As a computer programmer and knowledge worker (I don’t love this term, but I don’t have a better one), my desk is my constant home. It’s also the continuous home for my stuff. My desk is the home of things I’m using and things I need to find a home for. And so the piles grow. As I embark on the challenge of cleaning this year, I decided to start with my desk today....
Last year was an exciting year. There were many changes, challenges, opportunities, growth, and great friends. I had some intense feelings as well, and I moved to a smaller space. Forgive the randomness of this post; there will be a bunch of random collections of thoughts about the past year. I’m only in the infancy of this post, but it reminds me of the failed Best Man speech I gave at my middle brother’s wedding, where I tried to tie too many random thoughts together....
This is going to be a short one, as I don’t have too much to say. I’m hopefully writing a small book about cheerleading. I’m a man of mini obsessions. One of my many is going to the book store and looking at possible books to read. Whether I read them or not, I’m always hunting for new books to add to my personal library. I believe that a personal library is important and a lot can be learned from looking at the books one keeps....
One of the best things about being back on the East Coast is that I’m much closer to my brothers and their kids. I get to be the uncle I want to be. Well, at least I get to try to be the uncle I want to be. During this break, I’ve spent a bunch of time with my family for the holidays. The number of times I’ve been surrounded by four kids under ten this week is a new record....
As a software engineer, you tend not to trust code you don’t write yourself. Or even if you have written it yourself, there is a tendency to think we could write it better this time. Eventually, you run up against a project that is too complex to write from scratch. You will look for libraries and tools to help you solve the problem. Once a library has been located, the questions only grow....