Hi, I am Simeon

Hi, my name is Simeon. I am a software engineer based in Norway. I am using this site to get better at writing articles, espacially technical ones.

If you are here on my about page you probably dont even care about that. You may have come here to learn more about me, or perhaps your just lost. That's fine too. Anyways, who am I?

I don't really know anymore. I occupy many different roles. I am a collegaue to some, a friend to others, a husband to my wife, a son to my parents, a brother to my brothers, a son-in-law to my in-laws. The list goes on. In the midst of all these roles I feel as if I have a certain few characteristics most people know me by.

I try to be true to myself and the emotions I feel at all times. It is great most of the time, but I can be a little much sometimes. I sometimes laugh a little (very) loudly. I sometimes laugh too much in serious situations. I sometimes care too little about what people think of me. I say yes to waaaaaaay too many stupid challenges. — "I bet you can't ..." — "OH YEAH?!?!? I'll show you" proceeds to make a fool of myself. Luckily my wife keeps me grounded. She pulls me back when I'm being too much.

I have changed a lot over the years though. So even if there are some constants, I constantly notice that I adapt to my role. I spend so much time being something to someone that I don't always have time to do the things I love.

If it was up to me I would play football for 10 hours straight, then rush home to start my Playstation and play some FIFA. I remember one time me and a couple of friends went out to play football. The weather was pristine: warm and sunny, but not too warm. We ended up playing for 10 hours before we realised we had to go home to eat dinner.

And don't get me started with playing Playstation. Oooooooh man, how I miss sitting in my boyhood room playing FIFA half the day. I could literally spend 6 hours straight playing Ultimate Team, espacially if it was Weekend League.

Football has always been an important part of my life. I used to play actively (and yes, if it weren't for my insert random injury I would have gone pro). Some of my greatest memories are from the football field. Football has always ignited a lot of emotions for my part. In general I am a very calm person, but in the rare occasions I become angry it is more often then not related to football. If you were to ask my wife the top three moments she can remember me being angry, 2/3 are definetly football related.

Besides football I like to code. I fell in love with the concept of programming in secondary school. A friend of mine had a USB "rubber ducky". One day he plugged it in my laptop and made the machine seemingly blue screen. Nothing harmful, just good ol pranking. But the concept of being able to write some piece of code that could control others laptops by just plugging it in really blew my mind. I felt like there were endless possibilities.

So when I got the chance to program in high school, I already knew I'd love it. I still remember feeling like an absolute god the first time I was able to change a box from green to red using JavaScript. The power I (felt like I) possessed was incredible.

I have come a long way from writing triple nested for loops in JavaScript and thinkin I am the best programmer ever. Today I feel like I don't know enough. There are so many technologies I want to learn and understand better. I like to know how things work. It has always tickled my curiosity. Even though I wanna learn all these things and introduce all these cool technologies, I have realised that the real world is a lot less glamourous.

The real world still runs applications with Oracle databases and uses the package version that was discontinued 4 years ago. The real world wraps everything around try-catch blocks instead of returning meaningful outputs. In the real world we have to be pragmatic.

This is something I am still learnig to be better at. More pragmatic. I believe that is what differantiates the best of the best from the best. The engineers that are able to put aside their own favouritism for the good of the project.