Self Development
There are 10 entries for the tag
Self Development
Those of us not at MIX08 are likely jealous of those who are. Certainly Twitter has been aflutter with MIX08 tweets, letting the rest of us feel left out in near-real-time. Oh well. That's not the point. Just wanted to get that in there. The point, as you're wondering, is that while I was watching the keynote stream from MIX08, I found it very easy to succumb to Grass-is-Greener Syndrome (GIGS?). It's super easy to watch something like the IE8 demo, or the Silverlight stuff done by the Vertigo and Hard Rock people, or the just astonishing end-to-end magical technosex...
Title courtesy of Chris Chapman Some twittering this morning surrounding yesterday's ALT.Net summit got me to thinking about a broader principle that needs to be applied here. There is no growth within your comfort zone. If you always do that which is familiar, you reach a point of utter stagnation. Some call it a rut. Some call it doldrums. Call it what you will, but it's stagnation, made heavier by inertia. I talked about this before and I'll say it again: Sometimes you have to shock your system to make real progress. A lot of lashback for alt.net right now is...
Cold water stands before you. Maybe it's a pool, maybe it's a lake. What's the best way to handle it? Do you wade in, little by little, doing that little dance with your arms up in some unnatural Frankenstein pose, or do you jump right in, get it over with, and become acclimated all at once?
Sometimes you have to shock your system to make real progress. This is pretty much a univesally acceptable principle. You want to make big gains in the gym? You put your muscles through something they aren't used to, and tear them down so they can...
Ok, I talked last week about rebuilding myself. Time to add some specifcs.
I came up with this simple formula to use as a guide to the new me, because everyone knows geeks respond to math. At the surface, it seems a bit...off. But I'll explain.
Mathematically, it should really be 1 + 2 - (-3) = 6, which of course simplifies to 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, but that's not as catchy. And catchy is what I'm hoping will make me catch on.
The simple breakdown is this: Each week, realize a net personal gain of 6 (units?). Do this...
Here's to hoping. This post is going to be kind of a free-range, stream of consiousness sort of bit...I may clean it up later, may not, apologies in advance.
First, let me say that having just discovered Justice Gray's blog, I am totally down with this guy. He reminds me of a Canadian me. Not to imply that a Canadian me is in some way a lesser me...well...maybe a little...All jokes aside, subscribe it up bitches, this guy has something good to say all the time, and I love the way he presents his brain goo. Two posts of his kind...
So I was in the hospital. Again. Apparently, it was stress and anxiety. Again. I’ll give the Reader’s Digest version and then jump to the real point.
So Sunday afternoon I’m in my office humming along, making a bunch of bug fixes, and adding some new functionality to the piece of software I’m working on. All of a sudden I get this pain shooting into my chest on the left side. I get up, take a walk, take some deep breaths, and it seems to subside. I sit back down, there it is again. So I pack it up, go home. ...
"Learn at least one new [programming] language every year. Different languages solve the same problems in different ways. By learning several different approaches, you can help broaden your thinking and avoid getting stuck in a rut."
so sayeth the Pragmatic Programmers.
Last year’s language for me was Lua. I didn’t really say much about it, because…well, mostly lazy, but also I found limited application for it. It’s a nice tight little scripting language, it has high utility, loosely typed and very flexible.
Many games use Lua for interface modifiction scripting. World of Warcraft, for instance, which is why I learned it. The...
I used to thrive on the stuff. Back in high-school and college, in the early days of my career, I lived for the rush of the deadline. The unbeatable odds. The change request that would save the company a client who was gonna walk if it wasn’t in place tomorrow. Hero syndrome. Stress was my high. It was my drug of choice, and I was hooked.
I also used to pull all-nighters with gusto. 3 straight days of code/caffeine/cigarettes, and maybe some food. That was what drove me.
Somewhere along the line I got old. I already discovered that I can’t do...
I was just watching 28 Days with Sandra Bullock. She wasn’t here with me on my couch mind you (I wish), but rather in the movie. If you haven’t seen it, she’s a drunk and gets sent to rehab, and goes through the whole rehab thing. The movie was actually very good, I really enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Also, it showed that Sandra can in fact act. Fairly well in fact. Who’da thunk it.
The reason for the title of this post is that these people were all in rehab. No drugs, no booze, not...
So I'm taking a little break from what I’m doing (tell you shortly) to write this. I’m hoping to get some feedback.
I have decided tonight to beef up my compsci background. I am not a compsci grad. I am not a grad at all actually, but when I was in school I majored in ancient history. Minor in political science (yeah…so not a science). At the time, I had no plans or even desire to go into technology. This was 1995. In 1997 I got my first tech job as a temp working help desk at a sizeable law firm...