I hate the idea of death, but find it fascinating.

Is there a concept more powerful or omnipresent in this life?

Its feared and celebrated.  Depressing and liberating.

Death can represent both success and failure.  The best and worst outcome.  The goal. The beginning or the end.

The context is important.  Its one man’s comedy and another’s statistic, source of income or devastation.

Death is the culmination of bad choices, decisions or misinformation.  The result of poor timing and bad luck.  Weak genes.  Unhealthy environments.  Stupidity.  Time.  Inaccurate plans.  An act of mercy or violence.  A lapse in judgement.  An ounce of indecision.  A mistake.  A sacrifice.  A misunderstanding.

A time stamped on a piece of paper or a list of names and faces in the paper.  A short summary of people assumed to love you in life and miss your presence in the future.  A sentence describing the role in society that defined you.  Its a stone representing the range of time you occupied Earth.  Pictures serve as the proof.  Stories of the good times.  Memories are shared, as time passes, less frequently and only a few survive.

Its spiritual. Physical. Emotional. Even Magical.

Death is motivating.  It moves people to do amazing things.  Architecture. Religion. Music & art. Its a driving force in science and medicine. Politics and punishment. Finance and astronomy.

It bends our perception of the world.

Its the focal point and the finish line.

Sometimes its easy to forget, that life is cooler than death.

Advice I should follow:

Always treat other people as if it is their last day on earth.

After months of attempting to solve my strange sleeping patterns, I mentioned it to the doctor.

“Do you want me to write you a script for Ambien?  There is a generic.”, the doctor asked me.

I have no clue.  I’ve never taken a sleeping pill.  He’s the doctor.  This question blows my mind temporarily, but I accept the invite and we’re off.

Ambien is great.  I get sleepy, lay down, fall asleep, 7 hours later…. I wake up.  Perfect.

Prior to this miraculous $5/per month co-pay, I would lay down, roll over twelve times, get up, repeat for an hour or three.

There is side-effects to mention.  The “I get sleepy” part is all over the map.  Sometimes it equates to me stumbling around my apartment.  Other times its me sitting in the recliner giggling about something that happened in the third grade that I can’t quite communicate to anyone else.   The next day I try to piece together the final 30 minutes of the night before, its a fun game.

Last night, I decided to start the 30 minute countdown about 10pm.  Pop an ambien.  Check my email for the last time (its a compulsion).

Donnie ______ has added you as a friend on facebook.

I had watched a show on LSD earlier that evening and they had described the paranoia, anxiety and hallucinations that were experienced in bad trips.  I was trying to think of ways to verify that I was awake and aware of reality.  Holy shit.  I think I am insane, at this moment.

Here’s the thing.  Donnie and I grew up really good friends.  He chose one path, I took another.  I always hoped that we’d both grow up and we’d both make it out alright.

Three years ago, I mentioned his name to a mutual friend.  His response:

“You didn’t hear?  Donnie is dead.  He got decapitated in a car accident a year ago.”

Our lives had diverged, but all of my boyish hopes were crushed in my living room by a slightly tactless explanation of how the life of a friend, ended.  Over the past couple years, I searched to validate that rumor, but came up empty.

This morning, I wake up 7 hours later, as scripted by the generic ambien.  I walked to the kitchen and poured a bowl of cereal.  Piecing together the final 30 minutes of the previous night…

Either. there is LSD in generic ambien or a dead guy added me as a friend on Facebook.

First of all, I can’t wait to be debt-free.  It’s a slow process, but I love having something to work towards.

I frequently point people to checkout an amortization calculator when discussing mortgages and buying homes.  They have shown me how little I knew about personal finance, debt and money in general.  Playing around with loan calculators saved me about $10,000 on student loans.  That little win motivated me to try and be less ignorant about money and do some research.

So, here is a rough (enlightening) example of just how much information can be learned about future decisions from one of these things.

Magically, your total costs equaled exactly $200,000 for a new home.  You have no down payment and your lender isn’t making you get private mortgage insurance because of it (aka, this is not a “real” scenario, only for simplicity sake).

Your only decision is choosing a 15 year or 30 year repayment plan.

30 year

Lets assume 5.2% (from bankrate.com)

$1098.22/mo

Not too bad.

Where are we after 5 years?

Interest paid: $50,863.61

Balance: $183,872.08

Five years & $68k later, we now own about 8% of our $200k home.

15 year

a slightly lower rate: 4.5% (bankrate.com)

Our minimum payment increases to $1530/mo ($432 more than 30 year).

Lets see where we are at after 5 years of paying.

Interest paid: $39,980

Balance: $146,651

The obvious thing, is more money was paid.

$83,329 ($3000/year more).

BUT

$11k less was spent on interest. And now you own 27% of your $200k home, instead of just 7%.

Take a quick peak at the last line of the amortization schedule.

On the 30 year mortgage, you will have paid $395,359.83 for a $200,000 home.

15 year: $275,397.58 for the same $200,000 home.

The end result?  Spending an extra $432/month will save you approx $120,000 by not eating out as much, canceling the movie tier on your cable package and brewing your own coffee. If you end up with a larger surplus than $432, you will end up saving another $5-6k for every additional $100 you add to your monthly mortgage payment.

Disclaimer:  I don’t know anything about personal finance.  I’m just trying to learn.  This entire post is only highlighting certain interesting points in time of the report the amortization schedule shows us.  Don’t mistake this post as advice.  By all means, stimulate the economy, bitch about your debt, overdraft fees and your 11th maxed out credit card.

A few years ago, I was ready to sign over my life for a home with no knowledge beyond “how much do I pay per month”.   I’d be really pissed off knowing what I know now, if I had made that mistake.

Yesterday, Dave Hayes asked me, “what 5 apps would you say you spend the most time in”.

He was planning on showing me screenshots of those 4 or 5 apps in a theme for gnome-shell.

I just started listing the apps I always have running:

• firefox
• pidgin
• terminal
• rhythmbox
• tomboy

At this point, I realized “5 is impossible” to limit myself to.

• ssh
• chrome
• git/gitg/cola
• xdebug
• firebug
• apache
• php
• postrgesql

“Thats the bare essentials”, I said.  But wait, I’m a liar. So I continued.

• perl
• patch
• meld
• vim
• OpenOffice spreadsheet
• rsync
• htop

Then, there is the proprietary ones:

• gmail
• google calendar
• activestate komodo ide
• google reader
• vmware server / virtualbox

Don’t ask the guy with adhd to list his most used apps.  Then, I started wondering which ones I could live without.  If my computer was on fire and I had the only copy in the world of my favorite apps and all the backups were on clicking seagate 7200.11 hard drives and I could only save five apps, what would they be?

I just re-read that “sentence”.

Diagnosis: Insane.

Last week, I won a satellite into the  $10,000 WSOP Main Event, held in Las Vegas, July 5-18.

I was a happy dude.

One “problem”.  I had $10,000, mostly in $20 bills, that I had to successfully walk to my car with.  At midnight.  On a popular, downtown strip. With no bag or coat.

So, I stuffed the brick of cash in my back pocket and began the hurried walk towards my car.  I made it about 10 yards out the door before a man walks up to me and introduces himself.

“Hi. My name is Jonathon ____… I am obviously homeless”.

I hate homeless people.  I have many preconceived ideas about the homeless, regardless of how valid they might be.  Typically, I am of the opinion that giving money to them sustains their current situation, instead of provoking them to seek the proper help for a longterm solution.

I don’t want to enable addicts to be addicts.  Or bums to be bums.  I love people, but I am not the person to solve their problems.  If we all said no, in my convoluted, uneducated mind, I feel we would be pushing them further down the path towards someone who can treat their issues.

But, here I am, standing in an alley. Alone with Jonathon.  With a huge wad of money in my pocket.  A million thoughts went through my head at this moment.  Does he know what I have in my pocket?  Is he going to rob me?  How should I react if he tries?  Should I offer him money or tell him that I have none?

My normal reaction in this situation is usually: “I don’t carry cash”.  This is usually the truth and an easy escape from the real “reasons” I insist on refusing to fund their current status.

But, I suck at lying.  When I lie, I feel like it is obvious for others to read.  And that is an uncomfortable situation I try to avoid.  So, I’m very likely to tell the truth in nearly all situations.  This gets me in trouble a lot, but saves me from preserving half-truths and juggling who I told what, etc.. etc. in the long run.

As he was finishing his polite introduction, I pulled a $20 out of my pocket and handed it to him.  He stopped mid-sentence and looked down at the bill I just handed him.  His reaction was one of shock.  His eyes lit up with excitement.  “Are you sure?”, he asked me.

Before I could answer Jonathon gave me the biggest hug, lifting my feet off the ground.  It caught me totally off-guard.  All I could think was , this homeless dude smells like dryer sheets.

“Thank you so much”, he repeated.  “I can get something to eat”.

Was he really homeless? Was he actually headed off to buy drugs?  Did he swindle me out of $20?  Was he actually hungry?

For the first time, I realized his motivations and intentions don’t matter to me.  For my motivation for giving him $20 was not pure, either.

I preemptively handed over money because I didn’t want a confrontation.  It was the most convenient strategy for me to avoid negative outcomes.  My act of generosity was rooted in self-preservation.

That night I won a $10,000 WSOP main event seat.  I was thrilled to death.  It’s an opportunity I’ve dreamed of since I was old enough to enter a casino.  I’ll fly to Vegas, buyin to the tournament I’ve waited 7 years to play.  Hopefully I’ll create some great memories and maybe even win a little bit of money.

But, a hug from a homeless man named Jonathon is what I will remember the most.

My cold hearted nature towards people I don’t know melted instantly in a moment of my own selfishness.

If I accidentally win a WSOP main event, a homeless man named Jonathon might find out how grateful I am to have met him.

For 20 plus years, I was unpredictable.

I would seek out opportunities to deliver at the last minute.  Stay up for 3 days doing an entire semester’s worth of work right before the deadline.  I lived for this sensation.

Unpredictable and spontaneous.  I thought those were personality traits, but now I realize they were symptoms.

Life, for me, is so much better when I am in a structured, predictable pattern.  I’m at my worst mentally and emotionally when I don’t exercise or after eating poorly for a few days.  I used to think that those suggestions were just some programmed response doctors were trained to say.

Waiting until the last minute is still a compulsion, but I try to avoid acting on it.  I was creating stressful situations where there was none.  Concocting a competition to win or an obstacle to overcome, just to be in stress.  I needed that pressure, like a drug addict.

For years, I’ve been avoiding the battles that matter by starting fights that don’t.

Doing the easy things, ignoring the difficult ones.

This path left me unfocused and giving less than my best with no margin for error.

Now, I see that “margin” as what matters the most.  Giving yourself the flexibility to fail is liberating.  That margin is where learning happens.  That little cliche describes the freedom to be creative.  Its all the crumpled up pages of sketch paper in the artists trash can.  All the B-side tracks that never leave the recording studio. Turkey sandwiches for dinner after the 2 hour experiment  in the kitchen didn’t yield anything that looked remotely close to the picture in the cook book.

Imagine a world where you only get one chance to get it right with everything that you do.  Its counter to human nature.

Failure isn’t always good, but when there is room for it in your life, it represents the potential for something positive in the future.

Having a gameplan. Getting things done.  Learning.  Failing.

I’m done rationalizing my skill of failing.  Thanks for reading.

In my younger years, I viewed a lot of best practices, standards, processes, procedures and documentation as superfluous and corporate annoyance.  Part of it was my inexperience working in diverse teams.   I was also dealing with small projects, that had little to no longterm maintenance requirements.

With age and larger, longterm projects and added collaboration requirements, my opinion changed.

Managing scope creep.  Mitigating the unexpected. Minimizing the effects of adding a single feature, another developer or environmental (software) change.  Testing.  Security.  Release management. etc, etc…

Add customers, marketing and business goals into that mix and you have a lot going on.

I often see employers advertising job opportunities for web people who think “outside of the box”.

Besides being one of the most overused clichés and inaccurate replacements for “creative”, it is also a bad ideal to have for a web professional in 99.99% of the cases. There are too many constraints and variables for most teams to work effectively when they can’t generally predict what page other members are on.

Unless “thinking outside of the box” means, “constantly analyzes, learns, relearns, and creatively produces the next iteration with the goals in mind”, look for people in or around the box.

You can’t.

“Years of experience” only implies that one has had the exposure and opportunity to learn, refactor and progress.   It isn’t a measure of success and understanding.

Especially when you are referring to software developers, years do not equate to increased skill level.

In a phone interview once, I was asked the question:

How many years of XML experience do you have?

• None.
• 1-3.
• 3-5.
• More than 5

I couldn’t contain myself. I laughed.

Who keeps inventory of every piece of knowledge like that? Fun trivia, I guess.

I know so many web developers that can say, “I’ve been doing this for ten years”, that are working the same way they did ten years ago.

I know dozens of poker players that can say “I’ve been playing this game for thirty years”, that get crushed by studious players who started the game a few months earlier.

Your current skills have an expiration date.  You can either actively develop them or insulate your spoiled perceptions from criticism.

My suggestions?

• Find humility
• Get a role model
• Read a book

My goal was to create 2 months of content on this site to motivate bofe to resuscitate his personal blog.

I struggled through it, at times, with some less than coherent content.  But, relative to my goal, I was successful.

After a brief media timeout, I intend to resume writing for this domain.  I need to get reorganized and set some new goals.  Without some metric for measuring success, regardless of how trivial it may be, I never feel like I achieved anything.

This site needs some long term objectives.

• Grow an active readership of 100+ users
• Develop a consistent content theme
• Post three times a week for a year

I will have to consider where I am taking things, but until then, frequent random posts is the status quo.

I would like to make website reviews a weekly post.  Craig tells me no one cares about my opinions on religion, politics and the meaning of life, even though I know I’m fully qualified to disseminate the truth.  So, I will keep those to a minimum.

What do the other four readers of this site want to hear from me?

I like to eat.

I am downtown St Louis a lot.

Does this make me qualified to suggest places to eat in downtown St Louis?

Of course.

Mango Peruvian Cuisine

I just tried this one for the first time and I will definitely be going back.  The service was a little slow, but it was really amazing food.

Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse

I know its a chain, its expensive & you can’t exactly eat there for lunch.  But, its so good.  I mean, steak with butter.  Sweet potato casserole.

I’d wear a Ruth’s Chris t-shirt ever day if they’d deliver sweet potato casserole to my office for lunch.

Lucas Park Grille

It’s a really cool atmosphere.  I haven’t tried much of their menu, but everything I have tried was promising.  It’s also right next door to my favorite place to eat, so if I’m in the neighborhood, they usually lose out to sushi.

Wasabi Sushi Bar

I’m a sushi noob, but I like everything I’ve tried at Wasabi.  Spider roll and dragon roll, especially.  There menu is really easy to order from, with a lot pictures. Perfect for novice sushi eaters.

Sen Thai Asian Bistro

I wish I could tell you that everything on the menu is good, but I only order Drunken Noodles with Chicken every time I go there.  I would eat it for every meal, every day if it wasn’t such a trek or near Wasabi.

Other places I like to eat downtown:

• SanSai Japanese Grill
• Planet Sub
• Rooster

Places I’d like to try:

• Pappy’s Smokehouse
• Harry’s Downtown
• Kemoll’s
• J Bucks

Place I wish existed downtown:

AUTHENTIC MEXICAN CUISINE.  Zuzu’s, the only mexican place within walking distance open during lunch hour, is pathetic.

I would even settle for a Qdoba.