Did you hear the latest shit that Microsoft pulled?  They took over 22 domains previously owned by No-IP.com.

WHY?  Because a bunch of hosts on No-IP’s domains were being used to distribute malware.  And Microsoft’s infrastructure couldn’t handle it.

SUE MICROSOFT.  If you have the capability, sue those bastards.  We need to send Microsoft the message that they can’t just do whatever they want just because they’ve got lawyers and money.

Real people with those problems would–or at least should–work with the provider.  They would go to No-IP.com and tell them about the hosts that are propagating this shit, and get them to stop.  Not go through the court system and steal shit.

I’ve talked about respect before, but it’s really important to me.  And it relates directly to a conversation I had recently.

I’m not going to share details about who the conversation was with or what it was regarding.  That would be inappropriate, and that can be construed as disrespectful… and I’m all about respect.

I feel that everybody deserves at least a modicum of respect, no matter their age, position, physical or mental condition.  There’s no reason I can think of that I would consider justification for disrespecting someone outright, unless possibly they disrespected you first.

You can hate me, distrust me, despise me, or any of a dozen other things, but don’t disrespect me.  Don’t be condescending or patronizing (which is offensively condescending).

I had a conversation the other day where I was disrespected through use of condescension.  Or maybe through patronization.  I’m not sure which, and I don’t think they were necessarily meant to be so, and a lot of it was, I think, based around a bit of misinterpretation.  But it made me angry.

I’m not the kind of person that gets angry easily.  I might get a little upset, or I might “snap” at someone, but I don’t get angry.  And when I say angry, I mean rage.  I mean the kind of thing that causes an upsurge of adrenaline.  The kind of thing that makes me go quiet.

A lot of people might get boisterous when they’re angry, yelling and hollering.  I get quiet.  Really quiet.

I had a really hard time staying near this person.  Due to our… “relationship,” it wasn’t the kind of situation that would allow me to just say what I thought.  And what I thought was that there was a pen just BEGGING to be jabbed into this person’s face.  I could barely breath I was so angry.  I’m pretty sure my face was all red, too, while I pretended as though I were listening.

If it had been anybody else, I would have made them squirm.  My angry voice would have come out.  I would have stood right in their face, my nose to theirs (after bending over, of course), my finger ramming into their sternum to punctuate every word.  And just maybe I would have slammed a door.  And the last door I slammed cracked the frame, and I’m pretty sure did a fair bit of damage to the wall itself.

What would you do when a fairly well-built, 6’5″, 300 lb angry man gets in your face?  Respect me and you’ll never find out.

Recently, a friend and I had a conversation where he asked me how/where I get my drive.  He said the last thing he wants to do when he gets home is code, or–in the case of many others–touch a computer.

I’m not 100% sure where my drive comes from, to be honest.  It seems strange to say that I go home, after a long day of programming at work, and sit in front of the same laptop doing essentially the same thing.

So, here’s some things that seem like they might contribute to my drive.  I’m been having some mental issues as of late, so I’m yet capable (or willing) to decide which is the biggest motivator… but here goes:

Goals

I want to eventually push some of the software I’ve developed to a paying audience.  Through support contracts, through pay-for applications, or something.  Somehow the software I’ve written should be able to support me.

If I manage to support my application development by being a published author, that would be okay too.

I’d really like to have a company where I can work with my friends.  I have a couple of friends that are developers, and I really think it would be fun to work with them.  Maybe on web application development, maybe on building some sort of game, or maybe working on books or something like that.

Learning

I love to learn new stuff.  Not just anything, though, but stuff that interests me (I’m not going to learn Mandarin, for instance, because I don’t find it interesting nor useful).

I’ve decided against learning some things, though.  Several of my friends and colleagues have tried to get me to learn Ruby, Python, and some other languages.  And honestly, I just don’t find them interesting enough to pursue.  Learning programming is hard, and I’ve already got quite a few of them under my belt.