the 'tool' says "cool, thanks!"

So we're sitting there and the guy heading the meeting logs into the workstation in the conference room, and runs whatever tool it is to get to the spreadsheet he wants to open, and nothing looked odd to me, but he's fumbling all around trying to figure out how to use Excel because, surprise! ... the machine has Office 2007 on it... and he's never seen it before.

And consequently I had to sit there and listen to them all bitchandmoan about how Microsoft changes things "all the time" and "I hate this", etc.... when the fact is they're for the first time using a tool that is 3 weeks shy of being 3 years old... in technology years, that's a generation!

And... he's one of the two in charge of this $3Million dollar roll-out... trying to figure out what SCHEMA CHANGES the company has made... sheesh!

Thanks for inviting me to the meeting, guys... you've once again proved to me with your 'wisdom' why I don't work directly for your company, and why I have always worked either independent or for small companies. The corporate mentality of 'silos' and spending all day working hard to protect your 'turf' just drives me insane.

Or maybe I was already!

Morning rant - Slacker Students and HOV Violators

TehGrumpyCoder — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:00:00 GMT

Maybe I shouldn't have been up til 12:30 coding last night, because things are pissing me off this morning.

I check in with my class on the morning of the last day (today) and the one student that is a self-proclaimed "experienced programmer" has yet to interact with his team on the paper due at midnight tonight. Maybe he's spending all his time hand-compiling the Week 6 program, because I don't believe he's run the compiler yet on anything. That was obvious in Week 5 when it wouldn't compile, and we're talking *simple* programs in C.

If he plans on playing the system and taking credit for a team paper he didn't contribute to, he should have read MY syallabus. I modify the standard UOP one and add in this disclaimer interleaved with the boilerplate from the syllabus builder: "However, I reserve the right to report different grades for different team members if I see a substantial imbalance in the level of effort put forth." I have no problem giving someone a zero for their zero contribution... so we'll see.

Then there was the a--hole that pulled into the carpool lane in front of me this morning ... hey spanky... that cardboard box on your front seat doesn't count as a passenger unless you blow her up! ... and the reason I was riding your axx was because you were doing 55 in the carpool lane solo where the speedlimit is 65... honestly, you don't have to hold your speed at your IQ... really!

I really think ADOT should be proud of what they've constructed on the 101. I only wish I could make the designers drive it every day with me. There is absolutely no enforcement that I have seen of the carpool lane. People like that mental midget this morning drive in the diamond lane without a care in the world. Or the blonde in the little white car last Friday using the diamond lane like a passing lane. Why not? I drive the 101 a total of about 1-1/2 hours a day and I've NEVER seen a cop pick anyone off for driving solo. When I'm driving by myself, I bet there are 50 cars pass me in the carpool lane that are solo. And yeah that 25 year-old Toyota truck with a ladder hanging out the back is NOT a mixed-fuel vehicle, so don't bring that up!

And one other thing about the genius HOV design... going West on the 101 it's always been a bottleneck where they cleverly have the 51 end up in a single lane of about 1/2 mile of cars having to merge into 3 lanes that's trying to do the speedlimit, but now add to that merriment the fact that those of us that are carpooling have to *somehow* merge into that freakin' mess just before the 51... so there's some rocket scientist involved in that design that I'd like to give a round of applause to... or make him drive the 101 West every night. Half my commute is spent between the bottleneck at the 51 and the house ... and that's about 1/4 of the distance... sigh!

How about enforcing the carpool lane? I found this site: HOV Violation Fines, and if that's right, $354 X 50 would be $17700 (at least) in the first day especially for a cash-strapped state, plus numb-nuts from this morning would get 3 points on his license.

Well, the Excedrin is kicking in, so gotta get some work done...