In Valid Logic

I’d heard of people applying agile methodologies to their lives through things like personal kanban. I recently decided to apply another practice: retrospectives. Sounds simple, but when I thought about it, it really isn’t that often that I sit down and take stock of where I am and have action items at the end of it.

The idea is simple. Get away from distractions for a while. Grab a whiteboard, piece of paper, or whatever you have. Mark out three columns. In the first, list the things that have been going well or that you like about where you are in life. In the second, list the things you don’t like. And in the final, come up with a resolution or first action item for each of the things you don’t like.

The goal of it is to acknowledge what has been going well, figure out what hasn’t, and get the ball rolling on tackling those. Just like you do with your projects!

I am by no means an agile expert, or a super organized, together person. But I was thinking about how it has been 3 months since making a rather big career change and wanted to take stock of how things have gone, but personally and not just professionally.

Try it for yourself and see how it goes. For me, I think a 3 month rotation is about right.

Today is my last day at Telligent. After almost 6 years at Telligent, I have decided it is time to move on. I’ve certainly enjoyed my time and taken pleasure in watching our products mature over that time and working with amazing developers who’ve definitely helped me grow.

On Monday begins a new chapter though. I’ve decided to make the leap from developing in .NET full time to focusing on Ruby and Rails. On Monday, I join the team at Involver, where I’ll be building applications for marketers and brands to reach audiences through social media. I am really looking forward to working on their platform and to get back to face to face time with my coworkers.

It is crazy how today’s job market is. Earlier I was looking over the new topics on Hacker News for the “Ask HN” threads and was surprised to find three “whose hiring” ones in the past 7 hours.

Today’s market is super competitive, especially at the entry level jobs. My sister graduated from CSU Fullerton with a degree in Journalism and Graphic Design, which has a strong communications program and is well respected. She was also a contributing author to the school newspaper, interned at Us Weekly in Los Angeles for two years, and interned for Us Weekly in New York over the summer.

She graduated in May, but just now was able to get a job in her field. That is nuts. Granted over the summer she was doing an internship in New York, expected to stay there but later decided to come back to California. But she still was actively looking for a job from August to the end of January. On the job she finally got, she beat out 250 other people who’d submitted resumes. She was also in consideration for another job, that one was up against even more people and it came down to her and one other person.

The market today is a stark contrast from when I was in college and all my professors and advisors were touting how easy it’ll be to get a job and making $60k easy. I would be scared to be graduating in today’s market.

Today, a degree is just a piece of paper. Everyone else who is graduating with you has the same piece of paper. To beat them out, its who you know and the experience you have. I’m by no means saying college is worthless, but rather it isn’t everything. I’m a college drop out… I left college to work at Telligent. I’ve been luck enough to have it work out, and now my work experience would be more relevant.  Its no longer enough to just go to college.

Building on James’s comment in my last post, a web developer today needs Google juice behind them. A degree is great, but so is a blog with relevant topics, involvements in projects, a Github profile, and more.

Last night, I managed to migrate my blog from Graffiti CMS to WordPress.  I’d been planning on migrating for a while now, but was just a matter of finally deciding to sit down and do it.

Now, why did I migrate?  I know a few months ago, I caught some slack on Twitter for stating that I didn’t see what all the drama of Graffiti was (this was pre-open sourcing).  And I still agree.  Graffiti is a great tool, I liked it and enjoyed it, however I ended up deciding to migrate for a few reasons.  Most notably is the plugin availability/community.  WordPress has tons of plugins for different tasks, and Graffiti simply doesn’t compare.  The developer in me may say “hey, I can write my own” but the reality is that I don’t have the time to or really want to.  I wanted a drop dead easy way to include code in posts and didn’t want to fiddle with it.  I wanted easier media management, and didn’t want to come up with something new on my own.

I had tossed around the idea of writing my own blog, since I wanted it off of my servers, but other services like Tumblr didn’t have quite what I wanted.  I thought it’d be nice to write a simple one in Sinatra and use MongoDB (via MongoHQ), but it again came back to prioritizing my different projects, and I’ve called blogging apps the new Hello World.

In the move, I also wanted to bring over all the content from my original blog, qgyen.net.  Now I have basically merged the two blogs and everything from my original domain redirects here.  Gain more Google juice, and sadly, my old dead domain had still more subscribers than my new domain.  Yes, sad.

How was the process?  Not too bad.  For a good guide, I’d recommend Jef’s post.  I made a few changes through:

1. I used the original VB.NET version of the GraffitiToBlogML tool (link).  I simply found it before the C# port.
2. Both the VB.NET and C# version have the potential of producing invalid XML.  They basically just write out XML directly rather than use the XML libraries within .NET.  One place it broke for me is they produce the old post uri by basically taking the post title and replacing spaces with dashes, it doesn’t strip invalid characters.  I had some posts with quotations in the title (“).  This broke the XML.  I changed it to use category.LinkName and post.Name, since those are the url-able portions used directly by Graffiti itself.  I also had it not append .aspx, since Graffiti didn’t actually do that.
3. BlogML seems to treat the post’s creation date as when it was published.  This can be an issue if you had migrated from to Graffiti from something else, like Community Server.  I had 300 or so posts who up in December 2007 at first.  The migrated data had a creation date of December 2007, but Graffiti had a separate Published field that marked when it was published.  I changed the tool to handle that so I could migrate my data right.
4. At least in the VB version, it was missing some null checks, I ran into one with TagList being null instead of empty.
5. I imported using the BlogML importer rather than MoveableType one.  For a really simple walk through, see this guide.

I will definitely miss Graffiti, since it was so drop dead simple to use.

How many times have you had a dialog like this: I should blog more. Well, what should I blog about? I don’t know, but I should blog more. Though I don’t want to sound boring, repetitive, or like an idiot.

There are probably two problems at work. First, over thinking a simple problem. Second, finding what you’re passionate about and how to best express it.

There are a number of top notch developers who hardly blog, if at all. But when they do, it is pure gold. They speak more with code than on a blog. You don’t need jaw dropping libraries or masterpieces, but just useful stuff someone else might want to use or read.

Want to find who the true leaders are? Find prominent people on Github and see what public projects they have. You’ll quickly find who is down in the trenches.

Having just gone to CodeMash 2010 last week, I am certainly reinvigorated. Especially after Joe O’Brien’s talk on "Refactoring the Programmer". It was really spot on with so many aspects of the developer’s lifestyle. Some things I’ve taken aware include:

• Scale back Twitter. It is a time sink and I rarely learn anything in that time.
• Blogs are great, but scale back what I read. All about finding the most value for the time. Ignore banter and marketing. Find others who show their passion in their writing.
• Write more code. Practice makes perfect. Athletes aren’t just naturally talented, they practice and are learning continuously.
• Read more code. Find good leaders, and learn what they’ve already learned.
• Read more books. And not necessarily on coding, but on improving yourself overall. Happiness comes from improving overall, not just in your profession.
• Go out on limbs. If you put something out there, ask people to check it out and give some honest feedback. If you have a question, seek out an expert and ask them. Be clear in what you’re asking, courteous of their time, and you’ll likely get your answer.
• Reciprocate. Asking for help is a two way street, so you need to pay it forward. Forming connections goes a lot further than hoarding your time.

My passion is in doing. Nothing makes me happier than hacking away on some random idea until 1-2am. And it is contagious. It bleeds over into all that I do. I put out better work during the day. I’m glad to go to the grocery store before dinner. I’m happier paying my bills. I came out of CodeMash with a whole list of things to hack on and hopefully get even more to keep me invigorated until next year. And hopefully I can throw the ideas out there, get some feedback, and create some value for others.

Last Friday, I had to go to pick up a piece of furniture with my dad that we’d been waiting for. We’d told them we’d be in at 5pm to pack it up, and they’d said they’d have it there from their warehouse before then. Sure enough, we get there at 5pm on the dot, and it is still at their warehouse. Luckily it is only 3 block away, so we follow the owner over there to pick it up.

When we get there, he says that he could make up a million excuses about why he didn’t have it there by 5, but the truth was he just forgot. His wife told him that morning it needed to be there by 5, but he forgot.

It may seem minor, but I was impressed he was so frank. Most places would act like they had no idea, it was someone else’s fault, or somehow your fault. When we got there and he said it was still at their warehouse, I was rolling my eyes, but when we left, was saying no problem and didn’t mind at all.

I don’t get how the medical industry can function.

So I’ve already posted how the hospital was gunning for their money 30 mins after my son was born back in July. So they got paid.

Then when he was coming up on two months, we started getting a trickling of other bills. The OB had some weird billing practices and we still owed on her delivery. Then we got the copay bill for the circumcision. Then we got the copay bill for the anesthesiologist. $300 here, $200 there, $400 for that one. What next, is the cook going to send me a bill for the room service?

Why can’t they just do all inclusive billing? I would much rather know all my expenses up front than to get bills trickling in one after another 2 months after the fact.

But then the thing that made me nearly crap my pants. Got the mail yesterday to find something from the hospital. Open it up, and the first thing I see before opening it up all the way is “Amount Due: $14,472″. I accidentally let an expletive slip with a toddler in the room. Though one you open it up and look over the fine details, you see it has three boxes: Amount due, amount due from insurance, and amount due from patient. The $14k was amount due from insurance, amount due from patient was $0. But why are they sending me a notice that insurance still hasn’t paid them? I don’t care. The insurance industry is just as messed up as their own billing practices. At the very minimum, they could make the statement a little bit clearer. It isn’t pleasant to take it out and see the top 1/3rd first with some big dollar amount.

That’s my rant for the day.

Yesterday, I’d posted about my son’s birth the following Friday. One thing that really irked me about the experience was the hospital ruining the moment after my son was born.

Shortly after Josh was born I was in the nursery watching the nurse bathe him, one of the other nurses came in and said the front desk was asking me to come down to handle my deductible/copayment. Josh was born at 9:34pm and my receipt was timestamped 10:13pm. So when my son was 39 minutes old, they were already wanting their money.

I couldn’t believe it, and my family was standing there asking “where you going?”

When my first son was born, I don’t remember the hospital asking me to pay the whole time we were there. I think they just sent me the bill. If I did need to pay there, it wasn’t 30 mins after he was born, it would have been later at a insignificant time to where I wouldn’t even remember it.

Sure hospitals have been hurting for money, but they could be a little more sensitive. Gee, you just welcomed a new life into the world, your going to be there for 3 days… there is plenty of time in there to have me pay rather than right afterwards.

Last Friday, on July 10th, 2009, was pleased to welcome a new life into this world. My second son, Joshua David Robertson, was born at 9:34pm weighing 8lbs 5oz and 19.5″ long. He was originally due for July 22nd, though Trish had a c-section scheduled for Monday, July 13th (our last son was a c-section, it is hospital policy to always give c-sections after you’ve had one).

Friday night we were getting ready for dinner when Trish started feeling some strong contractions. She called her doctor who recommend we go in to hook her up to some monitors. Low and behold, she was at 7cm already and they were rushing to get her ready for the c-section before her water broke. It was kind of crazy as there were 4-5 nurses in the room getting everything hooked up and ready to go. All and all, it was 2 hours from when we were sitting at home and Josh was born.

Initially, Josh was on the observation table for the first 12 hours. He took a gulp of fluid on his way out, so they had to suction his stomach a couple of times and watch to make sure his lungs cleared up. Apparently, it is common with c-sections. He was ok by the next morning and was hanging out in the room with Trish from then on.

On top of that, he had a true knot in his cord. This is where he wiggled his way around and developed a knot in the cord. If he had been in there longer, or if they tried a normal delivery, it could have easily tightened and cut him off. He was very lucky.

Trish and Josh came home on Monday and we’ve been doing very well. He is adjusting well, Nick (our 1st son, 22 months old) is getting used to him and likes helping out. Josh is a pretty good sleeper, though still has his days and nights slightly off.

This time, taking advantage of some state programs for family leave, so taking a full 6 weeks off. So I’m now one week in, my inbox is overflowing, but been enjoying it so far. Have 5 weeks left, though I don’t think I’ll be able to make it much longer without doing some sort of dev work. I’ve already chimed in on a couple email threads that I couldn’t resist. Will definitely enjoy the remaining time.

Recently have been thinking about some computing changes.

I switched over to a Mac almost a year and a half ago, and have been all Mac for a year now (Mac Pro desktop and Macbook Pro laptop). I have definitely fallen in love with my Mac and the tools on it. I absolutely love Spaces/Expose, Things, Quicksilver, TextMate, and the strong console environment (I’m a linux geek deep down too).

I still code in Windows though. During the day, I live in VMware Fusion. Fusion is a great app, but some of the annoyances of using VM so much are starting to catch up with me. First, I like to keep Outlook and coding separate, so I actually run two VMs all day long, one with XP and Outlook with 512mb ram, and then I code in a Windows 2008 VM with 2gb ram (I know 2gb is not helping).

My Mac Pro has 8gb of ram total, and while during the day I only have 2.5gb of VMs running, I constantly find the memory bar in iStatPro bumping up against full. I find that a little puzzling and is one reason I haven’t gone beyond 2gb on the dev VM. Other than those VMs, I usually have Adium, Safari, TokBox, and sometimes a Terminal session open (I seem to use irb a lot, even if just as a calculator).

I’d like to find a better way to improve my life.

One possibility is to move my desktop back to Windows. I would certainly gain a lot of speed, getting full use of the ram and running native, but Spaces/Expose are so ingrained into my daily use, it would be hard to lose them. If I did though, I would still keep OS X on my laptop so I can still use Things, TextMate and some of the other Mac tools. Also, the reality is I don’t really do much Ruby coding on my desktop. I always do Rails/Merb coding at night and its almost always on my laptop, in the living room.

In running prices, I think I could almost sell my Mac Pro and build a new Core i7 12gb SSD system for the same price. Sadly, Mac desktops have a huge premium. Though it is beyond me how they make dual Xeons so quiet.

The other option is to keep the Mac Pro, start running my dev VM with more ram and possibly upgrading to 16gb ram. An SSD or two is likely in my future as well, so I could have one for the OS and one for my dev VM. I would also need to find someway else of using Outlook, perhaps just running it on a spare PC and RDC to it or something.

One thing is for certain though, running my dev VM on my laptop is a painful experience. I’ve been playing with ASP.NET MVC lately and using my VM on my laptop is just annoying. I already have my MBP maxed out at 4gb ram, and it runs the same 2gb VM. But even aside from memory, virtualization uses more CPU which means more heat on the laptop and sometimes the fan goes wild even though I’m just doing basic stuff. In talking with Jayme though, he says he RDCs from his laptop to his desktop to code, so I could probably just have a small Windows XP VM and RDC into my desktop or into the dev VM on my desktop to make life easier.

As a trial though, I’ve installed Windows 7 RC x64 on my desktop with Boot Camp and will try it out this week or coding. I’ve installed Switcher, which seems like a nice replacement for Expose, but don’t know about Spaces yet. Maybe I’ll try a day or two with my dev VM bumped up to 4gb as well.