A Cajun-Asian View

"A line of proven crappy code is worth 10 lines of clean unproven code." - Bob at the Daily WTF.

Just something I need to keep in mind while working on my current project at the office.

Ever had one of those days where the last thing you want to do after working all day on a computer at the office is to go home, get on a computer, and type out a blog post?

I think I had that month...

After 28 years of existing on this Earth, I can now finally say that I've handled a firearm. A friend and I went to the nearby indoor range (+1 Eyes Bleeding Warning: Gratuitous use of the blink tag!). He brought his .22 rifle that he got from his father-in-law along with two boxes of ammo for it, and we rented a 9mm Glock (Most likely the Glock 17) and purchased a box for it. Turns out that my friend had never shot a handgun either, so that was a new experience for both of us.

I actually did it. On Thursday, I got all of my equipment together and went out to the local ice rink to play some pickup ice hockey for the first time in a year and a half when I injured my shoulder as a result of playing (Impingement syndrome was the diagnosis from my doctor). I've been itching to play again for nearly a year now, but the combination of wanting to nurse my shoulder to 100% plus life cutting in (job change, girlfriend, etc.) made that rather difficult. Plus I wanted to go out the public skating sessions on a regular basis and get some exercise back instead of starting up hockey cold (like I did three years ago when I sprained my ankle during that pickup).

I guess it's just the signs of aging.

Got an electric guitar from a friend for pretty cheap, so here's my small collection of guitars!

Yeah, both are beginners guitars, though I've had the Yamaha Eterna EF-10 acoustic (top one in the picture) since 1995 and played it on-and-off through-out the years. That acoustic will just not die; It's been dropped, bumped into things, and generally abused and ignored by me, but it always shrugs it off with only the rather rare minor chip here and there. And I've always enjoyed the sound it produces.

The Fender Squier Bullet electric is also a beginner's guitar, and according to Wikipedia, made in 1984 in Japan. It seems to be in very good condition for it to be 23 years old; it was either rarely played or very well taken care of. It is my first electric (and well, only the second guitar that I owned), and still getting used it it. I'm not as comfortable on it as I am with my acoustic, but I feel that way on just about any electric guitar I try out. I'll probably get used to it as I play on it more.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." -- Steve Jobs, June 12, 2005

Like or hate the man, but you have to admit that Steve Jobs gave a great commencement speech on June 12, 2005.

One good thing about having clean lines of responsibility between different developers in a small company like early on in my previous job is that you're entirely responsible for your own code, so there's nobody else that will come in and make changes without you knowing it. When I was first hired on as a developer/IT support staff at my previous company, green with a Computer Science diploma in the spring of 2001, it was only my boss and I that handled the IT and computer needs of a 50-person company. As the company grew to around 150 people towards the end of my employment there the IT staff responsibilities grew exponentially, and we eventually started hiring more people to help pad out our needs. By the end of my employment there, the IT department had added on two people, one who could do some programming in Access Basic, but primarily did reports and tech support for the users, and another who was going to be largely what my old role was (Administration and Developer).