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

The last three weeks has been a whirlwind of work. I started work October 4th with my first official client. I managed to land a six month contract for a staff augmentation role helping to relieve a backfilled position. The environment is eerily similar to a job I had a few years ago. Small development staff, large queue of critical work to be performed, and a very large legacy code base being revamped with no documentation. I’m noticing a trend…

The company itself deals in pre-paid debit cards, and essentially acts as a banking institution for its many customers. My first week was one giant brain dump. I learned the systems, the third party providers, business processes, and did a big code dive. I also ended up getting a bit of a glimpse into the financial world of pimps and prostitutes on how they launder money. I learned about MoneyPak fraud rings, and how incredibly dumb some would be defrauders are.

I can’t go into the specifics of what I’m doing, but it’s mostly been improving internal business applications and site redesign work. This last week was working solely on improving an emailing system that relies heavily on ExactTarget web services. I redesigned the internal email submission system with an improvement in efficiency of more than 50%. However, please note that ExactTarget isn’t exactly a speedy email submission system. I established a baseline for non-async triggered send mail requests at 10 minutes per 1000 emails sent. The async model isn’t much better, but is an improvement with about 5 minutes per 1000 emails.

The use of ‘async’ for the ExactTarget triggered send messages is a bit of a misleading expectation. Doing an ‘async’ send is nothing more than setting the RequestType property of the CreateOptions object passed to the standard Create function call. It still requires a somewhat significant delay in waiting for the request to round trip back to the calling application with a request ID output. It was impossible to get any baseline expectation from ExactTarget on any SLA.

Anyway, sorry about going off on that tangent a bit. After having been off for four weeks I have never felt more refreshed and focused. I managed to overcome many negative habits previously impacting my ability to focus on one task for long periods of time. I no longer feel compelled to check the same six news sites constantly, I no longer require music to stay on track, and I have never felt more productive. I know not all clients will be like this, and I am just incredibly happy it’s been such a great experience on my first time out.

This week was a very exciting week for me. I had my first interview in going on three years. I had an interview this past Tuesday with a potential client of a consulting company to see if I was a good fit. I sat through about an hour long interview with the client manager going over high-level tech questions, and my background experiences. At the same time I was going through the interview process I was also being observed by the VP of sales for the actual consulting company. It was a two-for-one interview with my having to answer questions for a client, and be graded by my actual consultant employer.

It went very well. There were some aspects of the interview I could have done better. It’s really hard to express a persons background, key applications that were developed, and do so juggling the don’t share to much stigma from past employers day-to-day workings. I’d would like to have thrown out names of companies I’ve worked with, but you really have to be discreet while still displaying a solid background they can feel excited about.

The end result of that first interview is that the client said I’d answered more questions correctly than anyone else they’ve previously interviewed. Talk about an ego booster. That opened up the door for phase two, which would be another interview done by the whole development team I’d be working with. That particular interview took place today, and if I can say I think it went rather well.

Somehow during the process the interview started to take a turn from grilling me with questions to just a room full of like minded individuals (geeks) talking about really neat new technologies and processes. The conversation ranged from projects I’d worked on, tools I’ve used, frameworks I like, and a general overview of my background. I was asked to debate with one of the developers on my take on a nullable boolean data type. Whether I felt it was ever necessary to have a bool value that was anything other than just true or false, or why I felt a three-state supporting bool should ever be used.

During the entire interview the only question I could not answer was what a closure was. I told them I’d probably used one, but I couldn’t at that point in time think of what it was. I came home to find I have in fact used closures, but if you asked me right now I still don’t think I could explain what they are short of similar to anonymous delegates. Yeah, I agree that if you can’t explain it to a seven year old then you probably don’t know what it is yourself.

At the end of the interview one of the developers told me that I was the first person that has ever actually explained correctly the difference between a custom control and a server control. The best part was in my follow-up questions about the development environment a developer simply said that the company was suffering from “premature Ajaxilation.” I think I about laughed myself out of the chair right there. What a fantastic group of developers. I’m sure it won’t all be as nice an experience as this has been, but the journey into independent consulting definitely has been a fun trip so far.

Well, I’m reaping the benefits of being self-employed. In the last four weeks I’ve dropped exactly 25 pounds. I only eat when I’m hungry, no snacks (only a box of cookies last week), and I run a minimum of one mile per day. In that time with a reduced diet and daily exercise I’ve dropped a lot of weight. I do miss star bucks frappachinos and a slice of lemon loaf though.

Finally made it through all the holiday weekend and extended weekend. Ended up spending the entire three day weekend with family, and reconfiguring my entire internal network. Somehow packed within this three bedroom house are over 26 internet enabled devices and computers. Some virtual, some net-connected microchips, but all-in-all I found that total rather shocking. Setting up the network took a better part of a day and a half to go through auditing serial numbers, model numbers, locations, mac address filtering, and reassigning static IPs.

Over the past week I’ve made more phone calls than I probably have in the past year. Sadly you could ask friends and family about how infrequently I tend to use the phone. At least I know my main weakness already, but I’m working on it. Anyway, I ended up fielding at least nine solid leads on consulting opportunities that floated across my inbox, and of the nine I have two I’m in talks with. Both are three to four month projects that would take me through to the new year. Typically this period is difficult for consultants to get work due to the holiday landmines that float during October to January. It won’t hurt me to take on a short-term contract, which is why I’ve gravitated towards the 3-4 month range.

I ended up meeting with a co-founder of Gaslight Software on Tuesday for a lunch meeting. Very interesting company dynamic if you can imagine their company as a solar system with many independent consultant companies orbiting around the single name. If I started to go into an explanation of what the company does and how it benefits people I’d be doing a huge disservice to the co-founders who can explain it much better than I. If you’re an independent consultant it’d be worth your time to talk to them yourselves.

On Thursday I think I may have had the best experience to date for being self-employed. I met a man who has long battled a crippling disease that has cost him his ability to work at the young age of 37. After a lengthy battle with social security he’s spent the better part of three years documenting what to do and what not to do in battling the government for justified compensation. All this information is being compiled now into a book format that hopefully will be published in the near future on Amazon.com, or one of many other online publication companies for the benefit of anyone else going through the process. It was a very eye opening experience to say the least, and otherwise would have been missed if I were in another 9-5 position.

Belated once more. Yesterday I setup a new HP Proliant server with six new ultra fast hard drives. I spent most of the day reading on proper DMZ setup with virtual servers, virtual switch setup, and configured the server with multiple physical and virtual adapters. I really dig VMWare ESXi by the way. When I was finished I wrapped up, ate some lunch, and got ready to leave for the first LAN party in ten years I’ve been to.

The LAN party was excellent, I should really say system link party, but I still dig LAN as the description. It’s a little more difficult setting up an Xbox party what with the TV requirement and all for all patrons. In this case I’m glad that HDMI caught on with some LCD computer monitors, but somewhat wish the Xbox would just have added a DVI cable port as well.

Considering the difficulty in many days to keep up with posting about self employment that isn’t very interesting at the moment I think I’m going to skip daily posts. I’ll post interesting tidbits I encounter along the way for sure, but not this droll daily drivel. For now I’m off to rack mount the server with its other brothers, and move my database servers to the new server with the larger faster drives for awesome I/O goodness.

A belated post. Yesterday was a mixed bag. My wife was home sick all day so I spent much of my day just popping in to check to see if she was doing better. Since she was home I did more work on her start-up software. I decided to go with ASP.Net MVC 2. Luckily I won an MVC book at the Cincinnati .Net Users Group. The “ASP.Net MVC In Action” book is a very good reference for jumping head first into MVC.

I bought the SSL for the site, spent a few hours working on a theme (still working on it,) and am trying to knock out a rough version. A new problem arises in that my virtual servers are hosted under one IP and I have two SSL’s to use. One for an existing store, and one for the new store site. That means day 4 and now day 5 are being spent mapping the existing network in Visio, and building a new virtual network design. Handling virtual servers on one physical machine with two internet connections sharing multiple IPs is a tricky bag. It’s hard to DMZ one server while allowing the other on the same machine have access to local network resources.

At the point when I started considering leaving my previous employer the first thing I did was setup accounts on Dice.com, enable my Monster.com account, and then setup a Careerbuilder account. Careerbuilder has been the worst mistake I could have made. I get so many job requests from affiliates for positions in nearly every state in the US except the one I live in, and fluff job requests like being a secret shopper or insurance plan sales person with potential to make $150k per year. It’s literally job spam. I do not live in New York, Texas, Indiana, California, or Florida but for some reason people from Careerbuilder think I’d be interested in the positions. I get phone calls from people I can hardly understand about positions in sales for the same jobs I’m spammed with. I don’t think anyone coming from Careerbuilder has actually read my resume, and the ones who have didn’t look at my current location and willingness to travel percentage. Just a friendly note about one persons experience using Careerbuilder. Your results may vary, doubt it though.

I woke up at 9:00am after having been up the past night till roughly 1:00am upgrading my blog engine. For some reason my 1.6.0 install of BlogEngine.net kept resulting in 500 or 404 server errors. I ended up pre-compiling a default install, and pushing it to a new folder. I setup a new website in IIS pointing with the new site folder. I created a new IIS user with permissions to the site and the site only in a new application pool. The new site worked as it should. Today I finished up importing my posts, enabling the recaptcha, and happily see zero spam for the day.

Earlier today I started coding my custom on-line payment mechanism after going through the Paypal API, and the Authorize.Net web request examples. I think I’ve settled on Authorize.Net as the payment gateway of choice. I still think back to the fire that knocked Authorize.Net offline for more than a day with a little hesitation. Still, considering all the costs, it’s still more economical compared to other competitors for the same general service. I’d been considering BrainTree, or PayPal for a while only to realize they had a very sharp minimum fees or fees in general. If you consider a $75 minimum fee per month sharp for BrainTree, but given the low expectation for income early on seemed the more expensive route starting up. In the end if you build the payment providers right they should be able to be swapped out down the road without headache.

The real lesson learned today has been a simple one, but a difficult one to overcome. Remove distractions. I keep repeating the same motions over and over again. I will open a browser, hot key hacker news, endgadget, life hacker, hack a day, and five web comic links. When opened I will explore every single article posted to hacker news, skim all the gadgets on endgadget, and read the abstracts on all the new hacks for the day on hack a day. Life hacker I usually just skim for something of interest, and just pass to the gadget of the day link if one was posted. The comics usually update once every three days usually on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Still I find myself inclined to repeat these steps over and over even though I know there is nothing new. It’s like going to the fridge after a few hours when you already know there isn’t anything magically appearing on the shelves. You just do it.

I can remedy this in the short-term through just sheer willpower. I have even considered setting times just for work, unplugging the network cable, and just working through. Being a developer that is like cutting off my virtual bookshelf and reference materials. I just can’t do that without major impact to my efficiency. I do have a plan. In comes the iPad. I have removed all the links to my sites, blocked the sites on my desktop, and am going to use the iPad as the sole news/comic/articles viewing device. That way I can keep the device downstairs so that when I’m in this room I’m working. When I am downstairs with the iPad I am free to do as I want because that’s my off-time room. It’s been a big learning curve today getting used to that separation, but tomorrow will really tell how well it helps.

Well, it’s officially sunk in. I am in the open water of the job ocean. I already had difficulty in explaining to the insurance adjustor, who was out this morning to inspect my roof, what it was I do for a living. About the time I said I am self-employed as of yesterday I received a big grin, and a “Good luck with that” comment. I guess it didn’t help right as the adjustor asked the question my wife started laughing. I’m starting to notice that there seems to be a stigma about being self-employment with strangers and family equally if you’re not already living in a mansion.

Anyways, today started out similar to yesterday with the exception that I had a roof inspection planned for 11am this morning. I had scheduled for both the insurance adjustor and for my contractor to be here at the same time. The contractor was supposed to champion the repair for the obvious storm damage as he had told me during his initial roof repair some weeks ago. Forty minutes go by with the adjustor completing his investigation, and my contractor was nowhere to be seen.

Long story short I do not have storm damage, and instead improperly sealed shingles going in three feet intervals the entire vertical length of the house. Indicating the shingles were not staggered, and due to nine years of flexing has unsealed the vast majority of the roof. Hence when the rain and wind come whipping through the water gets up under the shingle as it is lifted, and comes pooling in my garage.

Not so much related to self-employment, but a good indicator that you can never really plan for all unexpected costs during these early phases. I will keep in mind the same feelings I have now for the contractor who didn’t show or so much as call. Now that I’m getting back into a service industry I can see how much not showing up impacts one’s reputation. I think regardless of anything else that happens today that’s the lesson for the day. Just show up when you say you will, and if you can’t at least call.

As for now I’m off to cook some Ramen, and actually get to work on my first project. I have a workflow to flush out, a website to build, and payment gateway to integrate.

Today started out just like any other Monday except I didn’t wake up at 7:30am. I didn’t get out of bed till after 10am, and then spent the day taking care of Amazon shipments instead of having been in a cube for nearly three hours by that point in time. I guess it didn’t actually start out like any other Monday. Today was my first day of intentionally being unemployed. I think at this point unemployed and self-employed can be swapped around until I start having an assured, or at least promised income.

I feel amazingly refreshed. I don’t think it’s actually sunk in yet, just feels more like an extended weekend, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at any minute I start to get the realization I actually did quit my job. I can remember it all like it was yesterday, or at least last Friday. It was my last day on the job. I had an hour meeting as usual in the morning, played two hours of Frisbee golf at lunch (bi-weekly outing fell on my last day), spent two hours in meetings with consultants after lunch, and finished by fixing one last bug before I was to leave. A lot of people came around shaking my hand, asking me to stay, and in the end giving the final goodbyes (for now.) Since it’s such a small world out there I’d be shocked if that was the last I’ll see of them.

That was the final day. I shared a few emails with my boss, talked in his office for a while, and went back to pack my things. I had made a list of things I’d encountered during my time there that were just not right. From a coding and business perspective so during the previous three weeks of my notice I made notes of things as they came to my attention. The list ended up being six pages long, bulleted, with references to patterns and practices links, and a summary at the end of my reasoning for going. I sent it as my last order of business for the day, packed my equipment one last time, and walked to the bosses office.

Come to find out he’s a fast read. On his screen was page three of the document, and up he stands to shake my hand. Oddly enough he was incredibly happy to have the document. Instantly he went into how many of the things I had noted were exactly what he was looking for (he’d requested I talk to him about these things initially – i just decided to document it) to make the business managers understand what some of the problems were with the company.

Keep in mind my list of reasons wasn’t tied directly to one person or another, or anyone for that matter. Simply notes I’d made during development of part of the core or interconnects to the core. For example one particular point was how within the core all the exception message are hard-coded (core claims they’re DB-drive still to this day) and the primary language is English. For a marketing company to have the core product used by international companies without any localization support is beyond me. I’m sure those English messages will make a lot of sense to the Spanish market, or wherever they’re intended. Things like that where these problems may go unnoticed by anyone until sales does a deal with a foreign market. The core team can once again say, “it’s extensible enough to support other languages….”, and then all hell would break loose when once again the core is found not to support the sold functionality. That got pretty old after a while.

Whenever I had second thoughts about leaving I kept looking back at the list I’d made, reflecting on the hours of wasted time spent fixing broken projects, and the isolation of the core from ever being fixed. I just smile. I feel incredibly free, refreshed, and I’m ready to start making a difference again. I miss helping people with software. I think back to my consulting time with a lot of fond memories. Once had a floor manager at a manufacturing company come over to shake my hand for saving him four hours a day making and printing bar codes when I spent a few hours to build an automated label print system for him. I miss having a visible impact with individuals and companies. One thing I know for sure is I now can get back to doing what i love. Reading, learning, and building things that help people. At least that’s the goal.

Now if you excuse me I’m going to go cook some Ramen for lunch, clean the house, and then sit outside on the patio to enjoy my day off before the real work begins tomorrow.