Being bored has never felt so good
Ater two 55+ hour work weeks and a 17 hour day (we didn't leave the office until 1 AM and I worked through lunch that day), I've been a bit lazy. In fact, I haven't felt like doint anything at all. No electronics, no coding, no anything. We did play a game of Pathfinder and that was a lot of fun.
However, being bored has never felt so good in my entire life. I think I am content for the first time in a long time. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I chased the money until a peaked with a job at Microsoft. Once I had the job, I didn't handle it well. It was an easy job, but I couldn't believe that all I had to do was attend meetings with customers and fill out paperwork. I was used to putting in long hours writing and debugging code. I just didn't fit that culture and I burned out trying to make the job into something it wasn't.
Not this time. I spent a lot of overtime (thank goodness I was a contractor and got paid for every hour I worked) writing and debugging code. I was made for this. When it was over, we all breathed a sigh of relief and continued writing and debugging code. I don't make as much money as I did when I was living in Atlanta working for Microsoft, but age, wisdom, and experience have taught me that it's not all about the money. Now, it's about getting to the office at 8 A.M., working until noon, taking an hour for lunch, and then going home at 5 P.M. That's the way it is for everyone here. I'm now a contractor for the Alabama Department of Transportation. In government, what goes for one goes for all. It's a little different for contractors because we're expected to do a bit more because we're compensated for it.
I will hopefully have some news to share soon (if everything goes as planned).
I feel very fortunate that we get to use .NET Core and the latest technologies from Microsoft. There's not very much JavaScript here, but that might change. It also looks like I'll be working on an iOS app using Microsoft Xamarin. They gave me a new MacBook Pro to work wih and it's an incredible piece of technology.
I'm excited about the future, but I'm glad crunch time is over. We made our release date and saved the organization bookoos of dollars in software licensing, so that's good.
I'd like to get back into electronics, but nothing that I look at excites me any more. Maybe I'll catch the bug again when the new Embedded Micro (now called Alchitry) FPGA is released. Embedded Micro is the company that made the excellent Mojo FPGA that I've had so much fun with.
Alchitry AU
Basically, all that's really kept my interest lately is reading books on my new Kindle Paperwhite and playing Pathfinder.
Kindle Paperwhite
It's been fun to be the Game Master (same thing as the Dungeon Master in Dungeons and Dragons), but it takes a lot of preparation work to make sure the game goes well. I've got great players who follow along with the story pretty well and don't do anything too crazy. I've made some newbie mistakes as a GM that have caused the game to be a little bit easier than it was supposed to be, but my players don't seem to mind. They're having fun and that's what matters most to me.
Pathfinder