I was talking to a friend this morning, and realized something. It seems that credentials can be selectively respected, or ignored, depending on the situation. Say, for instance, that you feel threatened by someone. You may examine that person’s credentials and look for something specific. Not seeing what you want, you deem them unqualified. But what happens if you’ve got work to do, or you’re too set in your ways, or you’re unwilling to learn? Do you pawn your workload off onto someone who has “experience” instead? Is the credential so important then? If you feel so threatened by someone so as to wave their lack of a specific set of letters in their face despite the obvious presence of education, experience and other worthy awesomeness, well… you suck.

I speak from experience on this, in a way. Having no CS background, I find myself often wondering if I’m doing things “the right way”. I’ve learned a lot in the time I’ve been doing software development, but lately it’s been tough staying on top of things. I’m working with a great bunch of people now, developers who are really good at what they do, and I worry that I’m not going to hold up. Do my best, I guess. This was a rough week. It started off good, and had a sour end today, when code I had checked into the repository yesterday no longer seems to work. I’m on call this weekend, so time in front of a computer will be an inevitability, so maybe I will work on it. After this project, I go back to developing a new project in a vacuum, but I wish I would have been able to do that project first, so my contributions to my current endeavour would be more substantial.

Speaking of credentials, or lack thereof, a friend of mine inspired me to participate in NaNoWriMo, this coming November. I am in WAY over my head, but it should be a crazy, hectic month. I know I’m not allowed to outline anything until the month starts, but that isn’t going to keep me from thinking about what to do.

When I was doing the photo challenge in February, I kept looking for an opportunity to use Opeth’s Windowpane as a photo caption. It never happened because the shot really needed to be staged in order for it to work and I would have felt weird asking someone to participate. Anyway, the song is fantastic. It showcases Ankerfelt’s non-death metal vocal style. Enjoy.

I was reading this morning, and a passage struck me, so much so that I figured I’d share. A woman told her sister “You can’t have what you need”. That seems like a pretty raw deal to me, frankly, and yet, there are probably a billion people on this planet who can’t have what they need either. If you can’t have what you need, can you have what you want? Cold comfort, I guess. In my own life, anyway, the things that I want are probably not going to be helpful in the long run, and possibly even detrimental to eventually getting what I need.

While I have been listening to a lot of Volbeat lately, it’s not really appropriate for a track for this post, given the book I am referring to in this post. So, I give you Fairies Wear Boots, by Black Sabbath. Enjoy.

I realized this morning that I can’t go into a lot of places unless I can’t hear what others are saying. I left my iPod at home this morning, and was doing groceries and ended up listening in on a conversation between a woman and her very young daughter. Her daughter was helping her push the cart around, which was nice. However, the mother was constantly going on, quite loudly, about how “wonderful” chicken was, and how tasty ground beef was, etc, and by the time they rolled back to the checkout they had a pile of dead animal about a metre high, with nary a vegetable in sight. Anyway. I kept my mouth shut. Not really my problem, and I am congratulating myself for holding my tongue by having a celebratory espresso now that I am home.

I have the windows open in my house, for the one of the first times in 2010. That’s usually a strong indicator that my months of slogging through snow and slush are quickly coming to an end, which is great by me. I do love the winter, the fresh blanket of snow, but come spring time, I seriously begin wondering if I should create a Facebook album full of photos of dog shit. Pick up after your pets, people.

Happy Pi day, every one. Specifically, at 1:59 pm this afternoon. Try to celebrate something round today. Maybe have a cake, or better yet, a pie. Mmmm… pie.

A track for today? Something Pi-ish, maybe? Okay. How about You Spin me Round, but a cover of the original Dead or Alive track, by Dope. Enjoy.

I am noticing something about myself at work lately. I am losing my edge, that quality that a lot of newer or younger programmers have to know *all* of the little intricacies and specifications of new technologies. I am becoming more of a generalist, which has its good aspects, but I find myself less able to immediately grok something without having to read a whole lot of background info, first. Maybe I am just not as thirsty for it as I once was. The late nights over buckets of coffee, reading, absorbing, and writing code — those don’t happen any more. Maybe that thirst is being quenched by other things, not related to my job. I don’t know. Or maybe, this is merely a matter of stimulation at work, and that isn’t really occurring as much as it used to. Frankly, it is a bit frightening.

Maybe I need a change. Of scenery, or job, or goals, or some combination thereof. Maybe I am too jaded for this now. Maybe, I need to do something that I have a larger vested interest in, something to make me want to learn again. That’s a whole lot of maybe.

A track for this post? Okay. The Greymen, by Lake of Tears. The link is to a live version, the quality is not the greatest, from a show called SamFest. I think it was held in Roumania.

Such a dark cold way
And it enters through your breathing everyday
What a dark old way to stay the same
As it enters through your breathing,

Close your eyes and feel them turn it grey

It is fairly early on this Saturday morning, and I am quietly enjoying an espresso – the first of a few this morning I am sure. The full moon is tracking outside of my window right now, moving silently through a black sky. An hour glass of sorts, it is reminding me that I have things to do today. It can wait.

Well. Maybe it can’t. it’s getting close to the edge of the window sill now, and in a few more minutes it will be gone from my sight unless I move my chair. Maybe I am sitting in a moving Zen garden, like the Ryoan-ji Zen Garden in Kyoto, Japan. Based on mathematical principals, it is constructed in such a way that the 15 boulders are not all visible from any one perspective. Shape analysis aside, it is an interesting concept, and something that can and should be applied to life. If we stand still in life, we cannot see everything around us. At the same time, moving away from the familiar may obscure these familiar things once they move behind new ones. Astronomers face this problem every day, when they examine interstellar objects. We operate from a fixed perspective, based on this planet, and can’t always see things that exist in straight lines behind other stars and galaxies. We get brief glimpses of these things, occasionally, during eclipses, and through gravitational effects that curve space and time. Cool.

Maybe that’s what we all need in life. The ability to curve space and time, if only to see what we might be missing in our lives. This may result in a yearning for something new, or act as a reinforcing influence in knowing what we currently possess is special and worth keeping.

The track for this moonlit morning is Still Counting, by Volbeat. Volbeat is a Danish band, a cross between heavy metal and rockabilly, hugely popular in Denmark. Amazing vocalist. They are playing the Sonisphere festival in Finland in August this summer, along with Maiden, Slayer, Anthrax, and a host of other giants of metal. It’d be an awesome show.

This weekend, the nano tank came down. It’s not as big of a deal as it sounds, and I’ve been planning it for a while. I was at the point where I was really just going through the motions of feeding my clown fish, making sure there was water in the auto top-off system, and doing routine maintenance. I wasn’t enjoying it, and since I am travelling more these years, the tank had become a bit of an obstacle for getting away for longer periods of time. Anyway, it is strange to have an empty corner in my living room, and to not hear the gurgling of water at night.

I am reading the Yiddish Policemen’s Union, again, by Chabon. Fantastic book. I seem to really enjoy books that are bleakly funny. When I first read it a year ago, it took me a few tries to get into it, because I was stumbling over the Yiddish terms for various things. It’s a recommend, in any case.

For a music track, I’m going to recommend a tune called Call Me, Call Me, off of the Cowboy Bebop sound track. There’s a video, from scenes taken from the show. Truly, one of the best anime series of all time.