BioOfSorts

Bio follows, although who's I could not say:

I was born at a very young age. After a youth gloriously misspent among the yurts and steppes I was fortunate to follow that other famous son of my Pennsyltucky home - Joan Jett - into the wider world. Eventually I came upon various big ideas, and the big thinkers that carry them (JerryWeinberg is one). The rest has been madness, as I foolishly tried to both make sense of the world and engage in my life, only to discover that the world smells, and my life is already spoken for - several times. I have since found bog, and given up on all that, along with my several scheming droogs. My life, meanwhile, divorced the two-timing scum, and is currently trapped between a commitment to monastic isolation, sitting atop Sugar Mountain with some colored baloons, and some kind of philosophical polyamory.

I can't spell most of the stuff my life is considering. That's OK. I don't really want to know.

At the moment, I'm interested in doing work I enjoy, for people I like. It's surprising to me how big a change this is, and the reactions this idea generates. Apparently this is quite the arrogant ambition. I've been arrogant and ambitious before, so I'm glad that I haven't lost my touch. It appears I am good at at least one thing. Or maybe just consistent. At any rate, I'll take it.

I've worked a lot with computers, which are hard to understand but make sense the more you do, and also with people which are easy to understand but make no sense regardless of understanding. Between the two I spend most of my time not understanding and making no sense. I'm OK with that. As long as I know when I'm confused, that counts as success and puts me ahead of the vast majority of people. Of course you can't tell them that.

About ten years ago I first articulated my professional interest in doing something interesting for someone who wanted what I could offer. My management told me to go away until I had something practical to say. I'm not clear whether they thought the combination itself was impractical, or they just didn't have any of that right then. This was more confusing to me because I think this was the most practical thing I'd said yet about my career. Perhaps it still is. At any rate against good sound advice from my betters I have continued to dream this particular dream, believing that should I fail, I will at least fail while daring greatly.

As a practical matter<sic>, to date I've built most kinds of computer things, dealt with most kinds of projects, and filled most roles within systems development organizations. Along the way I've read a lot of InterestingBooks, done a bunch of workshop-y things including the TwoZeroZeroTwoSem, and maybe learned a little along the way. I'm pretty convinced I can perform adequately in most roles in doing systems things. There are some limitations, like I dislike working for idiots, won't be abused, and have little patience with mistreating "subordinates", religious wars about technology, and who's zooming who kinds of politics. I'll ignore the religious wars and / or the politics if I get left mostly alone. Mistreating people I won't be around.

I suspect that the idea of doing something of value for someone who wants what you offer is a useful folly, if doomed. I feel a bit like Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, when I assert that if your "real world" is not thus, well, you can have it.

So, while I'm doing the odd systems things - some odder than others - I am working toward establishing a home chef / catering business. I'm good at it. I like doing it. The people - customers - generally want something, and are grateful when they get it if you do a good job. Building systems most of the time satisfies none of these criteria, so this is a bit of a change for me.

It's some kind of comment on the system field that those few constraints are seldom met. On top of customer indifference, demanding, sometimes tedious work and so on, it's a new field. We really have little idea how this building systems stuff actually works. Which doesn't stop the cottage industry of weighty tomes on the methodology du-jour. We don't learn that either. I keep trying to figure it out, with communities like SHAPE for example, but I just don't know if I'm getting anywhere. Sometimes I suspect that there is no there, there.

The most practical philosophy I have encountered comes from "B" movies, followed closely by alternative rock. I'm sure that means something, but I'm too superficial and alienated to figure it out (and why does nobody get this joke, and nobody think it's funny?)

Should the catering business not work out, I intend to become an Asparagus farmer in the New Mexico desert. Asparagus is notoriously hard to cultivate, and sensitive to climate and conditions. The New Mexico desert is almost entirely unsuited to growing Asparagus. This seems a reasonable goal, at least compared to software. I am also quite confident in my plan since this assessment of AsparagusGrowing makes no reference to the market, and is entirely based on hearsay sources I cannot attribute. Were this software, such a plan would be "over determined." Asparagus must be The New, New Thing.

This is CaptainAmerica, on radio free radicals, but a little beta carotene will take care of that. Over and out.

-JimBullock, 17-Sept-2002 (Edits, 2003.08.04)

Updated: Monday, August 4, 2003