Ramblings of a Wayward Code Slave

I'm not going to make this post very long because what I have to say is simple and it's something that I've remembered and forgotten too many times to count. Today has also been a very emotional day for my family and it's still influencing me as I write this. Here's my message: it doesn't matter how wealthy you are, how successful you are, how influential you are, or how powerful you are; what matters is who you love and who loves you.

The news from the doctor about my mother was not good and I'll leave it at that. At times like this, when you start realizing that those you love won't be around forever, you start thinking. And wondering. And second-guessing yourself. My God, the times I could have gone home to visit my parents -- who were always desperate to see me and always welcomed me with loving, open arms -- and I didn't go visit simply because I was busy or because I wanted to do things with friends. Where are these friends now? Gone. Where are my parents now? Still there, arms still open, waiting patiently with love in their eyes and kindness in their voices. But they won't be there forever. Am I a failure as a son? Perhaps, perhaps not. I certainly feel like one at the moment.

I plan to make up for lost time as best as I can. Please, if you love someone then tell him or her. Visit and show interest in those that matter to you. Don't pretend that they'll be around forever. They won't. Don't put off until tomorrow what you could do today. I've been granted a second chance by the grace of God -- at least for a while -- and I don't intend to waste that time on anything that's not important. I have enough pain and regret in my life already and I've suddenly realized that I'm the cause of a lot of it for myself and that I've probably caused a lot of it for my poor parents as well. Between trying to be independent in my 20s and marrying a woman who hated my parents in my 30s, I've basically flushed the last 15 years down the toilet. Now there's far less time ahead than there is behind and I find myself wishing for that time back. Please, please learn from my mistakes and don't repeat them.

In the end, the true measure of your life is based on who you loved and how you treated them. Perhaps this is a reflection that I've gained through gradual maturation and perhaps this is a universal truth to which I've only recently been made privy. Perhaps it's both. I know that, for myself, I intend to find those people I love and tell them how much they mean to me. And if you've read this far then I think you have a phone call to make or a person to go hug. Do it now.

I always hated hospitals. My first experience with one was when I was four years old and broke my right leg. I was in traction for six weeks at the hospital and much of it wasn't a pleasant experience. I guess that flavored my impression of hospitals in general; however, all of that changed when I got a hernia in 2003 and was told that I'd die if I didn't have an operation in the next 24 hours.

I learned a lot from that experience. Superficially, hospitals have done much to eliminate the Eisenhower-era look and they don't reek of antiseptic anymore. But underneath it all, I think I was the one who changed the most. The doctors and nurses where I stayed saved my life and nurtured me back to health, something for which I'll always be grateful despite the $45,000 price tag for it. Now a different hospital in a different town is doing the same thing for my mother. She didn't need surgery, but her condition was grave when she went in and they're taking good care of her.

As I was sitting here, pondering this blog entry, it struck me that hospitals are true microcosms of our universe. You can experience all of life in one building. Birth, death, joy, pain, love, grief -- it's all there. Perhaps that's what makes hospitals so intimidating. Knowing that a father is seeing his son for the first time on one floor while at the same time someone else's wife of 50 years is being put in a refrigerated cubicle in the basement is disturbing. But hospitals are like that and I suppose that's why hospital dramas rank so high in nighttime television. Anything can happen and does happen. People are born, they have kids, and they die in hospitals every day. I suppose that's what always bothered me about hospitals -- when someone goes into one as a patient it usually is a pretty big deal and can be one of those life-changing events. I admit to feeling precisely this way about my mother going into the hospital this past Friday, but now that she's been in there a few days and is getting better I'm a lot more comfortable with it.

In my mind, I keep going back to the people who work in these places. I couldn't do it, plain and simple. I always considered myself to be a really stable person who can handle a lot, but between the events that go on in hospitals and the emotions of the people experiencing them I'd be a basket case in a week. I've known several nurses and nurses-in-training and most of them drank like fish and smoked like a broken stove. No wonder. Constantly being on the front lines of life must be a completely draining experience to the point of emotional debilitation.

Here is a quote from an article on the nursing shortage from a group in Pennsylvania, but it seems just as relevant for the nation as a whole:

"For each additional patient in a nurse's caseload, the study found there is a seven percent increase in the likelihood of a patient dying within 30 days of admission; a 23 percent increase in the likelihood the nurse will develop burnout; and a 15 percent increase in the likelihood the nurse will experience job dissatisfaction. The Aiken study also demonstrates that heavy workloads and mandatory overtime are contributing to a nurse burnout rate of 40 percent, a rate that exceeds the norm for the health care industry."

Those figures are astoundingly high and -- I'm guessing here -- probably only exceeded by law enforcement. I know I was a pain in the ass when I was in the hospital a few years ago and the nurses were really nice to me despite it, a fact I credit them with whenever I think of them. I think nurses are great and deserve all the respect that we can throw their way. Next time -- if there is a next time -- I won't be as much of a pain.

So for now, I'm happy that my mother is getting better and that, for her, the hospital is a house of healing. Nevertheless, it also makes me remember that one day -- for many of us -- the hospital will be the last place we see. Considering my mortality and the mortality of those I love is unsettling to say the least, and this is yet another -- and perhaps biggest -- reason why hospitals are so intimidating. They force us to consider the best and worst in life. Moreover, through introspection, they force us to consider the best and worst in ourselves with regard to our behavior around those we have known and loved. Confronting my regrets and shameful misdeeds on a good day is difficult, but especially so when something life-changing may be close at hand.

Life, death, and everything in-between -- hospitals condense it all down and concentrate it in a very personal way. For many patients it's a high-stakes Wheel of Fortune spin. If it stops here, the tumor's benign. If it stops there, it might be renal failure. We all pray a lot more in hospitals than anywhere else -- I know I did -- and we ask God to give our doctors almost God-like powers. In fact, the faith that we wind up giving to the doctors is similar in nature to that we give God Himself. And we pray for miracles which sometimes come and sometimes don't. It's like I said -- hospitals are a microcosm of our universe. The only difference is that what takes a lifetime on the outside happens every day in there.

I have absolutely no idea if there's a point in here or not. I was just thinking and needed an outlet to vent my thoughts and concerns and this is usually the place where I go. Perhaps one day I'll come back and give this a better ending and then again perhaps it needs no ending at all. I'll just leave the reader with my last thought: if hospitals are a microcosm of our lives and hospitals are places that make us afraid on a very fundamental level, then what does that say about our lives? Is it our mortality that scares us or is it the regret over past misdeeds that we must face when loved ones die or when we're dying ourselves? What can we do to change that? What can I personally do to change that?

So what is it with men in power these days and sexual perversion? Does having authority make guys want to dress up in lacy undies and get spanked on the bottom by some Elvira lookalike? The latest public debacle of this nature is the senior staffer at the Department of Homeland Security who got arrested for chatting on the Internet with who he thought was a 14 year-old girl but in reality was a law enforcement officer. This numbskull gave out his real name, cellphone number, and e-mail address and then proceeded to type in stuff that is apparently so obscene that nobody will divulge the nature of it. As if we wanted to know in the first place.

It seems like this happens every few years. We see a picture of some guy in his 50s or 60s wearing a bra and panties with a hooker. Or with another guy wearing a bra and panties. Or some grandfatherly-looking fellow gets arrested for molesting a young child. I'm especially nauseated in the cases where the little kid turns out to be a boy. And these sick bastards whine on and on about the colossal pressure and responsibility of their jobs and how they need some kind of release from it. Hey buddy, we all do. That's what weekends are for. Anyway, it may be cliche, but if you can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen.

All of this mess makes me wonder what skeletons are out there that haven't seen the light of day yet. It wouldn't bother me too much if I never found out. For those up-and-coming movers and shakers out there, here's a few tips:

1. Underage kids are under age, i.e., stay away from them you damn pervert.
2. Nobody ever got nailed for being heterosexual.
3. If you get the desire to cross-dress, don't.
4. Stay off the Internet with your perverted ideas.
5. There are some times when recording devices and cameras should be put away. Know those times.
6. Booze and a hooker are 2/3 of the requirements for a future resignation letter.
   
7. Jail is worse than early retirement.

Learn 'em, live 'em, love 'em. Because if you screw up you'll have a 100% chance of getting caught and then your face will be on national news as well.

Writing software used to be fun. It required some talent, a good bit of knowhow, and a decent amount of creativity. At the same time, it was manageable and after a programmer acquired a certain amount of knowledge he or she could pretty much do anything. No longer. Granted, the Internet and the web have complicated matters, but the programming skills needed to be competitive in today's software development market make coders of 10 years ago look like they were rubbing two sticks together. Software development -- and when I say this I mean Microsoft software development since that permeates the market these days -- has become big business, and bloat is good for business. Why so, you ask?

Well, it helps Microsoft's bottom line to make it's programming framework as difficult as possible to learn and keep current. First, Microsoft writes its own applications that compete with other software out there (Office, SQL Server, FrontPage, etc., etc.) and if they have the inside track on how their framework operates then so much the better for them. Second, this complexity makes finding good coders more difficult so the industry has started relying upon certifications to help with this. And guess who makes and gives the certification tests? Yup, Microsoft. And guess who writes most of the material for studying? Yup, Microsoft. Oh, third-party howto books from Sams.NET and Que will come out later on, but Microsoft has the jump on them for obvious reasons. Of course, the tests are always harder than the books because at $100 a pop, failing a time or two just puts that much more change into Microsoft's pockets. And then third, Microsoft has a fee-based help desk for software developers who get stuck. Cha-ching!

So Microsoft makes the bloated framework, writes the insufficient manuals, makes out the tests, has licensed testing centers administer them, and runs the help desk for the poor saps who pass the test and then forget some of it. Is it any wonder why Microsoft is always having to defend itself from the federal government on antitrust charges? Their greed is becoming legendary. For those interested, the weekly column by Cringely has a real shocker on Bill Gates and his professional relationship with Paul Allen.

So we, the tired and weary coders huddled in front of our CRTs and flat panels, are the big losers in all this. We're not only tithing to Redmond every time they change everything up (which is about every two years) but we're forced to play the certification game if we want to be competitive in the hiring market. We're set up to fail at what we do -- and what we're good at -- because there's more money to be made in Redmond from failure than from success.

Financial advisors always say that diversification is the key to financial success and freedom. We, unfortunately, have yet to learn that in the software industry. There's a small hardcore set of UNIX developers out there, but it's tough to break into that group and hard to move around once there. Mac OS X? UNIX in another flavor, and Mac to boot. No, the money is in Microsoft and their .NET framework. That's unfortunate, because all of the eggs are in their basket. And it's not because they make the best basket, either; it's because they have a savvy business team and they used their operating system -- which isn't that good -- to leverage the extra software business. Some people call that smart business. Ten years ago, I would have agreed. Five years ago I would have said it's enough. Now, I just say that it's shameless greed and bullying. Don't even get me started on intellectual property and software patents...that's a different rant.

So the software industry has let one company truss us all up and dangle us like puppets. It's our stupid fault for letting it happen, so shame on us. It's Microsoft's fault for showing us the ugly side of business and for creating and then feeding off of the fetid and decaying corpse of software devleopment that exists today. So shame on them, too.

Where I work, the film Brokeback Mountain gets a lot of commentary during office breaks, especially since I'm holed up with four other guys. The testosterone gets running high and soon jokes are being cracked about Bareback Mountain, Prances with Wolves, or Jeremiah's Johnson as alternate movie names that didn't make the final cut. That got me thinking about homophobia and, more in general, how one person's fear (phobia) is another person's desire. Not knowing too much -- nor seeking more information -- on fears and desires with regard to sexual persuasions, I started thinking about something closer to my ballpark: technology.

My mother was the classic technophobe. We were the last family on earth to get a VCR, and that gadget only had the time set for it when I came home for a visit from college. She let my father run the two remote controls since it was too confusing for her. She could run the microwave and the TV, but that was it. I, on the other hand, am the classic technophile. I've owned at least a dozen cordless phones since 1991, I've changed cellphone providers just so I could get a cooler phone, and I've tried every PDA on the market with the exception of the Blueberry. I own an iPod, a state-of-the-art computer system, and my home theater requires a systems analyst to run it. I have a ham radio with enough buttons and dials to confuse Marconi himself, and even my coffeemaker is programmable. I was my mother's nemesis and all of my toys confused her immensely.

A while back, in an effort to learn a bit about what I do for a living, my mother steeled her will and took a computer literacy course at my old high school. Soon thereafter she wanted a computer of her own and got a Windows PC to use. Several years passed until one day she was asking me a computer question. I was expecting a typical newbie computer question like "which way does the disk go in?" or something similar, but I was stunned. It was an intelligent computer question. From my mother. After pinching myself to make certain I was awake, I answered it. And learned...learned that she uses Word to write documents for her Garden Club meetings, PageMaker to design flyers for church, and she completely manages all of their finances online. Mon Dieu! She's downloaded, installed, and configured McAfee VirusScan and Personal Firewall. She checks for spyware. She defrags her hard drive. She even owns a cellphone.

Uh, where have I been for the past decade? She came screaming out of the technophobe category with a vengeance and is now a technophile. I got her a DVD player for her birthday this year. She configured it herself and got it working with multiple remote controls. What about the time on the VCR, you ask? She doesn't use it anymore. Old tech.