How to get an Honorary Roaming Architect Degree

Back in grade 6, we had reading club (stochastic remember that).  The purpose was to transform into Roboreader that could finish the most amount of books in a month.  Then you get a cute little magnet that you could put onto your fridge for you parents could brag to all your parents (while your sibling got the same one for trying hard, and you made fun of him until he cried).

I also remember almost finishing the perfect season.  We had math drills once a week.  10 math questions in one minute, I earned the nickname: Terminator. In the Last month, i had a brain fart and slipped on a 2x3 = 8.  We had learned powers that day, bit flipped somewhere in my head.  Latter in college there was Keener Bingo and the unix Beirdos which i realized us engineers are bored out and needs labels to help cluster like-minded people.

The aftermath: Can't remember a single book I read (Charlotte's web, was that a pig or spider?) and after reaching pinnacle of 12x12 i didn't want to go further in chances of lowering my average.  (I again sat during the final softball game to preserve my .900 batting average 15 years latter, sorry Joe).   I also routinely go to the Beirdos for help for Perl,  and of course those wonderful vi-shorcut sheets.

So back on topic, what do you need to do to earn this title?  BTW its not Roman Architect - a person who designs stuff in Fortran claiming its the top mathematical system in the world (they are lurking around, beware!).  I suppose when I'm 60 i won't remember a single journey or an object from a class, but we have blogs now right?!?  Blogger don't get bought out by Micro-AARP!

Honary Doctrate In Travel'n & Architect'n

• Must have done some architecting in 5 different countries.  Note off-shoring your design does count. and we do TRANSFER credits for if the country has split due to civil unrest (Czechoslovakia), but its limited to last 50 years (sorry california).
• You must of been employed by 5 different companies,  your own ventures count, but aliases or domains of the same ventures do not.  Working = 1 year min.  Revenue = optional.
• Must of designed systems in least 3 different sectors, i.e. banking, finance, military, social, media etc.. (no facebook, twitter, squared in are not sectors).
• Must of attempted to learn 5 different languages ( sign language does not count ).  An attempt means you got a reply, toll-free and automated services do not count.
• Must of been primary source for 1 data breach involving foreign data security practices.  Note fixing and reporting the breach, optional.  Distribution of breach is highly discouraged.
• Taken 2 completely hacks which broke at least one of following,  patent, copyright, reverse-engineering, and obfuscated to something you sold of as original work. 
• Must of been recruited at least 3 foreign tech workers ending up in a financial stipend.   Off-shoring does not count (see above) and bonus if was during a rescission.
• Must of participated in 2 complete disaster of a project, one had to be at least government related and costing tax-payers money.
• You've tried karokee'ing at least 2 other languages other than English. Note singing to your boarding wards, eligible daughters do count.
• You've done a blog in 2 other laungages other than English, only to give up once realized they pay in centavos/per/click, not centos/per/click. Zut Alors, C'est Domage!
• Must be on two patent disclosures.  Not following is excluded : fonts/colors/fusion.  but we accept as long as your name shown.  Social widgets are accepted.

So there it is, we'll be providing the Honary Doctrate In Travel'n & Architect'n pending underwriting from one our out-sourced eastern sponsors  

Meet these and get a badge (sorry not magnet, but likely to be a widget).

How can you get validation?  Resumes... hell no.  Your blog of course, after all who else is going to provide you with an honorary degree, your not Bill Crosby after all.
Are some of these personal and get you in hot water?. do what i do, wait until things blow over and we can all laugh about it.   After all your Roaming Architect degree is a lifetime adventure.

Tech : Microsoft Why all the hate

Its amazing to how much we've evolved in the 2000's with the following buzzwords Open Source, Web APIs, Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing, Commerce, Social, Geo-location becoming part of lingua-franca.

But one word and the company is all but forgotten and left for dead: Microsoft and Productivity.

The very first OS i worked on was ms-basic 5.1 and doshell. I hacked up my first visual basic program based using the  GORILLAS.BAS demo (Angry Birds anyone?) latter used in a Turbo Pascal Hockey emulator (yes all we Canadians luv hockey).

Now before I begin my list, I will have to say, by the time I was in university, we all used to hate Microsoft.   It was simple, they were the biggest baddest, software company out there, with there seemingly infallible leader, Bill Gates (which after his philanthropist career, seems all that much harder to hate).  The software interns came back very cocky and half repossessed,  they offered the crappiest pizza during the recruiting sessions, and notoriously had the titles for every lame job (SDET are still around!) and worst you had to mail them and beg for a Platform SDK dvd, so they could keep tabs on you.  So much hate that my very first job we participated in creating a new advertisement to post for new hires somethine like this as the tag line:

<Want to generate next generation function enterPlayerNumberOne(name) function for Solitare 2.0? Don't become a microserf, join us for a real challenge>

My first commercial product was in Visual Studio C++,  using their Document - View, thanks to old one big UI hook event pump I prototyped it quick (3 days) complete with serial driver and a multitasking processing layer. It fell as quick (5 months latter) due to inability to decouple UI from the model and constant redesign of UI. I cursed at the absolutely having the idealist Java around the door, but could never leverage it due to MS continuous tampering and forcing everyone on to their Visual Studio MFC (multifunctional crap) APIs.  Even then it was way faster, and how could to I explain to my clients "Oh thats the java that makes it slow and ugly, but underneath its all OO!).  

I also recall another death struggle with corporate powers, that old Microsoft freebie syndrome.  Sourcesafe, the "free and functional" Microsoft version control.  Well we did an old pc-world shutout, and it finished last in every category.  People gasped when making code vanish in to thin air using it.  Nevertheless I was singled out for forcing a $500/seat version control system into the company and not giving positive reviews for the Microsoft's ugly daughter.   This was quite often the case from upper management, its from Microsoft and its FREE, what else do u wanT!


Anyways, I digress, So here's the things we owe to them, in my time

1) Office UI : Quite simply the first graphical word office suite, most productive, and integrated, OLE support

2)  Windows User Experience Guidelines.  Quite simply one of the most follow UI standards at the time.

3) Direct 3d : Pretty much a center of all 3d games for the last decade and half (okay it didn't power Wolfenstein)

4) Bill Gates :  Before Steve Jobs, the single most compelling man in Tech.   His Humbleness, giving, quiet and in-corruptable nature, made it easy to want to him to represent us.

5) Windows 95: Simply the first UI that was adopted by the masses.  Yes it was slow but until that command line was out of the reach for most people.

6) Windows NT :  Well before google, someone came up with the idea to house big ole mainframes on with commodity hardware and portable user space code.  IMHO pushed unix into what linux is today

7) Importance of Internet: Though microsoft has suprinsgly done very poorly in ever faction of mobile computing, Bill Gates predicted in 1995

8) Productivity of the United States :  From 1980 to year 2000, US held a great advantage due to accessible computing



Okay so there is probably a list double this size of why people don't like them, but why kick someone while there down.



Hadn't it been for the Anti-Trust suit in the early 2000's where would they be today?