Facts of Life
January 19, 2008
Hi pals, first of all Happy 2008 to everybody, it's been a more than a month since I last posted. Now I'll take some time to told where I've been and a true life story.
Where I've been?
At Redmond, on Junuary 3rd I flew to Redmond, WA, USA to help on the shipping of Web Client Software Factory. These two weeks working on Patterns & Practices were great, I found a great team that is working hard to get a new factory with many new features to help you creating responsive, modular and well-designed web applications.
I won't spend more time talking about the factory, you just have to go to Blaine's (PM) blog or Mike's (DEV-LEAD) blog to follow up the project status.
I didn't come alone, I shared this trip with Mariano and Ezequiel who also worked on Patterns & Practices projects.
My true story
I got introduced to Computer's Science by my grandpa. He didn't know anything about it, but when I was a little child he thought it was the future. When I was 8, he bought me my first PC. I spent most of the time playing around with MSPaint, Sokoban, Prince of Persia and that kind of stuff. He thought I was wasting my time, so he paid me a my own instructor to teach me what to do with the PC.
About 3 months later, I was a DOS expert, and I used to do my own application launchers, and that kind of things. Until I discovered QBasic , Logo and Pascal. They were the coolest languages at that time.
I grew up and he insisted me to finish college (that I'm currently doing well), and to keep on studying. He served me as an inspiration of a continuous learning experience, while he was 63, he paid a professor for him to teach how to master MS-Word (before that he had never used a computer) and till he got really sick, he continued studying computers.
Besides this geekie background, when I was a little child he always dreamed to take me on vacations to New York City (that was our dream together). Then with time, we knew that part of our family were divided, when they came from Europe, and they were living on NYC. When he knew this, he arranged all the trip, and stuff needed to make our dream come true. Sadly, he got blind, and very sick and we couldn't make.
Today (19-Jan-2007), I'm leaving Redmond to take my vacations on New York city. It's like all my dreams becoming true at the same time. I've worked in the place I was dreamed to work, going on vacations where I always dreamed to go. But today also is the first anniversary of my grandpa's death. I'm finishing this story (that went out of my normal way of posting), with tears in my eyes, connecting the dots (as it started). These are my conclusions, that with 22 years I can made about life:
Work hard, do your best for those you love or that thing that you really want to accomplish and you will turn dreams into facts. I wanted to be right now with him, but we don't manage life and I can't since he passed away but I know that he would be very proud and very happy for his elder (and unique boy) grandson.
Present is the seed for the future. If you wanna be or wanna do something and you are all the time snoozing your dreams, they will never come true. If you do your best today, having in mind the vision you want for the feature things will happen. Doesn't matter when, doesn't matter how, doesn't even matter life or dead.
As I learnt today, looking back in to my own life, I recognize the work done by somebody who loved me more than life, and how that effort impacted my whole life but also today.
Enough!
I don't wanna turn this blog in kindda Digital Soap Opera, but this might be helpful for others to realize that sometimes to understand where and why we are here, we should take a look at the past.
Feel free to comment,
thanks,
~johnny
PS. As I said I'm going on vacations, so if you try to reach me you will probably can't, and if you know how, please don't do it :). I might be posting pictures and things that I'll see on NYC.