Fernando Valente's weblog

So, today is December 31 and tomorrow is already 2012. The world is going to end at December 22, so we don’t have much time left. lol

Seriously, Arnold Schwarzenegger used to write his plans for the next year on a piece of paper. Strangely, that used to work. Not that I believe in luck. Well, luck is something just ridiculous, but I think it’s nice to write my plans here.

Become famous internationally – I know you might be thinking about how a 17 YO guy is going to be famous. What some people who read my blog don’t know is that I used to be well know in Brazil because of my FireRocker. I believe most people forgot about me as I haven’t published many stuff recently. But I do have plans to become famous(not well known). It doesn’t matter where, it might just be between programmers or Mac users. But it’s fine to me.

Publish at least 3 Mac apps – If I could pick a job now, it would be as a Mac developer. I love  developing for the Mac. In fact, I develop for the iPhone and web because I have to, not because I want to. I’ve already started working on a Mac app recently, but I got a lot of work to do as a freelancer. I hope to publish at least 3 Mac apps in 2012.

Become big and lift at least 90 kg of weight - Some time ago I started to work out. I got plans to get very big in next year. I know it won’t be easy as I’m a half ectomorph. But I’m also a half mesomorph and that still gives me some hope. In fact, when I do a good training, I get muscle mass very quickly. And the good thing is that I’m still loosing a lot of fat. It may be good for now, but I will have to stop doing this in a few months…

I wanna be like this

Learn how to sing and play the guitar –  This is something I wanted to learn a long time ago. In fact, I still want to. I wanna buy a guitar as soon as I can and teach myself how to play it. I’m also willing to take some singing lessons. And who knows I find out I love it and start composing something.

Start my own company – I know I’ve started Chiaro Software over 2 years ago. When I say I wanna start my own company, I mean I wanna have a company that is registered with the government. I will do this in january and I hope to start making a lot of money from the customers I might get because of that.

Move to the US or Canada – I know I’ve said that last year, but it didn’t happen. Who knows I find a way to move in next year? Europe and Australia are also fine.

Travel to Europe – If I don’t end up moving to there, I really wanna travel to there as soon as I get a chance. Portugal, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy seem to be really interesting

So, the break out is getting over. I guess I will finally get rid of this shit called “acne”. I’m having less pimples and blackheads. I’m still having a couple of them, but not too much. After all these years, I think I will finally get cured. I suffer from acne since I was 11.

So today I bought a peel called Lysalpha Cicapeel. It’s from a French company and as we all know, the French cosmetics are the best ones available in the market! This peel not only gets rid of the acne scars, but also helps to kill the remaining bacterias and makes your skin produce less sebum. This is good and bad at the same time, sebum is good for your skin, but with less sebum, it means less pimples. I won’t be using it for too long, so there will be no problem. I’m gonna have to use a sun protector while I’m using this peel, but who cares?

Yesterday I had a break out, which is something good. If you take Milk Thistle, you will have a break out before your acne starts to get better. At least, that’s what I’ve read in many forums and websites. I hope they are right

I suffer of a very severe acne. It’s not the highest degree, but one of the highest(degree 4). For some time I tried to go to dermatologists, but they keep wanting to prescript me Accutane. I’m not gonna take this shit. For many reasons, I’ve chosen not to die. Not to mention the fact Roche pays them to prescribe this piece of crap. So I decided to treat myself.

My face is totally destroyed by acne...

I did a research about acne treatments and I found vitamin A can be very good. So I started to take it. It did not work. It doesn’t seem to work for some people. I believe Accutane wouldn’t work too, as it’s a synthetic form of vitamin A. Then I figured out Milk Thistle is great for curing acne. P.Acnes is the bacteria that will cause acne. The first thing that comes to your mind when you think about bacterias is the word “antibiotics”. DON’T take any. A dirty blood is great for the bacteria to proliferate. Toxins are just like Christmans for them. Your liver will take care of the toxins. Problem is: sometimes your liver won’t be able to take care of so much toxins. Healthy food is a great way to help, but it won’t work for most people. In puberty, many people have a reduced liver function. Let’s add all those factors to the hormones. What we get is a liver that can’t take care of all those toxins. That’s why you should NOT take antibiotics. They are usually bad for your liver.

So, I struggled to find Milk Thistle in Brazil. I ended up figuring out it’s called Legalon here. And it’s very expensive(around 35USD for 30 pills). I will try to get it for free from the government, but it may not be that easy. I started taking it a few days ago. At the first days, everything was fine. My acne was getting much better. Suddenly I had a break down. My acne got worse and I got a strong headache. So I Googled for an answer. I found out my liver is getting detoxicated and it’s liberating old toxins. My colons(yes, colonS, we got 2 of them) and kidneys are not being able to expel them. A friend of mine’s dad is a doctor. I asked him what should I do to clean my colons. He said Psyllium husks are great. And he was right! No more headaches and acne getting worse. You should NEVER start a detoxification by your liver. Always start by kidneys and colons. Then move on to your liver. I’m full of blackheads, which means my blood is very dirty.

I think my skin will be great in a month. The bad thing about Milk Thistle is  that you will have to take it for many time(maybe forever), but the good thing is that it has almost no side-effects. It’s surely much better than Accutane as it cannot kill you. I will write more posts about it as soon as I make progress. I really wanna help people who have the same problem I have.

Note: I’m not a doctor and I’m not responsible if you have any problem. There are almost no risks in this treatment, but some people may be alergic to Milk Thistle and Psyllium.

Found a home

I’m so sad I’m writing this post. But yes, I’m going back to Rio next week. Everything started when I went to Campus Party back in January. I was going to stay in a hotel, but I’d struggle to pay for that. So a friend of mine asked if I didn’t want to stay in his boyfriend’s home. I saw nothing wrong on that and we quickly became “friends”(you will understand why the fuck the word friends has the quotation marks soon). So when I moved to São Paulo, I’d share the apartment with him and a friend of his. It’s something very common here because people can split the bills, which are pretty expensive. When I arrived at SP, the first thing he told was that 2 more people were going to live with us. 5 people in such a small apartment totally disrespects the physical laws. So I just didn’t know what to do. I looked for an apartment to rent, but I found nothing.

At the same time, things didn’t go quite well at my work. My boss didn’t think I was good at programming because of my age. A friend of mine had recommended me for the job. That same friend helped me a lot in the beginning when I was about to get fired. To me, he is a very special guy because he did so much for me and I will never forget what he did. If someday I ever get rich, I will surely remember of those who helped me. Thanks Heinar, you’re an amazing guy. I will never forget what you did.

A few time later I got my boss to trust me and almost everything was fine. I started also behaving strangely(maybe because of the problems I was having, I was just so nervous and could not think). But I really learned a lot about society after that. I really really did and I’m very thankful for this.

Getting back to the apartment stuff, I wasn’t able to find anything. The first good news I heard was that my dad’s friend had a apartment here and he wouldn’t mind letting me stay there. That sounded like music to my ears(in fact, that sounded like a Michael Jackson song lol). But the bad news came a few time later. My dad’s friend has asked a friend of his to take care of the apartment and he had rented it. But I’d just have to wait 2 months and I’d have a place to stay.

I moved to my great grandaunt’s home temporary. I tried hard to find somewhere to rent, in case anything went wrong. But I wasn’t able to find something that fitted in my salary. After some intensive research, my dad talked to his friend and asked a few details. The problem was that the condo costs were over R$1,800.00. I could rent an apartment with this money, so of course I said “Thank you so much, but I cannot afford it”. He tried to help me and I’m thankful for that

I started to look for something to rent, but I couldn’t find anything. Everything was just so expensive that, well, I just CANNOT afford. My grandmother told me she would come here if needed to help me to look for a place to live. I work 8 hours per day and I just can’t spend so much time looking for a place to live. And, there’s more. I can only look for a place to rent in the weekends, which is very hard. For a some time, I thought I’d be able to find it by myself, but I ended up saying “Yes”. WHY!?!?!?!?!? Why the fuck I did this?

As soon as she came here, my great grandaunt’s children told her I needed to get out of her home ASAP, as her health isn’t very well. I cannot say I disagree with them, because she isn’t really doing well. My mom told my grandmother “Try to find something which will not require a contract”. In Brazil, we have to pay a 30% fee in case we break a renting contract. She took this very seriously… She kept ignoring anything she found that required a fucking contract. And yes, I’d have more time if she stayed where she was.

There are many people here which will rent rooms in their homes. I kept telling her to not look for this kind of stuff because it’s dangerous as hell. Did she listen to me? NO, SHE DIDN’T! She also found some apartments which didn’t require a contract. The only one available was at a neighborhood called Liberdade(“liberty” in Portuguese). It’s one of  the most dangerous neighborhoods in São Paulo. Crackheads invaded it. If they see you have something they find interesting(like a watch or a t-shirt), they will simply shot you and take your stuff. Then they will sell it to buy more crack. They don’t even ask you, they simply kill you. When I told her about this, she kept insisting on that. What the fuck!? I wonder what happened to her brain. Really, I don’t want to put my life under risk. Not really.

So, I ended up finding nothing and I will get back to Rio in next week. Everything seemed so perfect, but a lot of stuff went wrong. I really hope I could change this, but I cannot see anything happening anytime soon. I will just quit my fucking job and getting back to that crappy city. What a crappy life

Today I’m turning 17. Please let me know if you want to send me a gift. lol

No, it’s not in another country. I got a job here in Brazil, but I must say I’m happy as hell. I went to the interview yesterday and they said I’d get an e-mail in a few hours. I didn’t get it and I thought “Oh crap, I didn’t get the job”. Today I got an e-mail saying I was hired. I will work as an iOS developer in a magazine publisher. I will be developing magazines for the iPad. I’m just SOOOO HAPPY!  Wish me luck

It’s not only serious business, but also a VERY HARD business. I miss a good networking everyday. From trying to get a job, to working on a new project. Every time I tried to be a friend of a successful person, I failed miserable. And successful doesn’t mean millionaire or rich. By successful, I mean someone who is self-employed and/or has some good visibility and who also can pay her bills doing X. I believe I’m not that sociable, that may be the why I can’t get some stuff to work. It’s literally very easy to find successful Mac developers.

Every time I fail on doing something, I say I didn’t have something else like a good design or the functionality X. Networking is something I don’t have. And in this case, it’s different. Why? Successful people know the recipe for the success. They know how stuff works and most important: they can teach you that. They also can help you to promote your stuff.

For some dumb reason, there are people who can get a great networking naturally, but there are others who can’t. I’m in the second group. Getting good contacts is such a painful task to me. I don’t know the secret for that, but I really need to find it. One thing that screws me up is the fact I live in Brazil. It’s very easy to make contacts in meat-ups. There are many of them around the world. However, there are 3 shareware publishers in Brazil who work with the Mac platform.

The most noticeable is Brainjuice. It’s the first company to publish Mac shareware located in Brazil. I believe they are about to close their doors. Their programmer is American and now he works for The New York Times. I mean, they haven’t published anything in the past years. What makes you think they are not about to close their doors?

The other Mac shareware publisher is called Rainer Brockerhoff. He’s German and is not very active. He just creates stuff to tune your system. He was the first Mac programmer in Brazil.

And finally, there’s me. The less noticeable of them. I’m the first Brazilian programmer, who lives in Brazil, to publish Mac shareware. Yes, believe in me, I’m the only one!

In my area networking is very important. I could be employed right now. Why? Most Mac developers are self-employed. There are many jobs for Mac developers out there, but you won’t find much on Monsters for example. Mix those 2 things and you will see an amazing opportunity. Many jobs + element X + most people in that field are self employed = easy to get a job. However, there’s still the X element. And the X element is called networking.

I’m looking for a job in somewhere far from Brazil. I can do iOS, Mac and web development, but if I could pick I’d pick a Mac developer position. I sent my resume to a lot of companies around the world. I’m nervous. It’s always that same old question. Will I get hired? The problem is that the answer may be “No”, which is a very big problem to me. I really need a job and I’d do anything to get it. If any of my readers knows about someone who could hire me, please leave a comment or contact me. You can see my resume on the “Resume” page of this blog(what an obvious thing lol).

I still have more than a year to get a job outside Brazil, otherwise I will get my death sentence. OK, it’s not literally a death sentence, but I will be forced to join the army. Thanks to the crappy Brazilian law. No decent country has this kind of law. You don’t really want to know what happens in the Brazilian army. Ever since I was 13, I decided to get the hell out of this country, but as the time passes, my situation gets worse and worse. I hate this country, and now the president is a terrorist. How would you feel if Osama Bin Laden was the president of the country you live? Probably the same way I feel now.