the bofe blog

So I made a new life feed for this site. It’s powered by Yahoo! Pipes. It’s on the right side, RSS users. That means you’ll have to click.

Inspiration goes to Derek G.

About a month ago I went to a conference near Philadelphia, PA for work. My travel schedule went a little like this:

• Depart Louisville, KY at 4:45 PM EST (I got to the airport at 4:00, but that’s another story)
• Arrive in Cleveland, OH for a brief layover
• Arrive in Philadelphia, PA
• Somehow get to King of Prussia, PA

I had a hotel to stay at for the conference. The shuttle service didn’t run past 6PM. So the obvious alternative is to get a cab. I’m not very well-versed in giving cab instructions, especially in a place I’m not familiar with, especially to a place which is > 20 minutes away in another city. So while in Cleveland, I look to my dad for advice. He just says go for it with the cab and if they don’t know what you’re talking about, find another one. That’s Dad, always practical.

Then it got weird.

“You need a ride to King of Prussia?” a random older (40s-50s) man said. Then time kind of stopped. It was a classic devil on the shoulder/angel on the shoulder situation… except I couldn’t tell which voice was evil. I looked at the man — he looks fairly clean, probably a businessman. He was bigger than me, which was kind of worrisome.

“Dude, you’re just as likely to be chopped up and left in a ditch when you’re stepping into a cab. This guy already knows where you’re going and he speaks English”, one of the unidentifiable voices in my head said to me.

“Yeah,” I said, “we’ll meet up after the flight?”
“Sounds good.”

The guy turned out to be pretty cool. We talked a little shop about computers, but he turned out to be a minister. I offered him $60 (which would have been the cab fair) but he wouldn’t take any money.

As a direct result of this story, my mother and sister think I am a complete idiot.

In May I made a huge mistake. I read the season finale spoilers for LOST Season 3. Talk about torture — LOST is one of the speculative shows I’ve ever seen. It’s very easy to talk about. NOT talking about the season finale’s shocking ending was not easy.

Did I mention I read them two weeks before the finale aired?

For Season 4, if it ever starts I’m going to employ this fix:

(windows)
notepad C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS
127.0.0.1 spoilerslost.blogspot.com


(linux)
vim /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 spoilerslost.blogspot.com


That should keep me out of trouble.

Late to the game on this one. This week I canceled my Time Warner cable, and now I just have their cable internet. Cable TV just isn’t worth the money anymore.

I just installed Adblock Plus to go along with Firefox.

Is there anything else I need to be aware of?

Of course, this does not apply to me. This is information I’ve gleaned over the years talking to friends. These are the mindsets a typical web developer goes through while at work, maybe even turning into each one of these in a single day.

Starter

Generally seen in first few months of employment. Starter can single handedly handle any project thrown at him/her. Starter doesn’t need any help. Most time spent working hard proving worth to other team members/superiors. Starter does not have the ability to say no.

Planner

Planner is a distant cousin to Doorman and Doc. Planner will spend all of his/her time drawing flow charts and ER diagrams, knowing the ins and outs of each process. Planner’s applications never get implemented – or they are total failures/washes that never see the light of day past an alpha version.

Doorman

Doorman is about to quit. Doorman feels like he/she should leave on a good note, so often turns to Doc. Doorman feels karmically obligated to document everything, leave plenty of notes, and document all processes or even provide training to new employees. Since Doorman was once Starter, Doorman knows how it feels.

Doc

Doc feels like he/she must document every single activity done, even down to using the bathroom. Doc must optimize all hours spent on the clock and prove to superiors that he is a worthy investment. Doc doesn’t realize that he could do that much more effectively by not being Doc and just being becoming Zone.

Thief

People often get Thief and Fire Chief confused. They do kind of rhyme… but that’s where their similarities stop. Thief just has to get the job done — the difference is Thief does it just so people will leave him/her alone. Thief goes out to websites with similar projects and will just modify copy/pasted code and call it their own.

Zone

This beast is hardly seen. Most often sighted around holiday weekends or after hours. Zone can be identified with its unique ear coverings, usually called headphones which drown out all other distracting noise and actually enables Zone to be productive. In the event that Zone is interrupted, a varying hibernation ensues. The Zone’s Hibernation period is directly proportional to the length of the stay in the zone.

Fire Chief

A lot depends on the workplace — you could just be thrown into a Fire Chief position, or create on for yourself while being Launcher.Fire Chief is so disorganized he/she has no idea what to do until a user comes with a fire to put out. Fire Chief only brings quick dirty fixes and ultimately creates much more work for everyone… but who cares? The fire got put out.

Seeker

In search of perfection, Seeker looks for a new platform/language/process because he/she is currently unsatisfied with how much work is going into trivial tasks. Seeker never really lasts, and ultimately reverts to Guardian.

Guardian

Guardian is completely satisfied with his/her current situation, even if it can be done faster/better in another environment. Guardian will even gladly do more work and brag about how ‘it compiles faster’. Guardian is the cause of just as many problems as Fire Chief, the problems created by Guardian are just much longer lasting.

Bartender

Bartender operates under many aliases – most notably Dude-From-Office-Space-Construction-Worker. All Bartender can do is think about how badly he/she wants to not be working with computers ever again. Even with less money, it’s worth it to Bartender. Bartender never takes action.

Feel free to comment additional ones =)

It took me almost four hours to realize today was Thursday.

Come back to me already. I won’t make it until February.

We’ve all got our personal causes to support, beliefs to believe, and guiding principles govern our lives. Without them, we’re doing nothing without a reason. For a while, I considered myself to be doing nothing without a reason. Maybe laziness. Or apathy.

It’s been pretty amusing getting back into the thick of things when it comes to the big two: politics and religion. The two that when a discussion breaks out online you can usually see a fight coming a mile away or everyone getting really quiet/awkward. The two that we’re encouraged NOT to discuss at work because people have differing ideas.

I was uninvolved with politics and I didn’t exactly care about religion for quite some time. I’m back in my involvement. I’m reading lots of news online and watching The Colbert Report daily. “News” shows like The Daily Show or The O’Reilly Factor aren’t worth watching.

It makes me upset that typical evangelism doesn’t really apply to politics and religion. Typical evangelism would be just spreading the good news about a new restaurant, a TV show, or a rockin’ new band.

For example, a friend says:

Dude… you should listen to this band. They’re called Hurt. Their new album is pretty awesome, give it a try.

Or even better, you say:

Hmm… who is this band? I like their sound and this song is pretty awesome.

With television and politics you get the opposite. Bully tactics, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you’re on, make us very very stupid. They also drive us further apart when we aren’t really that different. Rarely do you see a political show whose true goal is to have an open dialog about politics. You have omnipotent host vs. poorly-spoken non-representative extremist member of political party. Bill O’Reilly is notorious for this, but what a lot of O’Reilly haters don’t do is point out when someone like John Stewart does the exact same thing.

The shows don’t create an environment for an open idea exchange, they just create an environment of idiocy and bullying. They drive left and right further apart, creating more galvanized views which will refuse to unite for a common good.

Agreeing with bully tactics ultimately makes you stupid. Bullying takes something like the Holy Trinity, which isn’t exactly an easy thing to understand and reduces it to a yes/no question. It takes an idea like socialized medicine and makes anyone who says “we just can’t afford it, we need something more economically sound” a child hating villain.

Unfortunately, bullying gets attention. Making someone who doesn’t agree with you look like an idiot is very easy to do… and it gets pageviews/ratings from people who like to say “me too!” and “haha”.