Category Archives: Daily Blog

Generally a bunch of various small items that come up on a given day. Less focused than other topics, a catch-all…

New Week, New Goals

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Looking at doing some C++/OpenGL coding today, perhaps along with some other various C++ coding.

Thinking I may look at sketching out a ‘real’ multicast protocol for securely sending data. The protocol I put together for Draeger is proprietary information but it is also crippled by the limitations of the devices that it needed to support. I think a design that is more modern and can use https for credential management and uses public key cryptography can be put together that would be superior (on devices with hardware that is relatively modern) and support dissemination of information over a multicast network with excellent security and acceptable network impact. This would give me something I can share that is based on things I’ve learned when implementing the design that Draeger needed. Definitely worth thinking about.

Later in the week I want to do a little windows forms coding and see if I can project the OpenGL coding into a windows forms HWND. After that I’ll probably do a bit of WPF coding and do a bit of 3D along with some practice with LINQ features I’ve not generally made use of in the past.

The java spring work is interesting but will likely be pushed off towards the end of the week. There are many cool features in there but that is a bigger lift and doesn’t deliver the relatively quick benefits that C# and C++ exercises do at this time.

More later today…

Into the weekend and looking at the last week of April…

End of another week. Looking at the upcoming week and managing focus.

I expect that next week I’ll be bouncing around between Java/Spring, C++/OpenGL and C#/WPF trying to cycle through things that are high on my list of technologies I’d like to be involved with (probably not all at the same time 🙂 ) in my next role. Knocking some rust off and getting a bit more breadth and depth in some areas (I’ve worked around spring in the past but not tried putting together a complete solution) seems best.

I am going to need to make up some project goals for this week. Simple things, obviously,m as I have very limited time in each area but I need better focus than the last week of reading and tiny code samples provided.

Happy to have my bigger Linux machine up and running pretty well now. I will need to consider whether to replace the failed memory module(s) of just run with 8GB on that system. Most of my windows dev boxes have 32GB or more but Linux has a reputation for handling low resource systems better. Perhaps this will be a workable configuration…certainly better than reloading the OS every few weeks after the system gets currupted though…
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On to April 21, 2023

So Alert Innovation has opted for a different candidate. I have several more very capable seeming recruiters involved with my search and a few very interesting possibles in the pipe. Ups and downs again.

The rollercoaster continues as I talked with recruiters yesterday and have some more possibilities in the pipe. Keeping on keeping on.

Probably going to do some more spring/java reading today. Cool tools for microservices that I haven’t really played with in there.

Figured out that the stability problems I’ve been seeing with my bigger Linux machine is a bad DDR4 module. I was reinstalling Ubuntu after yet another OS corruption issue and tried the memory test with the 16GB module only in the machine. Many memory errors came back and when I swapped in an 8GB module I had on hand all of these went away. Re-loading things on that machine now and hopefully things will stay stable. This is an older core-i7 NUC and has always run very hot so I do still have concerns. At this point I have is set for low power as best possible.

Switch back to C#/C++/OpenGL this morning…

Definitely feeling a bit discouraged at the moment. So many possibilities that seemed exciting and like good fits where some detail that in many cases feels workable gets a ‘no’. I certainly don’t want to accept a bad fit but it definitely feels challenging right now.

Not going to stop or slow down but very much hoping to find one where everything comes together in the near future. It is interesting walking around various tech stacks knocking the rust off and investigating areas I’ve not had a need for in the past but I get far more satisfaction from seeing a large project come together and ship and that isn’t something I can do on my own.

Sadly Veeva decided not to go to a second round…

Got a reply from veeva saying they’re not moving forward. Disappointing as there were very interesting possibilities building out cloud microservices for the sort of work they were looking at.

I will keep the java/spring books handy but given this off the table I’m going to head back to WPF and C++/OpenGL stuff for the moment. Plenty of interesting technology to look at at and rust to knock off…

Minor Resume Clean-up Posted

Some minor resume clean-up done. Mostly pushing my ‘keyword’ sections at the top together and doing ‘triage’ on the contents to clear out redundant items and tighten up some others.

I had two sections for things I’ve done lots of and things I’ve worked with but don’t feel I have ‘deep’ expertise in. Thinking that really isn’t necessary as I can talk to any of these items and the consolidation makes it easier to read.

Realistically those are aimed mostly at automated and human filters in any case. A quick way for someone to scan my resume and match up items on the ‘want’ and ‘need’ lists to things I’ve done without having to dive into the individual job items. It also adds in some areas where I’ve done prototyping or side projects that don’t show up on the main resume but where I’ve gained experience with certain things (MongoDB comes to mind)…


It is always challenging to decide what to include and what to strip out of a resume. I suspect I probably should have two (at least) versions, one with lots of extra key-words to help deal with over specific filters and the other to be more human friendly. At this point I’ll probably stick with the one I have though…there are enough items in there to get the job done (I think) while keeping it a little more streamlined for human readers.

Java, Spring and Spring Boot

Going to spend much of today reading and putting together some spring code as a java and spring refresher.

I have a number of spring books around that I’ve gone through at one time or another when working on spring based systems. I’ve not been central to the spring part so these were just familiarity issues but at this point I’m seeing a lot of interesting features in there and looking at taking my knowledge to another level.

First serious interview with Veeva done…

Tine to refresh my Java and Spring knowledge. Had a good high level talk and I’m pretty sure I could be a good fit for what they’re looking to do. I’ve not written any Java code in around five years though so refresher time…

Ah, things turn and turn again…had a good talk with a company doing medical information management in Java on AWS. Last weekend I was diving into OpenGL and now I’m headed back over to do a Java and Spring refresher. Didn’t so a lot with spring as at Amazon we have our own framework (may have been spring derived, don’t know) and at KMC I was involved more with the JavaFX UI side than the core system (which I’m pretty sure was spring). More stuff to learn in case this goes to another round. Fingers crossed and preparing regardless 🙂

Daily – 18 April, 2023

Interview at 11 AM today. A bit (unreasonably) nervous about this one as it is cloud/java based and will include a coding exercise. It has been almost five years (longer than I remembered but…) since I wrote any Java code so I don’t expect that part to go all that smoothly. I’ve done a bit of review over the weekend but I’ve also had other things to attend to so there’s only so much a few hours can do.

Realistically if they’re really just looking for someone with smokin’ java skills and aren’t interested in the rest of my background I’m probably not the right candidate for them but I still tend to stress about these sorts of things. I ramp fast (witness my time with Amazon Robotics) but that doesn’t make struggling with the simple stuff in an interview any more pleasant.

The range of potential opportunities makes refreshers much harder. I’ve seen C++. C# and Java based opportunities (and some crossing those lines) along with RTOS, Windows and Linux targets. Add in a bigger mix of places where significant GUI work is involved and I’m dancing all over the place in my reading and bits of sample code.


Over the weekend was doing some OpenCL reading and looking at CUDA a bit. Both interesting technologies but I think I’m going to back-burner then to more OpenGL and C++/C# stuff.

Given the Tuesday java/cloud interview I bought the latest Core Java set. Less has changed in the five or so years since I did serious java coding than I expected. I’m still in need of serious refresher on the java front but since the split is 90% other and 10% java and my broader skills in software architecture and design should be front and center for the sort of positions that would be a good match I’m not overly concerned.

I am thinking about looking at OpenGL from Java a little along the way as I have a copy of ”Pro Java 9 Games Development’ sitting around that uses JavaFX and 3D APIs. Would be good to do a little coding in IntelliJ IDEA again and use some JavaFX code to have another angle on the 3D render stuff…

Another week of Job Search. Refresher on WPF, WinForms and OpenGL.

Starting a new week and still spread out on tech topics to visit but a little more focused after the weekend.

Looking at a week of OpenGL, OpenCL, WPF, WinForms, C# and Java as I keep at my tech refresher work on things I haven’t touched recently.


I keep running into opportunities where embedded and UI are both relevant. Some also add in 3D rendering. I have done a modest amount of work in both, but generally as a prototyping/tooling/home project thing and it has been a while since I dipped my toes in there (the crypto work at Draeger was pretty intense). The most recent home project work has involved VR and Unity rather than the lower level APIs so that doesn’t necessarily translate directly.

I ramp fast so part of this is refresher and part of this is a demonstration (if all goes well). This will still be a bit spread out as there have been quite a few areas that job descriptions have pointed to.

At this point I’m planning to spend most of my 3D-ish time in OpenGL and OpenCL as Vulkan and Direct3D 12 seem to be more appropriate to high performance video games and I’ve done some work in the past using OpenGL and done substantial reading on OpenCL.

On the UI front I may very well do a little MFC work to support the OpenGL coding as the sample frameworks in C++ that are provided by the books I have (‘OpenGL Superbible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference 7th Edition’ and ‘OpenCL Programming Guide (OpenGL) 1st Edition’) are pretty rudimentary. Once I have C++ based code running I’ll probably step over to trying some things in WinForms (on place seems to really want WinForms and 3D) and WPF using PInvoke or helper DLLs in C++.

I’m also going to look at back-filling some areas of C# where I’m weak…particularly LINQ and the async/await patterns.

Java has come up on the cloud side lately as well. Since it has been a few years since I wrote any Java I picked up the latest ‘Core Java, Volume I: Fundamentals, 12th edition’ and ‘Core Java: Advanced Features, Volume 2, 12th Edition’. Looks from a quick scan as if Java has changed less in recent years than C++ or C# so some refresher exercises and reading seems like it should do. I haven’t really used my IntelliJ IDEA license in some time (other parts of the JetBrains Toolkit have been of great value) so this will be a welcome chance to get that up and in service as well.