So, I’ve had a few rants thoughts on process in the past.

I’d like to revisit those with my Big Boy pants on.  For one thing, during my current job search process, my experience in Agile in the past 4 years always comes up, so I thought I’d parrot here what I generally say in the interviews, on why you’d choose one versus another.

If you’ll allow me, I’m going to argue that both are valuable, and both should be in your organization.

Well, the goodbye echos are over, the severance check is safely in the bank, and the initial supernova of Job Hunt Hysteria has died down.

Yep, I’m just unemployed at the moment.  Nothing terribly special…just a guy looking for his next gig, like millions of others.

The first week of “not going to work” didn’t go so well.  I was completely off-schedule at home, and an person with my brain chemistry devoid of structure tends toward anxiety and acting-out.  I did act-out on Wednesday, so the road back there continues.  I have calmed down considerably, and I feel like I’m through the change curve to the point of “Yep, I don’t work at Lexmark anymore.”

Double entendre….on darn, already off to a poor start.

So, as 11 month ago, I took the leap, signed the papers, and volunteered to leave my former employer.  This came with some stipulations.  For one year, I may not:

1. Try to recruit anyone actively employed at Lexmark or assist any new employer in same.
2. Besmirch or otherwise criticize Lexmark.
3. Return to work there.

That’s right.  In the course of one afternoon, I went from a a fully-employed Software Architect at a (nominally) Fortune 500 company to 4 weeks from out-the-door on the job market.  

So, I’ve been at Lexmark longer than:

• I’ve been married (10 years)
• I’ve had kids (10 years)
• I knew what autocross was (13 years)
• I could swim a full lap in a pool (1 year)
• I’ve known the Java Programming Language (in all its 1.1.8 glory) (15 years)
• I’ve lived in any one place continuously (13 years)

The only thing I’ve done longer than have the email address hcombs@lexmark.com and the same strangely 4-digit employee ID (they recycle them) is:

To quote Donne:

Never ask for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

The South Carolina primary will likely be the end of Jeb Bush’s run for the Whitehouse.  I’m on the record decrying the idea that we’ll have yet another member of either the Clinton or Bush family lead our nation.

Still, I’m struck by what this means, not only for Jeb and his personal legacy, but also for the Party and our nation as a whole. The saddest part of the slow-motion denouement of Jeb Bush’s campaign: This is not who Jeb is.

It’s been a fascinating, sometimes frustrating year.   Today’s my last official workday; I’ll probably check email from here on out.

Some highlights to share:

Code activity

That pretty much tells-the-tale.  Up through July I was hot and heavy on of our projects, then I had a week of vacation (which was awesome…I really recommend Nags Head, NC.)  Throughout that time, I was working with a very sharp team, and we had a go-live with our changes on April 23d.  I didn’t sleep much that night.  

Except for a 1 month break during the summer, Maria and I have been swimming every weekday morning, and I’m quite proud of our progress.

In January, we could barely make 1 half-lap of a 25 yard pool without being totally out of breath. Maria was very scared–she could barely swim–and she would only do kickboard stuff at first.  I was a complete goof, and the thought of doing even a full 25-yard stint frankly scared me.  I couldn’t coordinate my movements, I couldn’t breathe properly, and everything felt like a struggle.  I honestly didn’t know if we’d make it out of January still swimming.

Once upon a time, my employer decided I was enough of a naive workaholic to put me on a list.  This list contained other people who were naive workaholics.  They decided they should herd us together and teach us to be more effective, slightly less naive workaholics.

The guy who taught the class had many nuggets of wisdom, but this one stuck with me.  He drew this simple diagram on a pad of paper at the front of the class.

Yes, I’m still alive, as my twitter stream would substantiate.

Felt led to share this.

First, some background: I’m a Protestant Christian.  As such, I follow the doctrine of Justfication by Faith (Sola Fide).  Justification by Faith, broadly defined, means that we are ‘justified’, that is, redeemed or saved, by Grace from God alone through Faith,

**For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,**not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:9, ESV).  

This is sort of a follow-up to my On Steve Jobs post.

I write this with myself as the audience, after getting slapped with fish by life for the past 10 days.

No one cares.

You’ve been raised in child-centric America, from 1990 to the present.  You’re behaviorally Millennial; you don’t remember a time before computers, minivans, or helicopter parents.  You’ve always felt entitled to speak your mind, in whatever the situation.

I did a quarter mile worth of laps in a pool.  Holy crap!

Maria is now on a summer swim team, racing other kids her age.  Holy crap!

Got a good pair of goggles at Costco, and my breathing patterns are better, if only my cardio would come along with it.

I’ve been a software developer throughout the “Agile Revolution.”  My first team lead, back in 2001 said these words to me and I’ve always taken them to heart:

I think the world’s pretty done with us [Software Developers].  I feel like we’ve got about 5 years to get our act together or that’s it.

Apropos, that same year a highly influential group of practitioners signed the Agile Manifesto.   Amid waves of Dot-Com-Bubble-Bursting, offshoring, and right-sizing, they kept it simple:  Here’s what works; apply liberally.

Ecclesiastes is Solomon’s valediction as an old man.  From the purported wisest man that ever lived–gifted with wisdom from God Himself--comes a book that seems a real downer on the hollowness of nearly every pursuit in his hedonistic life.

Sometimes, having worked as a developer for 16 years, I’m reminded off Ecclesiastes.

With apologies to Solomon:

To everything there is a season:
_  A time to build big, and a time to build small,_
_  A time to write, and lots more time to sustain,_
_  A time to break systems apart,_
_  A time to pull systems together._
A time to delete, and a time to merge.
Most telling is the author’s refrain:  “All is vanity! There is nothing new under the sun.”

Reference:  Why Go’s design is a disservice to intelligent programmers

I honestly can’t decide if this article is sarcastic praise for #golang hitting every one of its design goals, because once you look past the ad-hominem crap, it’s there:

• “Similar to Go, the book is easy to read with good examples and clocking in at about 150 pages you can finish it in one sitting.” 
  • Read: Go’s easy to learn.  The documentation is excellent.
• “I’ve always thought that the developers at Google are hand picked from the brightest and best on Earth. Surely they can handle something a little more complicated?” 
  • He misses the point entirely.  Those same devs choose to go away from the frills to get leaner and faster.  Code is a means to an end at Google, and they realize that it’s going to be read by other developers many times more than it’s written.  Simplicity and clarity surmount all else; Google’s stultifying C++ style guide makes this apparent.
• “There are no shortcuts in Go, it’s verbose code or nothing.”
  • Shortcuts get abused.  See: C preprocessor macros.
  • I read this as “‘I have to check return values and handle errors’ == verbose code.”  This is not a valid Software Engineering view.  IMO, it should be obvious whether code handles errors properly.
• “The language could be described as C with training wheels.”

  • Thanks!  I rather like C.  I just wish it had a decent Standard Library, no header files, less “undefined” behavior, inbuilt concurrency, package management, and garbage collection. 

It’s 1:38 pm. But for a snowstorm on Thursday, this would be my 7th straight day at work.

I’m doing things that people variously term “unwise,” “strange,” or “nearly impossible.”

I’ve nearly gotten them to work, but not yet.  That’s why I’m here.

“Well, sir, you certainly didn’t have afternoons like *this*, when you were doing the Architect Gig.”

Gotta love that inner critic.  There’s always something.

My response:  Indeed, but I didn’t *ever* have weeks like last week where we found and solved problems in realtime with a team of engineers, either.  It was lonely, and devoid of the kind of dopamine-enhanced highs I got.

Last week was hard.  Every day except for Wednesday, I was here ’til late.  On two nights, mine was the last car out of the parking log.   Snowpocalypse 2015 put us behind, and a Linux/PAM story that won’t die put us even farther behind.

So, Maria and I are swimming.

Maria tends to take after me, in that she can look at food and gain weight, and she rather enjoys food.  We both eat our emotions, and emotions we have aplenty.

Right after the new year, I noticed just how crotchety I felt, even at 36 years old.  My back hurt constantly, I had little energy, I couldn’t deal with stress, etc.  Maria was enrolled in swim classes last year and we found out she had limited range-of-motion in her right arm, basically from atrophy.

It’s been a stellar couple of days for Joey’s sense of humor.  Representative samples.

“Yo’ momma so fat, Arnold Schwarzenegger tells her to GET AWAY FROM DA CHOPPA!”

* * *

[Interior: The Combs Clan sits around the table]
Whitney (to Harold): You know, when you lie, you get spots on your face.

Harold: O RLY?  Tell me something and I’ll lie in response.

Whitney: Yeah, say ‘I like titty-twisters.’

Harold: I…like…titty-twisters.

Contrary to popular opinion, I can swim.

I actually took snorkeling lessons in 3rd grade and was utterly “into” SCUBA-diving.  I loved the water.

However, I got awfully used to having swim fins, a buoyancy compensator, and a mask on.  Read: I got lazy.  Free swimming just didn’t interest me, so I never learned to swim properly: diving, the basic 4 strokes, etc.

So, serendipity arrived this new year when Maria’s PT announced that she needed to work-out, every day and that she needed to swim.

• Bad engineers try to convince you don’t have a problem
• Good engineers solve your problem
• Great engineers help you understand the problem that caused your problem, then solve that.

Yes, I’m trying to create those little office placards in my spare time.   I’m sure someone, somewhere has said this better, but it does seem to be true.  

I was thinking about some senior people, and what seems to differentiate the goods from the greats is that capability of seeing the heart of an issue and keeping perspective.