We’re going to need a whole lot more of these in the future if we’re ever going to break our dependence on oil, whether foreign or domestic: CNN has a report on a gas station in California which sells alternative fuels in addition to regular gasoline. The best part? They sell BioWillie, the soybean-based biodiesel that Willie Nelson sponsors. (I have no idea if BioWillie is better or worse than any other form of biodiesel — I just like the name.)

Side note: according to the picture that accompanies the article, the price per gallon of regular unleaded in San Diego is around $3.49. Friggin’ OW.

According to CNN and Money magazine, I’ve got the best job in America. Well, not me personally — that job seems to belong to the Mark Dochtermann, the Director of Technology at Electronic Arts. But my job in general, software engineer — apparently, I could have no better job, according to the fine people at CNN and Money.

And honestly, I think I have to agree with them. Whether or not software engineering is empirically “the best job” or not (and I think we all know that these sorts of reports are all essentially horseshit), it’s the best job right now for me, which is really all I care about.

I’ve known this for awhile, of course. It’s one of the reasons why, for better or for worse, I haven’t been pursuing the writing thing with every fiber of my being: I like being a programmer, and I especially like being a web programmer. This isn’t something I’m doing until I find something better — programming is the “something better” that I came to following a lowly-paid and ill-respected stint as a web designer.

(This seems like a good place to discuss the difference between “web designer” or “web developer” and “software engineer,” at least as those words have pertained to my career. So many people, my family included (or perhaps “my familiy in particular”), have absolutely no idea what it is that I do. Everyone assumes I’m a designer or that I do, oh I dunno, data entry or something.

Technically speaking, I’m not an engineer in the most political sense of the word: I don’t have a degree in computer science, I have almost zero formal training in any programming disciplines, I don’t have any certifications to speak of. I’m all experience and no education. My current job title is “Senior Web Developer.” But I have a problem with that title — and haven’t been shy about letting my bosses know about it, for all the good it’s done — because “web developer” is what I did when I first started in this industry seven years ago. I developed websites: I did the design, I built out the HTML and maybe wrote a little JavaScript (or cribbed it from some other site). What I did as a “web developer” certainly wasn’t programming, and I don’t believe that title usually implies any sort of programming ability or background.

The problem, though, is that I’m not sure what a more appropriate titlewould be. The term “engineer” sounds so much better to my ears (and looks so much better on the resumé), but it’s not especially accurate, given the lack of credentials I mentioned above. My father was an electical engineer, and for that he was required to be licensed in whichever state he was employed. So no matter the kind of work I’m doing, I’m not sure there’s any way I’m qualified to use the word “engineer.”

But what I do now, whether my title indicates it or not beyond the fact that the word “senior” is in it, is software engineering. I’m not a designer (except on the side, just for fun). I’m not an HTML monkey, though I can monkey around with HTML like nobody’s business. What I do is work on — architect, design, document, code — the enormous application framework which powers all of our company’s websites as well as communicates with a number of our other back-end application servers. That includes code written in multiple programming languages (though primarily PHP) and a whole lot of MySQL database work.

It’s not all me, by any means (in fact, my good buddy Brian has been more responsible for the overall system architecture than I), but it’s certainly a whole lot me. And “web developer” just doesn’t feel like a fitting title for all of that. It’s kind of like calling an NFL wide reciever a “runner” — yeah, okay, that’s true, but it’s only part of it — a receiver does so much more than just run. (Well, most do, anyway.)

Okay. Rant over.)

Software engineering stretches my brain in happy-making ways — one of the things I like to think I’m best at is problem solving, and that’s what software engineering is all about. It’s overall a pretty low-pressure gig for me <knocks on all the wood he can find>. I get to work with people of a temperament similar to mine and who have interests similar to mine. And the job pays pretty damn well. I can’t think of very many jobs I’d rather have than the one I’ve already got; even those careers where I think I might better like the work itself don’t pay as well (or are phenomenally difficult to break into), and at this stage of my life, money’s still necessarily something of a priority. My job fits me well.

I love what I do. It’s nice to remember that sometimes.

An article on Wired’s website posits the theory that five-buck-a-gallon gas is good for all of us in the long run. The part of me that doesn’t have much in the way of money these days wants to disagree–falling gas prices have knocked about $60 a month off of my gas expenditures (thanks, 30-mile commute!). But I think the author’s probably right when he says that ridiculously hight gas prices are what’s going to allow us to get to the new energy technologies waiting for us in our future.

It looks like the oil companies might agree, given how far and how quickly prices have fallen. Big Oil would rather maintain their longtime stranglehold on our energy consumption rather than let record profits in the short term lead to a move away from oil (though, of course, I’m sure they really enjoyed those record profits while they could get ‘em). I’ve actually long thought that the only way we’d see serious progress on alternative fuel technologies would be when the oil companies could figure out how best they could profit from those advancements.

I think I’m going to take one line from the article and add it to my email sig: “It’s not written in stone that humanity has to propel itself with petroleum alone.”

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in the last couple of days–all of my free time at work has been eaten up by Google Earth. (And to those of who didn’t get to download it before they closed the beta–I am so sorry. You have no idea.)

I feel like such a geography geek right now. I’ve always liked maps; it’s probably one of the reasons why I’m usually the navigator anytime we take a long drive or go somewhere we’ve never been. (Terry’s obsessive and manical need for control while driving feeds into that, too, of course. <wink!>) So playing with Google Earth has been a whole helluva lot of fun for me.

And it’s been educational, too: I’m gaining a much greater understanding of how the world’s put together, the physical relationships between different places that it’s hard to get until you actually see the world in 3-D. Did you realize exactly how far north England is, by the way? I live in the northeastern corner of the U.S., and England’s several latitudinal lines above us, yet I’d always assumed it was roughly around the same latitude. Learn something new every day.

I might start posting interesting things I discover in hopes that you’ll find it interesting, too–and I know that geography (especially geography of places outside of the U.S.) isn’t really one of the things that gets taught all that well or that often in American schools. Would you guys be cool with that? Maybe I could make it a weekly feature?

I’ve tried a couple of times to find a way to talk about Google Earth, but I just can’t. Words are failing me. You just need to experience it for yourself to understand.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Google? Because I do. In unholy, unspeakable ways.

The Associated Press released an article today about the fact that computer programming jobs are going to become harder and harder to come by over the next decade or so. Between management wanting employees with more cross-discipline versatility and the ever-increasing move of coding jobs overseas, things don’t look so hot for American software developers.

Like, for instance, me.

I don’t assume this one article to be particularly prophetic, of course, but this also isn’t the first time I’ve heard this scenario described. The article even seems to single me out in particular:

“If you’re only interested in deep coding and you want to remain in your cubicle all day, there are a shrinking number of jobs for you,” said Diane Morello, Gartner vice president of research.

She might as well have said “there are a shrinking number of jobs for you, Allen.”

I’ve been thinking over the last few months that a change in career might be necessary for me at some point in the near future. (Yeah, I’m working toward a career as a writer, but I’m thinking specifically here of my day-job career.) As much as I enjoy my job, I’ve been feeling topped-out lately and haven’t had much opportunity to learn new skills and grow into another role. Some of that ennui could be because I’ve been working on the same project for two years, which is a pretty new experience to me–my web-development career before this job had been much more in the build-’em-quick-and-move-on vein, working for multiple clients at a time rather than on one monolithic internal project.

I really, really, really don’t want to go into management. Nothing against you managers out there–I just don’t believe it’s a career track at which I’d particularly excel, given my personality type. And I’ve rarely seen any managers who actually seemed happy in their jobs, so that’s not a path I’m anxious to go down.

Is it a matter of specialization? There might be options that way–software architecture or database administration, for example–but I can see where almost any road I select could be yanked out from under me and sent to India (where it apparently costs about one-third what it does here to develop software).

I’ve thought of changing careers altogether, of getting out of the technology biz–but how, exactly, do I go about doing that? I get paid pretty well for what I do, and I certainly can’t leave this field to go start over at the bottom rung of some other career when I’m the one responsible for supporting my family. And there’s also the matter of training; I’m not especially trained to do much else (though, to be fair, I had no training for this career, either).

I like my job. I like coding, I like sticking my nose into my computer (not literally) and building tools and applications out of code. But I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep on keeping on as I have been. I feel like a crux point is approaching more quickly than I’d like, a period of great life changes condensed into a small timeframe. I don’t know how much time I have. But I’d like to be as ready as I can be when the crux point arrives.

I’m torn about this Wired article about the transition in schools from traditional blackboards to hella-cool computer-driven interactive whiteboards. The part of me that digs technology and gadgetry thinks that these whiteboards sound awesome and would dearly love to have one of them to replace the traditional whiteboard behind my desk right now.

But the part of me that’s still eight-year-old Allen would miss chalk and blackboards. I had a big blackboard of my own when I was a kid and I still clearly remember sitting with it and a box of white Crayola chalk on the floor of my living room on Election Night 1980. While my parents watched Reagan boot Carter from the White House like Carter hadn’t paid rent in six months, I sat cross-legged on the floor and taught myself how to write in cursive.

I was in second grade but took reading and math with the fourth-graders, and the fourth-graders had all learned their cursive in third grade. It only took one episode of public embarrassment (I was asked to read a word on our spelling list in cursive, and I had no clue how to do so) to show me how important it was that I learn to both read and write in cursive–and I certainly couldn’t wait another year to learn it in school. So, for maybe the fisrt but certainly not the last time in my life, I taught myself what I needed to know.

The problem, of course, was that I wanted to use my new-found cursive skills all the time…even in my regular second-grade class. And I was told I couldn’t. It wasn’t fair, my teacher Mrs. Hendricks told me, for me to be using cursive when no one else in the class would be learning how to do it until the next year.

I think that was officially the birth of my sense of elitism, the first time I realized how my life could be impacted negatively by those less intelligent than I.

And by that, of course, I mean everybody.

(I know most of you reading DODN could care less about the following news, but it’s my blog, so just deal. It’s a short post, don’t worry.)

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the first release of PHP, easily the most popular scripting language on the web (WordPress, the software I’m using for this blog, is written in PHP)–and the reason I have the nifty, well-paying job that I do.

That’s right, I’m a professional PHP developer by day…Disarmingly Sexy Distinguished Author Guy gets his play by night. The best thing about being a professional PHP developer? Not rolling my own software–I do enough of that at work to want to spend much time doing it as a hobby, too–but being able to modify and tweak the code of my web apps if I need to.

So happy birthday, PHP! Thanks for the career!

You ever seen Twister? Ever wanted to know what it really looks like inside a tornado? National Geographic can show you.

(Warning: The Flash presentation takes some time to load, but be patient…it’s cool.)

To make up for the fact that I haven’t had much worth writing about the last couple of days (though I think later I might just write about not having anything to write about), I give you something cool to go look at and amuse yourself: Google Sightseeing.

I’m a tremendous fan of Google Maps. I feel like a nerd for saying so, but it’s true. And it’s absoultely amazing what you can see with the satellite views they have on their now…seeing my house from space was a pretty damn cool thing. Google Sightseeing finds lots of those pretty damn cool things and points them out to you, the Adoring Google Maps Consumer. An example from today (which will really only be of much interest for those of you familiar with Boston): the enormous rainbow-colored gas tank along I-93.

(And here’s a little bonus especially for our friends in the Tampa area.)

UPDATE (11:21 p.m.): In the process of looking for the satellite map of the airplane graveyard (see my response to Saundra’s comment below), I found a page full of other bitchin’ places to look at through Google Maps. (Beware! Exactly the kind of thing that could suck up hours of your time without your even realizing the hours had been sucked.)