Bird, bird, bird; bird is the word.
I am taking today off to eat a shitload of turkey and drink gin until football becomes entertaining.
Normal (that is to say, semirandom) updates resume tomorrow.
During my final few months at UNH, I have been taking a class by the name of "History of the Modern World" which UNH, in its infinite wisdom, decreed I should take to make sure I don't come out of college completely ignorant of the past. On the surface, it is an entry-level history major class; however, lurking beneath the surface is its true function, at least in my eyes: showcase of the stupidity of UNH students.
Now let's get some stuff clear. I'm going to berate two groups of people here: UNH students and history majors. I love history: it is one of my favorite things to read about. I hate history majors: they are lumped in with pysch majors and communications majors in a group I like to call "My Future Cashiers". UNH is a decent enough state school, which I ended up at after a year at WPI completely wiped out my savings.* I like UNH: clean, quiet campus. Wonderful professors (in CS, anyway). And above all: cheap.
However, because it is a state school, it often reminds me more of a high school than a university. The amount of popped collars exceeds the physical number of people on campus.** The goal of most of these kids seems to be nothing more than to get laid, with alcohol a close second. These are fine pursuits to be sure, but when your hung over ass almost throws up on me while I try to dodge your stumbling attempt to cross the street at 9 am on a Wednesday, I may grow a little irked at your dedication to your craft.
However, I have mostly high-level CS courses, notably devoid of this stereotype. The only gen ed I take this semester is the aforementioned history class, which is full to the brim of people that remind me of high school, and why it fucking sucked. One kid in particular's insistence that Communism worked perfectly really took the life out of me today. It seems like everyone has this kid in history class at some time in their life: fat, strident, ill-washed, and smugly sure of his superiority over the rest of these sheep who think capitalism is the bee's knees. His stained Che shirt, which he wears without a trace of irony (slightly distorted by his massive gut), is as much a symbol of his stupidity as it is any resistance against The Man.
Now, I remember in WPI this kind of kid existed as well. For some reason, I took a Shakespeare class there, and a version of this blob manifested himself in that classroom as well, often loudly opining that we were idiots and dolts beyond measure for thinking that Shakespeare existed. He was OBVIOUSLY a group of different authors working as a collective!***
The difference at WPI is that the professor fucking called him out, asking for evidence that that was true, and citing his own opinion that Shakespeare was quite real with well-reasoned arguments. Clue entire class chuckling at cookie-cutter nonconformist getting owned.
But at UNH, this never happens. The professor thanks him for his valuable contribution, and I groan and slouch down in my chair. Is this worth it? What the hell am I getting out of this exchange? Truth be told, I spend the vast majority of time in that class thinking about startups. They hold more interest for me these days than anything UNH has to offer.
* Thank you, three consecutive tuition hikes over the course of one year! You made my already 40K a year education completely unattainable!
** Seen crossing commuter parking lot: A kid with no less than three popped collars: two shirts, one fashionably rumpled black blazer. And a tan no one in New England could ever have.
*** Cue lecture on the uses of collectivism, with frequent interjections about how much he wishes he could suck Lenin's preserved dick. Or maybe I'm just reading between the lines there.
I often wonder about what my life would be like if I continued to work as a developer for large companies for the rest of my life. I can see two possible paths:
1) Stay Programmer.
2) Become Manager.
This is not a new dilemma. I'm sure people have faced it before with jobs in various fields other than software development. But it takes on a vital air when discussed among programmers and/or managers because the two are so different, and yet often one is promoted into the other.
Programmers* are very similar animals. They are all usually less than outgoing, interested in solving curious problems, and inclined to focus on one thing to the point where everything else becomes a dull background roar.
Managers are outgoing people. They have to be if they are any good at their craft, which is the sole act of dealing with and coordinating people. They enjoy nothing more than working with people, talking to people, and thinking about what to do with people and their time. They focus on a wide variety of tasks and they need to be able to context switch quickly.
Now you may think that I am about to start slagging managers as useless and talentless individuals. And some are. But a good manager is an extremely useful thing. He solves logistical problems, and aids the programmers with whatever is holding them up. An enabler who helps people get shit done, with a minimum of intrusion otherwise.
Nine times out of ten, programmers make rotten managers. They hate talking to people, they hate meetings longer than 10 minutes, and most of all, they hate to stop programming, which is essentially what you must do when you become a manager. Once in a while you will see an excellent manager promoted from a programmer who truly understands his employees, and is an absolute joy to work for with a laissez-faire management style and a no-bullshit attitude. These are gems that must be coveted beyond imagining: if you work for a manager like this, keep working there. And make sure he doesn't get fired!
This is mostly just an unstructured rant about how annoyed I am at the preponderance of shitty managers in software development today. And it is a difficult problem to fix: while most promoted from programmers suck, at least they are in touch with the problems programmers have. Nothing is worse than some business-school idiot with no programming experience being tapped to lead a dev team.
So what is the answer? I would begin by offering MAJOR salary increases for programmers becoming managers, and still allow them to program as they see fit, and delegate some managerial duties to an assistant as possible. This will keep them focused, interested, and ready to lead without boring them. I like this model, and if I ever have to become a manager (it is sometimes unavoidable if you wish to keep working at a particular company), it will definitely be my goal to set up my reign in this manner.
* When I use the word programmer, I mean a real programmer. Not someone who is doing it because they thought a CS degree was a ticket to instant free wealth. Someone who would be programming even if it were a completely unpopular social stigma akin to having herpes, and if it paid nothing at all, and in fact cost one money. The people who understand and love their profession, which is writing software. My God, I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Mt. Everest, don't I?
Time for a departure from my normally scheduled crap concerning lame-ass web startups* and stuff I like on the internet. This post is about COFFEH!
This post is also going to be profane. Watch those sensitive ears, ladies.
Coffee, as a rule, is delicious. I don't care how you imbibe it, be it lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, regular fucking coffee, whatever. It all tastes good and it all has a fucking stranglehold on my brain. It has gotten to the point now where a day without caffeine input (preferably coffee) leaves me incredibly irritable and with a skullsplitting headache.
As addictions go, this is a pretty tame one. I'm not sucking dick for coffee in alleys, or mugging people from the Midwest on vacation for coffee money. I should be glad that I am addicted to such a readily available substance. However, I am dismayed, probably just like any cocaine/heroin/janjaweed addict, by the vastly varying quality of my substance of choice.
Point in case: I am drinking a Dunkin' Donuts** coffee right now. It tastes like pee. But it is still much, much better than some coffee you can get. While it dismays me that this coffee is the best available to me on my way to UNH, it also makes me glad I am not drinking coffee from Cumby's, a disgusting gas station chain whose radio ads constantly shrill how awesome and trendy they are for serving Bengal Trader coffee ("ANY SIZE JUST 99 CENTS! YOU BETTER GET TO CUMBY'S!"). After some thought (not a lot, though), I decided to rank my coffee options:
1) Taste The Golden Spray
This is the highest ranking, reserved for the best indie coffee shops and other fine places where you can get some exotic shit to placate the monkey on your back. Also Illy, which I consider to be some of the tastiest mass produced coffee, unless you can get some Zabar's. The finest uncut Colombian.
2) I'd Buy THAT For A Dollar
This is my ranking for the best chains. I'd say stuff like Starbuck's and Seattle's Best rank in here somewhere. China white: it's been stepped on a little, but it's better than what everyone else is getting.
3) Mean Bean Machine
Dunkin' Donuts and all their ilk. Semi-decent coffee if you are in a hurry and don't need anything but a fix. Compare to Mexican Brown: tastes a little weird, still gets you where you need to go.
4) Cleveland Steamer In A Paper Cup
Gas station coffee. Any kind. It's all gross. Green Mountain is the best of this group, but still shitty. Badly stepped on Mexican Brown. Cut with Ajax.
5) SANKA TIME
Any decaf, anywhere. Hardware store complimentary coffee. ANY complimentary coffee. You're bootin' black tar heroin now.
And that's all I got today. Maybe tomorrow I will make fun of how useless Open Social is so far. Or maybe write about my amigo John's blog, which is so far even more content-free than my own, which is a feat indeed.
* Seriously, WTF. Like Amazon is impossible to use or some shit. Also their site design looks like one of those linkjack shitholes. As Ted Dziuba has been known to say, WARP FACTOR FAIL.
** Those of you from somewhere other than New England may not know what Dunkin Donuts is. I don't care.
10/22/07
This is my latest attempt at keeping things organized and people updated using a blog. I inevitably get bogged down in the implementation of my blog, because I grow bored with it or because I have too many other things to do on any particular day to write my thoughts or work down here.
Anyway, the idea is that if I catalog what is going on in my life on any given day I can keep better track of all my projects, and also keep other people involved in the projects updated. Of course I will probably just end up posting LOLCATs when intoxicated instead of useful content, but my heart is in the right place. I guess.
To get the ball rolling, I have to plug what I think is the only blog worth reading right now, which is Ted Dziuba and company's Uncov. This blog is ruthless in its skewering of various Web 2.0 startups, and it is all done in a style I admire. Also, if you are interested in more than just the trashing of half-assed startups, he has a list of Uncov-approved Web 2.0 garbage, some of which is truly useful. DivShare in particular is worth a look.
That's enough for today. I need to get some chicken in me.
Some links I added later:
http://www.uncov.com
http://www.divshare.com
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