Reality Me

Blog

  • Most of what I do no one will ever see

    The question I hate hearing the most is "What’s a website where I can see your work?" Fortunately, I have not had to answer that question in a good long time. As a freelancing web application developer, I end up working on websites briefly and then move to the next project. When I move on, someone else comes in an continues to evolve the website so using that website as an example becomes a risk of misrepresenting my skills. Perhaps I made a site that had valid HTML and CSS and was Section 508 compliant. With 30 seconds and one incorrect tag, another developer could break all that work. Besides, once someone else modifies the site, it no longer represents my work anyway. That would be like the previous home owner coming back to my house with guests to demonstrate her tasteful choice of colors on the walls.

    To complicate the ability to demonstrate my skills, most of the work I have done has been on proprietary systems with most of the functionality available to the company. For instance, I spent a year and a half working on a billing system. In no way could I show someone code samples from that project. I cannot even walk them through the client side of the project since I no longer have access to it and even if I did that would be revealing client confidential information. The front end of that website was a single marketing page and a login screen.

    And never judge a developer by their own website. I would love my personal websites to represent me professionally, but frankly, I am too busy doing work for others.

    I digress. This post was not intended to be a discussion of skills demonstration. Instead I came to exclaim with glee that I spent the morning ironing out some nasty problems in my current application project! Unfortunately, all the changes, no matter how significant, will only be seen by me. The output, the stuff on the screen, does not appear changed. So even my client cannot see what I have done. And this is why I like to work on my house myself…because sometimes, I like to point at something tangible and say, "I did that!"

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: That knocked the wind out of me!
    Master: Just breathe.

  • Plan your trip accordingly – bad bridges

    Tennessee has 19,838 bridges. 4,101 are deficient. Of those deficient bridges, 2,776 are fully operational while 1,325 are structurally deficient.

    The United States has 599,766 bridges. 152,316 are deficient. Of those deficient bridges, 79,792 are fully operational while 72,524 are structurally deficient. See a PDF map of the structurally deficient bridges done by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The map is an effort to geocode bridges from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Bridge Inventory (NBI) with data from 2007 except for Kentucky and Pennsylvania which was from 2006. See more information at CleanBeta.

    Note: This is the kind of post that my wife hates. She will now have me performing miracles to get from point A to point B without crossing any bridges when we travel.

  • Fire in brush behind building. Fire engine on scene. No danger.

    Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. reply-count Replies.

  • St mary’s on fire

    utterli-image
    At pellissippi and north shore.

    Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. reply-count Replies.

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: Life’s hard.
    Master: Life is simple; Your burdens are weighty.

  • Coffee Emergency!

    Code red! Code red! The last of the coffee grounds have been brewed. There is no more coffee in this house! Warning! Warning! Expect unpredictable behavior and mood swings. javajavajava

  • LOST Twitter RPG

    LOST returns tonight! I’m very excited. SpoilerTV decided to play a LOST RPG using Twitter (see LOST Characters Find Twitter). Some other people caught on and created their own LOST characters making it difficult to know who is playing the game and who is an imitator so I created a Yahoo Pipe to show only the feeds from the SpoilerTV game. I’ll try to improve the pipe over time.

  • From the mouths of babes

    We just shuffled bedrooms. Tommy moved downstairs. Noah moved to Tommy’s room. Evan moved to Noah’s room.

    Evan, bringing a picture to Dad: "I found this in Noah’s room." pause "I found this in my room."

  • From the mouths of babes

    On Friday, Cathy had to go get Tommy from school for the weekend. That’s our deal with him. While he is on academic probation, he comes home every weekend for forced study time. Of course, that places me upstairs doing double duty of programming and watching the children. I am under the gun to get some work finished, wrapped, closed out and it is not moving fast enough so I lost my temper with the children about three times on Friday, once when the new drywall fell to the floor. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, this may have been earlier in the week when Cathy had a meeting. Cathy’s post on Amy Says reminded me of these words:

    Amy to Dad: "We don’t want you to stay home and watch us anymore. From now on, you have to do all Mom’s errands so she can stay here!"

  • They will repeat what you say

    Amy was tasked with helping to distribute the folded laundry and took to her chore with glee and enthusiasm.

    Evan: "Amy come play!"
    Amy: "I can’t play Evan. I have to work."

    It is always a little shocking when you hear your exact words come out of a little mouth. At a Boy Scout event once, I commented to one of the other leaders, "I don’t think they hear a word I say." and he repeated one of my mantras then commented that he heard Noah say it earlier. They do hear! But sometimes the words we hear back are the ones we wish we had never said. Just this morning Evan spoke to Noah. I thought I misheard, but when I entered the room, Evan repeated the exact sentence to me that I uttered roughly three days ago.

    Evan to Noah: "When that [2 sheets of drywall] fell down [and cracked] Dad said ‘God damn’ and got mad."
    Evan to Dad: "When that fell down you said ‘God damn’ and got mad."

    I had to concede that I became angry when I shouldn’t and cursed. I explained that we shouldn’t use those words. I will await the phone call from his Sunday school teacher and the preacher.

  • From the mouths of babes

    Evan, hold index finger straight out: "I found boo ger."
    Dad: "Hold onto it and I’ll bring you a tissue."
    Evan: "Boo ger all gone."

  • Are you bemoaning the $160 million inauguration?

    Well Bush’s inauguration cost $157 million.

    the Obama figure of $160 million that got repeated in the press included security costs associated with the massive event. But the Bush tab of $42 million left out those enormous costs [Source, Media Matters, The media myth about the cost of Obama’s inauguration]

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: I handled that poorly.
    Master: Stress and anger damage the heart.

  • State of Me

    Cough cough cough gag. I feel like I’ve been coughing for over two months now. I’m over this. If it’s the high blood pressure medicine causing this cough then I would rather have hypertension.