My New Typing Tutor

Twitter = Discovery Part LLLXMI (I just made that up, is it even a number?)



That's Rich, from the AppsLab. He works with Jake.

That link takes you here. You can read about the game here. I have a very vague understanding of the underlying technology, but I don't care. That thing is pure awesome.

I suppose that sounds a bit strange, and maybe it does, but I like typing. I take pride in typing. My mother made me take a typing class in 9th grade like 400 years ago and I remember being so mad at her for that. Then I got my first job doing data entry. Then I was thankful. Yes, I've thanked my mother...

So here's what it looks like:



The goal is to type the words/objects that are falling from the top. Each letter you press fires a shot. I couldn't get a great screen shot and play at the same time, but in play, it looks something like this.



My first few go-arounds weren't to bad, but I was working so I only had a limited amount of time and focus.

When I got more time, I got up to Level 25 before quitting to do some real work. 97.6% accuracy. Not too shabby.



I hereby decree this to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Enjoy.

M&M's - Managers and Meetings

via Lewis Cunningham via Justin Levy. I've argued this for years, probably because I've been reading Jason Fried since 2005.

UPPER( 'dba' )

I'm tired of understanding enough to know how frustrating it is to not be able to speak to certain topics. I have discussions where I know (or believe) something is not right, but I lack the ability to articulate the reason. That blows. I don't like being in that position...at all.

I want to be a real DBA now.

UPPER( 'dba' );

Since I am working with OBIEE right now, and I want to continue with that, I have to choose an alternate method to become a DBA. Reading and studying (which I already do), will not suffice.

I have no incentive, other than my natural drive. That hasn't been enough though. I can't apply it on a daily basis and continue to work as I do.

So I've decided to go the certification route. Now, there are many problems with certification and it seems to be watered down. I have met my fair share of those holding certain certifications who couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. My reason for choosing certification is that it will push me to follow through with the training and give me a specific path towards that goal.

I believe I started down that path when I first got into IT, but I failed the first DBA test...barely. Then, it was pretty much rote memorization...now, with 7 more years of experience under my belt, it should be a lot easier as I have a better understanding of most of the underlying concepts.

Anyone out there taken a similar path? Or were you just thrown into the fire? I would prefer the fire, but I have chosen my path (OBIEE) for now.

Make Money Blogging

Yeah, it's pretty much a futile effort, but hey, I've been paid by Google.



Only 430 posts. I think that puts me at less than $0.40 a post. 28 months would come out to less than $4 a month.

The Long Drive Home

So I am starting to understand why people who travel don't have a lot of time.

For the past 3 weeks I have driven back and forth to Greenville, SC, a round trip of 1200 miles. That's 600 miles on Sunday and 600 miles on Thursday. My record so far is 7 hours and 45 minutes, approximately 75 MPH.

Tomorrow I will be flying and will be there in 1.5 hours. Much better.

My reasoning for driving is multi-fold:
1. I'm not in the habit of flying thus maintain a tad bit of fear at the prospect. I know it's not rational...
2. 4 trips in a month comes out to about $3,000, I can't float that kind of money now. Driving saves me about $400 a week in air travel and about $250 a week in car rental. Driving costs about $120 round trip in gas.
3. Driving pays. Current federal rate is 0.55/mile. 1200 miles = $660. Subtract that from $120 and I am ahead $540. Multiply that by 4 weeks and I'm at about $2,000.

One thing I did not take into account is the exhaustion factor. When I get home, I don't want to do a thing and just dread Sunday creeping up. Despite having a driving buddy coming home this past Thursday, I slept pretty much all day Friday. Today I was a slug too. I'm not much use to my kids in that state.

So I'm going to fly. I nice early morning flight won't bother me much as I will still be too tired to think too much about being scared. Perfect. Sucks that I have to leave so early in the morning, but what can you do?

I still can't float the money to do this every week, so I'm going to try and rotate the schedule, fly, drive and beg for a week of remote work to ease the burden.

Any tips or tricks for traveling out there? I'm using TripIt, which is nice to keep everything in one place. What else?

The Costs and Benefits of Enterprise Technology

My technology chops lag a bit behind the writers and readers of this blog. While I am taking the Piwowar EBS challenge along with Chet, Floyd and others, my day to day activities are more focused on trying to blow hot air onto the frozen middle of enterprise technology management. Chet recently retweeted a good question that got me thinking, reading and (now) writing. The question was:



That post linked to a super article called Upper Mismanagement from The New Republic. It discusses how many executives, having risen up from finance instead of operational backgrounds, are probably incapable of leading American manufacturing today.

We see many of those same problems in IT. Those leaders who come from a finance background tend to be focused on showing the money (or the savings), while the technical leadership are just as focused on innovative technology. That often leaves the more operational business folks hanging in between, trying to keep the business going - doing more with less.

One problem seems to be that the wrong people are making the decisions - for the wrong reasons. This is an organizational problem: the right people are not in the right place. Technical, financial, and business folks all need to work together to create the solutions that will best advance the organizational mission. Too great a focus on any of those areas will potentially endanger the goals of the others. Jake spoke to part of this divide in his OOW 08 presentation (slide 9):



What about solutions?

In a recent seminar on financial management for IT, we worked with Intel's Business Value Index model. When you have a few minutes, read this white paper: IT@Intel White Paper Using an IT Business Value Program to Measure Benefits to the Enterprise. I'll provide the first line as a teaser:

Intel's IT business value (ITBV) program has shifted our IT investment decision making process to a customer-focused, data-driven model that demonstrates the impact of IT on Intel’s bottom line.

Yes! Right on! Isn't that what we all do?! I'd argue that if we all did this even half as well as Intel we wouldn't have as many questions about "finance killing IT" or "IT costing too much" or "IT not serving business needs."

I encourage all of us to read this paper. It explains how Intel's model "works by evaluating IT investments along three factors: IT business value, impact on IT efficiency, and the financial attractiveness of an investment." I love how they are ranked.

The key to the success of the Intel model seems to be accurate measurement of all three factors. Cost is frequently measured, but not always accurately. How often have you seen a solution implemented without provisions for its total cost? IT efficiency is measured less often. Business value is typically implied in requirement gathering, but I often see operational metrics missing once a solution goes into production. One example comes from a business intelligence project I am working on. In all of our work to help our business owners develop KPIs, we came up short on defining those metrics that would indicate how well IT was performing. See a good post from CIO magazine on developing metrics for IT.

So, if it is easy and obvious to do the right thing around measuring the benefits of IT to the enterprise, why is it not done consistently? I used to think it was just me, or just my organization, or just my industry (Higher Education and Research). Since I have been in school and doing a bit of consulting, though, I find my peers in all industries are singing the same tune. Perhaps one answer is implied in the New Republic article referenced earlier in this post. Perhaps we are not preparing ourselves and those around us to take the lead in this area.

Here is a good recent publication from my industry highlighting the shifting roles in IT leadership. I would argue it is not that different in other industries. Nor would I argue that any of this is new. Here is a similarly good recent publication from the CIO Executive Council called the State of the CIO 2010. I also recently read some great old school management principles from IBM's heyday. They are enjoyable and still applicable. Check out especially the "IBM management principles and practices" and the "Quintessential quotes."

Please find the comments if you love or hate any of the resources I've included. Please also drop a comment if you have an answer to the question of "will 'show me the money' kill IT?"

Thank you @oraclenerd and @brhubart for getting me thinking, reading, and writing. Now I can shed the slacker tag for a spell and get back to my work on the Piwowar EBS challenge (I am still on hardware and OS, ugh).

Ted [ linkedin | twitter ] is Vice President for Communications at the Higher Education User Group, MBA and MSIS student at the Johns Hopkins University, Director of Administrative Systems at MICA, and slacker at badgerworks.

Random Things: Volume #11

Work: Consulting
I just returned home from my first week consulting. I went to the northern part of Alabama and didn't have much of a connection (phone or data) most of the time.

From my perspective it was a rousing success. Now I just need to wait and see if the client approved of my work.

I chose to drive as it was semi-last minute (last Thursday I found out) and I haven't had a good road trip in years. I promise it wasn't a fear of flying.

On the way I picked up the guy I would be working with at the Atlanta airport. We had only (briefly) communicated through email and one "get up to speed" phone call. I think it's safe to say that we got along pretty well. After a couple of hours with the client the following day, they asked how long we had been working together and were absolutely shocked to learn that we had just met.

As to the work, I got to rekindle some of my OBIEE administration skills, specifically the rpd (or metadata). It was fun to get back into it as I had been prepping for this the past couple of weeks. By day 2 I was in a zone (adding physical tables, replacing logical table data sources, etc).

My colleague's expertise was in Answers, so I got to see some pretty cool stuff. I'm trying to talk him into blogging and offered him a guest slot to see if he likes it.

The clients were great and easy to work with...overall an A+.

Google Latitude
As I have a new blackberry (couldn't afford the droid yet), I managed to download my Google Contacts, GMail and most importantly, Google Maps...which ties in with Google Latitude.

I could see myself driving up I-75 and even better, I could expose my location to my wife and parents (I am an only child...the center of their universe :). I even tried to use it to find my phone which I had misplaced this afternoon (it had fallen under my seat) to no avail. Basically, I believe it uses the cell towers to approximate your location, the closest I saw it was within 800 meters.

Amusingly, as we're driving to Atlanta this afternoon and my father calls...WTF? he says. "I'm taking my colleague to the airport"

"Are you going back?"

"No, I'm headed home"

I had neglected to tell him that I would be there through Thursday...he of course thought the worse.

I have 2 pretty cool guest posts on the way. Mr. Meyers has one and Mr. Piwowar finally got to Part 3 of his EBS install guide. :) I'll post those next week so they don't get lost in the weekend down time.

ORACLENERD, Inc.

Today I made it official...I filed my paperwork with the State of Florida to incorporate. It seemed fairly obvious what the name should be.

If you read the previous post, you probably gathered that little fact.

All of this is related to the fact that I have a new job. I'm not quite ready to talk about the details yet but I believe there is quite a bit of opportunity here. For one, I'll be working with OBIEE again. It's been about 9 months since I last worked with and I was just getting started. There may also be some work with APEX, which would be great. Finally, there's a very outside shot that I may get to work with Exadata v2 in the somewhat near future.

Maybe you're wondering why I incorporated? I don't know, just seemed like fun. Actually, I'll be working as a consultant. This is my first real trek down that road. I have to learn about billable hours, successful travel planning...and probably most importantly, budgeting.

I'm very excited about this opportunity. I will have to travel a bit, but I'll also get to work from home quite a bit so I believe in the long run, family time will probably be greater than when I was going to that "9 to 5" type job where I was actually away from home more than 60 hours a week. We'll see.

How To Apply For an EIN

EIN being an Employer Identification Number.

You can find the start page here at irs.gov.

This is the second time I have done this, well, second time I have had an EIN. I'm pretty sure the lawyer did it the first time around. If I remember correctly, that cost me a whopping $500, 5 years ago. Of course that included incorporation as well.

I remember how daunting it was back then, starting your own business. I felt like I had to hire a lawyer to do it. The truth is, it's very easy to do. Especially if you consider the sheer volume of documentation that exists on the Oracle database...this is a piece of cake.

It took 10 minutes to complete, but most of that time was spent doing screen captures. Twenty steps in all.

Landing page from the link above:



Begin Application:



Choose the type of business:



"Sub" Corporations:



Confirm your selection:



Why do you need an EIN?



Principal Officer?



Individual details:



Location of corporation:



Verify physical location:



"Accept Database Version" is funny. Do most people understand what that would mean? I guessed that's the USPS version of my address...but I tend to work with these types of scenarios.

Corporation details:



More about the corporation:



What does your corporation do?



I selected other because there was no IT type category on there.

What kind of Other?



What kind of Consulting?



How do you want this delivered?



Summary:



EIN assigned!



Additional information:



Thank you!



Pretty easy all in all. I bet is was a bit harder 5 years ago (i.e. not automated).

Amusingly, this form is only available at certain times of the day. I tried this morning and was told the online assistant didn't work until 7 PM on Sundays. WTF?

I've Got a Job!

Details to follow.

Dilbert: You're Fired!

Losing A Job: The Aftermath

So I've got a little experience in "losing" my job. Laid off, furloughed, rehired, resigned (and walked out), new job, laid off.

Of course I didn't lose one of those jobs...I know right where they are. I just can't or won't go back to them.

Fortunately for me, I've made a lot of good friends online. Very supportive friends. It makes "losing" a job that much easier.

Of course there's more to it...the effect it has on the family.

Kate...she doesn't understand yet. She just smiles and laughs and makes everything go away.

LC, however, is starting to grasp it. He doesn't say anything to me, but he does say stuff to his mother.

"Are we going to have to move back to Gainesville?"

"Is poppa going to pay our bills for us?"

You know...fun stuff like that.

Strangely, not to long ago he was always asking me to fire myself so I could be home all the time (it's the only way I get a vacation these days).

And then there's the wife, the lovely woman who agreed to marry me (yikes!) and has supported me through all of this. Without her, I could not have made it as far as I have.

When we met, we were polar opposites. I was a bit on the timid side and she...well, she doesn't have much of a filter. A perfect match!

Over time I have found my voice and she has muted hers (only a little). We're meeting somewhere in the middle (at least that's what I tell myself).

Kris does not work. She held LC in her hands and told me she didn't want to go back to work. I couldn't argue. Although she did work briefly but was let go because LC had an ear infection and needed medical attention. We didn't fight it. She's a stay-at-home mom, and we like it that way. She's been able to help Kate out with doctor visits, physical therapy, speech therapy, HGH injections...the list goes on and on.

Since she doesn't work, she feels, at times, out of control. When I "lose" my job, that feeling is heightened.

Not really sure what the point of this was...it's not to feel sorry for me, that's for sure. Just a warning to those out there in a similar situation. It doesn't effect just you...it effects your entire family (I haven't even mentioned my parents, or Kris' parents).

The only advice I can give to help alleviate this is:
1. Have enough money in the bank to weather the storm
2. ...OK, just 1.

The Perfect Job

Since I am no longer tethered, I can talk about my perfect job without fear of offending.

Company Size
I don't necessarily care how big the company is, but I know the bigger it is, the more bureaucratic it gets. Small usually means more nimble. I like large companies because that's a lot of people to get to know.

Culture
Casual. Definitely casual. I've been spoiled the last 6 months...shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops to work everyday. I met a recruiter the other day and I actually had to wear (long) pants and a button-up shirt. Yuk. I like to dress up...just not every day.

Cursing. Have to have cursing.



More points if you add in a swear jar.



Even professional. I want to work with people who have Jedi skills. I want to work with Good Lazy people, not Bad Lazy.

Benefits
Health Insurance, 401k plans, vacation time...all of those are important. On site gym? WIN! Even though I fail to go, it's nice to have that option. That was one of the big selling points in moving to Tampa. WellCare had a massive (to me anyway) campus, weight room, basketball and racquetball courts. They even had a softball field.

The last place I worked had a great gym and a car wash guy that came every week or so (though I never partook).

Environment
This definitely crosses path with some of the other categories, but I decided to create a new one because I wasn't sure exactly where it fit.

By environment, I mean your desk set up. Must haves:
--2 or more 21 inch monitors
--kick ass desktop machine
--a very nice chair. If I spend a lot of time in that thing, in better be comfortable.
--Ergonomic keyboard. I've been using Microsoft's Natural Keyboard (the rounded one) since I started using a computer in 1996 or 1997. I even take it to work if they don't provide one. I left mine at the last place and sent a frantic email to the HR lady to retrieve it for me.

+1 if this is your setup.



Location
I don't want to work at home all of the time, but I do want to be close. Spending more than an hour on the road a day is a waste of time. Traffic sucks too. The past couple of months I would have baseball practice at 6:30 on Mondays and Tuesdays which means I had to leave the office no later than 5:15. I'd then swing by home, pick up LC in the driveway and off to practice we went. Thursdays were similar with tutoring at 6.

I'd also like to be able to work from home once in awhile. Some places never let you do it...I work a lot and I get into the zone at night typically. If you don't want to allow me to work from home once in awhile, why should I work at home at all?

More than anything I just want the flexibility.

So what's your perfect job? Anything like mine?

Free Oracle Developer/dba

There is a serious lack of work in the Tampa market and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Now, I've always wanted to do this, but was never in a position to do so financially...I'm still not, but something is way better than nothing.

I'm going to offer my services for free.

Not forever mind you, somewhere between 2 and 4 weeks. It is negotiable.

If it works out, i.e. you like what I can bring to your organization, I prove that I pick new systems up quickly and I fit in well with your team; and I like working in your organization, then you pay me for that time worked and I sign up full-time either as a permanent employee or some sort of contract.

If it doesn't work out, we part ways and no one is worse for wear. You get free work from me and I get to experience a new environment (i.e. meet new people, expand my network, etc).

You can view my resume here (permanent link up top coming soon).

Some basic highlights:
PL/SQL: Expert (I don't like that term)
DBA: Junior to Mid-level (or DBA in lowercase, "dba")
APEX: Worked with up to version 3.2, admittedly rusty, but passionate about the product.
Design: Love modeling data. Model just about everything in my head (in normal life). Use Visio extensively for visual representations. Experience with SQL Developer Data Modeler, ERwin, etc.
Documentation: Give me a wiki or something similar and I'll document just about everything that I do.

That's it. Contact info is on my resume or up top on the "email" icon.

It's now posted on craigslist as well.

Father, Husband, Employee, Coach, Tutor

I had been pondering a post on how impossibly busy I have been lately. You know, the 45-60 hours in the office, the 2 hours on the road back and forth, coaching a bunch of 6-7-8 year olds and tutoring someone in database concepts. And blogging of course.

It doesn't seem to have quite the punch now.

Here's what it would have looked like anyway...

Father
With all that has happened in the last couple of years, I still get to come home to people that like me no matter what. LC and his battle stories with the girls at school and Kate...well, she just is. Her smile lights up the room. The infectious laugh...the hugging (finally!)...she just makes my day.

Husband
Intentionally left blank.

Employee
Move along...nothing to see here.

Tutor
It's been about 4 weeks since I began tutoring. I thought I would post more on it, but I've been so busy with everything else that I just never go to it. That should change now though, at least for awhile.

There is nothing like having to communicate complex systems to those who don't know the first thing about databases. Where do you start?

Last week was especially difficult. We had to diagram some tables based on one paragraph of requirements. This was more inline with logical modeling as well, which I don't have a lot of experience with. Which means, you have to represent (as I understood it anyway) your relationships without use of an intersection table. WTF?

Coach
One of the best things in the world. If you ever have the opportunity to coach young children, take it! Yes, it's painful at times. Yes, it is like herding cats. Yes, they do not listen. <-- does that even make sense?

But...you can yell at them for an hour straight. I don't mean the jerk kind of yelling, I mean the fun, obnoxious kind of yelling. Whatever that is.

For whatever reason, I'm naturally loud. Amazingly, I get louder on the baseball field.

There is no better way to turn your day around than by yelling at a bunch of kids. The best stress-reliever of all time possibly.

Starting Over...Again.

On Friday I was told, "They're [things] just not working out..." and let go from my job. The job counter was up to a whopping 189 days though...which is encouraging. That was my longest un-interrupted stint of employment in 17 months.

On the surface, it looks terrible; there's no doubt about that. I cringe at my record over that time. Two firings, one layoff and one furlough. Ouch.

The first firing was self-inflicted. Not something I am proud of...I had interviewed, was offered and accepted a position with RevolutionMoney prior to that though, so you could say I was checked out or just looking for an easy escape. I still wish it had gone down differently but I can't change the past.

That self-inflicted would, combined with the most recent news, looks pretty bad for me as an employee.

Employee Oriented

Am I a team player?

Do I work well with others?

Am I a good employee?

Do I lie, cheat or steal?

Technical

Do I have technical skills?

How do I compare to my peers?

What is my skill level?

All perfectly valid questions for a potential future employer.

I should defend myself right?

I have no idea right now.

I think the best thing I can do right now is engage potential employers, answer any and all questions, as openly and honestly as possible, and hope for the best. I know the market isn't great right now...but I'll do what I need to do find a job.

I find myself envious of those who have been with companys for a long period of time. Amusingly, had I been a bit more patient, I would have probably found WellCare to be a nice home for awhile. I still have a lot of great friends from there I think mostly because they were my support system when Kate got sick.

I took the job at RevolutionMoney because it was a startup and offered an opportunity to do all kinds of really cool stuff. None of the "really cool stuff" came to fruition though and all of the people behind that push either left or were let go.

I had just gotten comfortable in my recent job, was in a bit of groove...but "things just weren't working out."

So I'm looking.

If you know anyone out there looking for a lazy Oracle developer/modeler/little dba, send them my way.

"They're just not working out..."

Yup, let's stop the clock.

189 days isn't so bad is it?



Read the timeline for more info on my brief stint in Tampa.

(Old) Social Media and Travis Page

Driving home on Wednesday listing to the local AM station, 970 WFLA, there was an announcement for the radio resumes and the most recent winner, Travis Page.

Travis then came on air, told us a little about himself and what he was looking for. I couldn't believe it when I heard Database Technologies.

Really? On the radio? I couldn't believe it.

When I got home I had to check this guy out. First thing I wanted to know, was he an Oracle guy or a Microsoft guy. Reading through his resume I found that he did have a little bit of Oracle, but he was obviously focused on SQL Server. Boo.

I had to give the guy credit though. I look(ed) for jobs through twitter, dice, monster, etc., pretty much all the places where you didn't have to talk. This guy used the radio. The radio isn't new, or shiny. Perhaps it can be shiny...but I digress.

So I dropped Travis a line telling him about tonight's SOUG meeting and encouraged him to attend. Sure enough he did.

I love that kind of dedication. I've tried to help people in the past only to see them ignore my advice.

So, if you're in the Tampa Bay area and looking for a junior developer, either Oracle or SQL Server (ugh), call Travis immediately for an interview.

We talked for a bit after the meeting and seems like a very genuine guy (plus, he showed up!). Besides his little SQL Server problem, I think a company could find good use out of a guy like him. Resourceful and dedicated are two very good traits to have in an employee.

If you missed it up above, you can find Travis' resume here.

Learning From Failure

I think I began reading The Daily WTF about 4 years ago. I don't miss or skip a post.

I remember this one time, probably about the time I began reading the site, I had to automate a process to move files from one server to another. Originally, I had tried to create a network drive (yes, it was Windows) on the database server so that I could just use a simple Java class to read the directory and then load the files via DBMS_LOB.

I had ultimately decided on a service, but I didn't know how to write one for Windows. Then I found the Java Service Wrapper which would allow me to write the guts in Java and then install it on Windows as a service. Perfect.

Now that I had that settled, I had to figure out how to detect when a file was read to be moved. I decided on a looping mechanism, to check every minute or so, to see if a file was available. It looked something like this (I'm a tad rusty, so bear with me):

package project1;

import java.util.Date;

public class Class1
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    Class1 class1 = new Class1();
    Date d = new Date();
    long l = d.getTime() + 1000000000;
    String s = String.valueOf( l );
    
    for ( int i = 0; i < l; i++ )
    {
      //some sort of MOD "wait" here, then check for the file
    }
  }
}

It wasn't pretty, but it seemed to work.

Then I got a call from the server admin.

SA: "You've got something running on this machine that's spiking the CPU."

Me: "Really? I can't think of anything."

SA: "Well, take a look and see if you can find anything."

Me: "10-4"

Sure enough, go into Task Manager and there's java.exe hogging up all the CPU. WTF?

I just ran this on my machine and you can see the CPU start to spike:


Off to Google to see what I can find. During my research, I found mention of a small method called Thread.sleep(long). So I replaced my brilliant add 1000000 to the current date with Thread.sleep(6000), or whatever equals 60 seconds. Problem solved.

A short time later I read a post on The Daily WTF about the same exact problem (I can't find the exact post for the life of me). The "victim" did the exact same thing I did. The solution was the Thread.sleep() call.

Me = FAIL

One more short example.

Over beers, a friend (see last entry) of mine and I were discussing the failure of the North Korean missile launch. I said, "Idiots." He said, "They're going to learn a lot more from that failure than they would have had it suceeded."

Spoken like a true engineer I guess.

The point? You learn by trying. You learn my doing. You learn by failing. Whether you realize it or not, you learn. (Well, some people don't, but that's another post). If you're reading here though, that probably means you have a passion for what you do. That means that you are trying. You are learning (maybe not here specifically ;).

Here's to trying and failing and hopefully trying and succeeding.

Burnout

After about 5 years of near constant activity I'm finally beginning to feel the effects.

In 2004 I started a business. I would work over 100 hours a week including my day job trying to get that thing going (which never happened). The birth of Kate in December of that year really changed my life. Pretty much every since Kate has been to keep our heads above water financially.

Early 2005 I took a different job. They (graciously) allowed me to work up to 60 hours at for time. That certainly help alleviate some of the financial pressure.

In the last quarter of 2006 I got a call from a recruiter saying I could make two and a half times that money in Tampa. I took it. Unfortunately the contract only ended up lasting about 5 weeks before I rolled into a permanent position. That was WellCare.

About 1 year ago to the day, I was fired from WellCare, ostensibly for blogging about their layoffs. Strangely, last week they announced another round of layoffs.

I then took a contract (temp to perm) position at RevolutionMoney. My hopes were very high as it was still in the start-up phase and they were looking to compete with the likes of Visa and MasterCard. Less than 2 months later though I was let go.

Five weeks after that I was brought back as a permanent employee. Only to be furloughed 3 months later and brought back 4 days later.

In April I resigned and took a position with a new company.

Oy...

Where's the burnout?

I think all of this has led to a bit of burnout. I use to come home and after the kids went to bed starting work on some other side project. Now I just catch up on all the movies I've missed over the past 5 years. The desire to do new and different things is there, just not the will. I get on the computer and start doing other, more trivial stuff.

Lately I'm trying to get Oracle installed on Ubuntu. Mostly screwed that up and will probably have to reinstall everything. I know enough to be very dangerous.

At work I've lost a bit of my fight. I'm still passionate, I just don't have the desire to argue my point all the time. Yes, I know, choose your battles and all that. Most of the fights I've had though are fundamental, like constraints. Without a position of authority (Lead or Architect or DBA or something), I'm not sure I can get others to listen.

It's not like I'm socially inept. I know how to get along and work with others. I just don't know how (anymore) how to change their minds. I've tried proving my ideas out, but it mostly doesn't matter. I'm up against something larger here.

So, I'm a bit burned out. I have not posted a technical article here in more than a month. That's frustrating.

Have you had burnout similar to mine? How do you handle it? What do you do to get over it?