Too Old For This...

I'm not that old.  Some may think I am at my peak but at 37 years old, I feel drained by 18 years of the IT Web industry.  From HTML, XHTML, HTML5, CSS 2/3, Javascript, Prototype, jQuery, ASP, JSP, PHP, Ruby, Python, MS Access, Postgres, MySQL, hBase, Mongo, Zend, Rails, Django, Drupal, NodeJS,  CakePHP,  Linux, OSX, DNS, SMTP,  Cloud Hosting, I have had my fill.  I can teach at a college but can't get a government job without a degree yet I have security clearance; what!?

I get so confused nowadays with things as they don't make much sense anymore.  As far as technology, there is always something bigger, better, greater, something that carries some stupid "buzzword" and I have been keeping up with as much as I can to stay marketable; but at what cost and what benefit? I can't get paid more for some reason; I just end up working harder with the more knowledge I gather.  Where is the tradeoff??  Am I to live my entire life "stuck here"?

I want to be great at something but I picked a trade that demands that an individual knows "everything".  I have a security clearance, I teach part-time at Montgomery College, I provide for my family of four yet I feel like I live in welfare and am not particularly happy with my job most of the time.  I frequently have this internal feeling that I just need to be left alone.

Don't get me wrong, I love my career in web development but there are so many moving parts and languages and they keep changing; I am getting pretty fed-up with trying to stay ahead.  I am not the best developer but do my best at everything and make sure to follow reason and rules of convention.

I guess I just need a peaceful break, things are "eating" at me too much.

Stupid Video Makes Foreigners Kill!

What the heck is going on?? A Huffington Post article that I read along side with the news and propaganda of today is really outrageous.  It is hard for me to believe that certain people are so extreme that they want to torch and kill over a video that has no more meaning than an SNL skit.

The Anti-Muslim Video was interesting to say the least.  It was not provocative, funny or anything more than watching a video about Planet X - it is all about perspective and freedom of speech.

The only thing that I don't like is how a certain militant or non-militant group acted with their behavior in regards to the video.  The video did not cause those people to do what they did, as people, they did what they felt they wanted to do.  As a fellow human, this antagonistic behavior is moraly wrong, provoking and disturbing.  But, I will not voice my opinion with "flames" or by killing people, I will simply voice my opinion.

So, the real question is, how do we form an international government to suppress those ignorant people the same way as the U.S Government tries to suppress us?  Yes, that was a little thought provoking too so please don't set me on fire.

Go Fly a Kite!

That is the polite term used in today's work life to tell those pushy sales people to back-off.  Being pushed to 120% when you put in 100% all the time is too much.

When I say 120%, I mean when a salary job asks you to work overnight and on weekends, with no bonuses, away from your family to produce a sub-standard product to make them look good.

It is is exhausting, mentally, physically and is completely unfair to one's family life.  A job is called a "job" because there is and always will be work to do, whether or not you are there.  So, it doesn't make sense to burn-out your best talent with ridiculous short-terms requests with no guarantee of any sort of compensation or payoff.

So, for those in sales who work with tech teams, love your tech guys, they work hard.  It is hard work and takes far more talent, patience and experience tying together the multitude of web technologies out there: PHP, mySQL, hBase, AWS, Rails, Zend, Javascript, HTML5, CSS3 etc.  You push the good guys to their edge, they just might find a better offering.

Chase Manhattan Vaporizes 8,000 Homes!

This is just a simple post about some recent news:

JPMorgan shares dive after $2bn trading loss

Do the math, that is like vanishing 8,000 homes which is possibly about 20,000 people.  Who will be affected by this loss?  I guess we will soon find out. 

Feeling Antique

At 37 years old I should feel like a real pro in my field. In some cases I do, in other cases, I feel like I have so much to learn.  We are amidst the ever dreaded but "good" scaling mode.  Our company data is growing so much and our current infrastructure is not holding up.

I am now looking into Hive + Hadoop + Java + PHP to find answers.  Good thing, I know PHP and RDBMS inside and out.  Bad thing,  Hive  + Hadoop is a new kind of animal to me.  I am frustrated that I don't have a solution to fix our problem but also knowing that "fixing" our problem is a large-scale task.  Or maybe, someone else already knows how to do this that I could learn from.

I have been a self starter my entire life but I feel that now this task is much larger than just me and I has my head spinning.  I guess I will press on and see how much I can absorb to make this stuff work!

Lots of Data

Building websites is one thing.  What if you had the opportunity to build an application that served 7 million requests per day?!  Yeah.  Rollups, queries, Innodb customization, triggers, optimization.  Scalability is a huge task.  Time consuming, brain draining but yet challenging.

First rule: Don't try it if you haven't done it!

Why? You need the consultation of an expert, someone who knows what to expect, how to prepare for such.

I have learned a lot recently about developing for huge growth.  So much that I am absolutely overwhelmed yet satisfied with the knowledge that I have learned.  It has been difficult, time consuming and painful but the learning process is so awesome!

If you are experiencing rapid growth in a tech startup, don't hesitate to ask questions about data management because if I don't empty my brain, I just might implode with all of this new useful knowledge!

When the Going Gets Tough...

When the going gets tough, the tough rises to the occasion.  Think about how many difficult challenges you have had in work, personal life or whatever.  If you didn't rise to the occasion, you let "something else" control you. 

Nuff said...

Jobs In the US, My Opinion

Being a citizen of the US since my date of birth, I have seen the world churning from many different perspectives.  Recently, as a father and working professional, I am witness to the unfortunate unemployment rate plaguing many people today.

The real reason is morbid stupidity.  A generation of humans not taught to handle the modern world as it is today.  Those are the people who are lost and jobless.  The people who were quite satisfied making their earnings in a low wage retail or customer service environments.  Those are jobs that require nothing more than basic math and minor personal skills.  I wonder if this unemployment rate actually counts those already living off of the "system"?

I guarantee that most of the people that are out of work are uneducated, lower income, and are just plain morbidly stupid.  Whether or not it was their choice to be that way, is a completely different topic.

I feel for those in unemployment or in dire conditions - I have been there many times in my life. However, we have a problem in 2012 with at least 8% of the population which makes them unemployable.  Not because of the lack of jobs, but because of what they can "bring to the table" which unfortunately isn't that much.

CSS 4, What a Joke!

I have been in the web industry for well over 15 years.  I am well tenured with multiple web languages and platforms.  I was reading some headlines about CSS4 and looked at the W3C recommendation.

I am really in awe.   What a useless set of "features" considering the "global" CSS3 support we have right now. I have actually given up supporting IE browsers complete and develop only for WebKit and Gecko.

In the web industry, I am always looking for ways to be more efficient.  What I find is, more superfluous feature creep that is  a royal pain in the ass to implement.

I am not Google or Facebook or any other large company like that.  I am....me.  On person, one mind, and a lot of real world experience.  I develop web solutions for pure personal satisfaction and to support my family.  It comes to a point where you feel somewhat of a "smack-down" with the bullshit technology that manages to control your "world" of engineering.

Well, as far as CSS4, I laugh, I scoff, and I disapprove of this initiative as it seems to me, a pure "feature" related spec that offers no real (internet) world benefit.