The Visual Studio Team Foundation team had a chat this evening which was very informative. I look forward to reading the transcript, as there was lots of information in there.

VSTS Team Foundation Public Chat
Chat with members of the Team Foundation team of Visual Studio Team System. We'll be answering questions and discussing our suite of source control, work item tracking, Excel and Project integration, reporting, WSS integration, and build automation tools.

Chat room

There is another chat tomorrow morning, at 8am Pacific, for those that missed it. A bit early for me (8am Eastern), but if I was a west coaster, I would definitely try and make it.

Update: D'oh. 8am Pacific is actually 11am Eastern. I'm usually pretty good with time zones, so I don't know why I messed that up. I attended the 11am chat, and I am still keeping an eye out for the transcript.

I just got back from taking my latest Microsoft MCSD exam - 70-315 Developing Web Applications with .NET. (Yes, I know I planned to take it back in July, but I never got around to booking it until now.)

For the record, I passed. See my MCSD certification wiki if you are interested in persuing it yourself.

As well, I just signed a renewal with my current client for one more year. I have until at least February 2006 before I need to worry about my next assignment.

Some people may ask, “why bother?” I mean, if you already have a 1 year contract (working with .NET no less), why try to get certified now? Aren't certifications only for people who either don't have experience or don't have a job?

Definitely not. Certification is one aspect of my self-improvement regimine. The process of studying for an exam teaches me things that I would not otherwise know. I read books I might not otherwise read, or go to web sites that I might not otherwise go. Certification broadens my horizons.

It's true that certification is not a perfect replacement for experience. But certification does count for something towards the total experience calculation. It's something more to talk about during an interview. And it might tip the balance in your favor when a prospective employer is deciding which of two individuals to hire.

In short, as Eric Sink so accurately stated in his article Career Calculus, you alone are responsible for your career. Do you just sit back and let skills and experience come to you, or do you actively go out and seek to improve your skills? Being proactive about it (including persuing certifications on your own time and at your own expense), shows your employer that you are a good investment. That you will increase in value over time. In some situations, it just might get you a raise as well.

Today was an exciting day for me. Today I received my first letter from my sponsored child in Thailand. My sponsored child Namthip didn't even write the letter - her case worker at World Vision did. But she included a drawing, which was wonderful.

So tonight I spent about an hour writing a letter back to her, thanking her for the drawing. Now she is only 5, so I didn't write a mini-novel or anything. I just spent a lot of time picking my words, making sure it said what I wanted to say. Not too much and not too little. It's tough writing to a 5-year-old who speaks a different language, trying to make it easy for both the child and the translator.

Anyways, having such a letter and drawing from my sponsored child is now extremely important to me. The cynic in me thinks that World Vision sends this letter within the first month of sponsorship to all sponsors - that's just part of the process - to make me feel special when in fact it's nothing more than an automated process who's ultimate goal is to manipulate me to give more money. But the optimist in me, who definitely rules over the cynic most days, thinks that I could eventually develop a real bond with this child half-way around the world and is thankful that World Vision enabled that.

Yes, definitely right now they are an enabler and not a manipulator. So far. ;)

The Internet is a wild and wonderful place sometimes.

I tend to visit sites that send visitors to this site (at least the ones that are clearly not referral spam). So from a referral from dogpile, one of the many Internet search engines, I clicked a link to one of the other results. Very interesting, almost dictionary-like, definition of the word apology.

The difference between a Non-Apology and a True Apology

“A partial apology is a statement that includes the part of the apology that expresses sympathy without the part that accepts any responsibility.”

George Bush certainly knows the difference. Bush told the King of Jordan once that he was “sorry for the humiliations suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliations suffered by their families”. Sympathy without responsibility. I like that definition.

I've had an odd experience over the last week or so, and what better way is there to deal with an odd experience by blogging about it? None, I say.

This year, my mother had a brilliant idea on what our family should give each other for Christmas - nothing. We're a family that consists entirely of adults now (noone under the age of 25), and so instead of wasting our money on bobbles and trinkets, we agreed to donate to charity in each other's name.

This was indeed a brilliant idea, which I hope will continue for years to come.

In addition to purchasing some chickens and hens for a poor family in Africa (among other gifts), I also decided to get into “Child Sponsorship.” I hesitate to say an unkind word about this program, but you have to realize going in that your money does not go to that specific child whose sad picture comes included in the welcome package. Instead, it goes to support programs in that child's community.

Of course, it would be nice if some money did make its way to the specific child you think you're sponsoring, but I also realize the enormous overhead that it would take to do such a thing, so that my $30 would turn into only $10 after administrative costs are subtracted. And certainly the child sponsorship charities mention the fact that gifts of some value (money or presents) could spark jealously among other kids, which could trigger robberies and other nastiness. So, although it would be nice to send money directly to a poor child somewhere, it's probably for the best that a medical center is built, a clean water well is dug, or an elementary school is provided with textbooks.

This whole experience has given me a new outlook on charity, and I intend to continue to give all year, not just at Christmas. It's amazing.

Now here we come to the point of this post. As interested as I currently am in my child (Namthip in Wang Wiset, Thailand) and thinking of other ways to help, I am equally dumbstruck at how it appears I am the last person to discover this.

I tell my little story about how purchasing chickens led me to sponsor a child, and one of my boss' tells an amazing story of how she sponsors 4 children - one for each of her own 4 children, and of the same gender and age as her kids. One project manager I tell mentions how she sponsors 2 children. I tell another friend of mine, and he sponsors a child as well.

Hmph. That certainly takes some of the fun out of it. I mean, I still feel like giving and I definitely intend to do more, but I haven't been able to pass my joy along to anyone else yet... I'm the last one to the party.

Do you want to know what I love?

• An extremely productive day, crossing several things off my to-do list
• Solving a tough problem
• Doing something noone has probably ever done before
• A successful implementation
• Helping someone solve a tough problem they are having
• Learning something new
• Working with people who also love these things
• I'll be honest - getting some recognition* for my efforts

Do you want to know what I hate?

• A day with no progress or worse (negative progress!)
• Being the only person worried about something, when clearly there is something to worry about
• Having my worries proven right, but getting no satisfaction from being right because it means more work for me
• People who don't try to solve a problem themselves before coming to me for help
• People who have no interest in understanding how something works, despite it being in their best interests to know
• Working like a dog for six months, juggling three projects, all of them successfully implemented, and not getting any recognition*

* A word about recognition: to me, recognition is simply that someone accurately understands how difficult a problem was to solve. Perhaps the word I am looking for falls somewhere in between recognition and respect. I don't need verbal or written kudos. I don't think, in today's work environment, that formal plaques or certificates need to be issued and decreed about something as normal as a software deployment. I'm not talking about someone thanking me for every little thing that I do. I am saying simply that, if I did something that it would normally take a team of 2 or 3 developers to do, that someone knows that. I guess what I really like is when someone understands the value of my work.

As much as we as human beings try to say, “I don't care what anyone else thinks.”, the fact of the matter is I do care about what certain people think. For almost every single person on this planet, there has to be 1 or 2 people who's opinions matter dearly - a spouse, a close friend. For some (like me), the total count of people who's opinions matter to me in some degree is in the dozens. (Of course, there are those who seem to care about too many people's opinions, which is a different problem entirely...)

The theme song for Donald Trump's “The Apprentice” is called “For the Love of Money” by the O.J.'s. Everyone knows it by it's catchy lyrics -

“Money, money, money, mon-ey”

If you only listen to the chorus, you think the song is a tribute to money. Perfect fit for the Apprentice I guess. But if you really listen to the lyrics, it's not about the good side of money, it's about the bad side of money.

“For the love of money.
People would steal from their mothers.
For the love of money.
People would rob their own brothers.”

Uh, isn't Donald Trump the poster boy for the “love of money”? Gold-plated everything. Helicopters, jumbo jets. Model wives.

Alanis Morrisette should take note - there is irony in this song being associated with this show.

(<sarcasm>Of course, “rain on your wedding day” is also ironic.</sarcasm>)