antipaucity

Career development. Career path. Development opportunities. Taking your career to the next level.

Terms and phrases we all hear and pretty much pass over in our day-to-day lives. Right up until we want to move to a new/better job or performance reviews roll around.

But what do they mean, and how can you advance your career (presuming, of course, that you want to)?

This is by no means an exhaustive list – indeed, I’d appreciate any other ideas / feedback / improvements y’all may suggest

For a software developer:

• be the documentation KING of your code – if it’s not right, make it right
• own every bug in your code – even when it’s not “yours”
• be The Guy™ who learns a new component of the code/product (at least conversationally) every few weeks
• write at least one tutorial a month on the internal wiki/kb about something you found or did with the code
• write at least one tutorial or similar a month externally (maybe a personal blog) in a general fashion about something you learned or did

For a systems consultant:

• be the documentation KING of every project you work on – make ABSOLUTELY sure the next guy can do more after you leave
• own every issue you find, even when it’s really somebody else’s problem (no throwing it over the fence)
• the The Guy™ who learns something new about the environment or product every couple weeks
• write at least one tutorial a month and/or give an overview talk of something you learned/did
• write about what you’ve done (changing names to protect the innocent) on a blog or elsewhere
• teach as many people as are willing to learn what you know (in your company / on your team / etc)

Focus – decide where you want to be, and plot a course to get there.

Finally, NEVER make yourself “irreplaceable” – the instant you make yourself irreplaceable, you also make yourself unpromotable: after all, if you’re the Only Guy™ who can do your job, why would your boss/manager/supervisor even think of moving you into a new role?

^{As a side note – if you’re ever working at a customer site, don’t take calls from anyone other than the customer while you’re at your desk/cube/workspace: even if it’s project related, take it in a different room}

Wow. It’s been several months since I last posted a book review. I have been reading in the mean time – just haven’t gotten around to posting any of them hereon.

In the intervening months I’ve read 1434 by Gavin Menzies (follow-on to 1421) and The Lost City of Z by David Grann. I’m currently reading Netherland by Joseph O’Neill and Radical by David Platt.

I also bought a Kobo ereader at one of the Border’s stores in Louisville, and my wife and I have started reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain together.

I’m sure there have been others, too – but I’ll be posting reviews of them over the coming weeks.

I’ve recently had some travel for work that had put me up in Indianapolis.

Tuesday evening I watched the best light show ever: a miles-high, miles-wide thunderhead flashing nearly constantly for over 30 minutes.

It was a little east of where I was staying in Fishers, but man was it pretty!

For the record, God’s fireworks are cooler than any 4th of July party

A few years ago I was working for Sigma Xi as an intern, and was introduced to the then-young Connexions project from Rice University.

This week I was reminded of the service, and have started looking into ways I can contribute to their open repository of educational materials.

I’d written two articles published there when I was at Sigma XI, and while one of them now looks somewhat quaint and dated, I think there are some other areas that I could contribute to that would be helpful.

CNX is free and open to anyone to use, add-to, modify, and reference – so have fun

Following-on with what my wife wrote last week, we’ve been enjoying going to local auction houses again recently – even on nights when there’s nothing we want, it’s still at the very least entertaining

The last couple times we’ve gone, we’ve been to the Williamsburg Auction Center, near where my wife grew up. The building is clean (no smoking indoors, or near the doors), the organizers are professional and fun, and there is food available for purchase (^{_{“Supper will be available at Judy’s AUCTION HOUSE RESTAURANT Serving 4:30 p.m. to end of auction. Menu includes Judy’s homestyle Southern Recipies and Delicious Desserts!”}}).

So far we’ve found some interesting old books, and a few other odds and ends. If you can find one near you, I’d encourage you to go – for the entertainment value, if nothing more

I enjoy histories – especially when delivered in the format that Gavin Menzies employed in “1421 – The Year China Discovered America”.

The only other history I have read in the past 5 years I can recall reading so fast was Gideon’s Spies.

Gavin makes a compelling presentation, interpretation, application, and conclusion of a host of evidence that seems to indicate that the title is what really happened ~600 years ago, and that it was due to a freak storm and fire in The Forbidden City that the records of the great expedition were destroyed by the emperor’s counterparts in society, the mandarins.

Mr Menzies spent his career as a submariner in the British Navy – a fact which comes up several times during the book, and helps to explain many of the connections he was able to draw when reviewing the historical maps, journals, reports, etc.

1421 is a veritable cornucopia of names and places – European and Chinese explorers, exotic locales (many of which are referenced by the names the various countries used for them), foreign potentates, trade routes, etc. It might behoove one to keep notes when reading this book – or at the very least get used to flipping back and forth to keep track of everyone’s names

When I bought 1421, I also bought Mr Menzies’ second book, “1434 – The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance”. I can’t wait to read that one to see where his research has led.

• Quality of writing: 5/5
• Quality of content: at least 4/5
• Entertainment value: 4/5
• Plausibility: 5/5
• Historicity: likely 5/5
• Overall: 4.5/5

Several years ago, Cliff Stoll’s amazing, true-life account of espionage and system administration in the 1980s was recommended to me.

Mr Stoll started his professional life in astronomy, but, due to budget cuts at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, he moved into systems administration.

Interspersed through the book are both political commentaries (he was after all at Berkeley), and helpful hints for even non-techies. For example, the chocolate chip cookie recipe or the helpful note that you should NEVER use a microwave to dry-out your wet sneakers. Ever. It is just Bad News™.

The title, “The Cuckoo’s Egg”, is a  reference to how the cuckoo bird goes about raising her young: she doesn’t hatch her own eggs, but rather lays them in other birds’ nests, and lets them do all the work for her. (Sounds like another bird of Dr Seuss fame, but that will have to wait for another day.)

From start to finish, Cliff’s tale of spotting an accounting error (apparently in the Bad Old Days™, departments were billed based on how much computer time they used – a singularly silly approach to computing looked-at from the mindset of a person living and working in 2011), to tracking this phantom user who utilized exploits in common applications, to finding out that he not only wasn’t at Berkeley, he wasn’t from the west coast, nor, ultimately, even from this country, is a grand tour of  both computing history and old-fashioned detective work.

Along with Without Remorse, The Cuckoo’s Egg is a novel I have reread a couple times. It has also been on my standard list of books all techies should read for more than a decade. Even though the story happened a quarter century ago, it is still a thrilling read (ok, so the bit about dial-up access seems outlandishly dated, but that’s OK, too).

• Quality of writing: 4/5
• Entertainment value: 5/5
• Historicity: 5/5
• Overall: 4/5

Jeopardy! has been a favorite of mine for years: it’s the reason I eat fast.

I’ve tried-out a couple times in the past – once in person at Southpoint Mall in Durham NC and once online. Tonight I did again – so here’s hoping I did well enough

Normally I don’t like reviewing chains, but The Melting Pot is different. It’s a fondue place, and is a blast to eat at.

The first time I went was with my wife and parents-in-law the weekend before Thanksgiving. We were looking for a “fun” place to eat, and had been thinking about trying a fondue place for a while, so we went. We ordered a pair of their “Big Night Out France” dinners – two four-course fondue extravaganzas that allowed us to mix and match our “cooking styles” (in other words, the broths in which you cook your meat chunks).

So the cool thing about a fondue place is that you cook your own food at your table. The ingredients are brought out raw, and you spear them and set them in the near-boiling broth for 30-90 seconds (as done as you want). The four-course dinner started with a cheese appetizer round with chunks of bread and fruit to dip. Second was a selection of salads for each person at the table, and then came the coup de gras – the meat round! (My wife would say that the best part is the dessert, but she’s wrong )

The meat comes out raw and seasoned in a variety of marinades (we had duck l’orange, peppered sirloin, marinated fillet, chicken, shrimp, and lobster tail). There are also a host of sauces that can be added post-cooking to the different meats: far more than I could recall in detail

Our evening out was a blast – while we were worried that it would be hyper-formal or “too fancy”, it was fun. Fun enough that a couple weeks later I took my wife back for a smaller meal for just the two of us. The second time we went there was a small bit of excitement a few tables away from us: a couple on a date got engaged, and left with stars in their eyes.

Melting Pot is not a place I would recommend on a routine basis – full meals run in the neighborhood of $50 a person – but it is a lot of fun, and definitely worth going to for special events.

Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands free speaker-function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen.

MAN: Hello?
WOMAN: Honey, it’s me. Are you at the club?
MAN: Yep, sure am…..
WOMAN: I’m at the mall now and found this beautiful leather coat. It’s only $1,000. Is it OK if I buy it?
MAN: Sure, ..go ahead if you like it that much…
WOMAN: I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2010 models. I saw one I really liked.
MAN: How much?
WOMAN: $85,000
MAN: OK, but for that price I want it with all the options…
WOMAN: Great! Oh, and one more thing . The house we wanted last year is back on the market. They’re asking $950,000…down from $1.500,000
MAN: Well, then go ahead and give them an offer, but just offer $900,000.
WOMAN: OK. I’ll see you later! I love you!
MAN: Bye, I love you, too. The man hangs up.

The other men in the locker room are looking at him in astonishment.

Then he smiles and asks: Anyone know who this phone belongs to?”