aristoi.org

I've Panicked, and I CAN'T GET UP!

2009-09-30T04:02:40Z

It's been a bit less than six months now since I retired from the old full-time gig. Various forms of transitional insanity have ensued, most of them neither too severe nor long lasting. I've discovered a few things about myself that aren't that surprising. Most of them fall under the heading, "Adam, the Reluctant Social Primate." Yes, my moods are optimal when I exercise regularly. Yes, my moods are optimal when I spend nontrivial amounts of time around other people. Introverted though I may be, a hermit I am not. (At least not a happy one.)

Those small wrinkles aside, my stress levels have probably been on the low end of my lifetime scale. Even as a kid I was a constant spaz after the age of 3, so it's been nice to relax almost completely.

But, wait. No stress? No battles to wage, no moral indignities to suffer, no rage or agony? System errors ensue.

So for... a month or two I guess, maybe three, I've occasionally had trouble sleeping at night when I become preoccupied with my heartbeat. I lay there and listen to it and it feels erratic. I obsess over it as though I'll hear it stop at any second. I've done enough reading that i'm pretty sure I'm just dealing with some minor anxiety/panic attacks. The first few times were the worst. When it comes on now, I know (mostly) that I'm not having an actual cardiac event.

I'm really not sure about the origins or causes. Maybe it's physiological on some level. Maybe I haven't been as physically active as I need to be, or I've been spending too much time with gaps where my normal stressors use to live. In any case, it's making me feel more connected to my autonomic processes than I used to be.

Breathing seems to be the access panel of sorts. There are lots of ways to breathe; fast, slow, high, low, deep, shallow. Each of those pairs is a spectrum, and manipulating the combination seems to be the key to overriding a hindbrain freakout. Slow, not too deep but not too shallow, and low in the belly works for me. Too fast, deep or high in the chest and everything flips upside down. I think it might be hyperventilation. Extremities get tingly, heartbeat and blood pressure go up, and occasionally I throw a double heartbeat or two.

In other words, yuck. The brain/body connection is both awesome and fucking scary. I could feel my body start to respond just now even as I described the sensations. Uncontrolled, it can trigger a feedback loop. Something as simple as gastrointestinal movement... (and there's a lot of that, as I've recently become aware)... would feel like a weird heartbeat, which would make me panic and trigger the whole cycle.

As long as I can remember, I've struggled with my fears. I used to think it was a sort of personality defect, but the older I get, the more I think it might be more physiological. It seems like I'm wired tighter than most people; my adrenal response is on a hair trigger and it's fierce. So the general theories and applications of anxiety reduction techniques aren't new to me... it's just new to need to use them to stop feeling like I'm about to physically die.

Post-Employment Stress Disorder

2009-07-11T07:55:09Z

You know what I would love? An honest day's work.

That's a funny thing to say. Look at all the linguistic connotations buried in there. Honest work; as opposed to.. dishonest work?

Alright, so I'd love a day's work as a subsistence farmer. (to make me appreciate what I have, because if anything, I think not working has made me less well acquainted with what that is.)

Now, here's the deal. For damn near a decade, I earned a good salary. For parts of it, I earned a fantastic salary. For all of it, I was a heroically responsible spender. Nothing delights me more than to save, and nothing excites me more than spending beneath my means. Multiply that by ten years, and you'll find yourself sitting in a big ole wad of cash.

Now, I've invested all those savings. Every month counts, and every paycheck contributes. And I've only been gone from the workforce for less than 4 months; compensated for by the gamble I took against my own employers, an impulsive decision (and a retrospectively esoteric one) which lead me to one of the best windfalls of my life so far. And now, today, I'm living the unplanned, unstructured intermission in a life with a ridiculous first act and an completely unpredictable second.

Part of me would like to think that the second will blow the first out of the water. I've honed a lot of skills over these years; not just raw technical abilities, but critical skills when it comes to acquiring new skills and understanding new situations. I'm more confident than I've ever been that I could drop into a lot of settings and land right on my feet.

But part of me does worry that I've peaked. An asshole in my past who never meant to be an asshole once expressed his own fears for me of this outcome. What if I peak when I'm in my 20s? That would make life one hell of a let-down.

Tinkerer

2009-06-11T21:51:34Z

With more free time on my hands these days, I've been finding it easier to pick up odd projects here and there and actually get them finished. Last week I ran a water line to the refrigerator so the in-door ice/water dispenser will actually work. The details were a little tricky, but after battling with it for a day I managed to get everything sorted out and it's been working fine ever since.

Perhaps a bit drunk on my success, I started thinking about the koi pond. Frankly, it's way over capacity in terms of the number of fish it has right now. It only took a few months for it to go from practically spotless back to green and opaque. Now, I could always say goodbye to some of the fish... but they're all so pretty, and sort of an interesting visual study of genetic inheritance. And I could get another new filter that won't do much good, and scrub the hell out of the pond, but it'll just get nasty again.

So instead of taking either of those options, I found some plans online to build a large scale bio-filter from fairly simple parts. Essentially, a pump drives water out of the pond and into a large receptacle (i.e. a 35-gallon trash can) which acts as a reservoir of filthy sludge, and then the clean(er) water rises to the top and makes its way back to the pond. I had one false start when the water outlet couldn't keep up with the pump I was using so I had to replace it with a pipe twice the size. Since then it seems to be balancing out just fine.

I'm slightly terrified, though, because an imbalance in the inflow/outflow translates to pond water pouring out onto the floor in the shed. It's a concrete floor so it's not the end of the world, but what really scares me is not noticing it happening or being out of town and coming back to find a drained pond and a bunch of dead koi.

I've been trying to come up with an excuse to play around with an Arduino for a while now. I'm no electrical engineer but I remember a lot of the basics, and I think for what I'm trying to accomplish I could sort out the details. In fact, I already found a concept design for something that can do what I want.

The rig would be built into the filter. It would sense the water level in the basin and from that, be able to determine whether everything is hunky dory or if things are about to go horribly wrong. And since I can build the software to work any way I need, I'm thinking that it can be creative.

If the water gets to the "hrm, something might be wrong" level, it can turn off the pump for a minute or two and then back on. It'll have an internal count of how many times it's done that... so if it repeats more than a few times, it can assume there's something clogged up and just shut the pump off until help arrives. And if the water reaches the, "Everyone in the ark, quick!" level, it can shut the works off too.

And if that's really successful, then I might try my hand at rigging a wireless transmitter into it and having the computer inside the house keep tabs on the water level. And then it can send push alerts to my iPhone to let me know when anything wonky happens. So when I'm in Maine or what have you, and completely unable to do anything about it, it can scare the shit out of me by saying, "FLOOD! FLOOD!"

What did I put in my mouth?

2009-05-21T22:54:46Z

My travel plans mildly disrupted, I'm still in Houston partially out of my aversion to the long haul back home, but mostly because it's nicer here than it is in Phoenix right now. But it's been a while, and I've been pretty buried in getting my Objective-C and iPhone SDK skills up to snuff, so today I woke up with a bad case of ants in the pants.

First stop was a local indie coffee joint with 4.5 stars on Yelp and described in reviews as "quaint" and quiet, with plenty of room to yourself. I pictured a tackily decorated joint kinda like the Willow House. (Any incarnation of it.) Confirmed yet again that "quaint" in this part of Houston means, "in a strip mall." But I got a $2 double espresso that wasn't half bad.

I continued on my quest to find a breakfast spot. I wanted a Matt's Big Breakfast, an Orange Table, even a Coco's. I passed an IHOP and a Denny's before Michael (via IM as I cried about the dearth of breakfast options) suggested this odd little house I'd passed further up the road.

I went in and was confronted by two African-American ladies that immediately put me in mind of the misadventure we had a couple of weeks ago at the Beauty Supply Superstore, in which the lone white lady cashier quickly escorted us to an isolated part of the store before informing us that, "We really only carry things for (black) people, and (black) skin care. Even I don't buy anything for myself here." (Black) being whispered so low I couldn't hear her, not as a substitution for anything wicked.

But they seemed friendly enough and I was starved so I examined the rack. Houston has a strange propensity for stuffing things into a fully enclosed wad of dough. Kolaches I guess, but wtf, I call it a freaking sweet roll filled with yuck. This place had freaking sweet rolls filled with bacon egg and cheese so I gave it a try.

My mistake was in paying with $1 coins, of which I still have hundreds. The previously aloof cashier burst into a monologue about how she's been saving currency for years and years, but then meandered to her 11-year career with the CIA and then to her 35-year old son who's not fathered any children ("but isn't gay, thank God, he loves women!") to her belief that she just focuses on today and the Lord will take care of tomorrow, to how she has procrastinated getting her teeth fixed for a year and a half now. (It actually meandered a lot more than that, and I appreciate ludicrous situations so I sat there and listened. I could easily fill a couple of pages with all the crap she blurted out to me.)

I finally escaped and made my way to Houston's Chinatown. I don't know how I-10 here turns into a toll road, but somehow it does, so I mostly accomplished this via winding surface streets. And there I acquired my find of the day... fresh (umm) rambutan and lychee fruit! I've seen plenty of rambutan in photos, and I've had various processed lychee products, but never have I seen either fresh so I splurged on some of each.

Rambutan can be lovely to look at. See?

I will spare you a photo of the ones I purchased, but let's just say they look a bit less vibrant and aren't terribly flavorful. Fortunately, I did land some sort of frozen durian treat which scratched my itch for exotic fruit... and then some peculiar kimchi gyoza-style dumplings (I know, weird) that are pretty tasty too.

But since I couldn't abandon the iPhone development stuff for the whole day, I ended up at the most horrible Starbucks I have ever patronized for an hour and a half. Free wifi, is great, but between an obnoxious old man with phlegm issues and the uncontrollable 4-year old boy who appeared shortly afterwards, I had my fill of humans and retreated back to the house.

Ode to Roomba

2009-05-10T14:00:17Z

Shortly prior to launching myself violently out of the nest that was PNI, I purchased a refurbished Roomba on Woot. I'd always considered them one of the pinnacles of long-delayed consumerism induced by watching too much of The Jetsons... (it's not Rosie, dammit!)... I finally saw one for sale at a price that seemed remotely justifiable. It came, it cleaned, it rocks. One of my favorite parts is the little blue Shame On You light, which lets you know that it's discovered a patch of ground where you've been even more filthy than usual.

Now, I've explained to a couple of people that despite its random appearance, there's some method to the mad path it takes. I don't know what that method is, really, but I'm pretty sure it exists. I've tested it by putting little piles of carpet deodorizer in random spots and checking later to see if they were cleaned up, and they always have been.

But I saw a long-exposure photo on this boingboing posting earlier that made it all clear. So awesome!

Nothing To Report

2009-04-24T14:16:00Z

I drove a lot today. Like, a lot lot lot. I intended to leave at 5am but didn’t quite make it; I think I pulled out of the driveway around 6 or 6:15. Not bad, considering, but I did collide with Tucson traffic so I stopped to have breakfast.

I ate at a restaurant called the Kettle a lot when I was a kid. There were at least two in Edmond, maybe more, and they were different but I always remembered liking them. I guess they were really just a modified Denny’s. Breakfast food all day, but also the usual American fare. For some reason I always really liked it, though.

The ones in Oklahoma were shut down eons ago and I had presumed they were completely history until I noticed a sign for one off the highway on my way through Tucson a while back. I was with friends and we were eager to get back to Phoenix so I didn’t bother trying to go, but today was my chance.

Okay, so, ew. It’s not a modified Denny’s, it’s a degenerate Shoney’s. I “treated” myself to the breakfast buffet. Eggs and chorizo weren’t on the menu in Oklahoma, but once I tried these, I wasn’t sure it was chorizo anymore. The french toast was flavorless. The hash browns were okay but I mean, they’re hash browns. Messing up hash browns would be like messing up ice water… there’s just not much to it. Of course we’re not talking haute cuisine here and I get the feeling that this place just got stuck in time. Not stuck in the timelessly-preserved-from-the-ravages-of-entropy way, just in the ravaged-by-entropy-but-still-somehow-legally-serving-food way.

Made it through New Mexico and into El Paso. Totally overate since I was starving and the gorditas from JJs are fucking amazing. My stomach hurt for at least an hour afterwards. Meandered through a couple of towns and then ended up stopping at Fort Stockton for some reason. Filled up on gas and then discovered an ancient model of Wal-Mart I haven’t seen since they shut down the old one in Edmond on Broadway. It had the exact same floorplan, the departments were all in the same place- absolutely creepy. Just like the Kettle, the shape was the same but time had been unkind to the place.

And I drove on a while from there, stubbornly refusing to stop. A big electrical storm kicked up so I pulled off at a picnic area- a pitch black one, mind you, thus taking my life into my own hands- and managed to capture a few shots I liked. Really lovely colors and thick splintering bolts of lightning.

But I finally succumbed to weariness. I’m camped out in the truck at a rest stop right now. It’s reasonably well lit and I found a place secluded enough but near enough to people that I don’t feel freaked out. It’s been storming like crazy; rain pelting the truck, wind shaking it back and forth kind of storming. I completely love it and it’s lulled me to sleep several times. Them a semi starts up its generator or drives past and my primate bits get all riled up and I can’t sleep again for 15 minutes.

Not sure when I’ll continue. I’ve got a few hours left from here to San Antonio, and from there it’s a few more to Houston. I wouldn’t mind getting into San Antonio as the sun’s coming up but before traffic makes things tough… there are bound to be some nice photo opportunities waiting for me. But for now I think I’ll rock myself to sleep once more… zzzz….

driving, insanity, photos, road trip, travel, truck, vacation

et maintenant le voyage au le supermarché

2009-04-22T06:29:23Z

Well, things are finally coming together for the big transcontinental trek. I’d originally planned on taking the long route getting to Houston, but I’ve flipped it all around at this point. The plan right now is to truck out of Phoenix bright and early on Thursday, cruise through El Paso and snag some tasty gorditas, and then make a valiant attempt to reach San Antonio by evening.

I figure I’ll crash somewhere in town there, then bum around town for most of Friday and then head toward Houston sometime after noon. Easy! Maybe! But then at some undefined point in the next few weeks, I’ll head home the long way around.

View Larger Map

Visiting some friends in Dallas, some friends in Oklahoma, but then the rest is pretty much adrift. I thought about going further east to St Louis and Chicago and maybe Minneapolis, but that’s a hell of a lot further. I might change my mind if I’m feeling adventurous and enjoying the open road. (Or I might short circuit further south and shorten it if I hate it.)

But since it’s not strictly defined, anybody have any input or suggestions? I’m planning to hit Omaha ‘cause it’s on the way, maybe drift into Iowa just to mark a state off my visited list, check out Mount Rushmore, trek across through Wyoming and Montana and then drift down through Idaho and Utah back home. Basically camping all along the way and taking bunches of photos. And probably tweeting and posting photos and blogging too, ‘cause that’s just how I roll.

Tribes and War

2009-04-11T17:14:56Z

In my life so far, there's little question where I fall on the continuum of introversion and extroversion. Since adopting a keyboard as a permanent and utterly reliable companion at the age of 7, I've probably spent far more hours alone than in the company of other humans. The tricky part is that there's certainly more than one personality vector involved; tendencies toward introversion don't mean that I lack a fundamental need for human contact.

And it's only been a week! The daytimes are easy. I have enough to do to keep things interesting. Development work, yard work, house work, maybe a nap, play a game or something. But then the sun goes down and I start to feel shut in.

I was wandering through the park last night thinking, and I realized that the other thing I miss a lot is enemies. I almost feel guilty putting it into text, but it's true. As a practiced observer with ample exposure to office politics, I've theorized for quite some time that we love two things: being in tribes, and warring with other tribes.

A question for anyone reading this... my experiences are obviously pretty focused on one dysfunctional company. What have you seen? Have you ever worked in a group over, say, 10 people in size, that didn't have factions in at least some sense? I'd be fascinated to see any organization over 100 people that didn't have at least some splintering.

But the thing is, those tribal wars have formed a pretty awesome motivational crucible for me. Sure, they consume vast amounts of my mental and emotional energy, but from time to time the factors would shift into alignment and I had an amazing weapon on my hands. Which I don't really have now. It seems harder to be highly motivated without a catalyst.

It makes me want to do experiments to explore different types of personalities and contrast their responses to my own. I wonder if you could determine some sort of optimal balance and then engineer contrived situations to exploit the human response. I guess that sounds sort of Machiavellian.

Maybe I'm simply feeling an absence of routine social contact. What's the geek equivalent of a sports bar? I just need somewhere noncommittal I can go where I can pursue an interest I probably share with others in the immediate vicinity. I know of similar types of things that take place, but the people I've met and observed in those settings seem to be more interested in intellectual posturing than genuine conversation and collaboration.

I just (re?)read this page about INTP personality type qualities. It's still almost alarming how precisely it aligns with my own tendencies.

If pushed beyond their comfort level to form commitments or emotional bonds, they may reject a relationship entirely.
Under stress, they may show intense emotions that seem disproportionate to the situation.
They may not recognize basic social principles, such as appropriate dress and general behavior.

Whoops!

change, chaos, humans, people, sociology, solitude

Unemployment, Day 5

2009-04-08T23:49:22Z

It's pretty early to make any long term judgments, but I absolutely and completely love not having a job. I've tried to think of a time in my life earlier that compares to this, but there really aren't any.

The last time I was without a job, I was 17 years old. I was a full time student overlapping with that for quite some time. And before college, though I didn't have particular responsibilities for that period between Oklahoma and college in Arizona, it wasn't like I had a lot of freedom. I took care of my sisters while my parents were working, and bummed around the rest of the time.

But now... lots of marketable experience and skills. Plenty of money in the bank for now, at least. My house, with lots of projects I'm capable of doing on my own. Enough programming work already lined up to keep my brain well oiled. And aside of that? Total freedom. (I'm not gloating, I'm just fucking excited!)

So far, if anything, life seems more structured, not less. I have to wonder if my tendency to stay up late is more about prolonging my free time before returning to slavery the next day. (And sleeping in, the same.) Now that I can do whatever the hell I want, I don't really... need to.

So I wake up, putter around the house. Have coffee or wander out. Do some house stuff, work a while, read some news. Work some more, work on the house, grab lunch with a friend. Go to the gym at odd hours.

I think I've done something physical every day; and not in the walk-to-the-train-so-I-can-sit-for-8-hours way. Whether it's climbing up on the roof, digging up weeds, washing the truck, going to the gym.. or some combination of them... it's awesome feeling just a little sore but a lot more well balanced.

We'll see how things continue to unfold, but I'm already quite certain that I don't (and won't) regret leaving this time.

cats, change, fitness, gardening, house, sleep, travel, work

Zounds!

2009-04-03T13:41:55Z

Egads! Umm.. yotz!

Today's the last day at PNI. It's a bittersweet time; though I'm thrilled without a doubt to be on the cusp of a whole new chapter in my life, I've been reflecting a lot on the wonderful times I've had here. It's almost difficult to imagine life at the beginning of the journey.

I finally sat down and tallied up a list of all those I've had the pleasure of working with over the years. The list of direct webteam members alone is no fewer than 25 strong. There are at least 25 more people from outside that group with whom I've also worked and for whom I have a great deal of respect. And I can't even attempt to tally the complete list of those I have at least some history with, but it's well over 200.

One day early in my time there, I recall walking with my team lead through the office to attend a meeting. She greeted so many people by name as we passed them that I absolutely couldn't believe knowing that many people. It seems like I read an article once that the human brain is terribly flexible, but that left to its own devices, pretty much everyone has a maximum tribal limit of 300 people. Beyond that and it's harder to know any more people well enough to care. I guess that's only at any given time, since I can certainly prattle off stories and memories involving every single person I've known here.

Reactions to my departure have been varied and revealing. Those that I'm closest to have been fantastic and supportive and sad as I am that we won't be so near to each other every day now. A handful seem to have world views or personalities that simply don't contain the choice that I'm making, and thus can't comprehend why I'd do this. And the rest... probably still find me bizarre or enigmatic at best, since I've never really acquired the knack for mass friendliness toward those with whom I have no direct working relationship. Maybe someday I'll swap out my social on/off switch for a rheostat.

But all that aside, the reality of my situation is sinking in and my excitement is growing. Never in my adult life have I had this kind of uncomplicated, universal freedom to explore... and I intend to take full advantage of it.

So long, and thanks for all the newsprint

2009-03-14T00:31:13Z

I won't post this for at least a few days, but I felt like getting a few thoughts out while the experience is still fresh. Today, I gave my notice at work. It's the second time with this company, but the first in about seven years. Seven years! And if you just treat it all as one stretch of Job, that's like 9.3 years. Out of a 28.something year lifespan.

Look, I'll even make a damned chart.

I'm not sure my thoughts are even coming out in complete sentences. I've been weighing this decision for so long that it feels weird writing this not as a list of pros and cons to try to convince myself, but as a declaration of the awesomeness that's to come.

I can't wait to wake up on my own schedule and work on the stuff that excites me just because it does. I can't wait to build projects and explore the wacky aspects that I would never even bother explaining to someone else conceptually. I can't wait to be realistic about projects, to pour my heart and soul into things that I know won't be torn away from me and stomped on by another tribe.

I can't wait to collaborate and inspire those around me, and know that I can purely do that for the sake of enriching those people- not to pour inspiration down a drain whose only label is a dollar sign.

And I just can't wipe this smile off my face.

Overexperience

2009-03-10T00:15:49Z

I've always assumed that life would get easier the older you were. Experience would lead to greater understanding, wisdom, confidence; why wouldn't that make things progressively less stressful?

Lately, though, I feel buried under those past experiences. I watch scenarios and situations unfold that I have witnessed time and again lead to nothing but wasted energy... failed efforts... massive frustrations. And yet the nature of the situation offers me no ability to apply my experience to this; I can't override it, I can't control it, I can't avert it. At least, not without taking somewhat more drastic measures to remove myself from the situation entirely.

Oh, crap. I guess my wisdom and experience knows exactly what I have to do. I just haven't found the cojones to do it!

Produce

2009-02-18T01:31:12Z

I went and checked out the lettuce yesterday that I planted... umm.. late last year? The radicchio looks pretty but also like I don't want to eat it. The arugula is awesome and has really filled out; I actually ate a few leaves of it right there in the garden.

There was another little pot I planted that was just labeled "mesclun greens" but has now grown into a bunch of alien life forms. I can't tell what the hell any of them are; one of them looks a bit like parsley, and the other looks sort of like a weird halfway between spinach and butter lettuce.

The cats have been behaving strangely. Even though they're restricted to the laundry room, every now and then I lock them out completely. It gives me a chance to do some uninterrupted laundry, vacuum/sweep the floor in there, etc. I guess this time they were pretty unhappy with this arrangement. The Hamburgler managed to pry open a crawlspace access panel and avail herself of the full house all day. I closed that down but then Manolio managed to pull it open again. It's now covered in flagstone and brick. If they can move that, I will be truly disturbed.

Other stuff. Travel plans coming together. Furlough week approaching at a glacial pace, but I'm looking forward to it. Started another EVE trial account on a whim over the weekend. It makes a lot more sense this time (somehow) and it's sort of interesting. I'm not sure what part of me is entertained by it, but I'm doubtful that I'll stay interested very long.

Err. Other stuff I think. Fell asleep the other night with Independence Day on. (Ew.) Aside of the fact that they wasted Laura Roslin on the role of the First Lady (!) it made me have a weird dream that I had been elected president. My advisors were nagging me to make some sort of public address but I kept putting it off. (Worst. President. Ever.)

Conservation of Complexity

2009-02-04T14:34:57Z

I occasionally step back from projects I'm working on and wonder to myself whether I should reduce the complexity of what I'm doing. It's not so much that any one aspect of it is overly complex... it's just that increasingly, I take for granted a baseline of understanding about lots of disparate technologies.

Write a PHP script? Okay that's no problem. Now it does some database work; you may need to understand some finer points of complex SQL join operations, but that's not a huge deal. Now, some of this stuff is AJAX, but that's no big deal nowadays, right? (Is it still AJAX if it's using JSON?) You know about JSON, right? And jQuery, plus a utility belt full of plugins? And you know about Javascript closures? And the esoteric differences between PHP and Javascript's distinctions between objects and arrays? And some of these requests cross multiple server pools, so you know about mod_rewrite, yeah? and mod_proxy? And about how you can trick PHP into sending extra http headers even if you're just using the stream wrapper for http, and why you'd want to? (And you know what that is, right?) And about cross-domain session handling? And memcached, and the quirks with storing sessions in it?

Any one of these things is no big deal, but all of these things (and probably some that I'm forgetting) are prerequisites to completely understanding a system I'm currently building to let users make lists of their favorite restaurants.

Any coders reading this? Anyone have any thoughts? I don't think that I deliberately complicate things, but what's the appropriate balance between an elegant, comprehensive implementation- and one that a greener developer could unravel in an afternoon?

The Method

2009-02-03T00:12:33Z

I've been working for a while now on a project at work that combines the efforts of multiple developers on a whole new scale. Since I changed jobs a few years ago, it's been bittersweet; I know good and well that it's the nature of the beast that new employees will tend to crucify those who came before. I don't think it's evil or even conscious, but something about taking over someone's old duties makes it inevitable.

Typically, those being crucified have left the company for greener pastures, so their crucifixion takes place out of earshot. But since I broke the seal on the idea of a developer moving in any direction here except to a new company, I was the first to bear witness to their own departure.

I think when you do anything for 6 years, you're bound to gain some quirky insights. Maybe particularly since I operate from my gut with a lot of this stuff, I don't always find it easy to verbalize exactly why I would do something in the exact strange way I would; but more likely than not, I tried it once, long ago, and it was imperfect in some fashion. Knowing the technology is only part of the puzzle; figuring out the quirks and shortcomings of your target humans is just as important.

Because, as a rule, people are sloppy and imprecise. People are colloquial. People are erratic. People are forgetful, and forget that they're forgetful.

I think some of those who took the reins after I departed are now starting to get a feel for the uniquely horrible parts of this job. And I know I don't know everything, but it is more of a relief than I expected to see someone's face when something clicks and they shift from "Adam's methods are ~~short-bus~~ special," to, "Ohhhhhhhhh, I get it."