My Life and Code

Pictured: Part of the Penn State Abington campus during a Philly.NET code camp I attended a number of years back. This is my favorite time of the year, but where does the time go? I couldn't believe, when I looked at the date a few days ago, that we were already in mid-September. I feel like I look forward to fall every year, but never really stop to enjoy  it, usually due to whatever else is going on at the time. It also seems like it doesn't start getting cooler as earlier as it used to. The cooler weather is part of what I appreciate about fall. That, and the leaves changing color. I remember both from being a little kid, rolling around in piles of leaves in the brisk weather. It was later, when I was in high school, that I gained an even greater appreciation for it, when my 10th grade biology teacher gave us all an assignment to collect 10 different kinds of leaves and use clear contact paper to collect them into a book of sorts. As I just typed that sentence, it sounded bo...

Nine months after I graduated high school, I got a new job…working at a high school. Whereas most of my classmates had post-graduation plans, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I spent some time taking a few classes at the local community college and continuing to work. I worked as a janitor. Definitely not my long term goal. At the end of each school day, I’d go up to the teacher’s lounge on the fourth floor and wait for classes to let out. Then I’d begin my rounds of emptying trash and sweeping floors. One of the teachers at the school was a lady named Peggy Blanco. One day, while waiting for classes to let out, I was in that teacher’s lounge with Peggy and the topic of what I wanted to do with my life came up. I told her that I was considering becoming and auto mechanic. “Oh Alan!”, she said. “You’re smarter than that!” I have to stop right now to explain that, because being an auto mechanic requires  intelligence, both in understanding how things work and ...

“Some days I’m scared I’m gonna die. Or even worse: I might survive. I try to keep these words in mind: Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight. Gotta kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight.” — Chris Hannah

One of the things I was writing about here a few weeks ago was music, and how certain songs can trigger memories. And I've had this project for the past few years to assemble a playlist of songs which are, in essence, the soundtrack to my life.  Currently, it exists as a Google Doc, with a list of songs broken down by the period of my life which I associate them with. I'll eventually compile it into a playlist and listen to it, but for now, it's a document I update whenever an additional song or two comes to mind. For this project, I have a couple of ground rules. The songs included should all evoke mild to strong time and/or place associative memories when I hear them. The songs should evoke good memories, or bittersweet memories, but not bad  memories. It hasn't been something I could just sit down and complete all at once. There were songs that immediately came to mind when I started, and then others which have come to mind later. I also don't own  all of the son...

I’ve been fortunate in my life to have known a lot of good people, but sadly, more than a few have passed away too soon. Some I knew well, some were casual friendships, some were coworker friends. Some were in my life a long time, some just a short while. But all of them left an impact. I often reflect on the people I was lucky to cross paths with. Our lives can be influenced by the people around us and the time they are with us. The trajectory of the path we take can be guided by those who are there at the right time. Below are the names of people I still think of, appreciate, and am thankful for. I’m a better person for having known them. Alice Hughes / Bill Hottenstein / Br. Mark McBride / Bruce Grimmer / Dave Tyson / Drew Rusin / Jay Winslow / Jen (Skahan) Brock / Jen Monti / Matt Grom / Richie Peto / Rob Daninger

I used to know this girl named Crystal, who was a friend of a girlfriend back in the day. For some reason she crossed my mind recently. On Fridays and Saturdays we’d hang out with my girlfriend at the time’s circle of friends, and Crystal appeared in that group near the end of our relationship. Kind of like when a new character is introduced in the last season of a TV show, she just sort of showed up near the end. Crystal didn’t like me and was pretty open about it. She’d say to my girlfriend, right in front of me , “You can do so much better than him.” I’m not sure why she disliked me so much, and as for doing better, granted, I was no Brad Pitt, but I was a decent enough guy, albeit with faults. Crystal had a boyfriend, and he too was no Brad Pitt, so I don’t know who she was to judge. And as for him being a decent enough guy: pin in that. Even though she was always openly critical of me, I never said anything about it, and just rolled with it. I’m not really sure why. I was always...

If you're cursed with nostalgia and sentimentality like I am (and I only jokingly refer to it as a curse), you may have found that there are two things that can immediately take you back to a time and place long gone. At least, for me, there are two things that easily trigger that: scents and music. I'll talk about the latter here. Not every song does it. But some are just so engrained in a memory that the reaction is immediate: there I am again, the feeling of a time and place returns, I'm a certain age again, reliving a time long gone. And it's often bittersweet -- maybe it's just me, but a lot of those sorts of memories are a mix of happiness (for the experience at the time) and sadness (for the fact that it's over, only to be relived as a memory -- "you can't go home again", they say). There's something that Alex Van Halen once said, that I was trying to find the source for as I wrote this, about there being comfort in the past because it n...

Working in IT, I've met and worked with a lot of recruiters, both as a job seeker and as someone involved in the hiring process. They've run the gamut from "a pretty good person" to "practically a car salesman". But one in particular stands above the rest. Joel is the recruiter who placed me at my current job almost 10 years ago. And he's stayed in contact with me ever since, but not to try to poach me to another company, or to find new candidates to shop around, but rather just to keep in touch . I've never known another recruiter like him. Every few months I get an email from him, asking how I am, asking how my family's doing. It's always social, never business. Every few years we get together for lunch. He's a truly good, decent, human being. I'm grateful to every recruiter who helped me along my career path, and for every recruiter who helped out when my employer was looking for a candidate. And I'm thankful to still hear from...

I've learned some things in life. Granted, I don't always put them into practice , but I do actively try . I try not to repeat mistakes, and to learn from my mistakes and experiences. Here are ten things I've learned, and lessons I try to keep in mind. 1. You can be 100% sure of something, and still be wrong. This is something I've experienced myself and witnessed in others. And it can be a good or bad thing. Unlike some of the other things I'll list here, there's not much you can really do about this one. If you have concrete evidence of something, that "100% sure" probably isn't going to change. But in other cases, you may find that you were completely certain of something yet still wrong. 2. Actions taken out of emotion (especially anger) tend to be mistakes. I'm not a biologist, scientist, or psychologist, but as far as I can tell, the only "purpose" of emotion is to influence behavior. And often, influence it not for the better ....

Deisderata  is a poem written by Max Ehrmann and first published in 1927. I first heard it…on a Leonard Nimoy album, where it was called…(sigh) Spock Thoughts . It was a short time later when I found it as text inside a greeting card when looking to buy a birthday card for someone. I had no idea that it had existed beyond (and before ) Spock Thoughts . Years later, I had a poster of it, which hung in one of my offices at a prior job. I find it to be wise advice (though your mileage may vary with the line concerning God). Here it is in its entirety, as it entered the public domain a few years ago. In the original printed version, it was all one paragraph, though in later versions (such as the aforementioned poster) it will often be broken into separate sentences based on theme. I’ve done so below. Desiderata Go placidly  amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.  As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. ...

In my post-high school/pre-career years, I used to hang out at a pool hall. I've mentioned it at other times on this blog. One night, while hanging out in the arcade section, watching Jen Monti play Hard Drivin' , I turned to find that the girlfriend who had broken up with me a few months back was standing there. She used to hang at a pool hall too, a different one, and what I learned later was that there was some sort of issue that had caused her crew to not want to go to that one anymore, so the fallback was the one where I hung out. It was awkward. I couldn't look at her, a point she noticed and mentioned later to a mutual friend. It's not that I harbored any ill will, I just didn't know what to say. At that age, I was doing the best I could, and I’ll admit that, often, it wasn't good enough. That was the case that night. At 21, we don’t always handle things the best way. But as the days and weeks went on, I didn't want that awkwardness to continue, so I ...

In my senior year of high school, I started hanging out with this guy named Mike. For the life of me, I can't remember how it started, because Mike and I weren't in any of the same classes, and now that I think of it, I have to wonder if it was through a mutual friend, Chuck. But I'm only a few sentences into this and already rambling. Mike's older brother was in a band, and Mike and I auditioned to join. This sounds fancier than it was. I played bass, Mike played drums. It was through Mike's brother and his band that I met Bill, the topic of this blog post. Bill was the singer in the band. Just a few years older than Mike and I, Bill had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, specifically hard rock and heavy metal. His enthusiasm and love for it was contagious, and I always enjoyed talking music with him. He seemed to know everything about every hard rock or metal album from the 1970s to the current day. I always thought he should've written for a rock magazine. N...

  I guess I should begin this by saying I'm not on Facebook. I used to be, but stopped using it at a time which was, in hindsight, probably a good time to leave. But I'd been a Facebook user for years prior, and the last person I had contact with there before deactivating my account was Drew Rusin. I'd met Drew years ago, at a pool hall in Langhorne called The Rack Room . Years later, it's where I met up with him for the last time. The Rack Room was, by that time, closed, and we met up there to grab a bite and catch up at the Denny's which was out front. Back in the day, I'd met Drew through Dave Tyson, who also used to hang out at the pool hall with Drew and another friend, Jay Winslow. Dave, Drew, and Jay were almost always together. They were a few years younger than me. The Rack Room  was kind of like Cheers : maybe not everybody  knew your name, but enough people to make you feel at home I guess. It sounds corny. Regardless, I spent a lot of time there wit...

I recently learned of the passing of Brother Mark McBride, T.O.R.. Brother Mark was the principal of my high school, and someone I thought of as a friend. Though I hadn’t kept in touch with him, he was someone who’d cross my mind from time to time. He was a kind man, very down-to-earth, and very unlike a principal or other authority figure. On the first day of my sophomore year of high school, I arrived late and had to ask one of the faculty where I should be. I was new there that year. I didn’t know anyone, didn’t know the building, didn’t know the first-day routine. I was told that sophomores should be in the auditorium (the different grades were in different areas), and somehow found my way there. The crowd was sparse and I took a seat. A Franciscan friar was on the stage, speaking into a microphone. This was Brother Mark. The first impression he made upon me was when he said something that elicited a smattering of tepid applause — he reacted to this by saying, very dryly, “You may ...

Sometimes a bad day can be turned around by an unexpected source. Last Wednesday I was having a pretty terrible day after being jerked around by a local car dealership. Later that day, while on a live chat with iTunes support about a missing digital booklet, I was helped by a guy named Kumar who couldn't have been more helpful and positive. What had begun as a chat session to help me with a missing content problem turned into a dose of positive attitude that I really needed that day. Thanks Kumar!

It's been a few months since I've written anything here. Things have been extremely hectic, and any downtime has usually been spent trying to relax and recharge. In fact, I haven't had time to think about what to write here, so this blog entry will be a hodge-podge of miscellaneous thoughts and updates. I've been playing the new Mortal Kombat game. When I heard it would be moving back to a 2D fighting plane, and doing a "Let's go back in time and have an alternate history of the first three games (a la the latest Star Trek film)", I had absolutely no interest. But the pulled it off very well. Yes, I do miss the strategy and depth allowed by a 3D plane, and miss the multiple fighting styles that the characters have had in the last 3 games, but what's there is really good, and I love the addition of a 2-Player tag team co-op mode -- my son and I enjoy playing this together. I like the focus on characters from the first 3 games, though the downloadable ...

There's something to be said for the simple things in life. As life becomes more hectic and complicated, I find myself looking for those simple things to find solace and relaxation in. When I need to wind down, I like to have something simple to find some enjoyment in. The taoist book "Tao Te Ching" mentions teachers who "teach without teaching", and during my early twenties, I had two friends, Ed and Rob, who did just that. From them, I learned an appreciation for the simple things in life, not through anything they said or told me, but through their example. I soon learned to appreciate the simple things myself, and from time to time (when I have time), I put this to practice to take a break from all the commotion in life. One of those simple pleasures for me is old comic books, specifically those from the '60s through the mid '80s. I'd probably enjoy comics that are even older, but haven't read any that I know of. This isn't to say that c...

I posted a few weeks ago about a problem I had with the Microsoft SYNC system in my car not hearing my voice commands . At the time, a simple restart of my car seemed to fix the problem, but since then, the problem got worse and worse until finally not even the Bluetooth pairing to my phone would work. This was extremely frustrating considering I'd owned the car just over a month at the time. I Googled the problem and found that (surprise) other people were having the same problem, and recently. Some thought it was related to the cold. My first thought was to make sure I had the latest version of the software installed, but when I went to the official SYNC website and attempted to download the software, nothing happened. I turned on FireBug after several unsuccessful attempts to monitoring what was going on when I'd press the button and nothing would happen, and found out that there was a JavaScript error occurring that was then being submitted to a service to be logged...but n...

I recently purchased a new car, the first I've had in 14 years. My previous car had reached the end, and I had no choice but to buy a new one. While I didn't get anything too fancy -- I didn't get a luxury car, or a sports car, or anything like that -- the new car does have Microsoft Sync, which allows you to do a bunch of neat stuff like sync up your cell phone via Bluetooth so you can dial and talk hands free, and do other things via voice commands. The voice command stuff usually works pretty good, but not always, and yesterday, I ran into a definite glitch: it wasn't recognizing any voice commands. At first, I was trying to use some of the stuff that I hadn't used before, but every time I issued a command, the Sync would sound the tone that means "I didn't understand that." Ironically, when it would offer suggestions on what I should say, I found it offering up the very same command I was trying to give it. I decided to give up on trying the new s...

I was talking with a friend today, an older friend who is cantankerous, funny, and often sarcastically insightful. We have some things in common, such as our choice of careers, and we both play guitar, so I enjoy talking with him quite a bit. Today, the topic of some old movies came up. I can't remember how. One of the movies he mentioned was The Great Race by Blake Edwards, and starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. I've never seen it, but my friend was telling me about how the hero and villain were so clearly defined in the film, with the hero dressed impeccably in a white suit, and the villain in black with a wiry moustache and top hat. The way he described it, it seemed cliche, which was part of the appeal. And it made me think of my own life lately, and how I wished for things to be that well defined, to have that same contrast. There is no black and white in my life. At least, not lately, not recently. There are various shades of gray, with the circumstances, people, and ...