Life Thoughts « Mr T's rants and ravings

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Wisdom of Graffiti

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

Many years ago when I was in high school is was in a classroom for the first time. I don’t remember if I was every in this room again and I clearly did not sit at the same desk again. I don’t even remember why I was there. What I have never forgotten (and it is over 35 years later) is the graffiti written on the top of the desk.

I wish I was what I was when I wanted to be what I am now.

Confusing at first but profound as one thinks about it. Or so I think anyway. I have no idea what prompted a high school student to write it. How many things can one wish for and reach at that young an age and regret already. But none the less it is a sentiment I have pondered over the years.

When I look at possible changes in who I am or at least what I do for a career or for other life changes I think long and hard about what it means to change. Will I later regret making a move? That is a question that has the potential to create paralyzing uncertainty and a certain stagnation if taken to extreme of course. One does have to take risks at times and often those risks are based on less than complete information.

So far I have never had to express the wish to be what I once was. I have moved forward to better things and a happier life. Even these days when I think about becoming a teacher again (what I was when I wanted to be what I am now) it is not because I don’t want to be what I am now. Rather it is because I see different roles for different parts of my life. I want to be what I am now more than I want to be what I was then. At least for right now. Are there other things I might like to be? Yes I think so but they are new things, things I need to work towards, and not a retreat to something I once was.

I think a little "want" to drive one forward is a good thing. I think it is also ok to want to move back to something, or to be someone, one was before. Not everything works out the way we expect or the way we hope. Second chances are good things and not to be feared.

Posted in Life Thoughts, Philospohy | No Comments »

Noise

Monday, January 21st, 2008

I hate noise. Of course part of the definition of noise is "unwanted." It’s like weeds. Weeds are plants that are growing where they are not wanted. I hate all sorts of extra sounds but the ones from fans, pumps and similar devices are among the worst to my ear. Unfortunately they are integral parts of such devices as air conditioners, dehumidifiers, humidifiers, washing machines and exhaust fans. Things that it is hard to do without.

In my dream house the living space would be isolated from those devices as much as possible. I do not currently live in such a dream house. Where I living by myself I would put up with very dry air in the winter, very hot air in the summer, and lots of kitchen smells year round. But I don’t. Oh well.

I do try to avoid these sounds as much as possible. The washer and dryer are in the basement. I use the time delay on the dish washer to start it during the night when I am asleep or when I am out of the house. I’ll run the air conditioner high when I am not in the room so I can turn it down when I am in it. I have taken to wearing my Bose sound reducing headphones when using the Vacuum and may use it at other times as life goes on. I seem to be getting more sensitive to noise rather than less as I get older. That seems strange in some ways because as we age the range of frequency we can hear gets smaller.

BTW This site http://www.freemosquitoringtone.org/ lets you hear sound at different frequencies. Well it lets you play them. You can only hear all of them if you are below a given age. I can’t hear most of them. Why can’t more devices make noise in ranges I can’t hear? Now wouldn’t that be cool?

I dislike loud sounds as well. My hearing works pretty well and I’d like to keep it that way. Why do so many people turn the volume way up? It seems to me that distortion sets in way too easily at high volume.

All I want is a nice quiet world. Sigh.

Posted in Interesting links, Life Thoughts, rants | 1 Comment »

No I will not do your homework

Friday, January 18th, 2008

I received email today at both my work and home email from the same person. I have no idea where he is from (or for sure that it is a he) but they claimed to be a university student taking a VB course. They need help with their projects that are due next Thursday. They appear not to have started at all. In fact they probably do not know how to start.

They ask if I know someone who can help them. If that is all they are looking for why send the whole problem descriptions? I get these all the time. If I let them they would get me to do the whole project. In fact doing the whole project would be a lot easier and take less time than trying to actually help. I did the first project they sent me in under 3 minutes – design, write, and test. That’s less time then I spent writing this blog post. I imagine if they ask enough people one of them will send them a solution.

The next step, if history is any guide, is that they will ask for an explanation of how/why it works so they can hand that in as well. Am I being cynical? Perhaps but I’ve seen this before.

Some people believe that a diploma somehow magically makes them smart and knowledgeable. They don’t want to do the work of learning things. Just give them the grade so they can get the job they want. I actually had a student (at a so-called college) ask me to just give him a B because that is what he needed to get his course paid for and to graduate the program. He told me he didn’t have time to do the work but I should still give him the grade. Bah! That wasn’t going to happen.

Now I don’t mind helping people learn. In fact helping and teaching are great and wonderful things for me. If someone comes to me with code and needs help understanding why they are seeing a syntax error or why the answer is coming out wrong I’ll happy to help. I will look it over and explain things until they "get it." Debugging code is fun and I am always (well almost always) willing to give it a shot. But I refuse to do it all and let someone pretend them know something they don’t,

OK that is out of my system. Thanks for listening. Or Ignoring me. What ever. 🙂

Posted in Life Thoughts, rants | 1 Comment »

A Little Light Reading

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

One of the things I got for Christmas was Alan Greenspan’s book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. I started reading it a few nights ago. I’m reading it in small chunks not because it is dry and dull but because there is so much good/interesting stuff in it. I’m mulling it over as I read it.

There are more or less two main things about this book. One is economic theory. The other is Greenspan’s life and his interactions with people and events in history. For example he has worked with Presidents from Nixon to Bush junior. He has opinions on all of them and they make for interesting reading.

He’s also not the complete nerd you might expect. He is an accomplished mission and performed professionally for several years. Not what you expect in an economist.

I’m finding the economics interesting as well. It has been a long time since I studied macro economics (about 35 years) and things have changed in the economy and in the world since then. So I have to think a bit about what he writes in that area. I’m only part way through (the USSR just started breaking up) but I expect that I will learn a lot by the time I am finished. At the same time I expect that I am going to want to do some additional reading in economics to fill in the extensive holes in my knowledge.

I love getting books that make me think!

Posted in Books, Life Thoughts | No Comments »

New Year’s Resolutions

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. People never keep them anyway and I’m not that different from most people. I do set goals but they are not tied to the fact that there is a year change on the calendar.

January is typically the start of my annual self-evaluation phase though. For the last 14 years or so I have spent January and February evaluating my job and trying to decide if it is time to actively look for a new one, stay where I am at or just be open in case a new one pops up. This last year I decided to do the same thing during the summer as well. Twice a year seems like enough times to do serious soul searching, thinking and praying about ones career.

I start with an open mind. It helps that I start after a short vacation (I’ve been on vacation since the Friday before Christmas) so my mind is cleared of stress (well work related stress) and related activities. So I have no idea what I’ll decide. Though honestly I am far from unhappy with my present job or company.

I am trying to lose weight but that has been ongoing. I put on some weight over the summer and early fall. It has been tough losing it but it has to be done (doctor’s orders). Obviously I’m still working on that but you can’t call that a New Year’s resolution. As part of that I am trying to exercise more and get into better physical shape beyond just being thinner.

My third goal these days is to some up with more goals. I just don’t feel like I have enough on my plate to really make my life interesting. We’ll see how it goes.

Posted in Life Thoughts, MrT | No Comments »

Who are these people and why are they looking for me?

Friday, December 28th, 2007

Several times a week someone comes to one or the other of my blogs after doing an search for my name (often with the word "blog") on a search engine. Some or Google, some on AOL Search and some on Live Search. They are doing it from all over the world. Today it was someone using Google.jp (Japan) but its also been from all over the world. Places as random as Brooklyn NY and Manila the Philippines. South Africa and Norway. North, south, east and west.

But why? Are they looking for someone else with a similar name? Perhaps. But the ones that include the name of the company I work for along with my name are, I am pretty sure, looking for me.

On one hand it is sort of flattering. On the other I just have to wonder "why?"

Posted in Life Thoughts, MrT, questions | No Comments »

Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

So Mrs T is out shopping with our son. Apparently they have already got him a suit for an amazing price. They are having fun. Shopping on one of the busiest shopping days of the year is not my idea of fun though so I am glad I got to stay home.

In theory I am cleaning up from Christmas. In practice I slept very late, fixed some leftovers and have gotten very little done. I hope to get some things done before they come home though. At the very least I will put away my Christmas presents and break up all the cardboard boxes for the recycle bin. But I get distracted.

One of the first gifts I moved out of the family room was a special "day light" light that is supposed to help with seasonable affective disorder. I don’t know that I have it for sure but I do know that I really crave the sunlight when I don’t get any for a while. I set up the light in my office which has no windows and there for no natural light. I like the way it feels so I decided to blog a bit for a while. It’s medical – that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

I have a number of things that I have to put together. Why is it that I always get stuff like that? One or two I will try to do today but that garden wagon can wait I think. There is too much snow outside to use it anyway. So I will move it down to the cellar and put it together there one night when TV is boring. Given the writer’s strike there will probably be a lot of boring TV nights real soon.

Besides things that have to be put together I seem to get organization tools. This year I got some sort of box with 31 slots (one for each day of the month?) and some drawers. It’s nice but will it help? History suggests no but I’ll try. I think the only thing that would really get me organized is a professional assistant. Though to be fair Outlook has been a huge help and goes a long way towards keeping me on track and sane.

No clothing this year. Thank goodness. I have more clothing then I know what to do with already. A few gadgets though and those are always good. A handheld Sududo game which I expect to enjoy on some flights. And the best gift of all is a new Magellan GPS. That will get lots of use.

Well I have another week off now. This is the only time of the year when I take a vacation that doesn’t involve traveling somewhere and doing something. It sort of feels like a waste but I can really use the mental and physical down time. I hope you are all getting and enjoying some down time of your own.

Posted in Life Thoughts, MrT | No Comments »

Blogging Burn-out

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

I’ve been blogging for about four years now. There has been some ebb and flow in both the amount I post and the amount of other blogs I read over that time. Lately though its all become less fun and somehow harder to do. In my other blog I actually missed posting on several business days in a row for the first time in months. Usually I have so many posts in my head that I post several days worth at a time and am a week or more ahead. Not lately.

I don’t post as often here as I would like but there was a time when I posted daily at another blog that has been effectively abandoned. I had thought to move more of that blogging here but instead I just cut back. So total posting is really down about half or more from my peek. I still think about blog posts. I even write them in my head. What’s different is that I don’t actually get them written and posted. Why? Complicated.

Of course some of it is time. I have been traveling a lot lately. A week in Texas and couple of days in New York with lots of local New England day trips in the mix. And there is all this stuff to do because of the Christmas holidays. But that’s not all.

I used to take the computer into the family room and read and write blogs while watching TV. Lately I find I just want to get away from the computer. A bit of information overload I think. I just want to rest my brain.

Recently my brother and I talked about visiting a family owned home that is not much used in the winter. My brother said "but the cable TV and Internet connections are shut down for the season. Why would you go?" I answered "because the cable TV and Internet connections are shut down." Time with my thoughts. Time to pray. Time to just disconnect from the hustle and bustle of a world trying to live on Internet time.

I realized today that I have been programming computers for longer than more than half of Microsoft’s employees have even been alive. It’s been 35 years since my first computer program was written (in FORTRAN) and I have been running as fast as I can to keep up with the technology ever since. I’m not as young as I used to be. I think now and again I need to get off the treadmill and take a breather.

I’m planning on taking some time off from work for the week that joins Christmas and New Years. My wife is threatening to confiscate my Treo so I can’t check email while away from the computer. I think she’s planning on getting me out of the house and well away from the computers as well. I think it will be good for me.

The only question is will I come back revived and roaring to go again or will I perhaps find that I like being "off the net" better than on it? And if the latter then what do I do?

Posted in Life Thoughts, meta discussion, questions | 1 Comment »

Forbes 400

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

I have been reading through the latest Forbes 400 list. The 400 richest people in America. Impressive wealth. I can’t imagine being that rich – it takes $1.3 billion of net worth to make the list this year. Some of the people on the list inherited their money but a lot of them made it themselves. Some of them actually started out pretty poor. The ones who are self-made seem to combine being very smart with hard work and a little bit of luck. These are people who see potential and are willing to take chances to make something of an opportunity.

What I find interesting and actually a bit surprising is how many of them made their money in software. I expect people to make money in hardware (Dell and Jobs are on the list) because that is tangible. Likewise retail (the Walton family for example), real estate, energy (oil, gas, coal), manufacturing and other conventional businesses all seem reasonable. But I’m not sure I ever expected people to become billionaires from software. Somehow it makes me think I must have missed an opportunity or three myself.

I wonder what these people are like in real life though. I’ve meet a couple of them but mostly those have been business situations. That means a somewhat more formal setting, conversation that is work related and applicable to what is going on at the moment. You can get more of an idea about people in a small meeting than watching them make a formal presentation but still it’s all artificial. I’ve had what I would consider to be a real conversation – the sort of informal one you’d have with ordinary people – with one of them – John Abele. Some of you will know that name because he has been involved with FIRST for a while and has been Chairman of FIRST for the last four years or so. I have to say I liked him. He seemed as much a regular guy as anyone. Really smart to be sure but someone I could comfortably talk to.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, the rich "are different from you and me." A character created by Ernest Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." I wonder though how many of them are really different and how many just have more money? Two of the Forbes 400 I meet seemed pretty different. I’m not sure if they are different because they have money or if they have money because they are different. But clearly I don’t have enough of a sample to make a determination. I wish I could meet more of them to find out what they are really like.

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