Over the course of some of my recent previous work for hire, I worked with some technologies that I really didn’t want to work with, and I have cemented that viewpoint by refusing to write blog articles or claim having any knowledge on those technologies. But on second thought, maybe I should take a different approach, where I might write blog articles on those technologies anyways, just to have some proof for myself of what I was doing during that time that otherwise looks like it was wasted. Well, it was wasted time in my opinion, so that is correct… except for the fact that I did end up getting paid during that time. The point is, no matter how much I don’t like the technologies from a religious standpoint, the big picture doesn’t add up if I fail to write blog articles after having worked with the technology.
So, the point in hand, simply put, is that in the end, I need or organize and section off an area of my blog where it is clear that although I do not endorse some particular technologies and that I do not want to work with them again in the future, I have ultimately ended up working with them. So, what are the technology categories that I have previously worked with but deliberately omitted adding the corresponding information to my blog?
- Windows Server
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Windows PowerShell
- VMware ESXi and VMware vSphere
- Electric Commander and Electric Flow
- Splunk
- Other yucky proprietary stuff like that
Now, I’ve also made mention of perhaps another good point. Almost none of my previous tech blog articles cover the related subject of cash flow for performing the stated activities, they almost entirely focus on the “how to” subject and the real world end effects of performing the activity. For the sake of my tech blog world, that was largely the goal: the primary goal was to cover tech subjects that are accessible to anyone. Projects that work with free, libre, and open-source software, projects that do not require an expensive bill of materials, projects that can be done without access to a commercial employer’s proprietary environment or the ability to be legally eligible for work so as to be hired for working in such an environment, and ultimately, projects that are non-political, yes, that was all part of the goal.
Indeed, it can be intuitively understood that being skilled in these non-political activities is important to everyone, whether they are titled as a paid professional or not. Ultimately, it is the true means that we get work done. You can’t do photographic work if you don’t functional optics, but the question of whether or not you get paid for that activity is beyond the scope of the first-level technical discussion.
So, looking forward to future blog articles, what additional information can I state related to the point in hand given of missing information?
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What is the safety criticality of performing this task? Are mistakes when performing this task fairly inconsequential, or will mistakes result in personal injury?
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What is the “attention economy” required to perform this task? Is this task impossible to perform correctly without a high state of alertness, attention, and a work environment free from interruptions and distractions? Naturally, tasks with a high safety criticality will require a high attention economy.
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What is the short-term net cash flow on performing this activity?
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Are there existing political regiments that must be satisfied to perform this activity? Define politics. Politics is who gets what, when, and how.
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What are the political effects of performing this activity? The utmost minimal political effects of an activity is n = 1: you are the only person affected by performing an activity.
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Only applicable if this activity does exist within a political climate. What are the moral and ethical implications of performing this activity?
Also related, what are some important key points that some of my previous blog articles do a good job on answering?
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What material, hardware, software, or technical resources are required for performing this activity?
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What time commitment is required for performing this activity?
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What is the total cost of the bill of materials?
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What is the required prerequisite technical knowledge for performing this activity?
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What are the real-world results of performing this activity?
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How does performing this activity contribute to long-term research and development efforts that will eventually result in future monetary savings, labor savings, and overall strategic gain?
One thing that I do want to point out in general. In my blog, and to some extent I can say this about myself overall personally, I am very highly focused on economic advantages in terms of long-term future gains as the result of research and development. However, I do not say very much about short-term gains, .
I must put my own opinion forward at this point, though. The primary problem with activities that have a larger political effect is that they are often not reproducible: they have too many external dependencies that have to be just right in order for conditions to replay a second time as they have played out the first time. Typically, for highly political events, we honestly cannot say that they can be verified by any empirical scientific method simply because of their lack of reproducibility. Highly non-political activities, by contrast, are a boon to the empirical scientific method because it is often times fairly easy to control all pertinent variables so as to reproduce the satisfying conditions exactly.
For this reason, you could argue that the term “political science” is an oxymoron because there is no such thing as empirical scientific study on a subject as uncontrollable as the world of politics. The history of politics might just as well be considered equal to the history of UFOs, except for the study of reasonably small communities of humans where the political dynamics can be reproduced with a fairly high accuracy.