Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

I went to the annual all-company meeting yesterday and was greeted with the birthday party for my company. They just turned fifteen years old last week, and in order to celebrate everyone was greeted to a feast. Not only did we get some sweet chow, but we were also given our choice of either a laptop bag that is Ipod accessible, or a backpack with Ipod accessories build in. I think it’s like the one they’re selling on ThinkGeek.com. Anyway, awesome, but we were also exposed to the next big plans of the company. I’ll stay mute on the details other than to say that we’re setting up a company blog.

Our new marketing guru is a giant blog fiend; his presentations reek of success and have the distinct feeling of professionalism that makes my skin want to start taking salsa lessons. In short the guy seems to know how to get his marketing on, and I’ll give it to him he’s got the charisma of a class full of Dallas cowboy cheerleaders. Unfortunately there were no Dallas cowboy cheerleaders, but maybe next company meeting? Guess nobody got my memo.

Anyway, I suppose that means I’ll be blogging on two fronts. The first of which, will be here where my internal dialog has a home, and the second will be my company blog. We’re trying to reach out to the community and share our group knowledge. Borg anyone? That’s a Star Trek reference in case you’re not in the know. However, I’m not going to be able to really talk about anything other than what I’m working on in the vaguest of sense. Like right now I’m working with JD Edwards Enterprise One. Here I can safely rename it to JD Edwards Enterprise Suck. See, freedom right there. No, at the company blog I’ll probably have to tone it down and mention how I have experience with working around, er, I mean making JD Edwards Enterprise One work better.

I suppose at some point I’ll get back to focusing on providing more technical blog posts about some technology I’m working with. Nothing incredibly exciting at the moment, DSN database connections, VB.net windows services, command driven program, management interface software, integrated ASP classic web pages, serviced soft parts pegging application, Kanban quantity calculation processing, and mostly going through the daily grind to work on six applications at once. One thing I can tell you is hard is explaining to a client they have to wait six minutes for an application to refresh its data because you’re having to go through about 40 million database records to get the status, date, and part details for sales orders. Now, that’s the hard one right there sir.

I need a new place to live. I think I’ve come to that conclusion when I was trying to get into my computer room and was stumbling around stubbing my toes on the computer under the night stand I use as a router/hub rack. I then realizing I’d stubbed my left foot on the stand went to the right and stubbed my right foot on the dresser I use as the CD rack, and utility computer part holder. I then reel back and head to the left jumping around at this point, and stub my shin on the work bench just ahead of me, and fall onto the roller chair that my girl friend happened to leave shifted out in front of my path before she left two days prior.

Shoot here is how I have the room arranged, I think it’s a 12x16 room where when you walk into the room you see a dressor four feet into the room just in clearance with the door entry, to the left is the night stand next to the wall just as you walk in holding a lamp, and six routers. Underneath (stand actually sits on top) the stand is my desktop/VPN box, next to it is a giant red gaudy chair that we’ve had for more than twenty years. Just in the middle of the room is a weight bench with a leg lift on the front, and free weight bar on the back. To the left of it and farthest to the left against the wall is my infamous tread mill.

Behind the weight bench, to the right of the tread mill, is the closet that is completely blocked by the weight bench, and really is just filled with misc computer parts, outdated cloths, box of baseball cards, and some old computer terminal monitors. If you’re looking straight into the room just behind the dresser is the first of two bookshelves, the first against the far right wall just snuggling in beside the dresser. Next to the bookshelf is my desk that is dead center against the wall that is a foot away from the weight bench (currently resides in the middle of the room), and to the left of the desk is another bookshelf that also blocks the rest of the closet section. Laying on the floor is books I’ve been reading, or am currently reading along with assorted weights. Each bookshelf is overflowing with bargain computer books I picked up on Amazon.com along with a collection I’ve purchased from Borders. All in all the room is pretty cramped, and that’s the room I work most in. My bedroom is no exception to this rule, and the garage is so full of truck pieces that it’s border line resembling my computer room. I think in the next month, after my surgery, I’m going to start looking for a home of my own. I think its about time, and with the rates it’s almost retarded not to look. I have been budgeting myself to about 35k a year even though I make more, and hopefully that will pay off when I go home looking. We’ll see though, but my shins are starting to push more and more each day. I think I’d lost some stress if I had a more open environment in which to work, and live in. The degree of separation between my work room and bedroom are not far enough to promote healthy sleep, and I think I’m taking it to work with me each day. Again, we’ll see, anyway back at it.

Every now and again it occurs to me that things, while seemingly unpleasant in situation, are often made unpleasant by ones attitude on life. I find myself in a daily battle with my client as we’re both entrenched in this dilapidated new system that they’ve implemented worldwide, and are each day at the mercy of the vendors. It’s been over a month now and several requests we’ve put through for procedures to be pushed to production are still in backlog.

I’m sitting here after going through the third iteration of releasing this application to my boss, who is very particular about his interfaces, and I just feel a little at peace. I’ve been stressing, stressing, and have become so entrenched in the day to day goings of my client I’ve nearly forgotten I work for another company. I suppose that is not a bad thing since I tend to work more hours than I bill, and am generally pleased to be around these people. I’m a little disappointed that at some point I’ll leave and never really figure out what happens with them, whether what I did mattered, or whether they’re going to curse my name afterwards.

At my home company email traffic has dried up, and every once in a while I get news from home base. I don’t expect much more from being a consultant, but it seems the personal contacts I’ve made do not share the same interest to stay in communication. Not that it matters, but it was nice to get to know them on a less work based basis.

I like being a consultant, it’s nice to be able to switch companies, switch job duties, and not be pegged to one particular duty. However, I’m not in control of my hours (only am to an extent), I’m not in control of where I work, and I’m not in control of the environment I’m exposed to. Up to this point I’ve been blessed to work with a dedicated group of people in both a financial company, and now in an industrial company. I must say I much prefer the industrial company over any other. It’s a whole unique environment filled with procedure, diverse (in the sense of personality over skin color) group of people, and most of the time people have been in the company on the long term. They’re more vocal about their needs, and that’s what I want to know. I can make them crap and call it dinner, or I can make them steak. It all depends on how they’re willing to work with me, and to this point I can only lump praise on their acceptance of my work. I’ve not yet been called a son of a bitch like many others before me. Trust me, my division manager is quick to point out ones faults, and thus far he’s only been kind. He’s even told me that after I’m done working here I’ll be drinking 40’s, and praying never to see this place again. A lot of the guys ask me if I’ve brought the long necks, or 40’s when I come into the room to install applications. I tell you, appreciation goes a long way, and here I feel it daily.

So I came home yesterday after going out on a triple date with some friends to find the house completely dark. I walk in, turn on some lights, scare the heck out of the cat that has become contemptuous of my ability to leave house. I walk into the living room where we have two birds, and I hear the high pitched sounds of the TV being on. I look over, sure enough the TV is on, cable is off, and the Bose system is off. However, the Xbox 360 was turned on, which I never do because I don’t trust the long term durability of the system, and I’m past the warranty period for where I’d be less concerned if it crooked. I wont even start on how worthless the HD-DVD drive on the thing is now, and how Sony can choke on a big one for that Mr. fancy blue-ray discs.

So who turned on the 360? I look at the floor to see it’s surprisingly clean, which means the cleaning ladies must have come out. Suddenly it became clear; while the cleaning ladies were neglecting to clean the ring around the bathtub they’ve discovered the awesomeness of the Assassins Creed game on my 360.

I’m now discombobulated with the fact that I actually have to clean my own bathroom while paying a monthly sum to ensure that I do not have to clean my own sty. What a travesty! For such an outrage of responsibility I’m also tempted to start taking those pills used to treat obesity that cause the outbreak of the grease shits just to exact my revenge. However, this grease farts I’ve heard come out of nowhere, and you’re left with a false sense of security over your own ability to control bowl movements. I’m sure there would be many a allie fall to the hands of this ploy to exact revenge upon the unspecting toilet scrubber women, several of which I’ve gone to high school with, but I believe that the benefits of knowing that to play my X360 the cost of such pleasure would directly be proportional with the amount of work required to make the toilet sparkle once more. Hrm, speaking of toilets I’ve started collaborating with my step brother on his new web presence. We’re creating a business portal for his company, setting up his web presence, and may start the move towards becoming a full fledge plumbing supply house. Fantastic times I tell you. Should be a fun and exciting project to help take his business to another level, one I’ve worked with for a while, and hopefully will provide benefit to his company. Maybe even setup a little kick back from the commission generated by direct web sales. Oh well, what was I saying, oh yeah, bowl grease farts. They’re evil. I think that about covers it.

PS. Back to the Future, the movie, was a narcissistic joyride of what appeared to be the writers own fascination with eccentric creepy doctors, young boys put into awkward situations with their own mothers, and what must be the writers own inability to commit to a long term relationship. Why else would he take us back to the future, and what is with the spin on words for the title? Shoot, here is a suggestion “Back to the Story Line” either way they’re not really ever going to go back to fix anything important, just like in the movie(s).

It’s surgery time. I have a torn meniscus. What’s this mean? Whelp they’re going to go in and cut out the torn section as the tear apparently never heals due to the lack of blood apparently. Anyway, that is all I know at this point. Tentatively I have surgery April 1^st, and I picked that day especially because it’s April fools day.

Today is the day I find out about the knee. I’m hoping that there is something wrong, and it’s clearly visible so that I can then breathe a sigh of relief knowing the pain is not in my head. I’ve discovered a new ability that previously was not possible with my knee; I can take a hold of it, and pull it up and to the left. It will then shift, pops twice, and will sit in place at its new location. I tried doing the same thing to the opposite knee without much luck, so I know it has to be something, or at least I hope so?

I sat up pretty late last night watching movies, Shooter, Catch & Release, and after those two movies were over I decided that I wasn’t just ready to head to bed yet. It was only 10pm i still had a good two more hours that I could be using. So I dropped over to Hollywood Video (conveniently open till 12am 365 days a year) and rented Idiocracy, and enjoyed a very good movie. That movie was hilarious in some areas, and a frightening look at what could happen given a very slippery slope.

I ended up sitting there until well past 1a.m. not only watching the movie but also writing a screen play based on an idea that struck me the previous morning while getting up to take a shower. I spit balled the concept with a friend, whom also is writing his own screen play, and we quickly found ourselves laughing for well over four hours about the ideas. So to make sure I didn’t lose any of the thought cycles we put into our session brainstorming I started to write last night. I’m only on page six but the concepts are just coming so quickly that the movie started taking place in my head and all I could do was just try to type as quickly as it played out.

I’ve finished the beginning settings, lead up to the problem, and have begun the second phase where the initial negotiations begin. It’s fantastic, and I’ve found myself emotionally invested in these characters. I plan to work on it again tonight at some point after my knee appointment. Lord knows my mind is not with what I’m doing currently, but maybe someday you’ll see my movie.

Looks like my morning routines are starting to catch up to me. I usually stay up ridiculously late (i.e. past 1a.m) and then try to get myself out of bed around 5:30a.m. At this point I’m straining to keep focused, get in the shower, strain to make myself leave the scalding hot water that feels fantastic, and then fight to make myself get into the cold truck to drive to work on time.

I’m an extreme pain in the butt to get motivated in the mornings, and that’s no exception on weekends when I slumber like a drugged wild bear after wandering into a neighboring town. It’s such a pain. I usually end up getting behind the time because I’ll spend twenty minutes in the shower easily just with my head placed dead center in the 90 degree corner, and I’ll lean so my arms dangle down and I could realistically fall asleep standing there. Probably have time to time. Anyway, I then rush to find black socks, and after a while I don’t understand why at night I don’t just get them out so I don’t have to scour for them like a twisted scavenger hunt. It’s like I’ve made this elaborate maze just to find a pair of socks, but in the end it’s always the same. After ten minutes of searching I’ll suck it up, put gold bond on my feet, and wear the same pair from yesterday. I then spend the rest of the day paranoid I smell like feet.

By this point I need to leave the house in less than three minutes of I’ll be late. So I rush to the kitchen where I’ll, dare I say it, open the jug of water, take a gulp in my mouth, throw in a once a day vitamin, and run for my shoes and jacket.

At this point I’m in the cold freezing weather needing to have left five minutes beforehand to make it on time, and I’ll rush myself into the truck. Once in the truck I’ll start it up, check to see whether I can see through the ice on the window, and if I cant I’ll take a hack at it for a minute or two. From there I’ll drive (sometimes with limited visibility) down the street, and spend the next twenty minutes rushing to work to be on time.

When I get to work I start to worry because I’m almost ten minutes late, and finally I remember I always keep my clock set fifteen minutes ahead because in the morning my brain doesn’t work to remember that fact. So I always end up walking in five minutes early, unless the roads are really bad, or I find my socks. If I find my socks I’m having a good day and will be ten to fifteen minutes early.

So while I was scampering in the morning to take that big gulp of water I’ll grab three of the varying brands of diet pop drinks. I’ll typically take two of a kind and a third different brand. That way I can have a combo during the day. Start off with say a Vanilla Coke Zero, followed by a Vault Zero, and finally cap off my afternoon with another Vanilla Coke. Sometimes to spice things up I take three different varieties. The worst part of this whole dang process is I’ll neglect the fact to bring food, or money for food. So I’ll spend all day pumped on vitamins, caffeine, and lately I’ve been keeping a bag of Vitamin C cough drops at my desk that I munch on like candy. So I’ve been packed full of vitamins, which is bad for you, chalked up on caffeine, and have a distinct lack of restful sleep. It’s really starting to catch up. I sat here and I thought my brain went to sleep because someone walked by and I was looking straight up at the light on the ceiling for at least a full minute without realizing. In my defense I was really lost in though on doing the calculation for this recursive function to soft assign raw material to children parts that are parent parts to the raw material but child parts to parent parts that share similar child parts that are parent parts, and I have to figure out what order and priority they are assigned to each other. It gets awfully convoluted and confusing. So I’m sitting here in my head spinning these parts around trying to figure out the best solution to the current setup.

Saw the movie Juno tonight. I really enjoyed watching it, considering there was a whopping four people in the theater including myself, and that made it all the more enjoyable. I thought it was genuinely funny, had a good story line to it, and I was pleasantly surprised that there was no tom foolery from the adopting guy. I really thought that the relationship would go inappropriate, and then they’d be all legally obligated to give up the baby to the perv. Thankfully that was not the case, nor did the woman try to cut the fetus out of the girl and insert it into her own. You were wrong dude (you know who you are), but anyway the movie was really good. I’m definitely going to buy it on DVD and probably watch it once a month just for the awesome sound track, mellow presentation, and it was just generally not distracting/enthralling enough to bore me after one viewing. It’s like the movie ‘Sean of the Dead’ towards romance as ‘Sean of the Dead’ is to zombie movies. It’s there, it represents the genre, but it is mellow enough to watch on repeat without much fuss.

I also can't explain it but i want to sit around playing the Banjo with some lemonaid, and step away from computers for a while. I like movies that give you a new outlook/perspective into the world.

There tends to be a lot of days where I just don’t seem to want to get up for work. Not that typical “ugh, my job sucks, and I don’t want to go”, but the kind of hatred towards the responsibility of having to get up. Each morning is more of an effort than the last to drag myself into the shower, and to head out to work for this company. Not that my client is bad, in fact they’re fantastic, but the lack of sleep lately has just started to get to me. Between concentrating on my studies, hobbies, interests, friendships, relationship, family, medical problems, and the like I’m just completely drained. I would like nothing more than to take a week, maybe month off from responsibility, play the banjo, watch some movies, program some websites, learn some new things, and to relax. Even my week off vacation was pretty horrible. My bird died (my first pet mind you), I was sick, didn’t see my family for Christmas, started school the next week, had to work a week of my scheduled off time, and then I had to spend a week cramming my head with processes for my new client. I was just so drained from all that and I was just complete blindsided by life. I ended up deciding to go out that week to buy a hand gun so I could go to the target range as a way to do something I’d always wanted to do. I figured I’d worked that whole month of nothing short of 60 hour weeks so I thought I’d give myself a surprise.  So I sit here now at 11:38pm pondering the life lessons I’ve gained up until this point and I’m trying to decide the direction I want to go towards. I’m trying to decide whether this expensive, expensive degree at a college that is so dysfunctional in the first place, is really worth it. I’m thinking no. I’m thinking that regardless of how much money I make when I graduate exactly how much of my money I’ve invested. Is the 70+ thousand in five years I’d make a year really worth the 40+ or so thousand dollars I’d spend now. From the microeconomics class/finance class I’m thinking no. I’m thinking that right now the ends do not justify the means. I’m thinking that just because I’m going to school for management that I’d be prevented from going into management when the time is right. I think, I could become a manager, and that school is only one means to an end. Not the single means to an end. So I sit here pondering that, and what exactly it is I want from the next five years. Am I content where I work, where do I see it going, would I be happier elsewhere, and why would I be questioning that if I was content. From this point I’m happy with my job, I’m ok with my salary, and I’m gaining new experiences each and every day. Consulting is not hard, meeting unrealistic expectations is however, and I think that is the skill I’m honing now. Even today I had to tell a client boss that a feature that he requested, while referring to it as an easy fix, is not easy. In fact I told him that anything he requested, while seemingly easy, may in fact be a very complex addition. I like Steve Jobs definition of how ‘simple’ isn’t.

Yes, yes I know I don’t use proper punctuation, I don’t put proper spacing in my writings, but you know what? You’re getting this text straight from my head, and honestly up there it’s so ahead of its time that you’re actually seeing text how your mind stores it, or mine anyways.

As another side note Vista seems to have turned off permissions for me to access a mapped network drive after performing some updates. Fantastic. I’m denied access to internal IP addresses now. I think I’m going to have to change my stance on Vista. Frankly, it has a feeling of being pretty, stability of a five year old srattaling a paint shaker, and for some reason Visual Studio 2008 decides every freaking twenty minutes that it wants to restart itself. Thank you Visual Studio 2008 Professional for not living up to expectations, and for making all that time I wanted feel like a loss of valuable lusting time towards other software products. Maybe I’ll become a Fedora fan-boy, or maybe those Macs. They’re pretty, and seem to be functional. I bet their programming IDE doesn’t ask them politely to restart after handling its own down bringing. Anyway, I suppose I should cut back on drinking all these Diet Dr. Peppers before trying to sleep. That may have something to do with my rough mornings. That or it could be reading the ‘Programming C’ book I’ve been skimming through before bed. I have a nest of books all over the place. I think I’ll take a picture to show everyone. I have the sniper rifle laying on a bunch of them as I type this. Something funny about seeing a sniper rifle leaning up against technical programming manuals. Nerd vs War, or I guess Nerd Wars. So when the Mac people revolt I’ll be ready, that, or I’ll defect. Hrm.

I actually failed to realize just how neat Vista Ultimate is. I’ve had the new pc for a few months now (Dell XPS) and all its quad core glory. It wasn’t until this past weekend when I was sitting down getting it setup as my new development PC that I realized it had IIS 7 with ability to create multiple websites & multiple FTP sites. I was a little surprised at that fact as I’d have thought it would be reserved solely for the Windows Server family as was the case with IIS 6 for Server 2003 compared to the version I was using on XP Pro. So after a few clicks, some firewall modifications, and a couple choice words later I had my six websites setup and configured. Unfortunately it wasn’t until I tried to switch over this blog engine until I realized that a lot changed between IIS versions.

Anyway, long story short (props out to Ck) a buddy of mine pointed out some conversion issues, and I was able to resolve it after about five hours of head banging confusion. Dang you and the new web.config setup dealing with http handlers. So the site is live (RampidByter.com) after about a five month hiatus, my new system has been converted into a web server / development system, and of course I’m now having some new strange problems.

I ran Windows update just yesterday on the Vista PC, and installed the recommended NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX drivers. Wouldn’t you know it, now periodically the system will drop the screen, goes totally black, and then will come back to the desktop saying my video driver has failed but was restarted.

Man, can’t win with you Vista. That was one thing I liked about XP Pro it didn’t fail on the things I most rely on working without question. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t unstable, but at least it didn’t give me the impression that things broke all the time. So I’d run visual studio, make a web page, switch to design view, black screen, error message on the status bar, or I’d open media player while buiding the web page… back to black.

I guess Vista is an exception to the rule. Once you go black (Vista), you go back (XP).