English Major Meets Software

Random events, are not what occur. Or more that what randomness we attribute to the events of our lives is the willingness to accept culpability. Without a single doubt we are universally damned to the perturbed state of disavowing order.

That said, and only partially reasonable. I'm going to try to begin. At least try to describe what is a possible version of how I arrived where I am going.

Go:

Stirring. Making small incremental passes at waking. Flirting with day. These passive phrases cannot describe the apprehension and anger with which I greet the day. These quiet marks, do not color the halls of my dissatisfaction, the correct putrid hue of abject apathy.

I am not so much the weaker version of an earlier self, but at this point a have not the strength to make the neccessary preparations for failure. Instead I opt for existence.

Shaking the curve. Or so it might seem to be. When focused, energy or thought can edge around the bends of dastardly limitation. In a pure sense the volt - ampre - jules compilation of force of energy defines what force is present, and what that force is capable of doing. But the idea of shaking the curve implies that, including the known bounds of a force, there is the ability to excede its static and kenetic limitations.

This is crucial at times, in thinking oneself past the end of tired, or past the end of fear, failure and despair. Because it needs to be possible to exceed limits, it must be possible. As most will attest, despite some set of opposing (limiting) circumstance, there has been at least on circumstance in their life where they have out-bounded their current arena.

There have been times when I was sure that I could not possibly create the ideal. But then again, I do believe that I can shake the curve.

Moving, always moving... If I could write like my mind moves and have the words pour so freely as my apprehension at being, then I could be done with this already, and have written it moved to the next crisis of banality.

As a new father I look forward to the first time I can take my son to see "No Exit" and have him, like any sensible 5 year old gripe that it was weird and bad. But then have him, when he is mired in the depths of his own collusion at 20 smile at the simple perfection of self made damnation.

I don't have time really to think about the things that I should. I do not meditate on the efficacy of my self pity. Nor have I conjugated the verb of my apathy. I am but able to relish the mirth that is my smugness.

Walking makes the mind rally. In the darkest hours, the mind is lit by only the continuous motion of one foot before the other. This monotony is the soothing tonic. It is laudanum. Walking is the perception of progress, the figurative separation of oneself from one's own problems.

Moving with words, movement, that is what is necessary.. The continuation of self through multi-axially measured expansion.

That's somewhat like asking why is it that everything good for you tastes so bad, and hoping that cake will suddenly be the epitome of a healthy food. Relativism dominates with questions like this. I can in no way assert that I am the most deserving, the most needing, I can only suggest, that like the average attendee I believe that the PDC would be good for me.

I am no great .Net ideologue as I spend as much time cursing the "finesse points" of VS.Net as I do praising it when things work perfectly. And I did laugh at the recent set of MSDN blogs claiming that the Xml perf test results for next->.Net are any sort of vindication, it's a reasonably accepted practice to view vindication as the process of having proved wrong and initial false assumption or claim, and the fact the next->.Net is better that 1.1 in the Xml area doesn't vindicate, but it does lead me back to my answer to the question of why PDC + me is not that bad of a pairing.

The promise of what could be is what could be is what first “got me” about software. After few years of twizzling digits, I gained employ in a company that was poking their head around the corner into the wide, wide world of AI. My head was filled with wonderful dreams of Neural Nets, Ontologies, self tuning n-Dimensional data sets and the power to learn, predict and better the world.

Needless to say, while all this occurred, the practical realities of commercial software fell somewhat short of my imagination, but I was hooked. I could see where this was going. Kinks like bad source data, inconsistent training models and other short term hiccups aside, the ability to realize real world learning data models was stunningly captivating.

So...? PDC? Well my work since then, with .Net has left me with the same sort of feeling. When I first read Dino Esposito's "Applied XML Programming for .Net," I was so exited to see how I could apply the concepts to the world of high-volume data exchange in which I was thoroughly wrapped. Throw in a little WSE2 for local message management publish some web services and rip through huge flat files with hybrid XML readers, use XPATH + XmlSerialization + XSD validation, it was all so much cleaner and more traceable than the previous world of stored procedures, .bat files, custom .dlls... ah the beauty of .Net... Except, he-he, well it worked fine for nice little Xml files, but as soon as the 50MB+++ Xml files came in., ack, good night DX servers.

But that's the beauty of it. The .Net Framework made a pretty nice showing, maybe it let me down sometimes, but the ideas were all there, and that let me look at things in a whole new way. Now data could be my friend, not my burden. And that rolls me back to PDC. Next->.Net will still probably let me down sometimes, and it will probably wow me much more than 1.1, but most importantly it will let me see even more possibilities, have more friends, and fewer burdens. That's what PDC represents for me, and why I think I just might like being there.

Aside from that, I can’t really say that free is a bad price, now can I?

I know that it’s mostly that I’m new to this, but I’m constantly amazed at how seriously people take the chatter of the net. Not that this thread is all that imperative, but there’s definitely an emotion or two being stirred.

What I don’t yet get is how this [I mean blogging] matters. Sure there’s the marketing aspect, both of self, and company, but in threads like this when there’s an attempt to have a serious dialogue, it doesn’t quite work, at least not for me.

I have to admit my problem starts with phones, I hate them, with a devastating passion. I hate them, because the lack the intimacy of an in person conversation. When I’m in the middle of a persuasive argument, I need to be able to read the body language of my intended audience to know if I’m being effective.

That same problem seems to strike me as a critical flaw in the world of blogging. Most people, myself included, are only average writers. That means conveying complex emotions like Irony, sarcasm, guilt, frustration… and so on, in an effectual manner often eludes us.

The entire discourse between Shelly and Ethan [top link about], may well have been the fallout of a written communication failure. To be sure, just the state of in person communication, does not necessarily insure a successful transaction, but I think it’s far easier to come close for most people.

Getting back to the blogging matters [?!], question that I would like to resolve for myself, I wonder if blogging is meant to { Share, Connect, Explain, Derive, Extrapolate, Enhance, Extend, Proliferate, Pontificate, Postulate, Add Visceral Heart, Confuscate, Roil, Em- or Sym-pathize, …} And if it is meant to do any of the above, can it do it successfully.

It’s not that I question the efficacy of blogging, rather, I wonder if it is really possible for the average person to adopt a new form of communication, and use with the same degree of skill and lucidity as those forms of communication they already posses. Are we kidding ourselves when we look at blogs as a representation of a good dialogue?

I get a kick out realizing my own ignorance. Like this
little snippet of information. There are a lot of things in this world that I just don't get, but then again, that's what keeps me going, the fact that I still have so much to learn.

Keeping that in mind, why is it that some of the things that are so hard to learn, are the simplest. I know that's rhetorical, and I know its stupid to mull it over, because its not new ground, and there's not much to be gained by deconstructing the obvious, but then again maybe that's the rub it in it all. That not learning, is purely the subjugate of the obvious.

Thinking in code; more specifically .Net AppDomains, it reads like this. AppDomains, are very aware of the underlying processes that support their actions, but are entirely unable to know what the underlying processes are doing. It's obvious to the AppDomain that it is not alone in its computation, but in reality only it's internal constituents are truely accessible.

Just a thought, but sometimes a feel like an AppDomain myself....

Okay,

New noise, been a while, but I've been doing a lot of figuring. I'm closing in on fatherhood, and meanwhile embroiled in the continual redefinition of self via career.

The where am I going, what am I doing, and why do I spend much timing craping out the BS necessary to be employed.

I've learned to possibly valuable things. If you don't value your work, eventually nobody else will, and challenge is relative.

I'm not a good software eng, by any means, sure I can write code, solve basic problems, sometimes, when I'm lucky... innovate. But the vast majority of what I end of doing is DataEntry++; That's the reality of the job market + my background [no degree + no certs] + the needs of customers.

What I struggle most with is the concept of knowing of what, I am capable. How do we really know when a job is the right level of challeging vs. in over our head...

Being that I'm passively back on the market, I really don't know how to pick a good opportunity. Sure there's potential financial returns, there's name-plate status, there's security... but what if I really want to do something. What if I really want to push the bounds of my ability, and help make something new... creative and most importantly actually useful.

How do I look at a job opportunity and see that this is right for me, here's where I can define, what for me is challenging.

On that note... I'm trying to move lower. I've spent some time recently working on a dynamic MSIL proxy generator. I know, I know there are dozens of perfectly viable frameworks out there, but it was a great chance for me to peer under the hood and to be frank I enjoyed the more "procedural" like language.

It may be true that there is not a dream job for everyone, but seriously, I'm not ready to accept that. Somewhere along the line I'm going to get[make] that chance to find out just what challenging means to me.