Will Bridges

Uhg… I just now somewhat recovered from a very special Christmas gift of the Stomach Flu. It was absolutely terrible. I could barely sit down to do anything. I’m still here in Virginia. Right now I’m doing some work from one my Client’s office. It’s pretty cool except everybody in his office seems to smoke in the office. I might have to limit my trips here because of that. unfortunate fact. I used to smoke but can’t really tolerate it too well any more. It gives me a headache. My son has managed to stay on his sleeping schedule despite the fact we have had him all over the place. He sleeps pretty much all night. Well, I’ll post again later.

Comments(0)

I’m finally need to find more people in my business. I figured that would happen soon but this is a bit sooner than I thought. However, it’s not an issue because I have some more people that would be interested in work that is an addition to thier current job. Many people want to get Ruby on Rails experience and even people I know already have great experience would love to be working in Ruby on Rails just because it’s such a great environment to work in. So, I am certain I won’t run in to any difficulty trying to get more people for the work I have since I haven’t so far. Plus, I already have a couple people who have expressed interest. So, that’s a non-issue. I was just concerned about expanding my managing scope so quickly while I am trying to work on a couple projects as it is right now. All these things will even out as they have in the past.

On a side note I have a family reunion today for the holidays! So, I will try to snap some pictures and post them up for tomorrow. I hope everybody’s holidays are great. I know mine will be.

Comments(0)

Hello. Sorry I haven’t posted in a couple days. I just took the trip back to Virginia to come see family. I will post a large post tomorrow when I get a chance.

Comments(0)

I’ve been expanding business slowly to try to get clients in foreign English speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. I finally found Skype for Linux so this helps communication difficulties ease up a bit. I primarily use Ubuntu Linux for my desktop environment and I love it. Sometimes it’s annoying when someone has some windows program that I can’t use but that rarely happens. The only time I boot in to Windows is when I want to play a game that won’t run on Linux.

Back to expansion. There are several reasons I like foreign compensation. I still ‘voluntarily comply’ with the IRS codes saying some persons have to report ‘income’. But, once again, it expands my client base. If the US dollar is obliterated by a crash (even though world economy would be effected) I would still be able to work and not solely have to depend on the dollar.

Expansion is hard to deal with because I only have a limited number of hours to barter with. I do have help from a colleague that gives me about 10-20 hours a week. But, I’m going to need a lot more than that soon and I wonder if I will be able to find someone to fill those hours at the rate I’m quoting clients. Most likely I will find someone some where. But, finding someone I trust and don’t have to micromanage is the hard part. I did have someone who was willing to give me a lot more in the way of hours (up to 40) but that fell through because I couldn’t provide the work fast enough. He thought I was full of shit. Soon after he decided I was full of shit an influx of work came in. So, I did find someone to help with that burst. But, I’m about to go through another burst and I need to find someone to help me deal with it. However, long term, I am really looking for partner. My search so far has been difficult because I’m really picky but I’ll find one in the next couple months I’m sure.

It’s interesting to see that ruby on rails is a world wide phenomenon as fast as it has become one. But, it goes to show the true power of ruby on rails when a world wide community starts to endorse it. Ruby on Rails is growing up… awwww…

Comments(0)

I’ve found I don’t have much money to buy Christmas presents, once again. I have enough to get back home for Christmas and come back. But, all my money comes in after the holiday. So, I’m going to have to be very frugal this holiday season. Money isn’t coming in until Jan. 1. But, I guess getting home for the holidays is enough for most of my family. I just wanted to be able to do more this Christmas. Anyways, I hope everybody’s holiday is fruitful.

Comments(0)

I was talking to a friend the other day about the death of a central family member and how it tends to split apart families. My family lives all over the country in little pockets. So, that makes it difficult to get people together. But further everyone in my family is very opinionated and stubborn (including myself, even though I try not to be). So, when people in our family disagree they tend to just not talk to each other and hold a grudge. I’ve been slowly trying to reunite my family because I believe it’s what my grandmother and grandfather would want. They seemed to easily keep the family together from what I’ve heard. I never knew my grandfather even though I was named after him. He died three years before I was born. But, everyone says he kept the family glued together. I’ve always said that I’m not sure I’m up for the task, because it’s so difficult to get these people together. However, I know that if I don’t do it nobody will. Plus, there are others in the family who want the same thing so I have some help. I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve found it hard to get people together. But, I am going to make it my goal to step it up a notch after the new year. I want my son to know his family, where he came from, and have these people in his life.

That is solely on my mother’s side of the family. My father’s side of the family gets along well and they all live in relatively the same area in Northern Virginia. So, we get together at least once a year around the holidays. I have my mother’s last name, ‘Bridges’. So, when we named our son, Juhlyun we made his middle name ‘Ring’, which is my father’s last name. We appriciated how close my father’s side of the family was and wanted him to have a stronger connection to that.

You can’t really choose your family but they are your family. So, you have a responsibility to know who they are and accept them for who they are. Also, every child has a desire and need to better know who his/her family is. So, during this holiday season pick up the phone and just call a couple people in your family you haven’t talked to in a while. Make a date to hang out or send email. Your future and your children’s future depends on it.

Comments(0)

Being a new parent has made me look at my own education as a reflection of myself. I’m not talking just about the government school I went to when I was a child but my overall education. As many of you know I’m a high school drop out. So, it seems ,to some people, like it would be odd for someone who is a drop out to value education as much as I do. But, just because I dropped out doesn’t mean I don’t value education. I just didn’t value the education I was getting from the government school. I learned enough that I could teach myself what I didn’t know and needed to know. I believe being a person in the Information Age gives you no excuse not to grow, learn, and look at world as a child would. Wonder, ‘what if’ or ‘why?’ or ‘how does that work?’. Accepting the world around you without question leads you to slavery from the world around you. Many of us go to school and belive that after that we are done being educated and that’s it. It then becomes time to ‘do’ with the education you have recieved. But, that’s not the case. Anyone who excels in their respective field will tell you that education is a life long struggle to know. We have to willing to learn and willing to be proven wrong and willing to accept we do not know as much as we think we do. This should be the lesson we all accept moving in to this new year.

Comments(0)

I’ve spent a couple days trying to learn more about the monetary system under the Federal Reserve in the United States. What I have learned has been very eye opening. Mind you, I learned much of this stuff about 5 years ago when I became very interested in American history and the lessons I seemed to be missing. Now I know tons on the subject and it’s very disturbing. I’m also learning how to protect my money and it’s value.

Let me start by a small history lesson. All money used to be made of silver, gold, or other precious metals. A person would have to go a metal smith and get the metal pressed in to coins or they would have the precious metal stored for them by the metal smith. When the metal was stored by the smith the person storing the metal would receive a redeemable receipt. From that receipt the person could go and get the precious metal back from the smith in whole or in part at any time. This kept the person from carrying the heavy precious metals around. This was good but inconvenient when you were trying to buy something and you had to go back to the metal smith exchange the receipt for an amount of precious metal, then run back to the person you are trying to buy from and give them some precious metals. Then the person you bought from has to the metal smith to store the precious metals they got from you. The metal smiths (soon to be the first bankers) had a great idea. They could give you paper (or non-valuable materials of some sort) notes which were traded and redeemable for stored metals. People could go about trading the notes with each other and not have to run back and forth to the metal smith. Awesome! This worked great for a while. Then, the metal smiths said something similar ‘hey, I have 1000 gold coins and people only ever come to claim 100 gold coins at a time with these notes. I bet I could loan money.’ So, then the metal smiths started loaning these notes which were redeemable for gold and charging interest based on them. This worked great. The metal smiths were making money hand over fist. The people they were charging interest had to pay them back in gold so it only increased the power to print more money. They got greedy and made more notes than they had available in gold. Thus the founding of Fractional Reserve Banking. That’s where the Federal Reserve comes from. Banks were born from metal smiths.

When paper notes are not backed by precious metals they only have the value the people give them. They are also subject to inflation. We had no inflation when we had all of our money backed by a gold standard. A note is an instrument of debt and not real money. If you want further information on this look up the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (which was passed on Christmas vacation in congress when most people were home with families). Look at the real cause of the depression. Find out about who owns the federal reserve (it’s private banks, not the government). I will protect my money’s value and back it by gold and silver, not the value of a rich man’s word. Gold and silver have intrinsic value. Nobody will give you your liberty. You must claim it. So, be watchful and be informed.

Comments(0)

Okay, Spanish Lessons have been coming slow. I took 3 years of Spanish One when I was in high school. I failed every year because I wasn’t the type of student to turn in my homework or show up very often. I was too worried about learning programming. However, completely by accident, I learned the basics of Spanish syntax, pronunciation, and just little things that are very helpful in my mission to learn Spanish now. Plus, I have a decent vocabulary in Spanish for being as much of a beginner as I am. So, I’m ahead of Yendis (my girlfriend), a bit. But, I have been so busy with work I have only had time for two lessons. So, I don’t feel I’m moving fast enough. I do have a little over a year before I move to Uruguay so I feel I can come up to speed enough to not be fluent but to be able to converse in a decent fashion. Plus, once I get there I plan on getting a tutor to help me learn the native dialect and I’m sure that being there will improve our Spanish dramatically or at least I hope so. I’ll tell you all what, one month after I get there I will write a blog post completely in Spanish! That will gage how far I’ve come.

Comments(0)

It’s great being a Ruby on Rails programmer. But, really you should learn more about Rails before you go professional if you don’t know about testing, migrations, or plugins. It would save other programmers a great deal of time and pain going down the rabbit hole when we inherit your poor code. I’ve run in to projects where testing would be a great idea but it’s hard to tell your non-technical client that we need to spend x amount of hours on the clock adding testing and putting in valid migrations because your former programmer didn’t follow these practices. Unfortunately, I’m guilty of sucking it up and telling the people that do work with me ‘if there are no tests only build tests where it helps you in the process’. But, it’s a hard sell with a new client to spend time on building infrastructure they may never notice. So, Rails programmers and aspiring Rails programmers, let’s learn:

• What a rails migration is and why it should be essential.
• What is testing and why it is important.
• What the differences are between unit, functional, and integration tests are.
• What plugins are available and why you shouldn’t re-invent the wheel by ‘rolling your own’.
• What engines should be used for and what they should not be used for.
• What a helper is and what they are used for.
• Separation of concerns and strict use of the Model/View/Controller methods.
• What a library is used for in rails, where it goes, and why it goes there.
• Most of all, DON’T REPEAT YOURSELF! (DRY). Do not copy and paste code. If you do, it can probably be turned in to a method.

If you learn these lessons or are researching these lessons you can become a great Ruby on Rails programmer. If you scoff at any of it, please go back to your native language and leave Agile programming for the professionals.

Comments(0)