Remembering Steve Shephard
Yesterday I spent some time with the folks at work visiting the home and family of Steven Shephard, my coworker that past away earlier this week. It was a touching time, and a time that gave me even more perspective.
I found out things about my coworker that I had never knew before. Like he was an avid sports fan. And he loved to play the guitar. I knew he was into boating, but I had never known about his love of sports and guitar. I worked with him for a year and never knew these things about him.
I wonder how many other people we interact with regularly whose lives we never bother to look into. This can be looked at from both positive and negative viewpoints in that there are probably some people with whom we have regular contact that we might have facets of their lives that really should not mix with yours. Then again there are people with whom you have regular interaction whose lives you might not know anything about but that happen to live very interesting lives that would surely enrich your life should the opportunity arise to commingle with that person.
So I am somewhat saddened that I did not take the time to learn more about Steve. I should have. And I will for sure take some time to learn more about my coworkers from now on. I spend the better part of my day with them. I should know who I am working with.
Steve's family is awesome by the way. I met his wife, his brother-in-law and several other members of his family. They are a great bunch. And I am sure they are going to miss Steve terribly. So will all of us at work.
Broke as a joke ain’t funny
Every now and again I am faced with the realization that I am broke. Not "down on my luck" or "in a tight place" but freaking broke as a joke. I am so poor I cannot afford to pay attention right now.
Case in point... I left work today and had to use alternate transportation means in order to get home because I did not have the few dollars I needed to put gas in the truck to get it home. That broke.
And at times like these I cannot help but think back to a couple of years ago to when I was not only not broke but was thriving. I had a savings to fall back, credit for emergency situations, a small chance at success based on the availability to use emergency money as needed. I also had a good name in the credit realm, being able to get a loan for almost anything without issue.
Today if I cannot scrounge up a few dollars from my change cup there are days when I cannot eat lunch. There are times when I have to decide between putting gas in the car or paying for certain foods at the grocery store. I have actually had to look at various ways of getting a hold of my money before the bank does because I have accounts that have been severely overdrawn for a period of time now.
My credit is shot. I don't think I could qualify for a hard case loan or even a high risk loan right now even though I have specific needs that must be met and continue to go on unmet daily. I can for surely say that unless a financial miracle takes place in my life that there may come a time very soon that life as I know it will change dramatically for the worse. I pray that it doesn't and I am fighting like the dickens to keep that from happening but in all honesty and seriousness, things are financially that bad for my family right now.
I cannot imagine that anyone should ever be in this place. People were not built to handle this level of stress. Ever. Though I know it happens, and that I am largely responsible for this downturn in my life it doesn't take the edge off the fact that I am usually out of resource four to seven days before my next pay day. This is not living paycheck to paycheck, this is living paycheck to a week before paycheck. And I am scared to death by it.
Of course I do count my blessings daily as well. So I will never lose perspective on my situation. While I might not have money I do have a roof over the heads of my family and for the most part a means by which to feed them. My kids do not lack for much. For some, yes, but not much. Yet as much as I know that I am still richly blessed I still yearn for the days when I was financially solvent and had the ability to make decisions based on want and need as opposed to lack of ability to do one thing versus an ability to do the other.
Pray for me please. I need help.
I hate Microsoft
Particularly Microsoft Visio. I know that the product itself is a great product. And I know it does exactly what it is said to do.
My struggle with the application at the moment centers around the fact that everything you could possibly want out of a UML diagramming tool is present in Visio. Except the UML stuff.
That is something that Microsoft feels is better left to the professional version of Visio. Which means that after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I am still stuck with a product that I cannot use to do what my client needs me to do. Crap.
Sometimes Microsoft makes me want to hit them in the face. The open source alternatives that I have used for just about everything have never made me jump through the hoops that M$ does. Why can't they just buy Yahoo! already and fold so the world can be a better place?
In memory of Stephen Shepard
I found out earlier today that a coworker of mine, Stephen Shepard, passed away earlier this morning. He was 54 years old.
A few weeks ago I posted that I was not feeling well. On that same day Steve was not feeling well and had decided to work from home. A few days later I came back to work, dragassing as usual after not feeling well to find out that Steve was in the hospital.
I am not going to go into any details here because I think that would not be in the interest of Steve's family. Needless to say, he went into ICU on that day. He was showing signs of improvement, albeit minor signs, and was schedule to be transferred from hospital he was in to another hospital. That transfer took place this morning.
And shortly after that Steve died.
It was a rather shocking piece of news to get today. It was shocking enough to find out that he was in the hospital a few weeks ago, but to find out that he passed away after hearing that he was doing better floored my entire department at work. It is a hard thing to have to go through.
My heart goes out to his wife and kids. They were all able to spend his last days with him which is something that I would certainly be grateful for. I am still just reeling a little bit from the entire experience. I know how hard it is to lose a loved one at such a young age. Makes me want to go home and hug my kids really big.
I am the automotive black angel of death
I do believe there are things that some people are just naturally good at just as there are things that people are naturally bad at. Likewise there are circumstances that some people are prone to while there are other circumstances that people are totally counter to.
It would appear that in my case I am prone to killing vehicles. Little ones, big ones, new ones, old ones. Not sure what the crap this is all about but no sooner did I use my sister's truck for a time then the check engine light came on telling me that I had once again been stupid and did something to an otherwise healthy vehicle.
To be honest I am not sure what the problem is. But I do know that there will be no driving of this truck for a while. I need to make sure I don't kill this one into the grave like I did my own car. I cannot afford to have two dead cars on my hands. I am not sure I can handle the guilt.
Am I keeping my options open?
From time to time (almost every day, sometimes more than once a day) I get contacted either by email or by phone from recruiters that all seem to be asking the same question: Robert Gonzalez, are you keeping your employment options open? Well, rather than repeat myself I think it would be best to write it down for all to see.
In order for me to even consider a change right now a prospective employer would have to meet, at a minimum, these criteria:
- Salary: $110K per year base, not including bonuses
- Bonus: 10% of base, preferably quarterly
- Full health insurance for me and my dependents
- At least two weeks of vacation per year
NOTE: If the job is in San Francisco and it is not within a few blocks from a BART station I will be asking for more salary.
Things that would sweeten the deal:
- Any kind of a signing bonus, but cash and Macbooks speak the loudest
- Telecommuting options
Please understand that I am putting this out here not to try to be an arrogant ass or to try to pump you for money. I ask for these things because A) I am very spoiled in my current position and it would take something this significant to lure me away; and B) the current job market will bear these criteria.
The need for seasoned PHP developers is growing daily as just about every startup is looking toward the LAMP stack for cost savings, scalability and transportability. More and more companies are looking for PHP developers (or programmers that can learn quick) to fill these roles.
Unfortunately developers in Silicon Valley have appeared to either not taken an interest in PHP as a language or have abandoned it in favor of Python or Ruby. The pool from which to scout PHP talent is ever dwindling. There are plenty of good programmers in our area (think Java, C++, C#, .net, etc) that can learn the language fast enough. But there aren't nearly enough developers that have well rounded, solid experience with the language. I do. So I can ask for more.
That said, if you are not totally frightened but what you see here in terms of my requirements feel free to send me your requirements or those of your client. I am open to looking at just about anything. But rest assured I am not jumping ship for just anything.
And the TV says to the Robert “Ha!”
I may have spoke too soon when I said that my TV was healed. I thought it was. It turned on the last time I pushed the power button. It turned off too. But not when I pushed the button. No, it turned off because it wanted to.
After some research I found that this is a common problem with older TV. Basically every TV (tube based TV I believe) has something in them that accumulates voltage. The voltage that is accumulated in the TV is eventually dispersed either through a resistor or through being powered down. If the resistor goes then the TV can accumulate so much voltage that it can shut itself down due to short circuiting.
When this happens the only thing that really lets the TV off the hook is unplugging it. Apparently unplugging it allows the pent up voltage to disperse, slowly, until the circuit can actually close itself based on the voltage levels. And I believe that is what happened in my case.
I think the reason my TV "came back to life" when it did the other day was because my wife was thinking ahead and unplugged to minimize power usage by it. So when I plugged it in the other day the voltage that had shut it down the last time was completely dispersed and it allowed the TV to turn on.
What I am finding out now (I have spent some time researching this) is that if the TV ever decides to just shut down all by itself all I need to do is unplug it for about an hour and then plug it back in and turn it on. And you know what? It works.
So now I feel a little better about my TV. No, it isn't healed. But at least I know how to medicate it when it decided to be cranky with me.
My name is Robert and I like to do drawerings
I am faced with a learning experience. An experience that includes drawings, diagrams, UML and, unfortunately, Microsoft. I am a huge proponent of learning. However I am teh sux0r when it comes to drawing. And I am a savage Microsoft hater.
So it seems only natural that I would be totally against the concept of learning something that I suck at within the context of a Microsoft application environment. But I have some amount of motivation to do this. See, I have a client that is a recovering engineer and relies heavily on visual aids for planning, structure and architecture. His tool of choice for handling diagramming is Microsoft Visio.
Now I am not one to tell anyone how to do anything. If you want to work in a Microsoft environment that is between you and your capacity to handle the frustration of working with any software from Microsoft. But I was assured that Visio was outside the norm for Microsoft in that it was originally developed by a company that was eventually bought by Microsoft for the purpose of their Visio application.
So I am confident that this learning experience will not be nearly as bad as I thought it was originally going to be. I sure hope that I am right about this.
