I'm not as smart as I used to think I was

College is great. It gives those an opportunity that may not have otherwise been able to succeed in the world. I thought my opportunity to make money would be by getting a degree in finance. After all, I though the world revolved around money and the way to make money was in the financial world.

I was pretty good at finance. It came pretty easily to me and, if I am completely honest, I did not have to work very hard to get A's in my classes. Naturally, I found a job working for a large financial firm in the operations department. It was a good job right out of college and used the skills and knowledge I had acquired over the last four years (okay, let's be honest, I took five years).

Again, the work came easy to me. It never really challenged me at a level I would have liked from work. So, I made my own challenge. I was doing the same processes over and over every day and felt there had to be a better way to accomplish the same work without the manual processes done multiple times. I had always been a fan of Excel and started looking for a solution to my problems.

I found Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It worked perfectly. It also added a challenge to my work, finding a way to automate the mundane work I was doing. This expanded to helping other teams do the same. I wrote many new applications to help in others daily work and learned a little about coding along the way.

Well, I got bored and wanted a bigger challenge. I left the financial world to take a shot at using SQL. Lucky for me (although I didn't think that at the time) the first job I got after leaving finance was at a terrible company. Management was bad the position I was in was not defined well and was not a position that seemed important from others around. I left after a short time to use more SQL at another financial firm.

My college years made me think I could do anything and all the roles I had been employed in did not challenge me to a point where I felt I couldn't do something. Well, after I got experience in SQL I wanted a larger challenge and got a job using C#.

Earth shattered! Well, not really, but I discovered that I wasn't as smart as I thought. I actually had to work at something and it doesn't come easily for me. Object oriented programming was a much harder challenge than even all my classes put together in school. Google has become my best friend. I spend a lot of time searching for my answers. I am no longer the top performer (I had reviews almost every year that showed my peers rated me this way at my first job).

A lot of learning to go.

Programmer Blog

Well, if you have ever read my blog before you know that for all of my prior posts, except one, I told you about my life or thoughts of the day. For a while I was using the blog as therapy after my head injury. Looking back at those posts I realize how much therapy I really needed back then (and maybe still today). The one blog that I used to show my programming prowess (or lack thereof) was to give the world an Excel time tracker I created. Okay, saying it is for the world is over stating those that actually read my blog at the time. Of all my posts, the Excel post was the most viewed post.

I am not saying that a spreadsheet was more important than the brain injury I sustained in Mexico and the work it took in order to get back to my normal self. Perhaps it shows that I got better at writing the content in my blog. It could also mean that I used words that were a better hit in Google and the blog was higher in the hit list for readers. Or, really it was that I figured out how to show the post on the fun social site Facebook.

At any rate, I discovered that a blog can be a good medium for getting information across, be it information about me or the coding adventure I was trying with VBA. I have done a number more coding projects since the Excel time sheet. In fact, I created the time sheet while working at a financial firm. My position had nothing related to programming. I just took it upon myself to teach myself VBA. Maybe I was lazy and was tired of doing the same processes over and over or maybe I had the mindset of creating more effective work flows. Either way, I started to learn coding.

Now I am in a position where I code part time. No longer do I use VBA to code. I spend a large amount using C# and any other language my work uses. This is very difficult, I don't have a programming background. The fact is that Google and I have become best friends.

In my searches in Google, I found a blog site that I found interesting. The blog is called Simple Programmer and  provided some great ideas about programming. The blogs don't necessarily tell one how to program but practices that could apply across any job (just change the idea a little bit). One of the blog posts is entitles "How NOT to Email Famous People." I don't even know how one finds famous peoples email addresses. I guess perhaps you just try every combination of their name and add @gmail.com. I am pretty sure everyone has a gmail address, unless of course you are stuck using your AOL email address from the early 90's.

John Sonmez (the blog author) provides a blogging course that will help you advance your career. That is why I am re-purposing my blog. I am not writing as much as perhaps I should, but I wanted to help solidify my learning of C# and the frameworks we use at work. I may not post anything earth shattering, but I hope that I am able to help someone that reads my posts and learn something myself. I am going to put my schedule out there...once a week. Now hold me to it. We will see