Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

BC government in deep with HEU contract

canada.com: HEU vows to stay on 'protest line,' some Island schools go behind picket lines

School is cancelled tomorrow because the teachers will be respecting picketing by CUPE which is protesting the BC government's Back-to-work legislation that forces a 15% pay cut, longer hours and less job security for the HEU. This is something like the 7th union-busting, legislated labour agreement that this government has mandated.

I'm not a big fan of unions, but I think if we're going to have unions, then collective bargaining agreements should be made in good faith, otherwise, what is the point? Union dues are not cheap, so if it does no good it's a complete waste.

I honked in support of the HEU picketers as I drove past the Victoria General Hospital today on the way home from the bank.

Finishing what I started

I've wanted to talk about this on my weblog for well over two months, but the time wasn't right, until this week.

As I mentioned 11 days ago, our motivation for moving exceeded just being closer to Cyan's new school (instead of being 20 houses away and across the street, we're now next door).

So, why did we sell our beautiful custom-built house and move into a smaller, older house on a busier street? Two reasons.

1. We could get out of debt...

We were naughty spenders between '95 and '01 and have yet to dig ourselves out from that pile of bills. We've never missed a payment, except for when Netstruxr laid me off and I couldn't pay rent for a couple of months, but it was not a fun way to live, and it made us slaves to our creditors.

But now we are very lucky because we just happened to build on a street that ended up being beautiful and very in-demand in a hot real estate market. We did very well on the sale. We might have done better if we'd given it more time but we're happy with the result. We did well enough to buy a smaller house, pay off our debt (except for car payment and mortgage, which I consider acceptable liabilities to have at this stage of my life), renovate the new place, and have a chunk of change left over.

So about that chunk of change... reason number two!

2. I could finally finish my Computer Science degree!

Oh yeah baby! I left UVic in the summer of 1994 when I took a co-op job (internship) at Shell Canada in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. I sloughed off the project/report I was supposed to write because I decided I wasn't going back. They offered me a contract after my co-op work terms were over and I stayed there for nearly 3 years.

When we moved back to Victoria in '97 I hoped to take courses now and then, but our bills and spending habits were so bad I couldn't afford the time off or the tuition. Nor was I very motivated. Then we had children and built a house, and that pretty much eliminated any chance of going back. I've wanted to go back to school since '96, but I didn't talk about it much because it simply wasn't realistic... until now.

In September, I will start working part-time and return to UVic as a full-time student majoring in Computer Science! I have a long road ahead of me, but after so many years of self-destructive behavior, I finally believe I have the right attitude and enough willpower to see it through.

I have around 3 years of courses left.

So, why go back?

Many of my close friends and family already know what's going on. Just about everyone has been immediately supportive of our decision, but on occasion, people ask me why I'm going back... I'm good at what I do, I have a job, and I've preached for years that I couldn't care less about having "that piece of paper" (the degree), that what matters is skill and experience.

I suppose, after I finish my degree, I'll be proud of that piece of paper, because I will have truly earned it and truly respect the education I received, and I might even frame it and put it on a wall somewhere... but at the bottom of the frame will be a plaque that reads " This piece of paper is not why I went back to school."

So why go back now? That's easy.

I want to be better at what I do. I love Computer Science, and it drives me nuts how much of it I have not yet mastered and how many things I cannot do due to lack of knowledge. Like I tell my non-geek friends when explaining my motivation, I can use a database server, a web server, or an operating system, but I can not properly write one from scratch, at least not to my standards or industry standards.

Being limited like that is not acceptable to me. I want to grow in my profession, and to do that I need a lot more fundamental knowledge. I believe University is the best setting for me to learn these fundamentals.

Also, I want to finish what I started. I didn't appreciate education and the university experience when I was a kid, I was immature, took the world for granted and thought I knew enough, and didn't want to put the work in to get through school. It was getting harder and I wasn't used to school being a challenge, and my work ethic wasn't strong enough to get me through it.

I knowingly used my weak money management skills to put myself in a situation where I couldn't go back. I bought a small townhouse in Alberta while I was still doing my co-op term at Shell in Alberta, if you can believe it! I had a mortgage at the age of 19. Insane. That was a great excuse... that and how it was always my plan to move back to Alberta as soon as I could because it was where I wanted to live. Excuses excuses. I was running away from school because I couldn't handle it and didn't want it anymore. Period. That's the real truth. If I've ever told you any other reason, I was lying to you to protect my pride. I'm very sorry. I used to believe those excuses myself; I convinced myself those were the real reasons. Sure, it's true that I was refused a student loan even though my parents couldn't possibly afford to cover my education, but that's a pathetic excuse, one that would never stop me now, one that I would never accept from my children. In fairness to myself, it was an excuse I gave myself when I was very young and stupid, and I'm allowed to make mistakes, but I've perpetuated these lame excuses for a long long time, far longer than I should have.

Hey, these personal failures are hard to admit to, especially in public, but I'm through with giving excuses. I've had a million of them, but they're all bullshit. I feel like a thousand pounds is lifted from my shoulders... I wonder if this is how Catholics feel after confession?

Now the slate is clean. Excuses washed away. Money situation much improved. More mature and motivated, I am better prepared for this challenge and this important phase of my life.

My keystone, Cheryl

None of this would be possible without the complete support of my wonderful wife, Cheryl. Understandably, it wasn't a piece of cake to talk her into selling our house, which she loved so much and put so much energy into, and leaving the neighbourhood and neighbours that we loved so much, all so that I could go back to school. Hey, it's a selfish request, and I believe me, I know it. I do believe our family will be better off once I get this done, but it's still a lot to ask of someone.

Once I had Cheryl convinced that we could actually afford this, which was not easy (re: terrible money management skills) and that we could still own a home (Cheryl was very against renting, something I would have preferred only while I was going to school), Cheryl was on-board with the idea and we got the ball moving very quickly. Our house was sold less than a month after the decision was made!

I know I am very lucky to have such a supporting wife and family. Without them and my close friends I would have never matured to this point, and for that and a million other reasons I am eternally grateful.

Thank you Cheryl, Cyan, Xavier, Moms, Dads, Chuck, Shane, John, Justin and Steve. Together you form the keystone that holds me up.

Last but not least

I was be remiss if I did not also give Mark F. Murphy, my employer at Tyrell Software credit at this time. If he hadn't agreed to let me work part-time, none of this would have happened, at least not without finding a different job first, and that would have sucked big time. Thank you Mark, you are my liberty.

In Closing

This might be the longest weblog post I've ever made. Regardless, it's one of the most important and one I've spent the most time preparing. I am so pumped about our future.

Before I forget... I've got a lot of Math to re-learn over the spring and summer. I've found a ton of great Internet resources for Mathematics in the last couple of months, and now that our real-estate adventure is finally over I can turn my attention to them. If you know of any books or other resources for learning or re-learning Mathematics to prepare me for University, I would greatly appreciate you sharing those references with me.

I have to take Math 101 and Math 122 soon.

I also need to take CSc 230 as soon as possible. I'm looking forward to that course greatly, especially after following Duncan's weblog for so many years!

Sorry I can’t play right now

page 23 sentence 5 meme

Argh! I've already packed all of my books. Oh, no wait, I've got one, someone brought one of my old Peanuts books down from Cyan's room yesterday.

"HOW MANY TREES HAVE YOU WRITTEN DOWN?"

Resume-Driven Development

Daniel H Steinberg: Fragile Programming with RDD

(Daniel is a co-author of WROX's book about WebObjects)

I know a LOT of developers that practice RDD. Here in Victoria, where IT jobs have long been scarce, it's unfortunately been quite common to push for systems to be re-implemented from scratch using whatever the cool new technology-du-jour is so that one can get that tech on their resume.

Kirby Urner’s Python in the Mathematics Curriculum talk

When Kirby Urner was at the Plone Sprint I hosted last year, I had no idea of his history with Python and Mathematics. His work is amazing!

Today, Simon Willison linked to Kirby's PyCon 2004 talk, Python in the Mathematics Curriculum. Wow, I wish I had been there for the talk... I wonder if it was filmed or recorded.

Kirby's site, A Mathematical Canvas, part of the Oregon Curriculum Network, has tons of great information for someone interested in Computer Science and Mathematics.

SubEthaTrack – why didn’t I think of that?

SubEthaTrack - tracking documents shared in SubEthaEdit.

I wish I had thought of that, it's an obvious idea once presented! This is one of those days where light-bulbs will be flashing all over the world, innovators will be thinking of ways that this can be taken further.

Check out the Coding Monkey's chat document. It's an HTML document formatted with CSS. People can add stuff to do the document to participate in the chat, and read it using SubEthaEdit's live web preview window.

Looking back in a few years, if new ideas and ways of collaborating come out of this seed, this will be a historical day.

Thanks for the link Andre!

Selling most of my D&D collection

I'm selling most of my D&D book collection on eBay. Here's the link to the auction:

D&D Rulebooks, Modules, Accessories - HUGE D&D lot

Bid high, bid often!

April is busy, May and June will be too

Geez, nearly two weeks have past since I posted here. I've tried to post a couple of times, but my site was down for backups.

It's been a really busy month so far, at work and at home, and as far as home stuff goes, it's only just begun.

I'm moving after next weekend! Yeah, we sold the house we built in 2002. Once we're in our new house I'll explain what motivated us to move, yet again.

One side-benefit of the move is we'll be living right next door to the elementary school Cyan is going to next year. I remember living right next door to school in grade 5 and 6, it was awesome being so close. Playground and fields so close, and I suppose I got to sleep an extra 5 or 10 minutes because of it too.

The best thing was probably going home for lunch every day and watching the Flintstones with my Dad, who was at home for much of that period with a back injury. I got my first computer for Christmas in grade 6, so I probably spent my lunch hours playing video games or hacking after that.

Tear-off menus rule

I just wanted to get this off of my chest. If I could only have one new feature in Mac OS X 10.4, I would want:

- EOF for Cocoa/ObjC (duh, okay, two features, this one goes without saying but it trumps everything by a million miles and I wouldn't want anyone thinking I don't care about it anymore, because I do!).

- Tear-off menus like in OpenStep/Rhapsody.

I really really miss tear-off menus. They are so darn handy.

There, I said it, and I feel better.

Quitting in disgust

Rafe: Quitting in disgust

You don't have to be financially secure to quit a job in disgust... I've done it twice, and I wasn't financially secure either time.

Granted, once it was because I was disgusted with my salary and I immediately moved to a higher paying job, but the other time I left myself unemployed and scrambling for work. I was in a situation where I was asked to do something I felt was unethical, and rather than harm my integrity, reputation and conscience, I quit the job. It severely screwed my family financially (we're still digging out of that mess actually), but it was the right thing to do and I don't regret it at all.

Nothing I control is worth more than my integrity and I'll sacrifice a lot to protect it.

I'm not suggesting that Rafe quit his job... heck if I quit my job every time I was "disgusted" at something going on at work I would have stopped looking for new jobs ages ago. But sometimes, the level of disgust necessitates a change regardless of the consequences.