This made me actually chuckle out loud. I’m not proud that I did. But I chuckled all the same.
and here is what the card looked like.
November 2007
Monthly Archive
Wanna know one of my deepest darkest secrets?
I wish I was a writer.
That’s why I blog I suppose. Much like bass guitar players are frustrated guitarists (All apologies, Dennis), bloggers are the Web equivalent. Posers, imposters, wannabes, the lot of us.
It doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate good writing when we see it or hear it. I remember reading Hunter S. Thompson for the first time. The words dripped off the page like recently thawed Goldschlager. I’ve never been turned on by a writer like the way I was that day, but it made me appreciate all writers and writing in a way I never had before. For the first time, since I heard Stairway to Heaven or saw Star Wars, I realized that life is more than what you did yesterday or what your doing today. It’s about what you can do with your tomorrow. And so I started writing and trying to find insight in my screwed-up existence.
It happened to me again yesterday. And in this desert, commonly referred to as the Writer’s strike, I turned to Showtime On-Demand and gave a half hour of my life to Californication.
I really wanted to hate it. I already watch too much television. But a buddy of mine told me it had replaced his Sopranos obsession, so I gave it a shot. If I liked it, maybe I would want to write about it.
I was hoping to blog more anyway.
17
Black Friday
The Girlfriend make a trek out to Kohls this morning against my better advice. She waited in line an hour and a half before having to give way to nature and common sense. The Shopocalypse is at hand people! Ask yourself, “What would Jesus Buy?”
Originally uploaded by bankythehack3000
Let me tell you about the pride and joy of the Vaughan family. My nephew Jason just finished his season as starting offensive guard for the 10-2 Kearney Bulldogs. He also ended as the 2nd team All-Conference Offensive Guard.
But more than that he drew me and my brother closer than we had been in years. Every Friday night, we made the trek, either up north or down south, to watch this kid play. I don’t know if i’ve ever enjoyed football so much or ever will again.
He routinely kicked the ass of the guy on the other side of him, play after play, week-in and week-out. Sure I’m proud of the knucklehead lombano. This experience has given him many lessons to learn from.
The most important lesson to me, though, was that he was part of something that was extremely successful. We don’t get many opportunities in life to be part of something like that. Usually we are willing cogs in the modicum of mediocrity. We need people in life who have tasted success so that they can show us just how cool success can be. And the challenge is to be able to do that long after those Friday Night Lights go dim.
Its hard to explain what I do. Even my closest friends and family members really have no clue. That’s because, in general, people are pretty clueless about how software gets made. Sometimes its made because some dude is sitting in a cubicle somewhere coding away. And when I was a programmer, people could instantly relate. But good software is rarely coded, its designed. But before it can be designed, it helps to know what are the constraints, the variables, the environment in which this software is to be built upon.
Software is rarely built from scratch. But there are times when you just have an idea and you just start building. But even then, coders will look to their past. In fact, many of the best programmers “steal shamelessly” from projects they worked on before. Why? Because it will save them time. Yes, time, the most precious commodity of them all. Every second, the same as every second forthcoming or prior, but never to be seen or heard from again. And its easy to translate time into dollars. We make that compromise every day. How much of our lives are we trading for a quality of life we hope we will enjoy? But in the end we hope whatever money we spend, will translate into more time later. Its an investment in that quality of life we are counting on.
So architecture, good architecture, is about trading dollars for time, if possible, but at the very least, if we can’t do that, we hope to target those trusted, well tested things in our life that we have used before and use them again. And the best architects know exactly what those trusted, well tested things are. The bad ones only think they know.
It will be ok to cuss at work. In the middle of a meeting, did you ever wanted to call someone a “Dickwad” for, well, being a dickwad? or tell your client to “Go piss yourself. You can’t have that by March.” This study was done a couple of weeks back and suggests that it might even be good for you. How cool is that?
Why is it that adults can’t express themselves in a manner that we see fitting? Dropping the F bomb every 10 seconds may be irritating (come to think of it, I actually loved the Sopranos) but, nothing can substitute for a well placed “fuck” in conversation.
After all, there is precedent to be president . . .
It’s that time of year again. And your future president can’t stand it. The GF went to Boston Market today and even they have holiday cheer bags by which to remind you its time to spend gobs of money. Arghhh!!! Well as your gearing up for the holiday season, give this new movie a look-see. I saw it at SXSW last year and it was a hoot.While I’m in such a festive mood, here are the best gifts I’ve given and the best gifts I’ve received:
Recieved: I’d have to give a big thumbs up to my pal, Lil’ Davie. He once copied Dream Theater’s first CD for me as a gift. But what made it so special? He wanted me to have the lyrics so he wrote down ALL the lyrics on single sided notepaper. It totaled four sheets. I’m prone to say that I’ve never done anything that cool for someone but . . .
Given: There is this. Actually number 2 isn’t even close.
