Work

After reading Tips for how to decouple your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I was struck by how stupid I’ve been marking up my HTML for CSS and JS events. I started rewriting my latest project using these principles and they’ve really helped create a separation of concerns. To illustrate how this has helped, I was coding up a quick administrative interface to CRUD some service model classes in my project and I started to really hate the UI/UX I chose. I decided to switch to a table since the data is more tabular in nature and I was quite please to see that none of the JavaScript functionality broke. ...

I came across a fantastic article on Hacker News called Crushing the Imposter Syndrome and I think everyone should read it. I have an addendum to make to it as it relates to my life and what I have seen in the IT industry over the past 16 years. Please go and read the article now, then come back and read this. Back? OK, let’s start. I see imposter syndrome happening in IT quite a lot, but limited to a select group of people who really try to do a good job (e.g. solving a large problem). This is in contrast to the people in IT that are in it purely for the money and power or to sell something and then forget about that customer in the attempt to get a new customer. It possibly happens as much in other industries, but I don’t know since I have only existed in IT (or the IT department of other industries). One big cause of imposter syndrome is the pressure put on IT applicants when searching for a job. ...

I was reading a brilliant article titled “Post-Scarcity Economics” by Tom Streithorst and it resonated with me about our failing economy in Canada that I needed to write an article on it. Although the article is set against the US economy, much of what happens there also happens in Canada, albeit to a less extent 1. Please read the entire article (warning: it is lengthy) first, and I will be pulling sentences out and applying my experiences in Canada to them. ...

One of the things that I like to do in my personal life and in my corporation is control the books. Since I am responsible if the corporation fails, and if mismanaged money is the surest way to failure, then I better control where that money comes and goes. To this, I make myself the bookkeeper (with my wife, who verifies the work). As for accounting, I outsource that stuff to an accountant because it is much too complicated for me to spend so much time on it. That, and he saves me more than what he charges, so it’s a good deal. ...

You may or may not have noticed but the user icon in the sidebar is a link to my profile (or, resume if you will). Clicking on it will show you first the range of skills that I have. I have separated these skills into two areas – Business and Technical – due to the type of work that I target. However, it doesn’t necessarily show the full range of my skills, otherwise it would be a very long read and very boring for the reader. This is not me patting myself on the back, but there are a lot of skills that everyone has that they use in a workplace that don’t need to be written down. For example, my typing skills are very good (80+ wpm, touch-type) but I’m not going to write that down unless it was somehow dependent on my getting a specific type of job. But this is not the point of my article. ...

Continuing the theme from yesterday about burnout, it is important to identify the signs and symptoms of burnout. This Wikipedia article on burnout is chock full of good details, and I advise you to look there for reference as I talk about each symptom. As I go through each phase of burnout, I detail what I unknowingly did in that phase, in the hope that someone out there can recognize what they are currently doing and prevent it from happening further. I feel quite exposed writing about all of this, mainly because of the feeling that people will see me as fallible but it is all part of the process of learning and growing. ...

Being the 10th anniversary of when this story took place, I would like to tell a story today. It is one of the many stories that I tell each of my student mentees each year. At first it may seem like I am airing dirty laundry, but the purpose of this parable is that the reader can hopefully steer clear of the mistakes I made once upon a time. I was working at the main IT department for UBC (then called ITServices, it is now called UBCIT) as a software developer. It was my first job after graduating from UBC (I previously held the job before graduation, but that’s beside the point). I had been working at UBC for 2 years before a new project was started: Campus Wide Login (CWL). At the time, this project was revolutionary. It was a single sign-on (SSO) system that would obsolete the various usernames and passwords around the campus, and centralize it all into one system. The design was based on Kerberos which is a ticketing system, very similar to today’s OAuth2 system. ...

As my daughter, Elle, crosses the 7-month threshold of her life, I feel the need to write down my experiences thus far being both an entrepreneur and a father. First and foremost, Elle is the boss. Although it may seem like I am the one who determines when she eats and sleeps, she does so only because she does not really care. I am constantly at her beck and call any time of the day, which plays into the first part of the entrepreneurial experience. ...

In order to fully attain my merit badge for renaissance man, I am going to state a few goals of mine that will be started this year and may take until the end of next year to complete (mainly because I have to care for my daughter, which is a full-time job). These goals are in varying disciplines, but fulfill things that I have always wanted to learn as well as something that will help me in life (sooner or later). I don’t mind learning information that I may never use in life* but if I am going to spend money on learning I am going to ensure I get a positive ROI from it. These goals also dovetail into the new business opportunies that my company, JustPlainSimple Technologies Inc. would like to explore. In no particular order, here they are: ...