For the past 20 years or so I’ve been working as a programmer of one sort or another. A couple of years ago I got laid off during the great dot-com bust, and I’ve been living on investments and odd jobs since then. I really haven’t missed working, but I’m running out of money and I made a New Year’s resolution to start actively finding work. I thought I’d start by reading up on some new technologies – at least technologies that were new for me – so I started by looking into .NET Framework. In short time I came upon a page promoting the benefits of weblogs.
Well, this is great, I’m thinking. I’m going to get right back into this stuff. No problem. Let’s continue.
:eek:
WTF was that? Did I read that right? Let me try that again.
Wait a minute. It’s a joke, right. They’re going to say “Gotcha, didn’t we! We were just pulling you leg with this blather.”
I look in vain for the punch line but only get a link to a page of more links with pages and pages of stuff like this:
-- <rss version="2.0">
- <channel>
<title>MSDN: .NET Framework and CLR</title>
<link>http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/</link>
<description>The latest information for developers
on the Microsoft .NET Framework and Common
Language Runtime (CLR).</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<ttl>1440</ttl>
- <item>
<title>MSDN Chat Transcript: Debugging Visual Basic
.NET Applications (12/16/03)</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2003 08:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<description>Microsoft VB.NET team members help
users debug problems with their code, including
issues with Pocket PC menus, plus how to set up
remote debugging for server apps and other
configuration issues with the debugger.</description>
<link>http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/
vstudio/vstudio_121603.asp</link>
</item>
- <item>
<title>MSDN Chat Transcript: Debugging with
Visual C#, Present and Future</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2003 08:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<description>Microsoft C# and debugging
team members answer user questions
about configuration of the debugger, partial
class generation, and more.</description>
And I’m reminded again of one of the many reasons why I hate high-tech. People don’t even try to communicate. They are much more interested in marching out their latest list of buzzwords than actually trying to explain or inform, and they get away with it because all too often people are too intimidated to challenge them.
I’m sure other professions have to deal with their own blowhards, and indeed I’ve had first hand experience with some in the legal and medical professions. Still, techies seem to be the worst, but maybe that’s because I have to deal with them more often.
Well, anyway. Enough bitching. I better get back to where I was. Something about exposing my aggregates…