Fortunately, I get time away from work too. A couple weekends ago, I took some extra time away from work. I conveniently aligned my time off with the start of March Madness. I also spent three days learning to ride bulls from a retired professional bull rider, Lyle Sankey. For those who are friends with me on Facebook, pictures are uploaded there. I should have videos uploaded on youtube eventually too. The highlight of the weekend was climbing down into the chute on top of the back of a bull, taking the bull rope, sliding up, and nodding my head to have the gate opened. I cannot describe how it feels, but I will try anyways. I had an extreme sense of calm despite the adrenline rushing through me. There are a lot of things to pay attention to when sitting on the back of a 1500lbs animal surrounded by a steel cage. I could have worried about what could go wrong, but that would have only led to something going wrong. Instead, it was a matter of focusing on the details, getting the job done, and getting on with the ride. It was a thrilling experience!

I can hardly say I know what happened during my first ride. I remember nodding my head, hearing the gate open, then things got really violent and I was on the ground. In watching the video afterwards to review the ride, I actually found out the bull reversed out of the chute. This means rather than turning with its head towards the arena and bucking straight out, it stepped out with its hind end first, spinning around before beginning to buck. If I had been asked immediately after my ride, I would have said it went out straight. The only thing different during my second ride was I had a better idea of what actually happened right after it ended. My third and final ride was by far the best. By sheer luck I got one of the more difficult bulls any of us got put on that weekend. One experienced bull rider who was there helping with the livestock told me it would have given him a run for his money. I put up quite a fight, but eventually it managed to throw me away from my hand after the first circle.

I feel disappointed trying to describe the whole experience because it simply does not do it justice. The only reason I do not foresee me actively pursuing bull riding is because it is such a violent sport. My life is simply too comfortable to be thrown around weekend after weekend seeing how long I can go before I receive a severe injury. There are a lot of things that can be done to reduce the risk of injury, but it is still far too easy to be stepped on by a bull at the end of a ride. That being said, I still recommend it those who have not tried it and are in good shape. It was a once in a lifetime experience!

Unless I decide to do it again…

Despair and anger are common emotions, and they sometimes strikes us hardest when we know how to solve problems in one way and are asked to learn a new way to think and do.

I am frequently intrigued by the emotion of anger. I happen to be stubborn, temperamental individual. However, I also believe my rage is an intrinsic part of who I am. The quote above struck a note with me. When something aggravates me, I become hellbent on ridding myself of the problem. The solution can take a variety of forms, but the most common is to dominate the problem into submission. Running away or taking an alternative route rarely occurs to me. I am sure some of my success in school and learning new things has been driven by the anger Wallingford mentioned. As I start into a simple task that quickly becomes far more difficult than anticipated, rarely do I cut my losses to go another direction. I become more engrossed with the problem because I want to figure it out. It is an insult if I cannot complete it.

Now I return to my regularly scheduled Duke basketball game, more blog reading, and a database upgrade.

Eventually, others wanted me to take people with me to my desired destinations. However, they were not the driver I was. They did not know the way. They had been told of the next grand location, but did not understand the path to get there. I was capable of figuring it out. Thus, I was asked to help them get there. Unfortunately, they quickly fell behind me and lost the path. I needed them to complete my journey. I found myself going back to look for them and point them in the right direction again. Showing them the way was not enough.

It turned out the other drivers did not know how to drive as well as I did. They could not follow me. Some of the paths I chose, they could not traverse. Not only did they need to know the way, they needed to be taught how to drive too. I do not know how to teach people to drive. I only took the time to learn how to drive myself. Since teaching people how to drive is becoming one of the things I do, I need to learn how to do it as best I can.

Leading people requires far more skill than making the journey myself. I have to understand the driving skills of each driver following me. Can they drive in rain? Can they drive on gravel? What kind of car do they drive? Is it a front-wheel drive vehicle? Is it a 4×4? This determines the route we can take. Some locations cannot be reached without teaching them new driving skills. We cannot reach an isolated mountain location with only a gravel road as an entrance unless the drivers are capable of navigating mountainous terrain on gravel roads. If they need to learn the skill, I need to know how long it will take them to learn it. Is it reasonable to reach a destination over a mountainous gravel road in three months if they do not have any experience with gravel or mountains? Perhaps I need to take them to slightly less desirous location that only requires the ability to drive on gravel. This would allow me to spend three months making the journey while teaching them about gravel roads. We can follow it up with a second journey to understand what it is like in mountains. It may require us to take six months to get to our final destination, but it may prevent a bad accident along the way. The bad accident could set us back even further if they are kept in a hospital for twelve months. There is a lot to consider when leading others to a destination I could reach myself without much fuss.

Why do I need to lead others to a common destination? I can not do everything by myself. There simply is not the time. If we are transporting resources to the new spot, I may have to make many journeys to get everything to the final location. By then, it could be too late. If I lead others, they can help transport. They could also begin to make trips without me. Maybe someday they would lead others. Our ability to overall productivity increases as I teach others my craft.

I wanted to go somewhere. I learned to get there. Others want the ability to get to the same location. I need to understand their skills along with how well they can learn new skills to plot a course we can all take to accomplish the journey in the shortest amount of time possible. Learning to lead is not easy. I suspect I will be working at it for a long time. After all, I spent 23 years learning to drive, and I am still learning new techniques to this day. The best advice I have so far is tell people where you are going, tell them how you intend to get there, and then help them get there.

Side Note: I am a software developer. I currently am leading a team of six to eight developers depending on the day. We need to learn the latest technologies and methodologies to produce quality software in a cost effective, yet timely, manner. All that being said, I have been playing a lot of Gran Turismo 5 lately on the Playstation 3. Thus, I spend a lot of time analyzing how I and others on the road drive. I thought I would combine the two to explain my latest feelings and insights. No matter where you go in life, never forget how you got there. I got to where I am in life by working hard and playing harder. I enjoy making software, but I will always make time for playing videogames.

I was expected to find a way in life. I could not continue dreaming of being the next Michael Jordan, Steve Young, or Andy Roddick. I had to grow up. I was never very keen on the idea. By this time, computers had become an avenue to more stories and dreams. I began to pursue basic web development, and then on to programming. I could not decide whether I wanted to make games that future generations could love or websites which would open the eyes of others. I began walking down that path. On the side, I kept myself grounded with history classes. They were a constant reminder of where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in the history books.

I graduated college and got a job. I got told, “Welcome to the Real World.” It turns out it is not much different than whatever world I was in before. People have expectations, and it is my responsibility to meet them. That means even if I do not like it. I am very independent. I do not like someone else telling me what to do. At the same time, I want people to listen to me. I used to yell louder in hopes I could drown out the others until they had to listen to me. Sometimes I still do. With my job, I wanted to write code. I wanted my code to change the world.

My boss recently shifted me into a new sort of role. I coordinate developers literally on the other side of the world as we work on an application used by people in the same city as me. The new role requires getting up before the sun because people on the other side of the world work very different times than we do here. I am told it has something to do with an 11.5 hour timezone difference. I also spend most of my days in meetings. Some days I spend the entire day in meetings. Each meeting has people asking me to get work done. I struggled to understand how I was suppose to get work done while I was constantly in meetings. I wanted to be writing the code rather than sending it off to others. I could do it better. I yelled a little bit.

I still do not know whether I want to continue pursuing the road I am on or return to the fork in the road. However, in traveling down this new road, I learned something. If I want to be great, I do not have to do the things at which I am great. I just need to continue meeting the challenges laid before me. I have to rely on the people around me to help me. I have to rely on others to point me in the right direction when I can no longer see the road. I will have to try new things. I do not know where I am going. I do not know where I will end up. The one thing I know is I can never stop trying.

The refusal to address our software problems is only making matters worse. While commercial products often do meet our basic infrastructure needs, they do not and cannot come close to making us a successful business. The result is we implement the software closest to the core of our brand in-house. As time goes on, we continue to build applications on top of past applications. However, many of our past applications are outdated or were quite possibly outdated the day they were created. We continue to incur debt. Quite frankly, we are falling behind. Old applications need renovated. Current applications need modified. New applications need developed. All the while, we use yesterday’s practices because we do not have extra time to learn modern techniques.

Nearly every business today does software. Particularly if a business provides online services or makes transactions, it needs to consider itself in the software industry. Take a look at a company’s income and see how it aligns with spending on development resources. If a large percentage of revenue comes from areas supported by in-house developers, this is a good suggestion the company is in the software business. They need to put effort into improving and supporting their development efforts because otherwise their software debt will consume company expenses.

My company is very oriented towards today. They want a solution as soon as possible. Cleaning up the aftermath is left for tomorrow. The problem is tomorrow quickly becomes today and new problems need solutions implemented. Too often, no time is left to prepare for tomorrow. Frequently, we find ourselves wasting time today because all we thought about yesterday was yesterday’s problem. One example is the vast quantity of processes we have today with their own implementation to FTP files. FTPing a file is a fairly simple process and easy to implement. As a result, any time we needed to FTP file, we implemented it for our specific situation. As a result, we have never created a generalized process for FTPing files. Implementing a new specific solution always seemed easier than trying to make something more general and reusable. However, when looking back, we would have been better off creating a generic process to FTP files and reusing it as necessary than implementing one for each specific situation.

As a counter to my company’s constant band-aid on top of a band-aid approach, I repeatedly voice a need for general solutions which can be reused. However, it is not uncommon for me to find myself in a situation where there simply is not enough time to develop a generic application over a specialized application. Sometimes, we simply do not understand the domain well enough to generalize. If we tried, we would likely spend a lot of time creating a process that really is not reusable. As a result, we would need to spend more time reworking it later.

The result is we need a mixture of today and tomorrow. When time is of the essence, we need to create a solution that meets the requirements. That being said, we also want the application to be designed to be easily changed down the road. Then, as additional requirements develop, we modify the original application to meet the expanded scenarios. The result is something akin to agile software development practices. The key is to allow time to refactor the original application. If the requirements are moderately different early on, it may be more work to adopt a common approach. However, as the area matures, the small time spent upfront will begin to be returned. Fortunately, the time spent at the beginning of the process is not too great to warrant a large risk of wasted time if the product flounders. In essence, we need to meet today’s problems by adapting yesterday’s solutions to be prepared for tomorrow.

Hardware had definitely changed since I originally built Ellinore. The best part was the change in price. When building a system one’s self, it is easy to get something more than the average person needs for dirt cheap. Here are the new parts:

• 3.4 GHz Quad-Core 64-Bit AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition
• 4x2GB (8GB) DDR3 RAM
• HDMI Capable Video Card
• DVD Drive
• Fancy Motherboard
• Powerful Power Supply
• Sexy Case with Night Light

I also pulled my two 1TB Sata Western Digital hard drives from Ellinore since they were fairly new and had all my data.

The end result was a computer which has more processing power than I will ever need in a very long time. I might add that I paid just over $1000 by the time the cost of the hard drives is added. This is the reason I build my towers rather than paying more for less hardware from the normal retailers. It supports virtualization that I do not fully utilize yet. Still, the ability to easily run a few guest virtual machines on a host operating system is extremely convenient when tinkering with new setups. It also looks really good on my television in 1080p when I want to watch movies or HD shows on Hulu.

Ultimately, I needed a name. A machine with such power was only deserving of a name on par with a single individual in all of history:

Caesar.

By dictating the speed at which people can play, a person can completely throw an opponent off of their game. Some individuals need to move quickly while others will camp. Take them out of their element, and they suddenly will become less skilled. Meanwhile, it is advantageous to consider one’s own preference. It is not uncommon for someone to die in a way which frustrates them. As a result, they begin to play at a different pace. They begin to do things they do not normally do. Many times, these new actions make them worse players since they do not have the same level of experience.

It is also important to learn to play at multiple speeds. Certain maps, gametypes, team combinations, et cetera can make playing in a particular manner a noteworthy disadvantage even for the most skilled players. If someone can identify these situations and adapt to them by altering their tactics, they can gain the upper-hand. When a particular strategy is not working, shift to something else. It may be best to take the opposite approach of the opposition or perhaps assuming a similar stance will work. Other times, a combination is the best avenue.

Personally, I prefer to change the flow of the game throughout the game. My default approach is to play slow and allow the enemy to come to me. This gives me time to think and reduces the likelihood of split-second, random, blink-of-an-eye twitches to change the outcome. By using my team to limit the avenues of approach of the enemy, I suddenly gain the advantage. I, now, know where to expect to confront the enemy while they are walking into a blindspot. At the very least, it gives me a direct confrontation in which neither of us has the advantage. I am confident enough to expect to win this encounter until proven otherwise. If the enemy continues to walk into the same trap without a change in results, I will simply continue using the same tricks. Typically, the opposition will begin to try something different after a couple failed attempts. The result is I need to do something different.

If I have been slow to move, I will begin to charge them. They have become careless near their spawn since they expect me to be farther away. Suddenly, I surprise them by being merely around the next corner. Again, the advantage goes to me. Perhaps I had held my ground long enough that their entire team expects me to still be in the same general location. Now, I can begin to push through their flank unexpected. In due time, they will turn to meet me because I have become the greatest threat. Then, the rest of my team can push out to again catch them off-guard. Still, the entire time we are dictating the pace of the game.

There are games where the enemy beats me early on for whatever reason. Maybe they were faster than I expected them to be and they caught me off-guard. Maybe they simply out-shot me. Maybe they sat way back near their spawn, and I eventually crept into their trap if my patience was thin. The result is I now know their initial strategy. Usually, I will probe it again. I tend to be cautious, but leaning towards them maintaining the same basic concepts. After all, it worked for them once. If they were going fast, I will usually slow down even more. I set myself in an area will they will have less chance of surprising me around a corner. If they are sitting tight, I will approach them from an unexpected angle or with the help of a teammate. Once their defensive shell is cracked, I spring forward and attempt to take the offensive.

The key is always being in control of what is happening. Do not let the enemy push you around. If they are, try taking a different course. Learn your strengths and weaknesses and understand how those match up with your opposition. If they want to be fast and cover the entire map, don’t let them. If they want to hide in a corner, make them pay. However, simply butting heads with them is rarely a good idea. The only time when I see it as a viable option is when the game remains close and I am playing in my comfort zone. If my team begins to fall behind or I see a weakness easily remedied, I adjust. The flow of the game is not a static concept. It changes between every game and within every game. It changes with each team and within each team. It must be constantly monitored. You cannot underestimate the importance of the flow of the game.

This concept applies to nearly every single competitive game. It exists in FPS, football, basketball, baseball, hockey, chess, and even military conflicts. It is the basic idea behind strategy and tactics in general. It is not the only factor in deciding a victor, but it is without a doubt one of the most important. Not everyone understands it at a conscious level, but the best all use it to their advantage.

The computer still is not completely setup. This has delayed my writing of a blog post about it. I think I will finally put the blog post together as the configuring is going slower due to tinkering with new ideas. When starting with a fresh slate, I always like to try to do things in different ways that may turn out to be better than the previous methods. This is no exception. Sadly, it has not been an active enough interest to make much progress in the past couple of weeks. I am suspecting that to change this month.

February was the first time I really became accustomed to a full-time job. No longer am I a student employee or intern. In January, I was still the new guy who had few projects on which to work. Now, I am busy enough to the point I cannot even manage to streamline applications to meet the project deadlines which were set without my consultation. The result is I come home from busy days at work and need some relaxation time before I feel like being constructive. This is one of the reasons my new computer has been left in its present state for so long.

The Olympics are one of the greatest things in world of sports. The simple fact that it comes only once every four years, the winter ones anyways, makes it special. Then, there is the element of national pride. There is nothing better than community coming behind its team against the opposition as long as proper sportsmanship and respect is shown. This is one reason college sports tend to be better than professional sports, but that is for another blog post that will likely never be written. I actually did not watch as much of these Olympics as I have in the past. The primary reason being my focus on the hockey prevented me from watching many of the other sports. Also, my favorite sports tend to be related to ski and snowboard trick competitions. Having caught almost all of the Winter X-Games this year, there was less to see at the Olympics. The X-Games covers these sports better than the traditional Olympic media, and the athletes need time to develop something more to show than what was seen at the X-Games only a couple weeks before. Some might think the competitors may hold back for the Olympics, but that is rarely the case. The type of people who participate in such sports simply cannot resist to throw it down for whatever crowd they can gather. The spotlight of the Winter X-Games is as big, if not bigger, for them than at the Olympics.

I am a casual hockey fan. As a result, I purchased NHL 10 about a month ago. I had never gone online with hockey, but one of my KOR friends was motivation to check it out. Some of their ideas are pretty sweet. I am a little disappointed in EA’s ability to pull them off unfortunately. Still, this has resulted in me playing approximately 30-40 hours online already along with an additional 30-40 hours offline. Looking back on it, that is a lot of time for a single month. It was a result of the busy workdays. I liked sitting down to a game or two to relax after work. By the time I was ready to go do something, friends would be asking me to play online with them. The result was a lot of videogames.

My girlfriend is awesome. I just thought I would throw that out there in case you did not know. She recently bought a PS3 of her own which has resulted in me spending more hours on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2). So if I was not on NHL 10, I was on MW2. The one concerning aspect is I think she may already be getting better than me. I have been playing actively for three years now. She has been playing actively for maybe a month. We also had a good day of MX vs ATV Reflex one weekend. I also must add that I regained my pride by establishing my dominance in games at Chuck E Cheese. She had schooled me in the basketball games the past two trips there, but I pulled off a minor upset this time. Air hockey and shooter games are still no competition. Skee ball can go either way.

This past weekend we celebrated a couple birthdays in the family. Because videogames are taking over the world, we had the latest Mario game and Wii Fit Plus among others. I must say I have never been that good at the Mario games. I can usually be semi-competent, but that is about the extent of my ability. As for the Wii Fit stuff, I can ski jump and some yoga tree position that is supposed to be difficult.

Now do you see why I did not blog last month? That being said, I am getting more organized and settling into my new job and apartment. I suspect there will still be stints where I do not blog for periods of time as I get distracted by other interests; yet, I will continue to return in due time to write about my experiences.