Rampid Byter

I'm a geek, no question, and I listen to a lot of music. Really i can't imagine a day going by where I'm not listening to some form of music while I'm working out, relaxing, or while I'm toiling at work. It started a long time ago while i was working in my first programming position at SDRC in 2000. I began bringing in my personal laptop with a limited selection of music in MP3 format from the days of Napster not being a corporate unit. I'm not admitting to anything, just saying I had a few songs to listen to.

Since that time I've transitioned from downloading songs to a laptop, listening to radio FM stations, using a Zen Micro Photo MP3 player, an iPod Nano after the Zen died, and now i have Pandora Radio. I use Pandora almost exclusively at home, work, or even on my smart phone. I'm even tempted to hook up a computer system in the car to just use Pandora in the car stereo for long trips. Yes, i have a pocket PC i could use, but come on a computer in the car is awesome. It's become an integrated part of my life where I can listen to genre's i like, artists, and I get the advantage of hearing new music from bands i'd never known existed. I went from Weird Al to The Trucks, Freezepop, Gary Jules, and many more stations waiting to explore. If you haven't tried it, go try it, it's free, and it's incredibly more personalized than your typical top 40 stations you get with most online radio stations.

So recently a friend and I were going to lunch, we work together, and after leaving the building I notice the bosses Lotus sitting there with a custom plate. I remember thinking about how it’d be cool if I had a license plate that says “IM A PC.” I guess one man's opinion about what is considered cool can vary person to person. So, being myself, I just randomly say aloud that I’d like to get a license plate that says “IM A PC” to my colleague. The next thing I know he turns around with a spark in his eyes and says ‘that’s genius!’ Not sure whether he was in fact joking at my expense until we got to the car, and he was still carrying on about it. The more I thought about it the more I wanted the plate and we agreed to check after lunch.

So we get back to the office and check the custom plates office. ‘I AM A PC’ was available and that’s when my friend said if I wasn’t going to order it he would. So I owed him some tithe for a few things he’s done to help my life out from in-the-door tech job to my current position. So i said sure go ahead, and at the same time I had another thought. “IM A PC 2” so I could state that I am in fact a PC too. So I checked, and what do you know it’s completely available.

At this point I had a dilemma I let my buddy register the main one or I register it. So I decided to let him have first dibs, he ordered, and now of course I have to order mine. I proudly sit here today with the new plates “IM A PC 2” and he has “I AM A PC.” Yesterday we parked the vehicles next to each other, and it was the funniest geekiest thing I’ve ever seen. I felt proud of my new plates, and we, to me, exemplify the true meaning of the Microsoft Ad Campaign “IM A PC.” We're going to get together soon for our official I'M A PC photo that we're going to submit to Microsoft. I'm totally going to wear my .Net shirt.

I was just engaged in a conversation with a woman from the client site who came over to ask me a question about computers problems. At home apparently someone got on while she was off doing something and a virus took hold. I asked about her setup, i.e. software, users, and her internet connection.

Turns out her computer is hooked up to the internet through Road Runner and is directly connected to the cable modem. So in short she’s connected to an unprotected internet connection, and got a pretty nasty virus. I tried to tell her to get an additional router with a built in firewall, turn on windows firewall, and she stopped me part way into the conversation. She said she doesn’t need all that because she knows that ‘they’ are watching her already, and she has nothing to hide. I think I probably gave a pretty confused look.

She started to tell me that she knows that since she got online that she’s been watched by hackers, or whomever else can see her, and that they already know everything she does. She said to prevent them watching she turns the computer off at night, and only allows people on the computer while she is around to monitor. Her kids and grandkids are allowed to use the computer but if they do it without her she kicks them off. She blamed her kids for installing a virus while she wasn’t home (keep in mind the unprotected net’) and that one of them was a programmer in training that could have made it. This kid is ten years old, I think, and she considers him using NotePad, yes I said Notepad, as ruining her computer. I asked what language, and she said English. It got worse from there…

My brain hurts a little.

Vista,

You scare me. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of ways to end it with you, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I mean you’re so gorgeous I’d be so hard pressed to ever replace you, except to go Mac, but I’m not gay so I can’t swing that way.

Vista, what is wrong? I mean you treat me really, really well for the most part. You warn me whenever I try to do anything with you that you could be upset with it. It was nice for the first day but then we got into that fight when I had to keep accepting your demands. Thankfully I found you just had a nasty case of the UAC when we first got together, but that was cleared up after a while when your friend Defender moved away. Things even got a little better between us when you went to see your first SP therapist.

Last night we were just about to get really hot and heavy in a menashatwa(sp?) with C, and then you decided dump me. I don’t know what the problem was it isn’t the first time that I was with you using C to get my Groove on. This isn’t the first time we’ve been with C, well it’s becoming more frequent since I dumped Visual Studio, but I thought you were different?

It’s really starting to get rough Vista I think you’re starting to get out of control. Since that night… I almost hate to mention it because we swore we’d never talk about it. I just can’t hold it back. I know what you did. I know you killed XP. I know you over heard my plans to break up with you and leave you for XP. Since then I’ve heard that XP isn’t around anymore, nobody seems to know where it went to, and you’ve been silent about it ever since.

I want to know the truth, did you really kill XP? I’m going to go to the …. *preparing dump file*

I was sitting here finishing up some tiding up on client code and I am constantly switching between VB.Net 1.1 and C# 1.1.

For some unbeknownst reason the song “Everything you can do, I can do better” popped into my head. Hrm.

Business hierarchies are amusing. I think, from my experience, there are five main groups. There are the upper-upper management that ultimately gives the face to the company, typically your VP group, or the other individuals whose heads are distinctly hidden from view by the rear-end of the VP group.

From this group falls the upper-management that is directly responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations, maybe weekly reviews, and are the ‘boss’ for all intensive purposes. This group breeds the underling superfluous supervisor group that tends to spread around carrying out the wishes of their direct bosses by instructing the standard work force group.

Adjacent to these groups is the IT departments. Somehow IT, much like a tumor, wedges itself into the crevasses between each of these aforementioned groups, and on occasion has it’s very own head VP group. If it’s easier you can consider the IT department the conjoined twin to the standard business hierarchy. However, IT, unlike the conjoined twin, isn’t considered very important, and is often made to follow in the path of the business group regardless of IT objections.

It’s in this regard that IT is so often and consistently ignored by all major decision makers. The hypocrisy of this situation is that often IT is able to dictate all processes that business channels must flow through providing applications for business to run off, and the majority of the time all business operations would come to a complete halt based on IT process control. I’ve seen it happen like a train derailing, it’s an event that you can’t not look at, but at the same time you want to run from very quickly. Often time the casualties are merely the number of hours IT has to work in addition to normal load to get the train back on the tracks.

The craziest thing about this entire hierarchy is that while all management, VP group, or otherwise are still at the mercy of the work force. Without the padding of the worker group at the bottom of that triangle then your triangle starts to get a little pointier at the bottom. If your company looks like an upside down triangle with more upper management than work force then I’m assuming your company is going to go in that direction as well. But I digress; it’s with that work force at the bottom that carries the sway. I’ve seen IT projects go bottom up, not the triangle again, simply because the work force did not adopt the programs they were supposed to use. It costs millions, and it’s continuing to cost millions. It’s just really funny how what comes down from the top the top sometimes has to eat. If you’re lucky they may eat cake, but often times it’s a lot worse.

Dear Visual Studio 2008,

By the time you read this I’ll be dead, because when a computer can actually read and comprehend this I’ll most likely have died of old age. Visual Studio or VS as I so lovingly called you, you’re not the same IDE I fell in love with. You’ve changed, you seem so vain with your new dolled up look, and your cool fading WPF enhanced appearance.

You just don’t respond like you used to. Back in 98’ when I first picked you up it was just a fresh loving relationship. We didn’t need fancy frameworks, themed controls, and we were so happy together. You were only version 6 back then, but we’ve grown older. As time moved on our relationship changed, we had to try spicing things up in 02’ when you put .Net on.

It was a lot of fun. We had over 3000 classes to play around with, and let’s admit it we fooled around a lot back then. It was a little rocky at the start, we had to change to 03’ pretty quick, but we found what worked. When you showed me how great C# felt I was totally hooked, but looking back it was just lust. It wasn’t until I started to dig a little deeper that I realized all you were doing was just hiding things from me.

VS this relationship just isn’t working out. You’ve been hiding things from me for too long, and with your new attitude I just don’t see how we can keep going. I admit I’ve just been trying to use you at this point, but you don’t seem interested. You always tell me you are tired and need to restart, or you just sit there staring at me with your disabled grayed out face while you spin your cursor.

It’s over. I’m sorry, but I won’t take you constantly leaving then showing back up after removing all the things I’ve put on your form. I need to tell you something, and it may be hard to hear. I’ve been seeing someone else. I ran into your old friend C the other day, and we kicked things off. I started to compile code again instead of having to ask you to do it every time. It was refreshing to know what I’m doing counts. Your friends, CLR, and MSIL were nice to me in the beginning, but C told me the truth. You’ve been interpreting for me the whole time. I don’t need you to run my code. I’m sure I’ll see you around, maybe we can still be friends, but this is the end.

Yours truly,

Rob