Hey ya'll

Wow been sometime, quick updates. Term ended think I got an A on my class, at the moment in Tallahassee FL working for the next month. Although I'll be traveling on the weekends back home, but who really knows.

Got the wii fit, awesome device been doing the exercises the first week and my legs got a bit of pain. Guess I'm really out of pain, well I'll elaborate more later back to work for me.

Life as a consultant...

Wow can't believe I haven't kept this up to date. Well a brief summary from the last time I wrote here.

My first semester back at school sucked, can't believe I got a 74 on my final exam. Should I go and talk to my professor or keep that B I got an use it to fuel my classes to get A's? I'm going for the second option at the moment... Well new semester started last month and well taking a course in Artificial Intelligence, quite interesting although it'll be a theoretic approach to the class. :( hoped to do some project for the course and learn how to develop AI stuff, guess I'll have to do it on my own. Which I've started, currently reading about Python which I've seen it's getting quite popular and so far I like the language. Has a few concepts that blew me away, can't think of a language that manipulates imaginary numbers as easy as Python and the ease of manipulating lists and arrays is quite interesting. So far so good with that language I hope to use it more and more.

So, today I officially turn in my week notice... Got an offer to do some consulting in SQA and gonna try how that thing goes. So I'm quite nervous in all respects, since it's contract type work. But, I see it as an opportunity to grow as a professional and mostly a person. I'll be looking at another way this industry works and at what a lot of people at podcast have been talking about as a consultant. So naturally something new quite scares me... but life is for those that take risks right, no other way to learn if a decision was a good one or not until we make it. But for now I'm looking forward to this and see it with my own eyes and decide if this is what I really want.

Woohoo... my girlfriend is coming Thursday and will stay for the weekend, I'm thrilled to actually see her. She's been a good company so far and very supportive, can't ask for more than that I guess. So now it's just time to see when I'll do that other crazy thing... ;-)

Keep it real people and don't put any type of excuse to see those people that matter in our lives!

Oh noes...

Well, this title is a little better... The others I thought of using were Good bye friends, but that sounded to harsh or see ya later pal. But I got one sad sad announcement and one less sad announcement.

My 8 years old headphones are dying, the left earphone is starting to fail and only works when the cable put in one way. Anyways it just sucks some of the best $20 headphones ever, gonna have to start using one of the iPod pairs I got.

The saddest announcement is that a childhood friend of mine died last week, was hard seeing him all still and peaceful. Remember some of the times while in high school and man that sucked looking him like that, still not making a joke or anything. What still haunts me and I guess it will for sometime is, how I postponed time to go and say hello to him. Last I saw him was like 8 years or so ago, like right after I started college. Then I went about my business and ordeals and came back saw his mom and said I'll go sometime to talk to him. Guess what I can tell you all sorts of bullshit on why I didn't go to see him, and never went.

I was going to and wanted to talk about this in more detail last friday, but decided to take it easy and think about it. But one thing I hope not to do again, is to never postpone seeing a friend.

Till next time!

what are friendships?!

What are they, really? The moment to just celebrate a birthday? or to celebrate their wedding? or to really maintain them throughout our lives? Do our personal lives really drive us away from those people we met in the past? Being work, school, or whatever we are doing. Can we really put other things before friendship, other than family nothing is more important than family...

How much does it takes to just say "Hey how's it going?, what are you up to?, how are so an so?" I for one think it doesn't take much to just ask what are people up to, but at the same time I think others do think it takes too much. Up to some point I try to not keep in touch with some people, but my personal feelings and the way I just am don't let me do that. I like to keep in touch with my friends, hell I keep in touch with them more than my family. But I like to think and I think that my friends are my family!

Will finish with one request, this happened last night, it was my ex's birthday and no I did not forget. I mean could anyone really forget a birthday of someone they loved for 6 years? Could such a thing be possible even if something horrible happened between both, could such a thing really happen? This is what she wrote to me for the first time in what it's like 6 month,

11:21 PM Ex's-name: al parecer ya se te olvido mi cumpleaños
11:22 PM espero estes muy bien
saludos

How would you go about this?

Edit: Forgot to translate the quote above, "it seems that you have forgotten my birthday, hope you're doing good, greeting"

Software Developer as easy as 1-2-3

So, I'm making my rounds looking for stuff to read this morning and ever since we've been given .Net training at work I've been going to MSDN Home Page. Just to look at around and see what's new with .Net, tried to hold on learning .Net but guess I couldn't hold my ground more. Anyways, this shows what I've been saying and kinda puts down the Software industry at least for me. Check this page, a quote from the page

Tier 3 Lessons follow up on the skills learned in Tier 2. These lessons expand your knowledge of Windows and Web development with more advanced concepts such as data access and debugging. If you finish the Tier 3 lessons, Congratulations – you've graduated from the Beginner Developer Learning Center and can officially call yourself a Software Developer!

If I knew it would be this easy to be called a Software Developer I wouldn't have gone to college and spend all that time studying. Could it be I'm a bit disgruntled at this particular time? Could this be true Software Developer == Code Monkey in lay mans term?

The one thing that actually sucks is how much companies have invested in M$ that their technology is needed and how they are creating the names of jobs positions now a days. For example, yesterday I was having a conversation with a co-worker and it stunned me how he asked "So are you just studying for the heck of it or because you can find work with whatever you are studying?" This question kinda bugged me last night when I remembered it, I mean do I have to learn only M$ technologies everything else is just plainly garbage. This fella has been a M$ junkie for about 2 years now, well since I started working here. It annoyed me that I kept thinking of that conversation and looking at ways to answer or even validate my decision to study whatever I want to study. Still trying to keep that thought of whatever I like to learn is my business and no one else.

Oh, if you wish to waste some time watching a movie checkout "Idiocracy" with Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph.

Read this articule, if you are a software engineer or code monkey (a.k. a. programmer)

Read this!

To my friends that work in this field also, which do you want to be?

Keeping this one short, trying to finish something here at work...

Edit: While I try to find my boss, read this article too.

Happy times, sad times

Well sad times because my brother and niece just left, they came to visit unexpectedly well not for me since I new of the visit. But it was a surprise visit for my parents, this past Saturday was my dad's birthday and we had a blast. Lots of families and friends came to visit. Also we went to the beach yesterday and it was awesome, lots of fun times there with the family. :-D But they had to go back today, my brother still needs to finish a few things for his PhD studies and then time for him to go to work. Cool isn't?!

Well today I find if I drop the class I'm taking, the professor sent an email yesterday with a bonus for our 3rd take home work. Apparently we are failing the class somehow, could it be the uncertainty the professor has shown in not explaining the types of analysis he asks for. Or could it be his unwillingness in answering some of our questions, I mean I was about to call him incompetent one time in an email conversation we had. If you see this 0 * log (0) without any type of explanation the answer to this is error, log(0) yields error no mater what. Well said that anything multiplied by 0 is 0, which to my understanding is wrong error can't be multiplied by anything since it's something wrong that has yielded. It wasn't until he sent me the explanation of the formula we were using that it has been stated that when you see 0 * log (0) = 0, that is the only way when you can say that log(0) =0 is when it has been stated. He said from day 1 that the course would have a hands-on approach, yeah fucking right...

Anyways, from past experience if I see I'll be failing this course I'll just drop it. Nothing good will come-out if I try to keep doing this and not learn much from this course. What it'll hurt is that I'm paying for this classes out of my pocket, and it's a lot of money to waste away. Guess I'm dumb, I should've taken a course that was a necessary for my studies and not a special topics class. And I thought I had learn from my first time going through this Master's Studies. Buuu for me!