Chaos Program

1: Why bother?

I resisted having a blog for years. I’m a writer and I thought I should spend my time writing poems and stories that I could at least try to sell, rather than blathering about myself. Who would be interested in that garbage besides my family anyway?

Stop agreeing with me and read a little farther! It turns out that I’m engaged in public activities. Some of my writing has been published now. Also, I’ve developed a couple of websites (soon to be live). One of those is through my full time job and will actively be seeking public interest and participation. So I thought it might be good for those projects for the developer to have a public portal for people to learn more about where that work is going and why it’s going there.

There’s also the likelihood that I’ll be needing a job one of these days and having some kind of public footprint might be helpful. Or it might not. But I guess I don’t want to go to work for someone who reads this blog and decides they hate me.

2: The work side

My current job is as a contract website developer in Xerox Innovation Group. That’s the product-oriented R&D side of Xerox (not to be confused with the blue-sky research folks at PARC).  At the moment, I can’t say much about what I’m developing for Xerox except that it is truly cool technology that has the potential to reshape the way people use the web. And print from it. Never forget the printing part. This is Xerox, after all.

They brought me in to this project because I know my way around Ruby on Rails. For anyone who doesn’t know, Rails is the most powerful and interesting web development technology to come along in several years. I’ve also done work in PHP and Perl, though I mostly used that last one in a previous incarnation as a system administrator. Yes, it’s been quite a varied career. I’ve also been a printer and a punch press operator. I didn’t like those jobs nearly as much as what I do now (which pays a bit more, too).

3. Writing

I have written two novels, 2.5 dozen short stories and a couple hundred poems, almost all within the science fiction/fantasy area. Never managed to get the novels published. One of them I used to have on an old website I kept up a few years back. Both have been rejected by many publishers, as have most of the stories. I have had more success with my poetry. This seems weird to me because for most of my life I hardly even thought of poetry. But a few years ago I started writing it seriously and now I love it. It’s like a whole new way of thinking about myself and what I do.  Lots and lots of fun.

As this blog develops. I’ll include links to my writing as it becomes available, just like I’ll include links to web projects I work on. Two, two, two careers for the price of one! (But only one of them comes even close to putting food on the table – and unfortunately it’s not poetry!)

4. education

Many years ago, I spent less than a year wasting a small scholarship at a good university where I majored in physics. But it was too soon after high school and I hated going to classes, doing homework, and everything else about education at that time. I ended up quitting.

Years later, after working a number of low paying jobs and raising a family, I decided to clean up the unfinished business of school. I went to Fingerlakes Community College part time and got an Associates Degree in Computer Information Systems and a certificate in Criminal Justice. While I was doing that, a strange thing happened. I found out that school wasn’t nearly the hideously painful experience I remembered. Actually, I loved it. So, instead of quitting after the AAS degree, like I had planned, I went on to get a Bachelor of Science from Empire State College. My major was Math, Science and Technology, specializing in Information Technology.

Still not done. I am currently working on a Master of Science degree  in Information Assurance through the excellent (accredited and NSA certified) online program at Capitol College in Maryland.

I doubt I’ll continue on to get a PhD. I’m a little burned out with school these days and the student loans are starting to climb to a level that doesn’t make me happy. But I won’t rule anything out at this point either.

5. Personal

No need to go into the details of my life. I’ll mention that I live outside Rochester, New York, as I have my entire life. I’ve been married for a couple decades now and plan on adding many more of those (decades, not marriages). It’s a good life.