My stories… tales… whatever…..

A few of you have commented from time to time, that there should be a book deal in writing about my life. I wanted to take a moment here to thank each of you who have done so.

Being paid, to write, about anything has been a life long dream of mine. Not so much because I’ve ever wanted the ‘fame’ that can go with that, but because I’d like to get paid (well) for doing something I love to do, write.

I’ve said, often, over the years, that one of the reasons I like being a software developer (oh, wait… I need to start referring to myself as a “software engineer” as I read today they make up to 5 times what I’m making) is that I’m getting paid to write.

Writing software is not all that different from writing anything else. There are language rules, most often called ‘syntax’, about the placement of words, punctuation and so on. There are also rules about the ‘characters’ (they’re called ‘variables’) in that, in most languages, you must introduce (define) them before you can use them later in the story (program).

Also, despite years of effort, and millions, maybe billions, of dollars in research, it’s still a very creative process. There have been huge studies, and resultant software packages aimed at removing the creative process and turn it into more of a science than an art.

Regardless, for the most part, the process remains, for the actual developer (sorry, “engineer”) a creative one. Yes, there’s been a ton of standardization, constraints, guidelines, rules and regulations imposed, mostly on a company by company basis, but all that has really been accomplished is making the maintenance process simpler due to a ‘standardized’ code base. Essentially making it possible for anyone who knows the language, to read the code easily, it’s just the language standards we take for granted in ‘English’ for example, applied to say Java, FoxPro, C# or COBOL.

With all of that being said, I still fantasize that eventually, someone will stumble across my musings…. Find something marketable in my style, and initiate a dialog with me that will culminate in a deal to write something, anything actually, for publication and profit.

I haven’t been around, and visiting all of your blogs as much as usual. There are a number of reasons… First, work has been very busy, but I hit both deadlines this week and managed to book almost 40 billable hours in 4 days… meaning I didn’t have to burn any PTO hours for the holiday!

Second, I’ve been working on improving and updating my ‘TimeClock” application.

It’s a small app, I initially wrote almost a decade ago when I would often be working for several different clients throughout the day. It allowed me to log the time I spent by client/project/task and produce a summary at the end of the week to generate the appropriate invoicing.

I’d all but forgotten about it until a few of weeks ago when I stumbled across a copy of it on a old hard drive.

So I ported it to VFP 8, cleaned up the interface, and added a report generator that produces the report in HTML, the report can also be exported to Excel if desired. I added some color shading for the different sections of the report, and a “colorset” maintenance utility to make picking and choosing the report colors a bit simpler.

I started using it on the job, and submitting my generated report as my weekly time summary to the project manager.

Interestingly, I’ve started getting requests from her, and some other folks in the company, for a copy for their personal use.

So, I’m curious, is there a demand out there for a small, stand alone time tracking system that sold for say under $50? Please let me know if you think so. If there’s interest, I’ll build a demo version and make it available for download to anyone who’s interested. The first 20 who download it and provide me with suggestions for improvements will get the full version, when it’s released, for free.

My point… I always do have a point… is that, sometimes, we get what we’ve wished for, just not in exactly the way we thought we would. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll end up being an author… but a software author. Instead of writing novels, I’ll build my little publishing ‘empire’ writing little useful applications that actually help folks with small tasks… Then again… maybe not!!

The difference is though… I’ll keep writing, both stories, and software, because I love doing it. I still enjoy working on, or building cars, trucks and motorcycles, despite being ‘out of the biz’ for over 20 years, I love it, so I still do it, despite the fact it no longer earns me any money!

Oh, for those of you who remember… I told you I had a picture of me, the Blue Max Funny Car, Raymond Beadle and some other folks in the winners circle at Indy. I scanned it the other day, and as promised, here it is.

From Left to right... I do not remember the name of guy on the far left, next is Raymond Beadle, Fred ‘Waterbed’ Miller, Mike Clark of Amalie Motor Oil, and on the far right, is a 22 year old “me”.

The pic above (even if you click here to see it enlarged) is the ‘small’ version, anyone who would like the ‘full sized’ version, it can be found here. They’re approximately 5 and 11MB respectively.

That’s about it for now… I hope you all had a great weekend, and that you’re spending as much of your time as you can, doing something you love to do. Remember, no one when faced with dying has ever wished they’d spent more time “at the office”.

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