Snowflake vs bus

So we started the holidays with a bit of an off note.. My wife was on her way to work and was stopped a red light.   That is not an unfamiliar thing around Tampa but what followed was.  A public school bus was trying to make a u-turn to her left in a location that wasn't appropriate.  As my wife sat there, the rear of the bus swung toward her and broke her driver side mirror.  By the way, we named her car Snowflake - we started naming the cars for fun when the kids were little and just keep up the tradition now.

Here is what it looks like now.

Here is the passenger side mirror for comparison.

Fortunately, no one was physically hurt and we hope the bus driver is able to get the points wiped so they can continue to drive a bus.  

Now we are just trying to find a moment during the holidays to get it fixed.  

I'm not attached to any particular car - they are just transportation to me.  Even without Matthew 6:19-21 mentioning cars, buses or broken mirrors - I think the message is there.  This incident was just a reminder. 

Matthew 6:19-21 English Standard Version (ESV)

Lay Up Treasures in Heaven

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[a] destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Day 2 - the new building adventure

So my company just built a new building (7+ stories) next to an existing location and my overall organization moved over.  I knew from an email that I was on the 7th floor and it indicated there was another floor I would have access to (other than 1st).  I must say I didn't pay a ton of attention to it since things had been crazy busy.

On move in day, it was pretty uneventful - I moved over in the afternoon.  I only have a backpack worth of stuff so it was pretty easy.

Now the 2nd day rolls around and my first minor mistake was going back to the 1st building.  No big deal, just walked into the lobby and went "hm, oops" and did a purposeful loop back out the doors.  I doubt I am the only one that did that but no one I've spoken to will admit it.

So later on though, after drinking copious amounts of coffee - I decided it was time for a "break".  I don't know what it is but the rest rooms seem to always be closed when I need them.  In the old building it was indicated by a utility cart wedged in the doorway.  Here it seems that either a cart of some tape blocking the doorway is the indicator.  In this time of need, it was the yellow tape.

Ok, no big problem - in the old building I would usually just use gravity and go down a floor.  This time I decided on the elevator.  

Now let me describe the new elevators.  They are FANCY. Instead of a keypad inside for floor selection, you can ONLY select your floor from outside.  You pick the floor on this neat electronic keypad and it tells you which elevator to enter.  Once you enter it, it zooms you to your floor - possibly with stops in between based upon what the software running it decided to do.  It is pretty odd getting in still and wanting to reach for a button which isn't there.

So on this day, I was like "so what floor did I have access to?".  I think someone said 3.  So I pick 3 and away I go.  I get to the 3rd floor and swipe my badge - nothing happened.  Uh, so which other floor do I have access to?  Ok, so just standing there with a sad look didn't get me far and my "need" was increasing.  So I zoom backup to the 7th floor and ask someone what other floor we have access to?  Now, I could have trolled my email but was trying to hurry.  Anyway, someone indicated 2 and someone else said 5.  In this case, 2nd floor rang a bell and I zoomed down there. 

Now, I am feeling better.  Time to go back up - I'm not inclined to climb 5 flights of steps due to some knee issues.. I can do it but it can be uncomfortable some days.  So head for the elevators. I step in front of the keypad and it is dark.  I touch it and not much happens.  Then I touch it again and I get a message along the lines of "can't get lift".  Huh?  

I play with the keypad a minute or 2 and got a couple other error message type things.  Ok, so elevators are down.  Sigh.  I'll go find the stairs.  I find one stair case and it seemed like it was locked - not sure exactly what the deal was - in the other building it was never a problem entering the stairwell.  Ok, fine - there must be another one around and with a few other people wandering around I'm sure I will find it and not look like and idiot who is unable to get the elevator to work or the staircase to open.  So, I finally find it and trudge slowly up 5 flights of stairs.  

On my arrival, I tell my tale to someone else - who indicates that another coworker had a similar experience.  I go down and commiserate the experience with them.  On my way back to my area I end up waiting for a group of people getting off the elevator. Hm, working now.  Then I pass the restrooms - hm, men's room is open again.

Sigh.  This seems like how nearly every day goes right now. 

John 16:33 New International Version (NIV)

33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Technology described as beautiful

I find it awkward when people describe technology as beautiful - especially software they wrote.  Why? Well, because people and technology are different.

• People
• When you build friendships you want them to last indefinitely. 
• Even if you don't build a close friendship with a person, you should still care what happens to someone after your interactions are done.
• You tend to not want people you really like to leave your realm of interaction.

• Technology
• For any technology I create/use, I don't expect it to last forever. 
• I enjoyed my first 80286 based computer but I don't care that it was recycled and turned into something else.
• I really liked OS/2 but I don't want to use it now since I have no use for it. 

Technology described as beautiful feels awkward 6 months later when something comes along that outshines it.  To me, beauty tends to imply perfection in some way. Is old technology still beautiful?  Is someone prone to dismay when a request to change/replace it occurs?  Does someone fight change because their beautiful technology can't be made better?  How does someone take a criticism (especially if done in a way intended to spur improvement) of their beautiful technology?

Technology is a tool.  It can be well designed.  It can fit a need well.  It can even be easy/nice to use.  If someone starts to call it beautiful or "My Precious" then I wonder how well they will accept it when it is time for changes or replacement?  

I've seen a few articles discussing how software should be beautiful.   In the end there are usually specific engineering traits that really represent what they describe as beautiful.  Such as:

1. Ease of use/interaction/integration
2. maintainability
3. ease of debugging

I think it so much easier to stick to engineering terms and principles because it can be less subjective.  I know each of my examples above is subjective as stated but it is POSSIBLE to perform analysis of each and produce actual metrics.  I can track how long it takes to integrate different competing technologies into a system and use that to define "ease of integration". I can track how many hours it takes to add a new feature to 2 equivalent technologies.   I can determine how long it takes to go from bug report to root cause identification.   Given metrics like those, I can do something useful like compare them within the context of some need that I have.  If someone just tells me that technology X is beautiful - it doesn't really tell me anything.  This is especially true when a new competing technology arrives.  Is it "more beautiful"?  Is it a better fit for my needs?

Using engineering terms means that you don't get into the "my technology is more beautiful than yours" useless conversations.  This is important as needs change and you need your technology to keep up.  A metric indicating that "it is 20% faster to get a new feature into technology Y" goes far in helping make decisions.  Even if you don't have numbers, a "the developers identified issues faster" is useful.

In the end, I don't want a bond with my technology - I want it to perform some task within some given constraints.  If some other technology can do a better job then I want to know the what/why/how much given some type of metrics. 

- Scott

1 Chronicles 16:27 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

27 Splendor and majesty are before Him,
Strength and joy are in His place.

The master bath doors

Ok, so I am just at a loss for now.  The "saloon" doors below are the same doors that were there when we got the house except we tore the framing out when I updated the bathroom and we repainted the doors.  I really don't like the saloon doors but can't find anything else that both I and the wife both like.  She vetoed my "1970's hanging beads" door and a few others.  She prefers to have some door there.  The location is awkward because it is at an angle to the room so I can't really do a pocket door (ok, I have an idea but not sure it is a bright one - a bit like the first LED lights on the market years ago).

Anyways, here is the door prior to final mouldings and needing a bit of touch-up paint since I was a bit rough putting it back up. I probably could have gotten the doors another 1/16 - 1/8" tighter but finally decided that it really shouldn't be an issue..  I promise not to invite the neighbors over for an open house without mentioning it to my lovely wife.. :)  This time.. ahahaha.  Just kidding.

Obviously I am still debating what to do for the master bedroom flooring..  A project for another decade?

Hebrews 13:5 New International Version (NIV)

5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you.”

The new office room - the transformation

So the previous owners of our house had created "a room" in the large garage.  It had been used by one of their kids for a while as I understand it.  That time frame was a good number of years ago though.  The room was a pretty big disaster and was made a bigger disaster when we ended up tearing down some of the paneling for emergency use in the last big hurricane.  

When we got the house, this rooms flooring has half carpet and half bare concrete.  Apparently there had been water damage (the water heater is in that room as well) and there is an external door to the room as well.  The frame of the external door was rotted out and there was significant termite damage around the frame and the wooden "hut" around the water heater.

I replaced the external door and used solid PVC to frame it.  We took the old door and after repainting (thanks Mom!) it used it as the inside door to the room (which goes into the garage) - this replaced a busted up interior style door.  

We put up 1/2" insulating panels over the bare stud walls and what appears to be an attempt at insulation in places.  Then we put up 1/2" drywall and painted it.  

I replaced the fan/light combo with a much larger plain light (no fan) which made a huge difference and made the room actually usable.

We are putting in some Aquaguard laminate flooring from Floor and Decor which is pretty nice - much better than the stuff from the big box stores.  This goes together pretty well.  My only complaint is you have to be careful about damaged corners due due to rough handling somewhere in the supply chain.  It isn't always obvious until you open a box.

Here are some pictures of the slow transformation that is occurring..

After the exterior door replacement but before any other work outside of carpet/paneling removal:  (sorry about poor focus)

Below is the garage side of the room with the new 1/2" insulated panels.

Below is with the new light installed, new drywall and the green paint we picked.  That's my dad below - working hard too (many thanks for the help!)..

Below is the repainted old exterior door which is moved to the interior doorway (which leads to garage).  

We've got the flooring started below.  I'm struggling to move things around in the room though (bookcases, elliptical exercise equipment, etc).   

I still need to rip out the frame around the water heater (on right) and redo all that yet.  

It is getting closer though.  Still a bunch of work left.

I've started to put the electrical boxes back in. This isn't enjoyable right now - back kills me after working on the flooring.

I'll keep on adding to this post - lots more to do.  

There is lots of trim work to do around doors, ceiling, floor and I think we will put in some wainscoting as well.  The trim and wainscoting will be white.

I'm still debating whether I can do some work on the far wall (not photographed) to get a new dryer vent run inside it (with or without wall modifications) - that is a pet peeve I think I covered in another post and is still a big sore spot for me regarding this house.

I'm thinking about a ductless mini-split heat pump for this room (maybe multiple heads covering this room + a couple others).  There is AC run from the main system but there are issues..

I'll replace the window too - I want to put in a double pane window to help reduce the AC need and also fix some other issues with it. I've got some research to do before I tackle replacing a stucco framed window.

Ok, so I'll have to work on the "glory in our sufferings" from the verse below - I'm not there yet.

Romans 5:2-4 New International Version (NIV)

2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we[a] boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we[b] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.

The septic field replacement

The septic system replacement is FINALLY started.  It took longer than desired for the permit to go through.  I was very surprised when a women came out to get soil samples, etc prior to completion of the permit.  She spent probably 30-40 minutes getting samples, etc.  We are hoping that the septic people only stopped due to weather on Friday and will restart on Monday. I was actually surprised they got started Friday due to terrible weather out where I work now.. guess it wasn't quite as bad at the house.    At the moment, I think the septic tank is disconnected from the field but I think they emptied the tank before starting.. otherwise we would have a big mess right now.  As I understand it, they will plant grass once done.  Hoping things will look nice soon since we seem to be the "ugly yard" neighbors still..  Too many projects with not enough time and/or money.  To top it off, the dirt pile currently covers a large chunk of the side walk out front.  

The technology used is a newer one than we had at our old house. Instead of black round corrugated pipe it is a sort of half dome with holes and is open on the bottom.  This prevents tree roots from fully clogging the holes and preventing the fluids from exiting the pipe. I am really hoping this is a 30+ year solution. 

We are really hoping that this work isn't going to kill our remaining tree in the front yard.  They did cut quite a few roots - if it doesn't have some good roots down deep then it will struggle. I fear it will die but as my wife says "don't buy trouble".  

[Update 2019/08/22] Got it done!  I wish the grading was a bit better but I won't complain because it is DONE.  Now waiting to make sure everything flows the way it should. Figuring a week out to do it.

[Edit 2019/09/25] After some grass and weeds took hold and we cleaned up most of the surface rocks and root pieces. Paid our kids a good sum to pickup rocks and I raked a good amount of it into piles for them.   Still picking out future grass ideas - maybe zoysia.

Thanks for reading..
Scott

Isaiah 32:18 New International Version (NIV)

18 My people will live in peaceful dwelling places,
    in secure homes,
    in undisturbed places of rest.

Wiring and older homes - the headaches

I had a few days off between the end of a two week notice and the start of a new job.  I didn't end up with quite as much time in-between as I hoped but figured I'd make the best of it and get some projects done around the house.

I've been working on wiring up new outlets and switches in various places around the house - toward a goal of replacing everything. I'm mainly converting from the old flip switches to the paddle style switches and from the round style electrical outlets to the square/rectangular/block style.  I'm also adding in a few outlets with USB charging capability and replacing a few dimmers which worked fine with old incandescent lights but not so well with LED lights.

I started to work on the switch + timer next to our front door which controls the exterior entry lights and a switch/dimmer for a chandelier in the entryway. This was happily not a real hard one to do.  The hardest part was figuring out what I wanted to do with the extra (3rd) opening since I was getting rid of the timer for the lights since I was using dusk-to-dawn bulbs.  We ended up deciding to put in a night-light in that opening which turned out nice.

I decided to tackle the kitchen and that went well until I got to an outlet at the end of the "island" where our sink is.  The outlet had hot wires even with the kitchen and dinette breakers off.  It took about 35 minutes of back-and-forth to determine this 1 outlet was on the same circuit as the entry way lights/chandelier/outside GFCI outlet..  Ahh why??  Who knows..  Nothing I can do about it right now.

Anyways, I got a number of items done and then started to work on my daughters bedroom.  I just wanted to replace the set of 3-way single pole switches that control the ceiling fan/light from both doorways to her room.  Just in case you haven't run across "3-way switches" - they enable a fixture to operate by flipping either of 2 switches usually located at opposite ends of a hall or at 2 different entrances to a room.  I thought this would be easy.  Once I opened up the box for the switches I found something unexpected - a white "neutral" wire joined directly to a black "hot" wire.  In all the wiring I have done over the last ~15 years or so (just on my homes - not professionally) I have never seen that.  Everything in my mind screamed "mistake" and a few other phrases.  I had to sit down and start searching the internet to determine what I was looking at.  

I finally determined that electrical codes up to a certain point do seem to support something called a "switch loop".  I won't delve into the details here but it is a valid way to wire up fixtures.  The general premise is that you run power/wires to the fixture before it goes to the switch(es).  This is in comparison to "switch leg" where you run power/wires to switch(es) before going to the fixture.  Once I found a name for it - it became a bit easier to find more information and diagrams.  The expectation is that when a wire such as a neutral is actually hot - you mark it (black tape, etc).  That wasn't the case here.  I spent quality time with my non-contact tester verifying things.  On top of that, I found that I must be careful with crowded wiring because it isn't terribly hard to register a hot wire incorrectly by simply being a bit too close to a different wire that is hot..  No hair singed but I think I did pull out a few hairs in frustration while trying to understand what was going on.  

I *think* that the NEC 2011 codes really push you toward a switch leg setup which gives you a workable neutral wire in the switch box.

So after those 2+ hours of work I had a working set of new 3-way switches with a built-in light on each switch.

So onto the next area..  My wife mentioned that we have outlets in the master bedroom where plugs tend to slowly fall out of the outlets.. yes, that could be a fire just waiting to happen.

The first fun was identifying the breaker - I had mapped out the lighting a while back but the outlets turned out inconsistent.  It took a while to determine that the outlets on the side of the room next to the dinette area of the kitchen were on the dinette breaker. Why? Still don't know exactly.. can only guess they felt that was a good idea.  The last house I lived in did not do it that way and it was MUCH easier to understand the wiring layout.

So I got most of the switches/outlets done in the master bedroom and was getting ready to remount some outlets in one box when I saw something shine in the box.  I luckily decided to look into that and found that both bundles of wire had the outer jackets scrapped off and gouges in the copper wire itself.  What??  That is a fire waiting to happen.  How?  Not exactly sure but I suspect that either at construction or sometime during the previous owners tenancy someone used a flat blade screwdriver to push wires into the box and they slipped a lot.  The wiring is all 12 gauge which is difficult to manage/move/bend when you have 4-6 conductors plus ground wires to fit into an electrical box.  In this case, I could only tape up the wires for now and mark the outlet to fix later since I will have to wire it from the attic down into the box to do it right - there just isn't enough extra length to work with.

I found this problem in another box too.  All the damage generally resembles the picture below.

So, I am very glad I am going through the process of redoing lots of the electrical here even though it is painful and slow. At least I have the opportunity to correct some of the issues that exist and hopefully prevent any disasters.

I figure I am about 65% complete with the switch and outlet updates - just not enough time to deal with it.

Thanks for reading..
Scott

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 New International Version (NIV)

17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Embarrassing moment

My family really likes to laugh at me and I must admit that I do provide more than enough material at times to laugh at - this is one of them.

My wife and I went out to eat since our kids were at my parents. We bought a used car recently and my wife let me drive it which was nice of her.  On the way home I wanted to stop at the grocery store.  It had started to storm and there was lots of lightening so my wife indicated it was fine for me to leave her in the car.  

I went in and while there, my mom called to check whether she should take our son to the local clinic since he wasn't feeling very well.  He had been feeling off a few days before this but I thought had gotten better - apparently not.  Anyways, I asked her to go ahead and take him.

To top it off, it was his birthday.

I get done with my shopping as quick as I can and head outside.  It is raining like crazy and I am looking for the car.  I see the tail lights down an aisle and I make a run for it.  I'm running/prancing like a girl hoping I don't soak my work shoes too much.  

I get to the car and grab the door handle and it is locked.  I pull again and still locked then I notice someone in the front seat through the heavily tinted window.  Oh, great my wife is getting me back - she hopped in the drivers seat and locked the doors.  But why won't she open it after having her fun?

So at this point, I stop and ignore the rain and lightening and think - what is wrong with this picture.  Then it hits me - this isn't my car and it isn't my wife inside (probably fearing for her[?] life) as some crazy guy tries to open the door.

I then step quickly away from the car and start spinning around in circles in the rain looking for *our* car.  I see people in other nearby cars giving me a strange look..  Hm, hope I don't know them from church. 

Suddenly, I see the car and make a bee line for it.  I'm expecting to get tackled by police or some store employee who thinks I was trying to car jack people.  I quickly get in and give the short description of why I don't want to shop at that grocery store again.  Hmmm, prices WAY to high and they never have anything I like - we should never come back here again..  Hmmm, ok honey, so what really happened was..

Now, you may think - yeah, embarrassing but you can see how it could happen.  I would too except for the fact that our new car - the one we were using was WHITE and the one I was trying to get in was dark BLUE.. but it did match the car I normally drive.

Sigh.  I really hope no one recognized me.

Hope this brought you a smile. 

- Scott

I can't really come up with an appropriate bible verse for this so the best I have is.

Romans 5:4-5 New International Version (NIV)

4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Sad moments

I find there are events that cause me to think about my relationship with my wife and family. In this case, I found out a little while back that a past coworker of mine lost his wife to cancer.  I was shocked and saddened.  

That in and of itself is enough to make you think of your own family but then he also shared his story of the previous few months before she passed.  In this case, the doctors indicated there wasn't much time so they made the most of it.

Roger blogged about some aspects of this

https://www.rlwhitcomb.info/

Specifically - check out the post: 

“Good” Days and “Bad” Days

I was encouraged by Roger, his wife and their love for each other and God.

Revelation 21:4 New International Version (NIV)

4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[a]or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

A life in Information Technology

I knew I wanted to work with computers at a pretty young age - around 11 or 12 years old.  My parents got us a pretty fancy computer and it was love at first byte.  Yes, initially I played games on it but it didn't take long before I wanted to know how those games worked - along with the computer overall.  It had a BASIC interpreter which I quickly figured out.  That was pretty neat for a while but eventually  that wasn't enough - it was pretty limiting and I really wanted to understand how things worked at a deeper level.  I was very fortunate that my family had the money to feed my need for computer knowledge and I was able to get the Assembler Language cartridge for the system.  I had a blast with that; I spent countless hours reading the manual and figuring out how to make the system do interesting things (along with many crashes). At one point, I started to write a game in Assembly Language but my parents asked if I minded if we gave the system to some cousins ("The Twins").  I didn't mind because I did want to do something nice for my cousins - but I was still a little bummed I wasn't able to complete writing the game.  

If you are trying to guess what the computer was - get your bets in now.  I should just hint that if you look at my post  regarding "My Bookcase - IT Related", you will find that I still have a couple on Assembly Language programming for it.

Ok, instead I'll spoil it - it was a Radio Shack Color Computer - initially with 16k memory which we upgraded to 64k later.  It had a 6809E microprocessor which was "accumulator based" versus "general purpose register based".  It may seem archaic now but it was pretty advanced at the time in some ways.  My biggest complaint with it was that saving programs to the tape deck wasn't always as reliable as I preferred.

Anyways, after giving up the computer my parents surprised me with a new computer that Christmas.  This time it was a more "serious" computer - running MS-DOS and sporting a huge amount of memory - "More than anyone will ever need". I'm sure someone will recognize that comment.  Initially I played some games on it as well and then I started to work with the BASIC interpreter that came with it.  And repeating history, I wanted to understand it better and do more with it.  This time I spent some saved-up money and bought the Microsoft QuickC 1.0 compiler.  That was pretty neat - again I spent countless hours learning C and figuring out how to work with Assembly Language on it as well.  By this time, I knew that when I went to college I wanted to study computers.

There is a bit of downside of all this "IT" at an early age though - I didn't play outside as much as I probably should have.  I didn't socialize with other kids as much as I probably should have.  I don't think it had a serious impact but if those days had the same level of technology as we do now then I wonder.  I see how hard it is for my own kids to disengage from their "toys" and you can see what I consider an obvious impact on kids overall now days.  Many have terrible social skills and can't spend more than a minute without checking their phones, etc.

Back to the program, so to speak..  college came around and I studied computer science - specifically "Computer Science - Theory and Analysis".  This was the major which included a little more on the engineering side - which allowed me to learn more about microprocessors, micro-architecture, memory systems, etc.  I really enjoyed learning what made things tick :). It wasn't an easy major and I tended to pick hard classes too.  I really enjoyed the compiler, data structures and a couple of the electrical engineering classes along with some others.  At one point, I had hoped to find a job writing compilers after college but that didn't pan out - I guess I needed more than just a "token" effort.  During college I spent countless more hours finding interesting software to (try to) compile and execute on my computer or on one of the computers at college - mostly VAX 11/780, 11/750, 8600  (each running VMS) and DEC Ultrix based systems. I enjoyed using the VAX systems - a little bit too much one semester when I burned through my allocated time while playing with recursive algorithms.  Fortunately, most of the UNIX based systems didn't use "CPU time accounting". 

A fun tidbit is that the OpenVMS operating system is still available and they are working to get it running on x86 based hardware.

I got through college and was tired of the snow in Michigan so I decided to move south (and found an IT job). Initially I was going to try for South Carolina but I blew the one good interview opportunity I had - I was SO nervous I could hardly talk.  That was with an insurance company, I think.  I still don't like interviewing but I am a little bit better now.  After that, I set a deadline to stop applying for southern jobs from up north. My several month deadline was reached and with a bit of trepidation in my heart I told my parents I had to search from down south.

I packed up my car and a few belongings along with a bit of cash that my parents gave me and headed for Durham, NC - the Research Triangle Park (RTP) area was a good area for technology jobs.  Back then it was wild and exciting being on my own.  I didn't have any real plan for the most part and just went with the flow.  I ended up renting half of a duplex with a leaky roof and a "see the ground below" type floor.  For $200/month I had all the mice I could poison along with a wild bamboo forest-like backyard. I built a bookcase with some of that bamboo and toted it around from place to place for a number of years.  I also had a somewhat strange neighbor lady who was home bound and had "the worker" people bring her vodka to dull her problems. I quickly found a job through a temp agency working at Northern Telecom (NT) - doing operations work initially.  This was ok for a while - I was working 2nd and 3rd shifts and starting to think about what I wanted to do longer term and how to get there. I had hoped that the temp agency job might allow me to get in as an employee of Northern Telecom but that never happened.  After a while, I ended up at a different temp agency again working for NT but this time in their lab - patching telecom switch software.  Not an exciting job and not the grand "programming" position I was hoping for.  I did some automation work to help reduce the manual labor while there but it wasn't much and was hampered by tooling issues.  At NT, I did get experience on different hardware at least.  I had a tiny bit of exposure to their mainframe but most of my time I worked with their HP 3000 MP/E systems, some other UNIX systems and some of the various telecom switches.

After a while, I started getting pretty tired of working 2nd and 3rd shifts and not having the "real" programming job I wanted.  I probably could have looked more places (probably not near RTP) but I just got a bit down over the way things were working out.  Around this time, I thought about trying to find something in Michigan again - I hadn't seen my parents all that often or the rest of my family.  I ended up finding out that a job was available where my aunt worked - it was a "PC Programmer" position.  When I put in my notice, my NT supervisor offered me a whopping job offer.  It was $50k a year patching live telecom switches (no longer a lab environment).  Even though that was a huge pay increase from my $12/hr temp job I felt it was a dead end from a career standpoint.  

I ended up getting the PC Programmer job at Merillat Industries. My grandparents lived about 20 minutes from Merillat and they were going to spend the winter in Florida about then so they offered to let me house sit and take my time finding an apartment.  I thought that was a pretty neat setup.  My Aunt lived across the street though and later she described the kitchen as often "a shamble of dirty dishes".  It didn't seem that bad at the time.  Now, there was one big oddity about my grandparents cottage on the lake - when you do laundry, you have to put the drain hose into a drain hole in the floor otherwise.. well, lets just say I was thankful that my aunt and uncle had a spare fan or two..  Loved them more than ever right then. As for the job, it was "ok" - working on an order entry / cabinet configurator system written in MS QuickBasic. It had seen its day - as the amount of data increased, the method of getting around out-of-memory errors was to convert various large lists containing string types over to numerical types where possible.  Yes, that was how it was done for quite a while.  I could not convince them to move the system to run on Windows (vs MS-DOS alone) and support  more current hardware but I eventually convinced them that I could rework the system in C++.  I did that from scratch and it didn't take a terribly long time with the Watcom C++ compiler.  It was much more memory efficient and a faster interface.  Still not fancy by any means though.  Of course, if I got hit by a bus or ..  I eventually decided that I had reached the peak of what I could do there and I was really hating the winters in Michigan again.  After you fall enough times when older (relatively speaking), the excitement you had as a kid playing in the snow wears off. And of course, I am in my early 20's in a town of around 10-15k people in farm country - I was getting a bit bored and didn't like having to drive 1-2 hours to larger cities. I did enjoy being relatively close to my family though.

Regardless, I ended up with a job at Circuit City in the Richmond, VA area. This time I was working on a merchandising app that had a ton of interesting technology. I worked with -  C++, Oracle, Sybase, ObjectStore DB, NT4 and ClearCase.  This was a huge opportunity for me.  I did enjoy it for a good while - until odd decisions the company was making started to become more apparent.  As we got farther into the development of the application, some major oversights started to come up - I would ask questions and the responses were "It wasn't written into our contract.".  Ugh, ok?.?  Around this time, the DivX group in Circuit City was operating and I decided to go there in the hopes of finding a better long term position.  The pay was an ok base + opportunity for stock when/if they went public.  I was there a very short time before realizing that even though they were operating at a crazy pace - it wasn't work that moved them forward.  Many business issues were obvious and it was just a matter of time before the other shoe fell. I learned a lot about office politics while at Circuit City and DivX. 

A friend from my Circuit City team had left and gone to Platinum Technology which had a Richmond office.  He informed me of an opening and I interviewed there for a position in the Enterprise DBA tools group.  This was initially a DB and C/C++ position which was a good fit for my background at that point.  I got the job and worked on a number of different applications across a number of databases and platforms. I also got to do a bit of parsing work which I also enjoyed back in college - this time using ANTLR.  I worked with a number of databases - DB/2 (mainframe & LUW), Sybase, SQLServer, Oracle, a bit of Informix and Ingres (the DB almost no one even knows of).  A good bit of the work I did involved translating between UI actions for DB operations, intermediate representations of those actions and concrete SQL/DDL implementing those actions. The tools were all meant to simplify the lives of DBAs.  

Things changed though when Computer Associates acquired Platinum Technology.  This was my first experience with that process.  It was also the first time I had to endure rounds of layoffs.  I got through the layoffs (maybe by a flip of a coin - not sure) but things never went back to a good "normal".  I did end up working on a portal which integrated a number of the products into a web accessible system.  This was my first experience dealing with onshore vs offshore type staffing too.  Offshore did the UI development and I and others integrated the C/C++ backend apps into the Java based portal.  It was interesting to debug the JNI calls that were resulting in segfaults - debugger technology has improved over the years and I don't see much JNI work anymore which is probably good.  When the government started to hand out indictments to a number of C-level type management people, I finally decided to leave.  I just couldn't justify staying there any longer. I had been with them for a good while by this time though.

I interviewed with the VCCS (Virginia Community College System) and initially didn't get the job.  A few weeks after that, I got a call back and they offered me a position.  This was a big change - now I get to "know the customer" a bit and am involved in all aspects of things.  This was a place where I would end up wearing a multitude of hats - devops and full-stack might not have been popular terms when I started there but defines much of what went on.  I got to:

• reverse engineer internet facing systems (Online Admissions)
• work with various combinations of design/implement/debug/support/deploy internet facing systems (Online Admissions, VA Education Wizard, etc)
• help design/develop/support an identity management system/integrations(MS FIM, etc)
•  help with tuning those and other commercial products (Blackboard).  
• deal with security issues - hacking, etc.
• etc

I worked with awesome DBAs, network folks, PeopleSoft developers/operations/analyst, security people and many others. Now, in 2019, I recognize just how much the VCCS IT staff has accomplished with a relatively limited budget and staff size when compared to my recent employers. No organization is perfect but the people working at the VCCS can be proud of how well they are supporting the students.  I miss the relationships from this job.

Here I worked with mostly Java and Oracle as the core technologies but also used PeopleSoft, MS FIM, MS AD, VMWare, JavaScript, Tomcat, various integration technologies and a ton of other open source technologies to meet the demands of the 350k+ community college students along with the K12 students related to the VA Education Wizard.

Around the 10 year mark, my family and I (ok, really wife and I) decided to make a change.  I was feeling it was time to get out of my comfort zone a bit again (not quite like my early 20's though but close). We had talked about moving to Florida at various times - my parents had been doing the snow bird thing by moving between Michigan and Florida for a number of years and they eventually went full time in Florida.  For many years, we only saw my family a couple times per year.  My wife's family was around Richmond though.  This was a tough choice but we finally decided to make the leap.  The condensed conversation was something like this:

Wife: Honey, it is about 2 weeks before school starts in Florida. A while back you mentioned wanting to move there - were you serious?

 Me: Yes, I would. It would be nice being closer to my family for a while.

Wife: Should we do it now? We might be able to get the kids into the school at the start of the year. 

Me: Ok, let's do it.  Here is the plan; find an apartment and you and the kids move down now and I will work on selling the house and finding a job. Once I find a job, I'll come down and hopefully the house will sell shortly after. If I can't find a job then we'll consider it a long vacation for all of you and move you back up. 

Wife: How should we go about telling the kids?  

Me: Hm, they are in Florida already with Gma and Gpa.  I guess we call them and just ask them whether they want to come back home first or stay there and wait for us.

Wife: You know they may not take it well.

Me: I know.  One will take it better than the other but which way it goes isn't clear.

Wife: Shall we call them?

Me: I guess.. do you want to tell them?

Wife: No, go ahead and do the honors.

Me: Hm, thanks.

Wife: No problem.

Ring ring ring..

Me: Hi kids.  We got some news.  So, how are you liking Florida?

Kids: Great!

Me: That's good, we decided to move down there.  

Kids: Silence....  silence..

Me: so, since you are there you have the option of staying and waiting for us or you can come back and get your belongings and say some goodbyes. Let us know which option you want.

Kids: Your serious?  .. the break down began..

So that is what we did.  My wife found an apartment and we got the kids into the schools - nothing like getting signed up 1-3 days before school starts and moving into an apartment the week before.  I made a few trips with various belongings and finally got the house on the market. 

A couple of months went by and I ended up with the opportunity to work for either a telecom company or a company that dealt with large money transfers.  I had never heard of the "money place" before and knew no one there.  The father of someone my daughter knew worked for the telecom in Virginia and liked it.  I prayed on that one but didn't wait long before flipping a coin.  I felt I needed to get to Florida because everyone was desperately missing me.  

When I interviewed with the telecom, I only phone interviewed - the manager was in Ohio.  I really liked him though - we talked for a long while on technology and such and really hit it off.  I didn't ask some key questions though. I decided to take the telecom job and it was ok.  Before my first day, I didn't know that NONE of my team was in the Tampa area.  My team was spread over multiple countries and continents and I only knew 1 person - a person my manager worked with before who was asked to show me around for a few days.  That person ended up on vacation after day 1 and I ended up having to "make friends" immediately so someone would be willing to let me in since I wouldn't have a badge for a few days.. badge was "in the mail" and it turned out that it went to Ohio where my manager was instead of Tampa to me.. Arg..  Not off to a good start.  There were a lot of hurdles at the telecom but I did learn a lot.  Mainly, I learned a bunch about AWS and Cloud Foundry and to a lesser degree about the Neo4j graph database.  I implemented a number of "microservices"  that mostly involved Oracle and worked with Jira. We used some "agile like" practices.  Lots of technology but more barriers to getting things done than I could have imagined - tech debt from too many acquisitions for the most part.  I was really hating the fact that I was going into an office where I really knew no one and didn't really work that closely with anyone there.  Once the telecom announced "voluntary separation" packages - I didn't feel very confident in our org (which didn't seem to be making much money) so I decided to leave on my own terms instead of waiting to be part of a market flood of developers if they decided to do actual layoffs later or sell the org (which I found out later had almost happened before).

A recruiter with my now current employer (an analytics/data type company) had touched base with me a few times and finally convinced me to interview with them.  Have I mentioned I really don't like interviews - I'll have to post my thoughts on current interview practices some time.  Anyways, there were a few issues with timing for some of my interview panel so I ended up coming back a couple times along with a phone interview.  For the in-person interview, I met one of the VP's and really liked him - reminded me of someone I worked with at the VCCS; very smart and well spoken. It sounded like many things were in the midst of change and there would be opportunity to do both development and architecture work so I was happy with that.  They were in the early stages of migrating to the cloud as well.  My only real concern was distance - it was about a 1 hr drive during the interviews.  I had asked the recruiter about telecommuting but I never heard back.  I didn't feel too concerned since many places here seem fond of telecommuting.  I did get the job.  During the first 6 months, I spent a good amount of time finding a place to fit into the team.  When I joined, the team was trying to get a release deployed that had taken a year of effort.  They were also under orders to implement a significant amount of testing. The corporate culture is way different than anywhere else I've worked - they try hard to give it a family feel.  They like get-togethers after work and often enjoy lunches together.  There were down moments though - a couple VP's were let go and both were very smart and very nice to work with; both will be missed. As for Technology, there is a lot going on.  Converting from on-premise to cloud solutions creates a lot of opportunities and challenges.  From an opportunity standpoint, I've learned significantly more about Kubernetes(+ AWS EKS), Docker, AWS Redshift data warehouse, AWS ECS, Terraform and service meshes.  There is other stuff too but these standout at the moment. On the challenge side, we are finding that not every technology lives up to its hype - every major technology needs testing to verify it's up to the task. This isn't unexpected in general although there are things that I thought should work better than they do right now.  Technology doesn't stand still though so we will see what tomorrow brings.

Proverbs 16:3 New International Version (NIV)

3 Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
    and he will establish your plans.