The Ghost Brigades is the sequel to John Scalzi's Old Man's War.  Scalzi has immediately become one of my favorite authors.  I read Old Man's War very quickly and really loved it.  No surprise that I immediatly picked up this one.  What is a surprise is that I actually pre-ordered it.  I've never done that before.  And at the expense of getting ahead of myself, I am going to pre-order The Last Colony coming out next year.  I may even pre-order The Android's Dream, which is not an OMW series novel, but comes out next month.

The Ghost Brigades is not quite a sequel in the traditional sense, where the protaganist from the original book goes on to new things, but a continuation of the universe featuring some of the supporting characters.  The central plot follows Jared Dirac, the cloned body and mind of traitorous Charles Boutin who is on of the CDF's top scientists, in his mission to discover why Boutin betrayed mankind.  Tension is built through control of Dirac and questioning whether he too will defect.  Our OMW Hero's interest, Jane Sagan from the first book is key to Diracs control and we are treated to a glimpse of the Special Forces perspectives as wholly cloned, without childhood, killing machines through her experiences.  The Ghost Brigades reveals more of the OMW universe in a much more detailed and darker way as is fitting moving from a newbie infantry perspective in the first book to a more "informed" viewpoint of the professional having known nothing else.

Again, Scalzi rocks!  I did not enjoy this one quite as much as the first, although I would say this was a better read and a more matured rendering.  I think I really liked the first one more because I was not expecting to be blown away, where I was with the second.  If you fashion yourself a Sci-Fi fan, this is a must read.

Note:  I finished this book a while ago.  Due to blogging difficulties, I am trying to catch up with the highlights from the past.  Expect more soon.

This morning starts the last week here at the job.  I started here in July 2000 as a temporary gig until I could find something more suitable.  A combination of good people and lazy, more the latter until this year, caused this to be the longest company position of my career.  Also, it was the least diversified.  In 6+ years, I was a WebMaster, WebMaster TeamLead, and Web Engineer - eCommerce.  In comparison, my last formal job ran exactly 4 years and I was a CBT programmer, Network Manager / Systems Administrator, UNIX administrator, the telcomm admin backup, and website designer.  I am moving on to a company where I can be a bit more of everything.

It is funny how free one can feel with a simple change of status.  Short-Timers Syndrome is very real.  A few people last week have commented that I seem much happier than normal, despite my efforts to keep the news on the down-low.  Equally surprising is the rapidity of the news flow.  People come up to me and comment about my departure that have no reason to know.  It's nice to know that despite my reputation, I will be missed by many people.  After all, GP swears my job title should be re-labelled:  "Frank".

Linked through Cox & Forkum:  Conspiracy Theorists calling themselves "Truthers" demonstrated at the WTC site on Sept 11.  Also see the 9/11 photo posts at the blogsite TiffanyCuffLinks.  I especially love the signs suggesting that WTC was brought down on purpose with demolition.

Now I have been called many things from naive to fascist.  Many times by people who don't really understand the meaning of the works they use.  (Look up fascism in a reliable source before accusing someone!  No, wikis don't count.)  Furthermore, I never claim to understand everything that is going on; at least I hope the government is keeping some things classified to protect necessary assets and to minimize unnecessary panic.  Yes, I admit, the last bit is something of a sticky wicket.  However, how can anyone cleave to an irrational theory with no evidence especially when it flies in the face of other evidences and apparent facts?  Sure, everything we know can be fabricated, but to what end?

Things were different a thousand years ago when the exposure of mistruths was nearly impossible.  Then the populous was easily led and frequently, if not always, was.  Try not to notice historic Catholicism in this argument, it may just upset you.  But today, with rabid reporters and loads of documentation easily obtainable, it is arguable that anything can be hidden very long.  And the catastrophic consequences of revelation of misleading will destroy those involved.

Or so I've been told.

After 6+ years, it has finally come time to move on.  I turned in a letter of resignation to my boss JF after lunch.  I did give the company a few days to come up with a counter, but after dwelling over the reality of the situation over the weekend, I made a judgement call.  Even if they countered at the same rate, they are still short.  I won't detail the pros and cons, but even just monetarily, old is less than new.

It is with heavy heart that I abandon my current project; it has been phenomenal.  I will especially miss the guidance, instruction and motivation of GP.  And TB has become a fixture of working life long ago.  TC, or CT, and his brand of Crazy will be missed, but he's a consultant and not long for this gig.  LE, WG, JR, JP, CF(!) will all be missed.  Damn, what a downer....

But!  On to better things.  While the timing is inconvenient, this is an opportunity that I have been waiting for a long time.  The near 25% raise don't hurt either!  And nobody said I can't come back if it doesn't work out!  I'd prefer to take the team with me though.

Yesterday we were out at lunch and stopped at the bank drive-thru.  Below is the site that greeted us:

"So what", you say.  Notice the red warning sign on the bottom left of the glass.  No, not the phone number, the international sign of No Guns! 

Does this work?  It must, because why else would it be there?  Besides, in a "Here's your sign" sort of world, some idiot probably tried to rob a bank from the drive-thru!  "Hey," the robber must have thought, "I don't have to get someone to drive the getaway car, I can do it myself using the drive-thru!"  Do you think he was surprised when the girl just walked away and called the police?  "Hey!  Come back!  I'm not finished, yet.  You haven't heard my demands!  Come on...."

I guess international symbols are useful!  I am going to make a few for myself, now that I know they are effective.  Stay tuned....

BTW, the above picture was altered in only one way:  I pixelated the name of the teller, she just works there, it's not her fault.

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror, one of my favorite blogs, recently posted his list of Programmer's Bill of Rights.  While I completely agree with his enumeration, I think he overstates things a bit.  The list, editing out the links, is below:

1. Every programmer shall have two monitors
2. Every programmer shall have a fast PC
3. Every programmer shall have their choice of mouse and keyboard
4. Every programmer shall have a comfortable chair
5. Every programmer shall have a fast internet connection
6. Every programmer shall have quiet working conditions

I would add to that the ability to alter or modify my workstation in order to make it more productive to my style of programming.  Not trash the system or make if vulnerable to exploits, of course; but to allow me to load any little utility that I need to make coding easier, faster, or cooler.  I will get into some of these utilities in a later post.

I don't think it's our right to have these things, but the employers obligation to provide them.  Follow me here for moment:  It is my duty to do the best coding I can do given the tools I have.  That includes clear requirements, necessary hardware/software, and decent working conditions.  However, if my employer wants to get the greatest amount of productivity out of me, the above conditions should be met.  If they wish to pay me for substandard conditions, they should expect substandard output.

As GC says, If you go out and hire the greatest distance hauler you can find in order to guarantee the delivery of goods between LA and NY, you don't give him a pickup truck to do it with.

I am fortunate; after six years, I finally have a decent system:

• A 21" Viewsonic Gfx monitor with a 17" Viewsonic sidekick
• Dual CPU 3.4GHz Xeons with 2GB RAM
• Crap keyboard, but I bought me a MS Wireless Laser 5000 mouse
• Grabbed this comfy chair my first week and never let it go
• Stupid fast Internet (OC style)
• Could be quieter, but has been much worse.

So I am pumping out some great code.  At least I am not wasting any significant amount of time trying to coax my system into doing what it's supposed to be doing.

Now that everything is working OK, I am going to start retrofitting old posts.  So you may see some older posts showing up previous to the first one here now.  Don't be alarmed, it's OK. 

There are still a few things left to do:

• Create a "bridge" for individual posts.  Each post needs its own page for compatibility reasons.
• Create a categories list.
• Publish the blogrole.
• Continue to adjust the CSS.
• Create a real front page to utilize all of these features.

That's all work.  I'll do it later...

I have been laboring through setting up Custom Attributes and automatic validators in C#.NET.  It's very cool stuff, and as explained to me by my far more experienced lead, going to make our downstream efforts vastly simplified.

I was bashing at the keyboard aimlessly over this when I happened upon this article:  
   Attributed Programming in .NET Using C#
which has really helped me a great deal.  If you are interested in building custom attributes for business object entity classes, and you should be, check it out.