Category: Between Heaven and Earth

Retirement

My 7-month paid gig(s) this year confirmed my hunch: that I was permanently damaged by the crazy stuff that happened around 7 years ago and I could not tolerate working with bullshit without further reducing my lifespan.

So yeah, I’ve retired from professional web development so that you guys wouldn’t wake up to the news that Bry committed suicide because of work related stress.

Instead you’ll wake up a few years from now to the news that Bry committed suicide after finally succumbing to his decades long battle with depression. LOL

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So what now?

I’ll still be doing volunteer work i.e. the usual stuff I’ve been doing for the past few years. My earnings this year plus the odd teaching job that I’ll be taking every few months should be able last me for the rest of my days.

Yay~~! No corporate or startup shit for me!

Permanent Damage, a retrospective

It’s been over a year and a half since I left my previous full-time job and I still don’t have a new one.

It’s not that I don’t have the skills needed to be employed; it’s actually the opposite: even though I’m not actively looking for a job, people still come to me asking if I could work for them. My part time teaching and Rails “consultancy” gigs fall under this (i.e. I never “applied” for them formally), and I’m getting emails requesting for interviews from local companies once in a while.

The reason I’m not taking any full-time job offers is different:

It’s been over a year and a half since I left my previous full-time job and I still haven’t fully recovered from burnout. I’m not confident that I’d be able to do software development “grunt-work” at peak performance for more than a few weeks on end.

After a year’s hiatus, I guess it’s safe to say that I’ve suffered permanent damage from my burnout.

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Looking back, the main turning point of my career was on January 2006.

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Vindication

From Peter Drucker’s essay Focus on Contribution

Knowledge workers in an organization do not have good human relations because they have a “talent for people.” They have good human relations because they focus on contribution in their own work and in their relationships with others. As a result, their relationships are productive–and this is the only valid definition of “good human relations.” Warm feelings and pleasant words are meaningless, and indeed a false front for wretched attitudes, if there is no achievement in what is, after all, a work-focused and task-focused relationship. On the other hand, and occasional rough word will not disturb a relationship that produces results and accomplishments for all concerned.

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Bricked Router Cheat Post

Bork! Bork! Bork!

Spent most of the day trying to overwrite the Telefonica firmware in the router I bought last Sunday. In the end, I bricked the device. D:

It’s cheap so it’s no big deal. Maybe later I’d build a USB to JTAG cable and try to unbrick it.

Anyway, I was supposed to write about the steps for overwriting the firmware (effectively turning an P880 router into a 3k modem/router) in this post but since I didn’t get to finish the whole thing, I’m going to have to cheat.

Ako Mismo rant below the cut.

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