Horribly phrased pun title #meta
The best thing about posting in April 1 is that I can disavow any correctness, accuracy or intent in this post. No one will be able to reference this post to rub in my face that I have made any outrageous claims or offending remarks about anything I decide to talk about in this carefully crafted letter soup. Now that I have all the privilege and none of the responsibility let us take this minute hour and a half to empty this amassing of thoughts in the cold empty void of the internet. Since its preposterous at this point to expect that there will be another post this year then lets do justice to everything else that has previously been ignored up to this point and to what may approach soon.
2013 was shit. Unbelievable, unremarkable shit. Tough I exaggerate. It was mostly just unmemorable after anything that happened beyond what was a good start with the culmination of PAX. To that poor soul that has ever kept track of these historical world altering writings last post I complained, bitched, moaned and humped about a great many things related to the steep learning curve a proud, professional able bodied and responsible software engineer has to endure. The constant race of the ever exhausting honing of the skills the discipline requires takes a toll on even the most enthusiastic of us. Nonetheless after my ramblings and expectations a paradigm shift occurred that pushed me from a consulting coding workhorse to a despicable power hungry research and development manager. The path to my ever increasing tyranny and thirst for power was full of roadblocks and tests from my employer. To transition from a successful coding track record to project management, chief of staff and supreme overlord meant that for months I had to forget that I was going to spend most of my time writing software code and instead I were to focus more on client management, project delivery and junior staff training. Which was filled with frustrating nonsense like going to endless unproductive meetings where people talk about doing nothing or meet to talk about the next meeting of the meeting. The professional world is filled with these mental masturbators that like to have meetings and shuffle papers to play pretendsies white collar and make believe that they produce anything so for someone like me that writes code and things happen its hard to spend 2 hours on the road plus more visiting clients or talking to devs in other projects and ending the day without something to show for it. But, since I cant change that at the moment the lesson my employer expected me to learn was to sleaze my way through the business world of the empty suits and layers of bullshit that are unfortunately required as part of the management of the particular business model of my firm. Between that and long hours plus feeling helpless in delivering code there was a moment where I almost jumped ship. For better or worse that didn't happen and managed to go long in my current gig. Positive side effects of those last six months of the previous year were things like going to Austin to train other developers in sold intelectual property and traning a small army of junior coders and post graduates that thanks to my guidance they are on a path to becoming competent software developers without the horrible practices and habits that are all too comon in this industry even on so called veterans of the craft.
Somehow I pulled through and was given emergency powers assupreme chancellor research and development director where I get to have my own staff that executes my bidding and learns from my strict passion for the art of code. I get to put these aspiring young-lings to the test and teach them the ways of how to do things the proper way from the beginning like software development patterns, libraries, code reuse, modern technologies and all the fruits my constant enthusiastic research produces. They don't know that giving such powers to a radicalized aspiring world subjugator like myself is giving way to carve my path to my eventual and inevitable benevolent dictatorship. While nice perks like quarterly performance bonuses and company expense account are welcome adittions to the ever extending reach of my influence I still don't appreciate the endless meetings I am required to participate in. I rather spend those 2 hours helping my team with their code and teaching them best use of software stacks.
Which brings me to the present. The opportunity to teach and pass on my amassed experience has only served as a platform for exponential learning in the various technologies I once found frustrating or even confusing. The fact that I have to explain how something works means I really have to learn what I'm about to pass on. This has put me in a fast track of learning and its side effect have become that from the previous year to this one I have mastered things like REST APIs, code patterns and general software architecture that I admit once I found confusing or hard to learn but eagerly decided to conquer. The road to learning these things looked like a long thin stretch on a Nintendo 64 game where the machine wasn't powerful enough to render full distance and resorted to fog that blurred your final goal. All this continues to satisfy my ever increasing thirst for knowledge and power. Its sad that most teaching professionals these days treat the discipline of teaching as a way to parrot material from a source to a recipient and forget that teaching and getting someone else to learn something they're not good at or difficult requires a personal touch of understanding and remembering how you saw things when you didn't know anything and channeling the way you managed to move from not knowing to knowledge while shortening the time you take to get to that "this just sank in" moment.
Not all is dark and evil in my current authoritarian rule. I still struggle with wanting to write code and not given time for it but having to abandon it due to demands of my presence in other boring unproductive concerns which frustrates my desire to build profitable products. The current modern economic landscape provides many opportunities to use the power offriendship software to solve a lot of business and social problems. This can be profitable but for shortsighted business men and owners this translates in missed opportunities due to lack of funding for increased experienced staff or even simple things as letting me sit the fuck down to write some code.
Even so, a generally positive progress in my mastery of the craft combined with the ever increasing responsibilities as director, mentor, manager, administrator and architect have translated in the full abandonment of personal projects. But the thing that definitively canned my ventures was titled Project: Move the fuck out to a new apartment. Its not worth to say much about this except that anyone that has ever taken upon the task of finding a place to live know that is a project that will pretty much overshadow anything else you have going on your life at the moment. Combine that with the fact that the real estate market is so fucked that the combination of something nice, affordable, safe and low commute can almost never be fulfilled in full meant a downward spiral of apartment hunt without success through out all of 2013. This definitively took a toll on my sanity but at this point even I have learned that any opportunity where you have to face difficult adversity means that when all is finished you will only come out better than you were before when you get to the other side. Its nice to get to the point where you can laugh at life when it tires to throw you a curve. Like a pathetic wimp annoyingly trying to punch you knowing that when you manage to tire him your retaliation will conclude in his total obliteration.
So if I were to categorize this year it would be 2014: The complete opposite of 2013 by M. Night Shyamalamadingdong. First thing that milestones a memorable start was attending Magfest. I already foamed, babbled and cried about how amazing it was to be able to assist to a festival that is specifically crafted to cater to my top interests of Video Games and Video Game Music. My only command is that anyone that is remotely capable of appreciating video game music must attend this event. Ever since X-Strike Studios made a documentary about it in 2004 I wanted to go and I'm glad I decided to, thanks to a fried that provided the incentive of a couch to crash. I concluded that is so amazing that I'll make it my business to attend every year if I can.
Continuing with the theme the apartment business is a thing of the past and I can now say having concluded moving I can finally chill the fuck out and focus on whats important. Plus I'm sure that any time spent of acquiring skill is not time lost and if anything it will help rev back any projects that have stalled.
The reach of my influence will continue to grow as I infiltrate the Academia. An initiative brought by me with the backing of my firm has allowed me to establish collaborations with Computer Science departments that have fallen decades behind in their software development curriculum and offerings. Alliances with Student Councils and Associations means that I can help prepare young eager men and women on the right path of the software entrepreneurship discipline, teaching them about the industry while they're still in school, full of energy and hope before they get swallowed by a soulless insurance company get stuffed in a cubicle condemned to write reports every day for the rest of their stalled career. I hope that my recent panels made an impact and further awakened the interests of those on the fence about their chosen craft. From what I could gather, when you manage to get a 18-22 year old to put down their phone and stoplooking at Facebook playing 2048 to listen to you, you know you did something right.
Down the line... all that's left is more code, guitars, fast cars, babes, pizza, beer, games, shakes, sunglasses, surf, sand and Sim City 4. This fucking 11 year old game still holds up, and with a mod community that supports it up to this day is a cocaine you don't want to snort. Well, at least is not the pure crystal meth that is Minecraft.
2013 was shit. Unbelievable, unremarkable shit. Tough I exaggerate. It was mostly just unmemorable after anything that happened beyond what was a good start with the culmination of PAX. To that poor soul that has ever kept track of these historical world altering writings last post I complained, bitched, moaned and humped about a great many things related to the steep learning curve a proud, professional able bodied and responsible software engineer has to endure. The constant race of the ever exhausting honing of the skills the discipline requires takes a toll on even the most enthusiastic of us. Nonetheless after my ramblings and expectations a paradigm shift occurred that pushed me from a consulting coding workhorse to a despicable power hungry research and development manager. The path to my ever increasing tyranny and thirst for power was full of roadblocks and tests from my employer. To transition from a successful coding track record to project management, chief of staff and supreme overlord meant that for months I had to forget that I was going to spend most of my time writing software code and instead I were to focus more on client management, project delivery and junior staff training. Which was filled with frustrating nonsense like going to endless unproductive meetings where people talk about doing nothing or meet to talk about the next meeting of the meeting. The professional world is filled with these mental masturbators that like to have meetings and shuffle papers to play pretendsies white collar and make believe that they produce anything so for someone like me that writes code and things happen its hard to spend 2 hours on the road plus more visiting clients or talking to devs in other projects and ending the day without something to show for it. But, since I cant change that at the moment the lesson my employer expected me to learn was to sleaze my way through the business world of the empty suits and layers of bullshit that are unfortunately required as part of the management of the particular business model of my firm. Between that and long hours plus feeling helpless in delivering code there was a moment where I almost jumped ship. For better or worse that didn't happen and managed to go long in my current gig. Positive side effects of those last six months of the previous year were things like going to Austin to train other developers in sold intelectual property and traning a small army of junior coders and post graduates that thanks to my guidance they are on a path to becoming competent software developers without the horrible practices and habits that are all too comon in this industry even on so called veterans of the craft.
Somehow I pulled through and was given emergency powers as
Which brings me to the present. The opportunity to teach and pass on my amassed experience has only served as a platform for exponential learning in the various technologies I once found frustrating or even confusing. The fact that I have to explain how something works means I really have to learn what I'm about to pass on. This has put me in a fast track of learning and its side effect have become that from the previous year to this one I have mastered things like REST APIs, code patterns and general software architecture that I admit once I found confusing or hard to learn but eagerly decided to conquer. The road to learning these things looked like a long thin stretch on a Nintendo 64 game where the machine wasn't powerful enough to render full distance and resorted to fog that blurred your final goal. All this continues to satisfy my ever increasing thirst for knowledge and power. Its sad that most teaching professionals these days treat the discipline of teaching as a way to parrot material from a source to a recipient and forget that teaching and getting someone else to learn something they're not good at or difficult requires a personal touch of understanding and remembering how you saw things when you didn't know anything and channeling the way you managed to move from not knowing to knowledge while shortening the time you take to get to that "this just sank in" moment.
Not all is dark and evil in my current authoritarian rule. I still struggle with wanting to write code and not given time for it but having to abandon it due to demands of my presence in other boring unproductive concerns which frustrates my desire to build profitable products. The current modern economic landscape provides many opportunities to use the power of
Even so, a generally positive progress in my mastery of the craft combined with the ever increasing responsibilities as director, mentor, manager, administrator and architect have translated in the full abandonment of personal projects. But the thing that definitively canned my ventures was titled Project: Move the fuck out to a new apartment. Its not worth to say much about this except that anyone that has ever taken upon the task of finding a place to live know that is a project that will pretty much overshadow anything else you have going on your life at the moment. Combine that with the fact that the real estate market is so fucked that the combination of something nice, affordable, safe and low commute can almost never be fulfilled in full meant a downward spiral of apartment hunt without success through out all of 2013. This definitively took a toll on my sanity but at this point even I have learned that any opportunity where you have to face difficult adversity means that when all is finished you will only come out better than you were before when you get to the other side. Its nice to get to the point where you can laugh at life when it tires to throw you a curve. Like a pathetic wimp annoyingly trying to punch you knowing that when you manage to tire him your retaliation will conclude in his total obliteration.
So if I were to categorize this year it would be 2014: The complete opposite of 2013 by M. Night Shyamalamadingdong. First thing that milestones a memorable start was attending Magfest. I already foamed, babbled and cried about how amazing it was to be able to assist to a festival that is specifically crafted to cater to my top interests of Video Games and Video Game Music. My only command is that anyone that is remotely capable of appreciating video game music must attend this event. Ever since X-Strike Studios made a documentary about it in 2004 I wanted to go and I'm glad I decided to, thanks to a fried that provided the incentive of a couch to crash. I concluded that is so amazing that I'll make it my business to attend every year if I can.
Continuing with the theme the apartment business is a thing of the past and I can now say having concluded moving I can finally chill the fuck out and focus on whats important. Plus I'm sure that any time spent of acquiring skill is not time lost and if anything it will help rev back any projects that have stalled.
The reach of my influence will continue to grow as I infiltrate the Academia. An initiative brought by me with the backing of my firm has allowed me to establish collaborations with Computer Science departments that have fallen decades behind in their software development curriculum and offerings. Alliances with Student Councils and Associations means that I can help prepare young eager men and women on the right path of the software entrepreneurship discipline, teaching them about the industry while they're still in school, full of energy and hope before they get swallowed by a soulless insurance company get stuffed in a cubicle condemned to write reports every day for the rest of their stalled career. I hope that my recent panels made an impact and further awakened the interests of those on the fence about their chosen craft. From what I could gather, when you manage to get a 18-22 year old to put down their phone and stop
Down the line... all that's left is more code, guitars, fast cars, babes, pizza, beer, games, shakes, sunglasses, surf, sand and Sim City 4. This fucking 11 year old game still holds up, and with a mod community that supports it up to this day is a cocaine you don't want to snort. Well, at least is not the pure crystal meth that is Minecraft.
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