HOV Hypocrisy

Today was a very rare occasion. I was actually awake before 8AM and on the road, taking my mom to the airport so she can visit family for a couple weeks. After seeing her off and heading back to my place, I was greeted by by rush hour traffic as soon as I left the airport. A drive that normally takes me 25 minutes turned into an hour long exercise in frustration and boredom. I got so bored I actually started doing math on how silly the concept of HOV lanes are.

So, let’s take a mile of highway, 3 lanes wide (+1 HOV), and say there is a vehicle every 100ft. Kind of like I-635 in Dallas. This is fairly conservative considering that people just about touch bumpers as they’re grinding along at 5mph, but it makes the math easy. So on our ideal highway we have 528 cars per lane-mile, or 1584 cars across 3 lanes. Sitting there. Or barely moving. For an HOUR. As I am sitting there, I watch cars zip by in the HOV lane .. one about every 30 seconds, so maybe 200 cars passed me during the 20 mile drive home. Oh, and half of the cars only had one person who obviously got fed up with traffic and realized there was a completely empty lane not being used. See where I’m going with this?

Mmm Bacon

Just think of how Homer Simpson sounds when he says “Mmm donut” .. that’s me with bacon. Bacon is good by itself, but it also makes everything else taste better: steak, seafood, salads, sandwiches. Take the best cut of beef (filet) and wrap in bacon — even better! Wrap bacon around shrimp, grill it, and you’ve suddenly got a high-class appetizer (at least from the price on the menu). There is even a sandwich where the primary ingredient is bacon (BLT, duh!). A couple backyard geniuses have managed to raise the bar of bacon loving even more with *drumroll* Bacon Salt™.

Bacon Salt™ is kosher and vegetarian (vegan? dunno) safe, so now everyone can enjoy the taste of bacon. A friend of mine who is a vegetarian tried out a tofu bacon recipe that “tastes just like the real thing!” Apparently whoever made that recipe either had no taste buds, or had not eaten bacon in 15 years. It’s amazing how much of a following these guys have got already, just over a simple product like flavored salt. It just goes to show that the next great idea or product can come from anyone, anywhere.

P.S. I’m running down to Central Market in Dallas right now to pick some up!

Networking - Social and Technical

Finally got an offer letter today for the job I’ve been pursuing for the last month! Took a lot longer than I would have liked, but I think it will be worth the wait. Now I finally have a chance to get serious about networking and actually have a way to move up in a company instead of idling in the same spot for years. Ah progress feels good.

I had a little laugh today when I realized that I’ve never really had to look for a technical job. I spent more time trying to get hired at Winn Dixie when I was 16 than any job I’ve had involving computers or networks. Here is a list of all of the technical jobs I’ve had since I was in college and how I got them:

• 1999 - got my first technical job when I caught an employee of a local ISP (and fellow student) installing backdoors on university computers. I wasn’t even looking for a job, but the president of the ISP offered me one and I took it.
• 2001 - got an interview at a large hosting company because I knew someone who worked there through an IRC channel. I had one phone interview with the VP of Support and they paid for me to move to another state.
• 2002 - recruited for a startup by someone who heard good things about me from the hosting company.
• 2005 - recruited for another startup by a buddy of mine.
• 2006 - got a call on a Friday night from a friend of a friend to fix a “Linux problem”. It turned out to be Exchange, but I worked them through it anyway. Liked me so much they kept me around as a contractor for a year then hired me full-time.
• 2008 - called a company (first one I called too) who I had worked with in the past on some projects and apparently someone was impressed enough to get me an interview scheduled.

I think this goes to show that networking is a valuable thing in the technical world. It is such a huge industry, and there are so many people who really don’t know what they are doing that employers have a hard time finding the people who are really good. Anyone who can setup a cable modem router is a network engineer. Write a 3 line PHP form mail script and you’re a web developer. I’ve done recruiting, and there are so many embellished resumes out there that you would think half the country went to MIT. Companies need help sorting through the mess, so if you can get a personal reference to get you in the door, it makes it that much easier for them to hire you.

I never burn a bridge if I can avoid it, and I keep in touch with people from all of the companies I’ve worked for. I still get phone calls from customers who I worked with in Florida from 6 jobs ago. I keep up with all of my friends in the industry .. where they are, what they are doing, and if they need any help. Seemingly small contract jobs can quickly turn into a full-time endeavor if you do a good job and make the customer feel like they can trust you.

Attack Crosses the Virtual Threshold

The Tech Herald has a good writeup on an attack that took place against the Epilepsy Foundation of Americas public forum. Originally the attack seemed to come from “Anonymous” (the same group organized against the Church of Scientology) because some of the posts referenced them, but it turns out that another anonymous group called “Internet Hate Machine” pulled off the raid. The only way I can describe this sort of attack is twisted and hateful.

WordCamp Wrap-up

I made it to day 2 of WordCamp, and I’m glad I did. It was a beautiful day in Frisco .. almost too nice to be stuck inside, but the presentations were worth it. One of the highlights for me today was the panel discussion on “Blogging for Business”, which covered why and how businesses should use blogs to communicate. This is kind of a novel idea for many businesses because they aren’t accustomed to having a direct channel to/from their customers.

WordCamp 2008

I had the opportunity to attend the Dallas WordCamp 2008 today, which was the first time I’ve attended any kind of “geek” conference since I’ve been in Texas. Luckily this one was right in my own backyard and only $20 to get in. There were some really good presentations, including the announcement of WordPress 2.5 by the man himself, Matt Mullenweg. I believe the download for WordPress 2.5 was made available right as Matt was discussing it at WordCamp. :) The ServerBeach QT was there as well, taking notes and pictures for the guys stuck back in the office. Those ServerBeach business cards were just flying off the table too!

Today they covered topics such as SEO and building a community around your blog. I’ve had a blog for about a year but I still consider myself a newbie to the blogging world, so all of the presentations were interesting. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it again tomorrow .. if this cough lets me get any sleep that is.

Life in a Bubble

Over the last year I’ve run across some articles with titles like I’m Allergic to Modern Living, and of course my first reaction is to be skeptical. If people really could be “allergic” to something as pervasive EM radiation, wouldn’t you see more people suffering from random, inexplicable ailments with no apparent cause or cure .. hmm. All of this kind of slipped to the back of my brain until I ran across an article about research by Michael Persinger, a neuropsychologist in Ontario, Canada. This Is Your Brain on God focuses on how EM radiation can directly manipulate the inner workings of the human brain, which could explain a wide range of phenomena from religious visions to UFO abductions to mass hallucinations.

A new look for green?

Finally, someone has broken the mold when it comes to designing high-performance, fuel-efficient vehicles. A California company, Aptera Motors, has designed an all-electric and hybrid-electric vehicle that is not only affordable, but offers realistic mileage ratings that are double anything on the market today. Instead of taking the typical 4-wheeled box design of today’s cars and slimming it down, they started from the ground up with computer aided design, aerodynamic testing, and composite materials. The result is something that looks more like an aircraft crossed with a motorcycle (and is actually considered a motorcycle by the California DMV!)

Intellectual Hiatus

So I’m sitting at my desk in January, thinking “2008 is going to be a good year”. The company had just finished with a change of management and massive employee cleanup. This was great for those of us who were left because we actually had a clear project plan and the backing of management to get stuff done. Sure it would be hectic — light up a new building and move 400 people and a ton of servers in less than 60 days — but a crazy plan is better than no plan at all. I was getting ready for a huge crunch, but it would be fun because of the sense of accomplishment at the end.

Then the axe swings back the other way and 8 more of us are out the door. Oops.

Some of us probably deserved it more than others, but at the end of the day the result is the same. Business is business, and the people in charge need to do what they think is best for the company. *chuckle* Oh, I crack myself up sometimes ..

Luckily we all got some severance pay, plus our PTO, so the job hunt hasn’t been too pressing of a matter. It has given me a chance to figure out what direction I want to take next in my career. To be honest, I never planned on working at that place for more than 6 months, and a year was pushing it. After 2 years I was getting bored and tired of not having a real direction to go aside from being “the guy with all the answers”. It pays well, but there isn’t a whole lot of room for advancing your career.

So it is time to end the mental vacation (there’s only so much Internet you can browse before you get bored) and start thinking again. I’ve been meaning to get serious about Cisco networking for years now, but I never had a chance to focus on it because networking was not my primary responsibility. One of the cooler projects I’ve had a chance to work on the last 2 years was a Cisco IPCC installation and the voice stuff is *really* interesting. I picked up the CCNA study guides the other night and I’m gonna crash through them this week .. hopefully since I have a few years of real-world experience it won’t be that difficult. Eventually I want to get the CCIE or CCIE Voice certification, but that is going to take some time.

Geek Humor

It’s too early to have conscious thought, so I’m just gonna post this from xkcd: