BurningbirdOddly enough, the venting in my last two posts has put me in a better mood. Regardless of what happens next month, or even next week, I have a piece of software to rollout and a cute cat snuggled up on my lap sharing space with a TiBook.
A cute cat who assures me that no, I don’t suck. Well, I don’t, as long as I get off my butt and provide the overdue noon goodie, that is.
The weather was so hot yesterday, I waited to just before sunset to go for a walk. There didn’t seem to be anyone around on the short trail I’ve been having to take lately (the longer ones being too hard on my knee and ankle). This suited me, as I wan’t in the mood for company, or having to respond to the tentative smiles walkers give out as we pass each other.
I had my head phones on listening to music when a sudden movement on the road ahead of me made me jerk in surprise. One of the young deer had been in the path and my coming around the corner startled it into flight.
It ran behind a tree and started to head towards the road when I called out to it, in my softest, “I swear I’m a vegetarian” voice. When she stopped, I knew she was my orphan — the little deer who lost her mother when she was still a tiny, spotted fawn. I’m not sure if her mother died because she was getting old or got hit by a car, or if the conservation area shot her in its effort to keep the deer from overgrazing the land. Probably the former, as the park people would never touch a mother if she still had young.
The yearling peered around the tree, big, beautiful brown eyes looking up at me, as if to seek reassurance that I wasn’t going to scare it again. I just kept talking to it, and carefully kept my movements to a minimum. Though I’ve chatted with this little girl since she was a baby, I was still amazed whe she turned around and came back into the path not far from me at all, and then into the greener parts of the park on the other side of the road.
In fact, she seemed to parallel my steps as I headed out again, as if she wanted company. Why not? There is a warmth beyond food and survival we get from companionship with others, so why should we assume humans are the only creatures that appreciate this? Frankly, the way we treat each other at times makes me wonder if we’re the only creatures that don’t appreciate this gift.
Looking at that sweet little head trotting along side, I had a wild moment contemplating opening the door at home with my arms full and calling out to my roommate, “It followed me home. Can I keep it?” The temptation, the need, was strong: after all, she wasn’t the only animal walking alone in the forest last night.
We each have a moment in our nights, a point on the clock, where if we’re still awake, we might as well just stay awake. For me it is 4:30.
Good morning, everyone.
At least I managed to finish the metadata plugin. And I didn’t even need to drink the Mountain Dew.
I love to code. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I forgot how much I love to create software.
As I added years of experience, companies would increasingly pull me away from the computer and put me into a suit and a room and tell me to tell them what to do and their ‘junior’ people would do the coding because I was too valuable ‘just to code’.
Infrastructure was the word and architecture was my game, and I was, and am, good at this. I can spot bad tech a mile away, and can speak ‘user’, as well as ‘programmer’ and ‘manager’–a multi-lingual capability that proved itself of high worth again and again. But these gifts of mine rarely gave me a chance to just sit and code; to create something born of inspiration and need.
Coders will understand when I mention the ‘Aha!’ moment; when you hear from the other side of a cubical wall a cry of triumph–usually followed by the person bouncing out of their chair and in a hyperkinetic frenzy, walking about, dancing about–rapid swoosh of slinky being balanced from hand to hand, and shit-eating grin wide across the face. There were no cubical walls around me, and I scared my cat I think, but today I had one of those moments. And I re-discovered that I love to code.
I never realized until recently how much my experience at Skyfish.com had burned me out. It was the ultimate position someone like me dreams about: I had complete creative control of the architecture of the product, good rapport with the using community, a great team, and I still had time to code. I even had a CTO who I liked, though he was a pain in the butt at times.
But then the dot-com bust happened, and very nasty politics entered our game. The worry about our future and the anger at the power players, not to mention 16 hour days, eroded the joy so much, it’s taken me years to rediscover the person who sat down at a VAX terminal one day and typed in her first line of BASIC–and I’ll be damned, it worked!
I finished the metadata extension to Wordform today, and it works nicely and even though it’s not particularly fancy coding–using my code to glue together bits and pieces from others’ open source software–seeing it all come together, simply and with few moving parts, generated a rush of pure joy. That can’t be me, old, tired me that just experienced that moment. Can it?
We’ve been critical lately about ‘hackers and painters’, but this coder found the experience to be as satisfying as accomplishing a tough hike; as exhilarating as coming home from a day of shooting only to discover one perfect photo among the discards; as sure as knowing that something I’ve written is exactly right.
I did this. Whether people love it or hate it, doesn’t matter. The experience goes beyond money or, to use the coin of this realm, hypertext links; it even goes beyond being attractive to a member of the sex of preference and getting a mention in the New York Times. I did this.
Never take a coder for granted, or look at us with disdain or indifference; seeing in our aging bodies, the geeky children with vague ghosts of pocket protectors overlying whatever fashion sense we’ve learned to adopt as protective coloration. In moments like this, we almost have all the power of the universe in our fingertips because we make things work.
I love to code. That’s all. End of message.
I have started uploading my many images to flickr, and managed to ‘meet’ some new photographers in the process. I’ve not generally been fond of social networks, but when you have a site where the members have a shared interest–photography–doors open, experience broadens.
There are so many ways to organize your photos, and I have already created three new sets and explored several groups (and started one for the Ozarks). Best of all, the API exposes all of this and opens up all new ideas and possibilities.
Another advantage to getting the account at Flickr is that once everything is moved, I save enough space to close down the separate account for Tinfoil Project, as well as go with a smaller account for Burningbird. Paying the account a quarter in advance saves me even more money, while still providing all the service and space and bandwidth I need for my weblogs and also my ongoing development. Since Wordform has been approved at SourceForge, I don’t have to worry about hosting downloads of this product, or maintaining a bug database on my site. I can even put documentation at SourceForge, though I think I might do a restricted wiki. Best of all — when all of the bright, sharp, and intuitive developers that I know join the project, I won’t have to worry about setting up CVS for the group.
I was so pleased at my creative frugality that I celebrated by going to Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate today and getting one perfect chocolate covered strawberry.
It was the sweetest strawberry, red, and firm, and full of flavor. It was just juicy enough to drop brightly on my tongue, as I slowly nibbled the candy from the tip on down–taking time to fully experience each small bite. It was covered with the richest of chocolate that melted slowly, but without lingering overlong; and the complex flavor of cocoa and cool milk complemented the primal, sunshine flavor of the fruit.
One was enough. One was just enough.