Archive for ‘July, 2008’

T.G.I.F.

I have had my fingers on the keyboard – “nose to the grindstone” for the last two weeks and am loving it! I finally have a bit of a handle on Visual Studio/.NET/C# (C Sharp) and the other development tools being used in the current project for UCLA. I am a consultant-programmer for a department of UCLA …since 1991.

Programming has always involved a constant re-educating and adding of new skills but every so often things take what feels like a quantum leap. The learning curve this round has seemed particularly steep. I took a look at the timesheets I submit with my invoices for the last several months – a lot of research, testing, reading, i.e. not much coding. There were days when I struggled to get a few lines of code to work and when it did it was more dumb luck than knowing what I was doing.

Currently there is another programmer and our “boss” at UCLA that make up the team working on the prototype for the new version of software. I have not been alone in the struggle to understand the new paradigm. We use a product called “Go to Meeting” (GTM) to work together. GTM allows us to connect via the internet and any one of us can be the “presenter” – showing our screen to the others. GTM handles the phone conferencing also. This “show and tell” as well as a bit of team coding enabled us to “divide and conquer” – each of us dealing with a piece of the puzzle and then sharing what we learned. It has been fun, interesting, frustrating and annoying all at the same time but now that it is coming together – all worthwhile!

I have not suddenly become a .NET expert, but I have written some code in the last two weeks…code that I understand, that I know why it works! And just as we are close to having the prototype ready for the “boss” to demo to his “boss”… a new couple of tools are close to being released. Tools that will solve some problems: XAML (“zamel”) and Silverlight. I am NOT afraid! XAML particularly is the programmers’ answer to HTML. Silverlight brings it all together in .NET. It is an exciting time to be a programmer even given the constant feeling that there is too much to learn.

But, today – on this Friday – I am grateful for the last two weeks – for the opportunity to learn and do something which is fun, challenging and oh, pays the mortgage! I am also very grateful for the team I work with – nice people – professional, interesting, caring – a great team! Still… T.G.I.F. – a good day today and then the weekend to play.

Just in case your eyes have glazed over because you don’t know and don’t care what .NET or XAML is…Bob shares your sentiments…

Enjoying what is there – From the front porch

We had a good soaking rain off and on on the 4th of July. It might be the last really good rain for awhile as there is none in the forecast and this time of year it can go very dry.

When we had the trenching done for the electric, I asked Dave (contractor) to “fix” the ruts we made getting the bus in and out of the old garden site. Apart from the “patch” above, the grass has come up fairly well on the old site but still a bit sparse in areas and there were other small ruts from the 4wheeler. On Sunday, when things were dried a bit from the 4th’s rain, I spread more grass seed and starter fertilizer – in preparation for that, I mowed the yard as close as I dared. The timing was good as the yard is as green and “lush” as it will get….

It struck me yesterday as I was walking with Karl that the yard and the woods – this is likely their prime time for greenness – they look good, they look like summer – beautiful! Yes, the house needs some bushes – landscaping – I’ve been holding off, planning to paint at least the trim – I think the blue should be changed to dark brick brown-red – a darker shade of the roof color. I DO love the grassy yard area where the garden used to be and have NO regrets about giving up that garden. I’m thinking of a small rock bordered flower-herb garden on Karl’s dirt pile. I know that sounds like a potential recipe for disaster, re digging – but I’m ok with a bit of a challenge… and the soil is there, it has a nice contour…we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy what IS there.

From the front porch…

View from the dump

I lived in San Francisco for 2 years and then Los Angeles for 13 before moving to Montana in early 1994. Any spot in California with even a snippet of a view of anything was extremely expensive. It was astonishing to come to Montana and find ordinary spots with stunning views… the MacDonald’s in Polson sits on a hilltop with a beautiful view of Flathead Lake and the southern end of the Swan Range and the Flathead Valley. The Flathead County landfill, just south of Whitefish has a gorgeous mountain view in the north end of the valley.

Yesterday, after dropping trash at the county green box area (various of these scattered around the county for the drop off of residential trash) on Montana highway 82 which runs along the northern end of Flathead Lake, I noticed the lake and the clouds and the sky and the colors. I pulled off right in front of the dump area to see what I could capture…

It is a bit hard to see in this reduced photo but if you look closely – at the horizon “line”, you can see a sliver of lake – ruffled from the wind with whitecaps.

The view from the dump…

Grace

Grace: unmerited favor, ease and suppleness of movement and bearing

I love the word grace – simply saying it invokes a feeling of serenity and harmony. I had this pottery made by a young woman in Whitefish, who, at the time was just starting to sell her work. She had several bowls – of mixing bowl size with words handwritten around them. I got to thinking that I would like my plates and cups and bowls to have words that inspired me so that as I had my morning coffee or ate a meal, I would see the words. And hopefully, the words – words like grace, hope, love, peace, faith, harmony, laughter, joy – these words would inspire me at the start and during the day – to remember what was really important – even and especially while dealing with the nuts and bolts of daily life.

Sometimes, this works…

Sometimes, I just look at my dog…who imparts grace in simply being near…

A loose hold

Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest – June 27 entry

“I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.” Jeremiah 1:8

God promised Jeremiah that He would deliver him personally. That is all God promises His children. Wherever God sends us, He will guard our lives. Our personal property and possessions are a matter of indifference, we have to sit loosely to all those things; if we do not, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress. That is the inwardness of the overshadowing of personal deliverance.

“Our personal property and possessions…we have to sit loosely to all those things; if we do not, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress.” This caused me to think – and remember the following from Brennan Manning in Ragamuffin:


The garbage in most of our lives is the relentless anxiety and agitation created by the fear that we will not get enough of the world’s goodies to feel safe, secure and turned on.

It was a feeling that I was holding on too tightly and fretting too much over “things” that started me thinking about making changes on From the Front Porch (see On Eagles Wings post or page). My motives for adding advertising, for advertising on other blogs, for commenting on other blogs – were not entirely or even primarily, motives of greed. It costs money to self-host. Cameras, accessories, software – big bucks. As the number of people reading From the Front Porch grew and I discovered that my comments elsewhere led people to find me – AND – as I realized how much I loved the writing and photography, I wondered if I could subsidize this new love. I enjoyed the sense of community among bloggers. I see nothing wrong in making a living from writing and photography on a blog. It is self-publishing – a wonderful form of entrepreneurship.

My personal discontent with what I was doing stems not from the vehicle or the original motivation but the sense of anxiety I grew to have over the “numbers” for the day – how many comments, how many pageviews… And I started to pay attention to which entries seemed to get the most attention and maybe I should do more like that. And I started to not like doing it and longing for the mornings when I wrote for me.

My “day” job – my programming work – it is going well. I enjoy that work very much and feel extremely grateful that I have been able to make a good living doing something I enjoy – from a home office. And in this day of wi-fi, aircards, i.e. internet virtually everywhere, I can work from anywhere.

These thoughts, anxiety over money, over the house, over the future – fueled by this thought that if I wrote well enough, if my photography was good enough, it would “save” me from future fluctuations in programming work, or enable me to write and shoot full time. Suddenly I realized I was living in a way that I dislike – living with the feeling that I could control the future. Worse, I was not enjoying “now” as I tried to maintain control.

On June 27, I read the Oswald Chambers entry and finally “leaned not on my own understanding”. I have always had “enough”… It took a few days to loosen the hold. But, once I let go, enormous peace… It is a good path for me, this loose hold on things. It is when I do my best work – programming, writing or photography. It is when I am the best “me”. “Let go in reckless confidence” – another Brennan Manning theme – one I have written on the top of the spreadsheet I use for tracking my time for my programming work – something for me to remember every day.

On this Fourth of July, this day of Independence for our country, I will also celebrate an independence from fretting about the future and simply enjoy today.

“This is the day the Lord hath made. Rejoice and be glad in it” Psalm 118:24