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WORK -- As of June 1999, I work as an independent semi-freelance programmer. Most of my work is done on web applications of various sorts, usually involving SQL databases and such stuff. I usually write code in perl, at times also in C. Always now for some flavor of UNIX.
In my past I've also done professional Linux and Solaris system administration, a minescule amount of web design, a little highlevel support and some sporadic consulting. All of them were diversions from the real work of programming, usually unintended complications of working for small companies. I have some NT admin experience also, enough to fortify my intention never to touch NT again except with a Linux or BSD install CD.
A few months ago I looked at my "work" page and noticed that it was now two jobs behind in explaining my "current" position. So rather than listing where I work, here's where I have worked, which might or might not include where I currently do, in reversed chronological order.
- Community Servers, c/o Keyplus
Somehow I keep getting into these little companies trying to grow out of their own shoes. Community Servers' sole product is the Community Content Server, a great big structured hulk of perl which does all kinds of neat stuff, when it's not broken. More on this when there's something to say (other than "Oracle pisses me off.")
- Sonic.Net, Inc.
My second (and hopefully my last) stint with an ISP. Sonic is a regional ISP based in Santa Rosa, California. Originally one of those startups that come about when a few geeks notice they could do exactly the same thing but for money, and then as often as not go broke. Sonic hasn't gone broke, and indeed did fairly well for themselves, despite paying their employees on a level commensurate with the grunge end of the foodservice industry. While there I did programming, sysadmin, security analysis and highlevel support in approximately that order. Unfortunately, working conditions were sufficiently poor, and management sufficiently inept that Sonic ultimately fired almost its entire highlevel programming/sysadmin staff rather than negotiate a labor dispute following an informal strike. Here is the employee account of those events. Sonic, like most jobs, left me with a collection of odd personal mementos (see "the wages of career programming, below"); here's my favorite.
- Sonoma.Net
Sonoma.Net (pronounced "sonomanet") was another startup -- a little more than two years of programming, sysadmin and running extension cords next door to run the servers when the power bill didn't get paid and PG&E cut us off. Sonoma.Net's biggest obvious problem, other than bad small-business luck, was overambitious management, who tended to get us work in the wrong quantities and of the wrong nature, while I and the other geek there played a lot of catch-up and got ulcers. Sonoma.Net made for a lot of good stories and memories that seem a lot more pleasant now that it's all behind me. My very first paycheck ($65 for two afternoon's work) bounced.
Sonoma.Net started out doing ISP stuff with four lines and a TribeLink-8 PPP/AppleTalk box, which broke down a lot and which got administered by either a web interface or power cycling, depending on the specific problem. The machine room contained two pentiums (tuna and halibut), which ran Linux and Apache with near-perfect operational records throughout my employ.
Virtually all of the major work I did while at Sonoma.Net has now been replaced, sadly enough. Some of it was replaced quite justifiably -- often we'd get halfway through a supreme job of engineering a project, then get our timeline slashed or our priorities rearranged and the rest would be done at a breakneck pace with contracts being frantically renegotiated to allow for what was eventually going to be produced. Some of it, though, can be found on my less embarassing creations page.
Sonoma.Net finally collapsed in early 1998. Among the remnants were some O'Reilly books, a few pens, a lot of unpaid back wages and a Sun "Ultracomputing" mousepad which came free with a Sun Ultra 1.
Piles of paper with scribbles on them. You can never
escape these if you permit yourself to acquire a desk. Everytime you finish a project
or change jobs, the paper content will suddenly become useless. Yet for some reason,
unless you're a Virgo, they will remain in your life, the papers for each job
slipping away at a logarithmically decreasing rate. Some of these make pleasant
memory-laden reading material, others give you nightmares. You will glance back
through the paper or not depending on the proportions.
Manuals you hope never to use again. Assuming, in fact,
that you used them to begin with. Some people who write code own a lot of manuals, and
know instantly in which one to find what they need. They have good mental indexing
skills, but their hash buckets have 16-bit addressing at best.
Books that seemed to be a good idea at the time. Mine
include at least 15kg of fortran, PL/I and Algol books obtained for no more than $1.50
each at thrift stores. The idea was that I'd read them for amusement and historical
intrigue, but they're far too dull to bother. So I use them to swat wasps with (this is
also a good use for those $75-each C textbooks you're forced to buy several of during the
average CS degree.)
Documentation CDs. These are almost
as pernicious as the obsolete manuals, but you can use them as drink
coasters if you're running out of windoze install CDs.
TLAs. Asymptotes appear a lot in this
kind of work. One that applies here is the rate at which the proportion
of used/remaining TLAs, f(x) = n/363, approaches 1.
Homedir cruft. No matter if the
server you're doing the work on is across the world and the code won't
even run on your workstation, this happens, and then you're afraid to
delete bits because you can't remember if you ever got them into the
main codebase or not.
Harmful nutritional, behavioral or sexual
habits. Mine include Safeway "balanced nutritional
supplement," a brown liquid sold in packages of six cans each, tasting
sort of like Yoo-Hoo, but with enough nutrition to keep your stomach
from eating itself if you consume it at a sufficient rate. This rate
varies with your caffeine and food intakes. Behaviorally you tend to
see people and situations as input-output systems, which leads to
problems with girls. Though that, as commented elsewhere, is probably
just as well, since if you get roped into doing tech support for your
own product, it tends to put you off one or both genders for extended
periods.