Failure is often a good lesson. Throughout 2001' during the .dot.com mess, I kept making the wrong decisions, based on principal, and not best practice.

And today, 14 years later, that failure was a really good lesson, but one of which has had direct consequences on my career as both a software, and database developer.

I've been a store clerk the last 9 years, with no hope to return to Australia, Oahu, Cancun, Aruba, or the 29 states that my experience afforded me to visit.

But in the meanwhile, I did write a business application for the store to manage a complicated product delivery system that's been a huge success -mostly because it forced me to learn C#. The back end was MS SQL which, along with Oracle, and Ingress I had a pretty good command.

But my lesson is not keeping up aggressively with current technology, so if I were to return to the tech industry, catching up would be hard pressed.

It would be more like starting over. But that's ok, too! Because in all the business applications for which I advised, all the software languages I learned, all the software testing positions I served, all the support positions that lead to my experience -is evidence I started somewhere.

Not one of those positions did I fail. I only failed in choosing to stay with a core company being left behind, rather than the break away company with millions in financing willing to leave the old ones behind.

I made the right decision. But, damn I miss the international travel!