So here you are. I'm guessing if you've come to this site you were looking directly for my company, or me personally. Even better, fade to dream sequence...It's 2 am and a tortured IOS developer is stabbing a voodoo doll of Steve Jobs on the verge of tossing his MAC out of the window and stumbles across my site because I've actually posted something useful.

I'm just getting started with this site, but I'm hoping for it it to serve two functions.

1. General scratch pad to share anything useful that I may have learned in the world of software engineering. Currently I'm working primarily in IOS, but I find myself straying from time to time.

2. A place to mortify my family, friends, and coworkers as I share inappropriate snippets about them. I'm certainly not going to keep you entertained by talking about software.

  My love affair with software began with VBA. Oh god I can’t believe I even put that into words. It’s like saying my first love was a drug dealer who drove a pinto.

In the late 1990’s I was working as an Industrial Hygienist for an environmental remedial firm. Most of the year I was out in the filed breathing in asbestos and crawling over dead rats in crawl spaces of abandoned buildings in order to collect air samples. About mid autumn fieldwork would come to halt; and the only way to get paid was to go into the main office and write reports.


So I would drive 40 miles to the office in Boulder and sit in a 10 by 10 workspace, with the company owners, and their 16 gassy dogs, to write reports that needed to be submitted before they could bill for any work.

Now I sucked at this. Up until that point in my life I had become accustomed to being good at just about whatever I tried. It was humbling, Not only was I legitimately incompetent, but to top it off the work environment I found myself in was not ideal for success.

It was a company owned by two women who used to be an item. However, they had recently broken up due to an in office affair with an intern. I should also state that Lauren, the wronged (and weaker) party in this debacle, had Kind of hired me to assert her authority.

I was in my mid 20s and rocking my pink pocketbook with matching pink shoes. Judy, who was not very girly and who was really in charge, despised me. I would spend hours two finger typing, entering in calculations and field logs. When I was done I would print out (no network) and slip into a folder for Judy’s review before billing. I would slip it in the inbox as she glared at me from the back of her head. Apparently the smiley face on the sticky note pissed her off.

She would glance, find the first typo in the address field and circle it with her big red pen. It would then be placed in the “ANGELA REJECTED” bin. I would fix the first typo, print out a new copy, and place it in her inbox. She would skim the fix, move to the next paragraph, and goddammit, she would mark something in the very first paragraph with her evil red pen. Twelve copies later the kabuki dance would end. And so it continued
for the first week or so. By the end of the first week in the office, I knew I was pretty much on my way out. It could have been intuition, or maybe Judy’s stage whisper to Lauren “the big haired moron needs to go”.

The thing was I needed that job. I spent the drive home trying to define what I was screwing up and what I could do to fix it.

I decided to go to the bookstore. Figured they might have a book on Microsoft Word for marginally retarded girls with big hair. I did not find it, but what I did find was a book on VBA forms and macros. I did not have a background in computer science, I did not even know what programming was, but a light went on and I was excited.

Monday morning came and I spent the whole day creating spreadsheets, exporting data, and doing a whole hell of a lot copying and pasting. I was entranced. I loved the trial and error, the what happens if, and how everything always broke down to the truth, while still allowing for creativity. It was science and art combined. I was in love.

By the end of the day I had written my first macro with a word  template. I think I stayed until 1am but at the end I was able to
select run macro and generate a report for every job I was on that summer.


Tuesday morning when Judy came in there were 12 reports on her desk
rather then the 1 or 2 I might get through on any given day. I’m not
going to lie, she still got to use her nasty red pen, but it was
minimal; and I got to keep my job.

Evil Judy!

Me with big hair.  I am reasonably positive I am wearing a shirt of some kind.