I Know Stuff
I have a confession to make: I'm a little scared to leave my job. I slacked off quite a bit in college and didn't learn as much as I should have. I did a lot of what we like to call "networking," which means that I met a lot of people in my field (did a lot of socializing). After I'd been in school a couple years, I decided it was time to get some real experience, but I had trouble finding a job (although, if I'd been patient and waited another year, I might have had less of a problem). I jumped at the chance to work for my current company. I've been here three and a half years, and I'm a much better programmer now. Sometimes, I still wonder about how marketable my skills are. Since all my experience was garnered at a very small company, I haven't been able to compare myself with other programmers very often. Mother was talking this morning about some work he'd done for a friend. His friend needed some help cleaning up a database structure that someone had made for him. Mother explained that the database "had no foreign keys, no sense of referential integrity, and wasn't the least bit normalized."* Don't worry if you don't know what that means, since I had to ask what he meant by "normalized." When he explained it, I realized that I actually know quite a bit about database design. I know stuff. That's an exciting thought for me. I delved into the horde code (the open source webmail program we've modified for emailcop), and not only did I understand what was going on, I made lots and lots of changes. Most of these alterations were fairly superficial, but once again I can say that I know stuff. So, I guess I don't need to ph34r** the job market, my l33t php and postgresql skills should get me by. Now, if I could just get good enough at Counter-Strike to enter one of those tournaments, I could say I really know stuff. * For some real techno-babble, I have to quote Radar:my own brand of unix and Java script operating system. I call it: "JOS" (which stands for the "Junix Operating System, not the first name of the creator of Buffy, and Angel tv series). My design allows me to parse out the DOM at a much faster RAM to CPU ratio, thus allowing the ddl and the css port to integrate along side the xslt ribbon cable. My design effectively makes the USB coolant fan obselete, and out of date. Also, by linking the GUI with the ROM slot cable, I have increased proscesor speed to ten megapixels per unit of PCI. Yeah, put this in your pipe and parse it Steve Jobs, Linus Torvald, and Bill Gates! **http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A787917