I remember playing music with friends on a particular night many years ago when we really hit a moment-- "in the pocket" as a drummer friend liked to call it. More than one moment was spent wondering: "am I playing the music, or is the music playing me?" After the jam session I asked everybody the same question and they all knew precisely the same moment I was thinking of. To me, this is a kind of confirmation that there is an internal voice that, when we are open to it, we gladly follow. The places it takes us to rarely disappoint because this voice is located someplace close to our deepest-felt needs. This is why I try every creative thing possible that I can manage because I'm sure the voice and creativity sit right next to each other. Hopefully this doesn't seem creepy. It would be very wrong to scare you off from listening to your own inner voice. That Id of yours has a lot to tell you and it's not all about personal gratification, either. The same voice ... [More]

It came to me all at once, on the way to the train station tonight. My bigger difficulty with my recent attempts at writing shorts stories was really missing something. That is, you gotta have a need to say something. When you’re only writing for writing’s sake, then it’s going to be really hard to finish anything. So what’s your voice telling you to write? Don’t be surprised to find it’s not a heavily serious topic—there’s a ton of psychobabble out there that aggrandizes the inner voice but it’s really missing the point. Your voice isn’t there to tell you what the mysteries of the universe are, it’s there to tell you to go look for the mysteries. Writing skills only take over once you find something worth describing. Once writing skill takes over as the reason for writing, then the creative engine winds down and no work is done. I just bet this is a topic I’ve covered a few months ago—I think I’m not paying attention to my own lessons. Now, when I stop and look it’s pretty clea... [More]

Today wasn’t so bad. I didn’t get pestered with questions but having five hours of meetings really makes it hard for people to seek you out for third-degree coder-training. With a calm day like this, there’s bound to be waves coming by the end of the week… I think I’ve got a “incompetent” card or two left to play that-- if played at the right time—will prevent me from getting somebody else’s work dumped on my desk on Friday afternoon. I could work from home on Friday too, you know: “out of sight, out of mind”. These are the things I have to think about to avoid doing extra work. The real shame is when the right people are involved in the project when it starts, “crunch time” would happen earlier, instead of 2 days before deadline. Planning is the best chance for success. We never take a chance.

I am interrupted on average about three times an hour between 9am and 5pm. Nearly all of these questions begin with “how do I…” You know, I’m not the smartest person you’re ever going to meet—not by a longshot—but I am willing to learn… Why does everyone else get a free pass? Why do they ask me to do stuff instead of learning it themselves? I’ve been working in IT steadily for the past decade and I can definitely tell you less than half the staff I’ve ever met actually belong in IT. Why not? Well, if you’re not motivated to learn new things on your own, software programming is not the field for you. I look around at the blogs done by other programmers and see them making really cool stuff in their spare time. These people don’t have a senior dev sitting around at home, they answer their own questions. I’m not showing up to work every day to be at somebody else’s convenience. Really, who would want that job? Want to talk about different approaches to improve database performance... [More]

Today, I saw the most awful thing done with code that I have seen in a long time, maybe ever! No need to go into details, but the analogy to this blunder was like packing a Humvee in your luggage because you wanted bring a clock on your business trip. In a manner of speaking, the developer went long way around. Then he did it in the most sloppy way forcing the app to waste resources and never clean up those resource making the app unstable to the point where it would be useless within a few minutes of use. Doing it the hard way was one thing, but building the solution with the wrong components was just careless. I have to say I really don’t care for showing developers the fundamentals like polymorphism or explaining the Observer pattern. On the other hand, I’m usually glad to send them in the right direction IF they come to me and demonstrate a little more thought than: “this looks difficult, I might as well ask someone else how to do it.” In hindsight, when the developer was ... [More]

Now some might find my use of Twitter a bit on the odd side. I rarely make conversation or status updates. I chose Twitter as an ideal place to dump those tiny little ideas that zip through your head while you’re doing other things. Those ideas are probably because of doing other things. Like I know when I’ve grasped a concept tucked away in a novel because I hear it in my head. Then I dutifully report it to the Twittersphere. Mostly I don’t expect people to “get it”—they see the idea without the context. But there’s no chance of anyone getting it if I don’t post it, so I do and expect nothing in reply. On the other hand, I really like it when people use Twitter for real updates: you’re having a tough day at work? Yeah, me too. Have an opinion on Watchmen? Hey, I want to know. Twittermatic Friendships Unfortunately, there are some people out these would seem to dredge their way through Twitter watching a selection of key words, then they automatically follow the sources of thes... [More]

Let’s see, I started the day with a nice hot cup of coffee and a novel (still Quicksilver—halfway through now) but that didn’t really fill my sails, so I went for a haircut and then home to get my camera and make good use of the nice weather by walking Ching Trail. The attempts to take outdoor photos at mid-day reminded me why I found sessions at the ROM so fun—you can’t take photos in the outdoors in the early afternoon. I mean, it was wash-out city everywhere I pointed the camera. Ah, someday I’ll remember these lessons I seem to have taught myself a hundred times over. Hang on, who really wants to hear this sort of stuff? I’m really looking forward to one of those days where I feel really inspired—they do happen but it’s not like they ever happen on schedule or anything. Until the inspiration happens everything else shows you what a rut you’re in. Maybe the inspiration comes from breaking out of the rut. Yeah, that’s probably it. Now the question is: what does it take to bre... [More]

...I have crazy. You see, there is this myth that we can change software anytime we like. What happens when you commit yourself to one direction of effort is you tend to stay on that branch. Change -- even for the better-- usually comes at such a high cost to your business that you're better off keeping the status quo no matter how awful and limiting it may be. The pain of working with the old crappy stuff is still cheaper than taking the hit on the new and better stuff. You can try to convince people that its worth it to change, but those that make these kind of decisions only look at the bottom line: the smallest number wins. In the software side of the business we call this a monumental FAIL. Today is all "fail". One-hundred percent. Thorough and complete. Disappointment is too meek a notion to describe this.