Everyone should vote for Rockfish Interactive as Best Social Media Agency!!
New Job
Well, I just started a new job on Friday. I’m pretty excited and a little nervous. I’m going to be challenged to learn new things as well as to sharpen my existing skills. I’m going to be doing some ASPNET (as usual), jQuery, LINQ probably, and MVC. I’m really excited about doing some MVC. I was a little skeptical about MVC after the steep learning curve I had doing a MVC project in school. My issue there was more-so with Java than with MVC though. Java’s case sensitivity and automagical changes threw me for a loop.
Anyhow, I’m excited. My team lead pointed me at a great app, LINQPad. I’m already liking it enough, I had to buy it. It helps that it was on sale too 
I love it when a plan comes together
Don’t you love when things just work as they should? I did a few cleanup tasks today, moving a site from an old server to a new one, transferred a couple of domain names, and backed up some old files. The site move went unbelievably quick. MySQL move went well… Perl scripts all worked… simply beautiful. Why can’t it always be that clean and simple?
Developer or Engineer?
I am a software and web developer and network / system engineer on the side. While I am technically employed as only a developer, I often help out on the engineering side of the world. I’ve had jobs in both realms, though primarily in development. I dislike being asked which world I prefer. Why can’t it be both? Does being an engineer require ditching all application development skills? Does being a developer mean I can’t know how to troubleshoot a network? I say no. In fact, I think living in both worlds is a healthy thing.
If a developer understands at least at a minimal level, how networking works or how to setup a server, they also gain a greater appreciation for how the code they write will impact the environment it runs on. It’s also pretty handy in troubleshooting.
Likewise, if an engineer has even the slightest bit of development knowledge, they gain a lot of speed in troubleshooting. If an engineer knows something about development, they may be able to speed up some of their routine tasks by scripting something out. They may also be in a better place to troubleshoot that 100% CPU usage that the new version of someone’s code is using.
In any case, I like both worlds. I choose to stay in both worlds. If I can’t do it at work, no biggie. I’ll always tinker around at home with something to get my “geek fix”. I also volunteer for my local church and do plenty of networking and other engineering there. In fact, helping out at the church has actually helped me gain a lot more knowledge in areas I had never been.
I will always refer to myself first as a developer. I hate even using a single title. When do we ever get to wear a single “hat” in the real world? I mean, how often has the office receptionist done more than her job description contained? Everyday. How often does any job stay confined to its initial job description? Never. For my title, I’d just like “Resident Geek”, or if it has to stay more professional, “Development Engineer”. Any better suggestions?
So, I challenge every geek out there. Learn something you may not have an interest in currently. It may not be fun, but you may find it fun later. At least you have a greater appreciation for those who deal with the things which you don’t.
Reboot!
Starting over on a new coderot site…..again..for the first time.
