innertracks

Racknerd VPS running Caddy serving a Hugo generated static site. Site and content are created/edited in Emacs and rsynced to server. Took the default Hugo generated theme and tweaked it to my tastes. Forget where I sourced the original CSS I used as a starting point.

https://www.hextxt.com

I switched from IT oriented work to being a real estate broker a few months ago. Start going to open houses. When the hosting broker isn't busy ask them about their career, what they like best/least about the job, etc... I found everyone was open to sharing. You can get a feel for the cultures at the different brokerages in your area by doing this too.

No background in real estate other than as a client! I've been doing software consulting locally for a number of years. Prior to that I was doing database related development. (Warehouse design, ETL, and analytics.)

In case anyone might be considering career options some semi-random background and bits of my thought process:

I haven't been getting any traction on the tech side locally as much as I enjoy the engineering and problem solving. So I started looking inside myself for assets/skills and limitations as well as around my community for where to find the opportunities.

My basic questions became: What can I do without being concerned about my age (in my 50s as of last year) and have high levels of autonomy regarding scheduling my time? Where is the money flowing locally? How do I put myself in the position of being a revenue center instead of a cost center?

What do I bring to the table? Computational thinking, problem solving, and picking up processes and systems fast. (Seems to help quite a bit with following the paper trail in a contract.) My demonstrated non-tech assets/skills (Argentine Tango instructor, math and software tutor, flight instructor) include connecting with people and being very calm in stressful situations.

As far as age goes, a number of people are real estate brokers well into old age. It's a great retirement career from what I am seeing.

Locally, real estate has been strong relatively speaking for a number of years. Seattle and Vancouver BC home prices are making my town very attractive as an alternative. Especially for those who can telecommute.

So I knew I could quickly learn the systems and processes of being a broker. I have the personal attributes/skills to connect and work with clients. As long as I am willing to learn from role models doing business successfully how I want to do business, in time I will be successful.

Plus, working under established brand/company has been very nice.

Considering all of the above learning how to be a successful real estate broker made sense for me. Now I can explore areas like infosec and cryptanalysis for fun. No pressure to monetize.

Just started my new career as a real estate broker north of Seattle. Programming can go back to being mostly a hobby.

The Airship to Orbit concept [1] caught my attention a while ago. There's something rather elegant about floating one's way to (almost) orbit.

[1] http://www.jpaerospace.com/

From experience in the Seattle area, if you are in the USA you can get yourself passes for state and/or federal parks. In Washington state for example with a Discover Pass ($30 annual fee) you can park overnight for I believe up to two weeks. Not sure about the federal parks. Much cheaper than motels and no harassment from law enforcement. You're just camping! Move around as needed.

Edit: pass fee.

Been down in the deep depression pit of darkness myself. Your career isn't worth losing your life.

There's lots of good advice in these comments. Don't make any final decisions in your current state of mind. Seriously. Seek help out of the darkness. Finding a therapist who is a good fit may take some doing.

For some great perspectives:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/

http://theancientwisdomproject.com/

When I was a teenager in the early 80s I both learned to fly (eventually becoming a flight instructor and charter pilot) and learned to program. There was definitely a synergy between the two. My systems perspective was formed in an environment where decisions managing relatively complex interactions with the physical world have serious consequences in a matter of a few minutes or sooner.

Emotionally IT/programming haven't been nearly as satisfying as successfully managing a flight in adverse or challenging circumstances. Bush runways, unexpected weather changes, etc....

How interesting. I'm learning about healthy emotional boundaries. In the past there have been times I've been so synced up with another person's emotional state I thought their emotions were my own! Practicing dialing down my sensitivity has been a big help.

Location: Seattle Area

Remote: Yes.

Willing to relocate: Short term, project based. Happy to travel.

Technologies: Application Security, Drones, Python, Pandas, SQL, Lisp, Emacs, Linux, FAA Commercial Pilot License

Résumé/CV: http://www.wmecole.com/p/my-resume.html , https://github.com/wmecole

Email: [email protected]

SEEKING WORK - Remote (I live in the Seattle Area)

Contract or project based Information Security positions. Happy to travel up to 30%.

Enthusiastically transitioning to Information Security! I'm having fun working through Cryptopals with Python using Pandas. Learning how to use the tools in Kali distro in my lab is a blast!

Also interested in situations related to drones. I have my FAA commercial pilot license.

People Skills: Very high emotional intelligence, service oriented, excellent client engagement skills.

Technical Skills: Wordpress, Python, and SQL skills. Background supporting Wordpress consulting clients, small business application support, incident response, health care DBA and analytics.

email: [email protected] github: https://github.com/wmecole blog: http://wmecole.com

Some improvement did come with age. Perspective is amazingly helpful.

Along the way though I was able to find things that helped very noticeably. Some were physical, some were mind related, some were social, etc...

Bits and pieces that when put together did make a difference. Learning to take care of myself and remember to continue doing those things that were healthy for me has probably been a benefit of age as well.

The pieces of my puzzle: Therapy, hypnotherapy, dance (Argentine Tango), exercise, sleep, meditation, hydration, light levels, type of work, healthy relationships.

This was huge: Someone pointed out how I loved myself enough to be willing to destroy myself with such violence. Quite a shift in perspective! The realization of that love for self helped me switch to an amazingly hopeful resourceful place. The shift is difficult to describe though very real for me.

EDIT: Added to the puzzle pieces list.

Please do not ever give up.

7.62x39 was going to be my bullet of choice. 10 years or so of depression was enough. Until I saw my 3 year old daughter down the hall while I was heading to the closet to get the rifle. In that moment, I chose to endure the pain for her. Not that I didn't think about it again, many times, over the years.

A friend happened to call a few days later. He convinced me to schedule a doctor's appointment that day. Tip: The receptionist will find a slot the same day when you tell them you had to give your guns to a friend just in case. Be honest with them.

Sleep, light, medication,therapy, nutrition, hydration, friends you can call. Figuring it all out can be complex. Getting help is vital so keep looking until you find the help. Finding the right therapist may take a while.

It took me almost 10 years before I stopped having suicidal thoughts after my near miss. Another 5 years before I figured out one of the main reasons for what I was experiencing. Nearly 25 years total of the pain of depression because I figured I could handle it myself.

I was wrong.

Get the help.

Not long ago I discovered backups don't do any good if you delete them. The incident went down while I was wiping out my hard drive to do a fresh install of Fedora. I believe what happened may have been due to sleep fatigue.

Everything is a bit hazy. At one point in my wandering on the command line I found the mount point for my external backup drive. "What's this doing here?" and decide to remove it.

At some point I woke up in a panic and yanked the usb drive off the my laptop. Heart pounding. "Oh shit."

I actually felt like I was going to get sick. Tax records, client contact info, you name it, all gone. Except, basically, the pictures of my kids, mozilla profile, and my resume files.

While I reconstructed some of the missing files there a bunch that would be nice to have back. All of the business records though have had to be reconstructed by hand. By the next day I did realize I really only cared about the pictures of my kids in the end. And those were somehow saved from my blunder.

Work flow change: backup drive is only connected to laptop while backups are being made or restored. Disconnected at all other times. A third backup drive for backups of backups is on the todo list.

Noted. That sounds good. Thanks!

Just found out I didn't get the job. Gave me solid feedback on strengths and weaknesses. I very much appreciate a transparent interview process.

Seriously considering putting a write up of how I repiped the natural gas lines in our house. One inch pipe to the utility room, valves on all tees and a stub for the meter so I could pressure test the whole house by zones at the first tee after the meter.

Systems, problem solving, engineering. Happens everywhere not just on a computer screen.

Last week, I finished 2-3 hours of on-site interviews which required a flight and an overnight stay after an initial phone screen, a phone technical interview, and a short technical challenge online.

I was surprised how a couple really basic concepts evaporated from my head during the in-person white boarding. The questions though were reasonable and the interviewers were friendly. All in all a positive experience just an incredible investment of time it seems for all concerned.

The take away is I need to practice solving problems on a white board with just 3 hours of sleep. The sleep deprivation part might be the most important factor to simulate.

Hm. Maybe bourbon? Or a good cider?

Dual booting with Fedora. I voluntarily upgraded the Win 7 partition to give it a whirl a while back. They said I would have 30 days to go back.

Less than 24 hours later ... Nope.

The only place I want Windows running on my personal hardware is in a VM. Done with them.

Sounds fun! I've been thinking of ways and places to mix my database, software dev, and commercial pilot/flight instructor backgrounds.

While not strictly programming I just finished interview number four/five with a company about an hour ago. SQL and data modeling. First, one non-technical phone interview, one technical phone interview, one online take home test. Today, two different sessions, second one primarily technical, and lunch.

White boarding a simple data model of a real world scenario was surprisingly difficult even though the interviewers were very cordial. The exercise was used to gauge my question asking skills (interviewer was acting as subject matter expert) as much as data modeling and SQL. It was kind of fun as I used it as an opportunity to expand my ability to problem solve in stressful environments.

The weather being reported is much more optimistic than what I'm seeing outside my window.

Location: Bellingham, WA

Remote: Yes. Happy to travel up to 30%.

Willing to relocate: Not presently.

Technologies: Python, SQL, Database Design, Linux, Emacs

Résumé/CV: http://www.wmecole.com/p/my-resume.html

BitBucket: https://bitbucket.org/wmecole/

Email: [email protected]

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Natural talent for teaching, engineering, and picking up new concepts fast. Love the back end and business processes. Lately, I've been diving into machine learning.

Ramit Sethi has some great material. He has a download of a handful of resumes his clients have used successfully in the past including an engineer. I used those as models after seeing no results from my old resume. Then I submitted the new resume to a company with great reviews on Glassdoor and open positions I might be a fit for. I was curious to see what would happen. I was running a test and willing to follow through if anything came of it. Results are I'm flying out for final interviews next week. Time to study Ramit's interview prep material.

I've been reflecting on my experience with resumes and interviews for various positions, mostly technical, over the last 30 years. For me, getting jobs has almost always been about rapport with the person across the table or other end of the phone. Natural problem solving/engineering skills and abilities with a toolkit are important. Engagement with the interviewer via interesting, relevant stories feels like one of the keys.

A friend who used to hire engineers years ago at Sun told me he would hire based on two factors, assuming basic background/skills on the resume. One, light behind the eyes and two, could he enjoy drinking beer with the person after work? I have another friend who used to successfully hire engineers in a similar way. Not sure why we don't see more of this out there. Though the informal route probably embodies this approach by it's nature.