OCDProgrammer.com

I am a subscriber to CodingHorror.com.  A recent post from Jeff Atwood referenced a post from The Joel on Software.

Joel was responding to a comment from a person on his blog saying that they were going to leave the industry and move on.  They were just that unhappy.  Joel then went onto question it.  How the timing couldn’t be worse, pay was pretty darn good, and the overall coolness of being able to create new stuff for a living. 

Jeff Atwood responded by agreeing and then going on a bit of a side rant that I agree with.

If you’ve been in the industry for any length of time you come to see a bunch of people that shouldn’t be in the industry.  They just don’t have ‘it’.  They don’t have the analytical skills to program, but more importantly they don’t have the attitude it takes.  If you don’t love what you do in this industry, you need to move on.  Because if you don’t love what you do, you are not going to spend 8 hours fighting a bug that makes no sense.   If you don’t love what you do, you are not going to be up till 3 AM finishing a product that is needed ASAP. 

I love what Jeff says in closing:

So if a programmer ever hints, even in passing, that they might possibly want to exit the field -- they probably should. I'm not saying you should be a jerk about it, obviously. But if someone has any doubt at all about programming as a career choice, they should be encouraged to explore alternatives -- and make room for another programmer who unashamedly loves to code.

In my own closing:

I love it.  I’m staying.

Hat tip to Chris Blankenship for this one.

As a developer you get dumb questions from newbies (and experienced people as well) all the time.  Things that you know with about 60 seconds of effort could have been answered without bothering you.

In comes the best way ‘teach a person to fish’ rather than give them a fish.

Instead of giving the person the answer, you send them a link that shows them how to use Google!

Here is the deal, a friend had their house burn down.  Lots of stuff damaged unsure of whether or not it is repairable.  Can you help?

Girl - Age - 6:
Clothes Size 7/8 
Shoe size 1

Boy – Age - 4: 
Clothes Size 5
Shoe Size 11

Girl – Age 1 1/2:
Clothes Size 18 months
Shoe size 11 1/6

Mom
10 or 12 pants med or large shirts
Shoe Size 9

Dad
34/34 pants XL or L shirt
Shoe Size 11 1/5

Other needs requested:
People to call Walmart for donations.
People to call dry cleaners for donations
Pet supplies: Litter boxes, food for dogs, crates and beds for dogs.
Cash:  Will need a way to move into their next home…

Having been in a house fire when I was 3, losing my dad, I know the damage and setbacks one of these can do to a family.  If you can help, let me know via the contact form.

Am I the only one that see's the irony in this Facebook message?

Was triggered because I was registering my children on Facebook.  Guess they didn't hit the age requirement.

If you own a domain you have heard of this company.  Domain Registry of America.  The story for me started about 9 months ago.  A client of mine was having issues with their .org of their domain name.  We got it registered and transferred.  Then I started looking for the history behind the .com address.  Found out that an office worker had received the spam like letter from Domain Registry of America and they paid their exorbitant $35 renewal fee.  So now Domain Registry of America was the registrar of record for their .com domain. 

I thought it wasn’t much of a big deal and we’d just initiate a transfer to GoDaddy.  Contacted Domain Registry of America only to find out they put a 120 day hold on any new domains.  You can’t transfer them within that 120 period.  Lets not forget that NO OTHER REPUTABLE company puts such a limit on domains.  So after many frustrating emails on the subject, I figured I’d just wait them out.

Now it came time to initiate a transfer from them to GoDaddy.  I went to GoDaddy and filled out the information to see that they had the technical contact email as privacy@droa.com.  So I logged back into Domain Registry of America’s admin page to verify (again) my contact information, only to see a not so noticeable check box to make this happen.  I turn that option off and reinitiate the transfer.

Comes down to where I need the “EPP Key” to transfer the domain.  So I call up their customer service and give them my domain.  The customer service rep then goes to ask me what my password is… IE THEY HAVE THE PASSWORDS NOT ONLY IN THE CLEAR BUT EASILY ACCESSED!!! So they then send me the code via email and their email was laughable:

The first issue here is that they don’t have a clue who my registrar is at this point, and it certainly isn’t Melbourne IT, LTD. D/B/A Internet Names Worldwide.  So their email is just a continuing of the scam.  I’m stunned that the government hasn’t stepped in to deal with this scam yet.

So the moral of the story?  Send an email now, yes NOW, to all of your clients warning them that if they get any mailings from any company (but ESPECIALLY DROA) to contact you for clarification.

One of the purposes of the recent site design was to give my actual identity a bit more publicity.  One of the things I noticed is that you can customize your LinkedIn URL.

So instead of some auto-generated text at the end of the URL you can have  your custom text, or in my case my name.

You can do the same to your profile by logging in, clicking 'Edit My Profile' and then scrolling down to the section that has a link to your public profile:

Then at the top of the page you'll see the option to change your URL.

I've had two interesting things happen to friends computers over the past few months.

First I got an email from my friends at Tin Roof (by the way, if you want to support a great charity... this is it) telling me that she needed to file an extension on her taxes before she leaves for Nicaragua on Tuesday. However when she started Turbo Tax she was getting an error.

Further investigation by me (via a VNC connection I set up with her a while ago) realized that this was a .NET error.

Turbo Tax spit out the following error: 20888 39915.  A Quick search of their site gave this article.  Basically blaming .NET and their solution has a link to a program that totally wipes out .NET from your system so you can start over.  I downloaded the program, ran it and then reinstalled .NET and her problem was fixed (well after I ran a reboot.bat file that was in the Turbo Tax installation folder, but that's another issue all together).

Then I have another buddy who had been using a program I wrote for my church to transfer files between members of the multimedia team.  Several months ago a basic Windows component of it stopped working right.  I was at a total loss for a solution (as a simple uninstall and reinstall of .NET didn't help).  I let it drop... but I emailed him today with this fix and my hunch is, that this will get him up and running again.

What frustrates me the most about this, is that Microsoft's .NET uninstall doesn't fully uninstall itself.  Many years ago I did some work for Lexmark's All in One printers and one of the BIG things they did was make sure that their uninstall completely wipes out any record of the machine being on your system.  And really there is no excuse for any other behavior.

It has been an interesting week for me.

Started off with an old coworker IM'ing me and asking if I'd be a reference for a job he was interviewing on.  I certainly said yes, and last word I got is that he got the job.  The email I sent in reply to the email looking for feedback was a glowing recommendation for somebody who is a very skilled developer, and my first mentor in the trade.  Its good to be able to give back to him at times.

Then I was tasked with tech interviewing a candidate for a job at my employer.  First real interview I've had to do.  Was fun. In the end I love programming and talking about programming is pretty fun as well.

Next I was talking to a dad of one of my daughters friends.  He was recently back from a 10 month tour in Iraq.  He is a true, decorated war hero.  But now he has to reintegrate back into the real world.  Part of that is him wanting to get an IT job in the area.  He is interested in a newbie position, but some of his skills are a bit above that as well.  He has secret security clearance.  He'd be good for any company that needs general IT help (server setup, maintenance, deployment, help desk related work).  So if you work for a company that could honor one of our war hero's AND get a new worker at the same time... let me know and we can talk.  I have his resume on hand.

Finally came the most interesting part of the week.  We needed another .NET developer (we had hired the one I interviewed previously) for my employer and I recommended a former co-worker whom I helped train in what was nice and  good about programming.  This is a guy who at one point thought x was a valid variable name.... still can't believe that first code I saw from him... From what I can tell salary arrangements have been agreed on and if the owners of the company approve, me and this fellow will be co-workers once again. 

This final guy is one where I put my reputation on the line for him.  I am very tight lipped about my recommendations.  There are just four guys who would get my unequivocal recommendation.  There are many others who would get a recommendation on their work ethic, ability to learn, etc... but just four who I would recommend for ANY job they were going for.  He is one of them.

This is a rare double post on my site. This will be on both my Tech Blog and my Life Blog, but it is so cool that I have to share.

A few years ago, shortly after I had filed my taxes, I was looking at my paycheck and noticed that well over $100 per pay period was going to Uncle Sam... the downfall?  I got all that money back come tax time.  I had (have) pretty much a zero dollar tax liability.  So I went to our financial person and asked about lowering the amount of federal taxes taken from my check.

I was already claiming myself and my four dependents, but was still paying a ton out when there was no need to.  I was told that I can mark myself as 'EXEMPT' and then have a standard amount taken out if I want to.

So I did, I marked myself as exempt and then said to take $20 out per pay period instead of the $120 they were taking, so I gave myself a pretty sizable raise that year.  Now over the years as my salary has gone up I have raised that amount to now $40 a pay period, but after just filing my taxes... I got it all back again. Last year I paid about $600 in federal taxes... got a refund coming my way WELL above that amount.  Now it is still considerably lower then the $3000 or so we used to get back, but I figured I'd rather keep my money to myself instead of giving Uncle Sam an interest free loan.

So if you're up for giving yourself a raise, talk to your HR department about this.  They may give you a little resistance, but if you know you will get it all back... why not get it NOW? 

A few words of wisdom:

1. If you rely on the annual tax refund to bail you out of your Christmas spending, realize that this will remove that 'gift'. This is not free money, this is you just getting YOUR money earlier.

2. If you underpay throughout the year, beware... Uncle Sam can fine you!  That is why I still pay a nominal amount... just in case.

Well I've always avoided this a bit, but I am going to finally add a 'blog roll' like area to my site.  So the question is, which sites should I put there?

Now I know this blog has at least one link to it,  and I will give those sites higher consideration when I build my blog roll.

But what is your site?  I'll take a look at it and if I like it a lot (if I don't link to you, don't get upset :-), I'll link to it.   AND you'll get a free link here as well.