Renaissance Geek
To say that I wear many technological hats is an understatement. I’ve always known that to succeed in a company, you have to be willing to do anything that comes along. As I’ve been with my current employer more and more, I’ve come to inherit more hats than anyone else (other than, maybe, my boss.)
Last week (and continuing into this week) I’ve performed tasks that should be performed by:
- a software engineer (which is my title)
- a software architect
- a Linux system administrator/engineer
- a network engineer
- a web developer
- a multi-media artist
- a database administrator
- Windows technical support
- Linux technical support
- a technical writer
I’m not doing this because I’m the only person to do the job. There are plenty of other people on my team. However, I am most often the best choice for the job. I do it better than anyone else on my team. It takes me less time to do the actions, and they are (often) done right on the first attempt. There are even times when I am the only person that knows how to do the job, so I do it. When I realize that I’m the only person that knows how to do the job, I try to educate other members of my team, but their eyes glaze over when I get to step 3 of 22. They can’t grasp the level of technical detail necessary to do my job. They also don’t care enough about it to learn it, even if they had the capabilities.
Am I upset that I am the “go to guy” for all of these various and sundry activities? Nope. It’s job security. I know that if my company falls on economic hard times that I will probably be one of the people labeled as “indisposable”, and I’ll keep my job. I also offer much more expertise to my company than what they are paying me for. My boss is aware of this, and appreciates it. So long as he’s kept around, I’m sure to have a job.
Now, in the past, I’ve made myself indisposable, and it’s bitten me in the ass. It’s meant that I could not get promotions to other departments, transfers to other sections, and I’ve pretty much dug myself in a hole at a job. I won’t mind if that’s the case here. I really love what I’m doing. I like the people that I work with, and, above all else, I really love working for my boss. He’s a great guy! He knows how to do my job, and he understands when things go wrong and take a little longer than they might originally. I just have to up-front and honest with him when things go wrong, and I tell him how I’m going to correct the problem. He’s also very open, friendly, and personable. One of the best bosses that I’ve ever had. If he ever leaves the company, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Maybe stalk him until he hires me at his new job?
I know that a “Renaissance Man” is supposed to be equally versed in art and science, and that computers are mostly science. If you’ve ever worked for extensive periods in the technology business, you’ll understand that there is an art to the way things are done if they are done properly.
Share The Road
Yesterday when I was getting ready to leave, Kiara was already on her way to my office to pick up Shinto and me. She called a few minutes before I was shutting down to tell me that the roads in our area had been shut down for a bicycle race. This was about 5:30. I ask her where she could get to, and she told me that she could get to the intersection by my office, but not through it to my parking lot. I told her to hang out there, and Shinto and I would be down as soon as we could to meet her there.
We shut down our system, packed our stuff, and headed out. I met Shinto outside, and told him that we needed to walk around the building to the intersection. We got there, and I saw Kiara hanging out in the parking lot across the street, but her car was moving. I waved at her, but I didn’t think that she saw me. We decided to head down the road on foot to meet up with her at the entrance to the parking lot.
As we were crossing the street, several cars came by and tried to make various turns on the main street that feeds into our office complex. Race volunteers (none of them cops from what I could tell, at least, no uniforms) ran in front of the cars to make them stop. They were horribly rude, and yelling at everyone to tell them where they could and could not go. It was a total mess.
About the time we got to the entrance of the parking lot across the street, Kiara called me, and told me that she had managed to get into our office building’s parking lot. That’s when I told her where I was at, and she came to pick us up.
I see signs all the time telling me to “Share The Road” with bicyclists, but they seem totally unwilling to share the road with drivers. In the area of our office building, there are dozens (sometimes up to a 100) riders in huge groups riding around the roads. They clump together in huge groups, and most of the time they tend to run the red lights as if the rules of the road do not apply to them.
I’m thinking that it’s time that we take the roads back. I’m going to stop sharing the road with these arrogant bastards. I’m going to start crowding them, making no room for them, and generally being as ass towards them.
If I have to share, then so do they.
Shoveling Snow
I normally beg or bribe my neighbors to dig me out of the snow when it hits. Don’t worry, I plan on getting a snow blower some time this summer, so that I can fend for myself. The problem with this latest snow storm is that my neighbor with the large tractor hauled it off last week. I saw him driving down the road with it on a trailer, so I assume he was taking it in for repairs or something. I’m not sure, but he doesn’t have the tractor right now. My other neighbor with the smaller tractor with a snow blower is out of town right now, so he can’t come to my rescue either.
That means that I’m stuck shoveling snow in order to get Kiara’s car out of the garage in time for her cat show this weekend. My car (through a series of unfortunate decisions) is out of the garage, though. I did an hour of shoveling last night, and I managed to get a 10 foot wide, and 4 foot long channel started through the snow bank. The snow is about 2 feet high. Do the math and you’ll determine that I moved 80 cubic feet of snow in about an hour. That actually sounds kind of impressive. The downside to all of this is that I’m only about a third of the way through the snow bank.
It’s really warm today (current 63 degrees F), so I’m hoping that a good portion of the snow has melted off. Of course, it’s really heavy snow, and when it melts, it just gets heavier. I think it may be about the same amount of work to shovel partially melted snow as it is to shovel fresh snow. The volume of the snow may go down, but the density increases. All-in-all, it’s about the same amount of lifting effort once you’re done.
Maybe my out-of-town-neighbor will return sometime today, see our driveway, and be a nice enough fella to snow blow it before we get home. He’s done this in the past, and I’ve always appreciated it. I’ll appreciate it this time, if it happens.
Here’s to hoping that I don’t have to spend another two hours digging through the snow!
Nasty Storm
We had a nasty storm roll in last night. I really, really, really, really thought that we were done with this crap. Snow was bad enough that they have shut down the Interstate. I was actually stupid enough to try to get to work this morning, but they had shut down the roads already. I turned around to come home, but I didn’t make it back home. I got about half a mile from the house when I got stuck. Well, not really stuck, but I couldn’t make any more forward progress. I was about to give up when a nice young man came by in a large Jeep, and asked if I was going to make it. I told him that I wasn’t going to, and he offered me a ride home. I managed to get my car pulled over and out of the way, and this young man took me home.
I’ve tried to work from home, but I’ve failed miserably. We’ve had power failures here at the house, and my UPSs are shot. We’ve also had power failures at the office. Basically, if I’m online, then the office isn’t. If the office is online, then I’m not.
I think I’ve pretty resigned myself to doing documentation today, and probably tomorrow. It all depends on when the storm blows over…
Slave Mentality
While I was leaving the office yesterday evening, I happened to reach the door to the elevator lobby about 4 steps behind one of the people that clean the office. He was coming from the other direction, and had already opened the door when I rounded to corner to head to the door. I stopped to let him go through the door first since I was obviously behind him, and I motioned to the door with an open palm to indicate to him that he could go ahead of me. He looked down at the floor and mumbled in broken English, “No. You go. You here first.”
I was shocked that someone in this country, and in these times, could so totally defer to another person without one of them obviously holding a higher station in life (such as a military rank, or a CEO of a company, or a Senator/Representative, or the President, or something like that.) I wasn’t even to the door first. He was. I figured that if he opened the door before I came into view that I should at least be polite enough to allow him to go through the door that he opened.
I’m just a software engineer. I’m proud of what I have accomplished, and where I’m at in life, but that does not make be inherently better than the man that empties the trash in my office. There is no reason for them to defer to me in such a way, and I wish that they would look me in the eye, smile, and say (as best they can), “After you.”
Maybe their boss or manager has told them that they are not to fraternize with the people that work in the offices that they clean. I hope that’s not the case as I feel that everyone should treat (and be treated by) everyone as equals. We’re all human, after all.
While thinking about this on the way home from work, I realized that every single person that works for the building is like that. They hardly look at me, let alone make eye contact. They never talk to me even though I greet them first. It really makes me feel sorry for them that they are in a situation where they seem to be afraid of being fired for being nice to the people around them.
There is one exception. I don’t know his name, but I see one of the maintenance workers around all the time, and he’s very friendly and open. He always takes a moment or two to comment on the weather, ask how I’m doing, tell me to have a good weekend, and such like that. Little pleasantries that grease the wheels of human interaction. It’s really nothing special, but I like that kind of interaction with strangers. It’s not probing, in-depth, hard-hitting, or invasive. It’s just being friendly, and we need more of this in the world.
Slavery may be illegal, but the way some employers treat their employees, it is most certainly not dead.
I Know It’s Broken
We have a system here at work that saves data in a combination of a relational database, and some XML files. There are certain characters that SQL does not like, and there are certain characters that XML does not like either. Sure, you can make them like the characters, but you have to jump through some minor hoops for SQL, and some pretty major hoops for XML.
To solve the problem, we have told our users (who are trained, fairly intelligence, and mostly responsible) to never use these certain characters. Well, they’ve been trying to use those characters, and it’s hosing things up. We’ve retrained them over the past week, but they still keep doing.
Now I have one more thing on my plate: Add code to prevent them from submitting data with those characters. I’m getting a list of invalid characters from a manager, so that I can start coding. In the meantime, one my users decided on his own to go ahead and “test” the system by submitting a ton of these invalid characters to the system to see what would break. Yeah. Well…. he broke the system in some pretty hairy (and somewhat major) ways with his “testing” of known broken code.
He asked me to remove the bad data from the database and the XML. I looked at him like he was stupid (which he is proving to be), and he interpreted that as me trying to figure out how to fix the problem. I knew how to fix the problem, but I mainly contemplating how someone could be so fucking stupid.
I guess I need to work on my thousand yard stare some more.
Random Thoughts
Here are a few random thoughts that have popped in my head since Sunday morning:
Will we be having twins? They run in Kiara’s family, and I found out from my mom when I told her about the baby that her mom had twins (that died in infancy) and that my great-grandmother was a set of triplets. I didn’t know any of this before. I guess we’ll find out in the 6-8 week mark.
Maybe it’s the darker side of my psyche, but I hope nothing bad happens to Kiara during the whole process. While I want a child, I don’t want to “trade” Kiara for a newborn. If something happens, I’ll deal with it, but giving birth to a child is no small feat. I worry about these things.
Will I have a son or a daughter? I’m hoping for a son, but I’ll be just as happy with a daughter. I’m thinking that it will most likely be a son. My grandfather is 1 of 5 sons. My dad is 1 of 2 sons. My dad has 3 sons. My genetics seems to have a strong leaning towards boys. I guess we’ll find out around the 20th week.
Will my child have genetic problems? I’ll love any child that I have, but, like any parent, I hope for a healthy, happy, intelligent, caring, and wonderful child. If something less-than-perfect happens, I’ll adjust, and I’ll love the child just as if they were “perfect.” Then again, maybe that will be God’s vision of perfect for my child. We’ll have to find out.
I’d like to raise my child with some religious grounding. I’m not talking a Bible-thumping, God-fearing, Christ-is-all type religion. I want them to know that there is a God, that Jesus can be a source of wisdom, learning, love, and guidance. My child will get all of the science, evolution teachings, and other stuff like that in school. I want them to know and love God. That means finding a church, getting them baptized, and actually going on a regular basis. I’m hoping to find a small church. I don’t want to go to some big church that is more like a corporation than a House of God. I don’t have any religious friends, so I don’t have anyone to ask. I guess I’ll have to start “shopping around.”
Speaking of school, I think I want to home-school. We’re still years away from figuring that out, but it’s something to think about.
Will I raise a child that cures cancer?
Will I raise the next Ted Bundy?
Maybe my child will be the first human to step foot on Mars?
Names. Names. Names. We’ll need to know the sex as soon as possible. Every time we’ve gotten a new pet, it’s taken a few weeks to come up with a name. We can’t do that with a baby. I’d like to pick a name that means something to us. Like “Denise” as a middle name if it’s a girl after my little sister. If it’s a boy, I’d like “Luveal” to be his middle name after my grandfather. It’s something that we’ll have to work out. We’ll have about 20 weeks to figure out the name once we know the sex of the baby.
The due date is November 21st. Will we have snow around that time? Will we be able to get to the hospital when it comes time for the baby? We’ll have “Big Red” (a 1999 Chevy Suburban) by that time, so we’ll be able to handle most snowstorms unless it’s really bad.
Will my child be good at sports? Will he/she want to try?
I want to teach them chess, but I’m not going to push it on them. Maybe they’ll want to play and learn from me.
What kind of hobbies will my child have? Will I have the financial security to support them in all of their endeavors like my grandparents supported me through all of my “I’d like to try that” moments?
I bet my child will need braces. I needed braces, as did Kiara, and so did my father. I’m not worried about the cost, but kids can be cruel, and the jokes can be endless.
Speaking of the cruelty of children… Will my child be kind and generous or mean and spiteful? I’m going to do my best to instill in them a desire to help others, but I have this slight fear of failure. Maybe this fear of failure will help drive me to do the right things when necessary.
Godparents. Do we need godparents? What are godparents? How do we pick them? How do we ask them?
What happens to my child if both Kiara and I are killed before they are able to grow to adulthood? I assume we’ll set something up in our wills, but how do we pick the new guardians? How do we ask them? How do we pick one couple over another without hurting anyone’s feelings?
Speaking of a will, I guess it’s a good time to get one in order.
Saving money. We’ll need to save money for all sorts of things. I’m going to quit smoking for good. That will save me about $15 a week. I’m going to take that $15 a week, and put it in a jug for the child. What will I spend it on? Not really sure, but it will be there for them when they need it. It’s not enough for a college education, but it might be enough for a used car by the time they turn 16.
Will they share the love of animals that Kiara and I have? I hope so because the child is going to be stuck with sharing space with lots of cats and a few dogs. I’m sure that they’ll do just fine with them.
Aunts and Uncles. Kiara is an only child, and I only have three brothers left back in Texas. Our baby is really not going to know his/her uncles too well, but there is going to be a huge support team of friends here in town. I grew up around tons of friends of my mom and dad. I knew that they were not blood relatives, but they were like aunts and uncles to me. Our baby is going to have the same. I thought about listing everyone here, but I knew I would miss some people. I’m just looking forward to my child falling in love with all of the people in my life just like I love them.
How many cavities will they have as a child? I had my fair share, but I hope that their teeth are not going to be as bad as mine.
How many times will they run away from home? How far will they go before they decide to come back? Will I know about it?
What about sneaking out at night? I did it. I’m sure Kiara did it. Most people that I know did it. I know that they’ll do it, but I hope that they don’t get into too much trouble or danger while roaming the night.
What will they laugh at first?
What will be their first word?
I now have even more reason to live a good life, and I hope that they can be proud of me as their father. I’ll always love them, but I also want them to live a life that lets me brag about them to my friends until my friends get tired of hearing about my children.
How tall will they be?
What color will their hair be?
Will they look like me or Kiara?
What will their birthmark be? Where will it be?
What will they do for a living?
Will they go to college?
What kind of grades will they get? Will they take some weird math that they need help with, but it’s over my head on how to do it? Will I have to go back to school in order to properly help with homework?
If I have a son, will he want to run around, play sports, do Boy Scouts, and be active? Or will he want to sit in front of the TV and veg out?
Speaking of TV, it will not be the babysitter in our house.
As soon as we figure out the name, I need to get a domain name, and an email address setup for the baby. I’d like to email him/her my thoughts on him/her as he/she grows up. I think it would be interesting for him/her to read when he/she gets old enough.
If I have a daughter, will she also be active in the world? Will I be invited to participate in stuff like the Girl Scouts? I’d hate to be excluded from something as fun as that just because I’m the dad.
I enjoyed acting quite a bit when I was younger. Will they share this joy with me? Will they want to go to movies with me and enjoy them as much as I do? Of course, I’ll have to be more discerning about what movies I go to if I have a child with me. Most of them will probably be cartoons.
Speaking of cartoons, I guess I’ll have to get over my aversion to animation and start loving the world of computer and hand-drawn movies. I guess Kiara will now get her wish to start collecting Disney movies. I just hope that they continue their habit of re-releasing classic cartoons, so that our child can enjoy them. Maybe I’ll actually get to see the end of Bambi in the future without falling asleep. (I’ve seen Bambi about 5 times, and I’ve never made it to the end. I have no idea how it ends.)
Will Kiara’s folks (who are about retirement age) want to move to Colorado to be near their grandchild? I’m not sure how I feel about this. Sure, the extra help would be nice, and I like them well enough. I’m not sure I could handle seeing them every-other-day, though. If this does happen, I’ll adjust to it. Lots of changes in my life are coming, and this is just a small one.
How old should my child be when I have the sex talk? The drug talk? The talk about how to avoid certain people?
There is evil in the world. I want my child to be able to recognize it when they see it, and avoid it if possible. I have a friend from back in Texas that was not raised with this ability or skill. He’s been taken advantage of many times, and I feel sorry for him for this lack of his education. I hope to avoid this with my child, but I don’t want them to be paranoid, frightful of the world, or overly cautious. They need to love to live life without fear, but it needs to be tempered with a good dose of wariness.
What other questions will I have? I suppose they’ll come to me when they come.
Real Estate Investor
I was coming into work this morning, and I walked past this ancient, rusty, beat-up truck that had its bumpers held on with bailing wire, and several windows from its bed cover missing. It was a total disaster waiting to happen. The tires were even almost flat as well. I started to feel sympathy for the owner because I’ve driven cars that look like that in the past, but I saw a sign on the side of his truck that went something like this:
Looking for Real Estate Investor Apprentice
“Click a mouse, sell a house”
%$50% commission%
Call: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Typically an apprentice looks for a master to learn a trade from. If this guy is driving such a vehicle, then he is either incredibly frugal, or a dismal failure. Either way, I would not want to learn any kind of investment trade from him. Secondly, trying to flip real estate on the Internet is probably not the way to get rich quick. I just don’t see it happening, but I’m sure that someone, somewhere has done it. Lastly, is the commission 50%, or $50, or 50% of $50? Wow.
I’m thinking that this guy probably isn’t going to be getting many phone calls to his listed number because of the ramshackle state of his poor little truck.
Trunk Update
I got home last night as the sun was setting, and I decided to use what little light there was to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I spotted a small electrical switch in the latch mechanism. I wondered what it was for, so I flipped it to the other setting. I hit the button on my remote, and the latch opened! I closed the trunk, and hit the button again. The trunk opened! Yay! Was a simple thing. I’m really not sure why there is even a switch for such a thing. I’m not sure why anyone would want to turn this feature off unless they were totally paranoid. Perhaps this is why the seat releases are in the trunk. It allows you to throw valuables into the trunk, flip the switch, and no one can get into the trunk without a key. I suppose this could be useful, but I don’t think I’ll ever use that feature (on purpose.)
Presidential Race
A friend of mine on another message board started up a conversation about the 2008 presidential elections. Yeah. I know. It’s only March 2007, but I guess this is about the time that this shit starts to roll downhill. His post listed 24 people that have declared that they are running, or have expressed interest in running. I’m not sure how many of them are contenders, how many are serious, and how many are trying to just raise social issues by wasting everyone’s money and time.
I didn’t even look at the names on the list. I just counted them, and dismissed the entire list. I’m not going to spend time learning about 24 different people when only 2-4 of them will make it to the big dance, and, honestly, only 2 of them will really matter.
I’ve got a few vague opinions about a few of them, and very strong opinions against Hillary Clinton (but that’s another post.) I’m going to wait until next year when the herd has been culled before I spend time learning their platforms, opinions, ideas, goals, background, and other goodies.
