November 18, 2007

• i've decided

  that I really like rhapsody. Unlimited subscription-based access to 4,000,000 songs..  That's just awesome to me.  I can have just about every cure song available through a few mouse clicks.  No more buying 3 copies of the Show CD because I lost the first two.  All those Hillsong songs that I have no idea which CD they are on, I can now search through rhapsody and find them and listen to them nearly instantly.  And I can listen to music while I keep searching, instead of listening to silence while I juggle CDs.  Well, I still listen to CDs, because I can still hear the difference between the compressed versions and the original CDs (though I'm hoping eventually Rhapsody will make available lossless compressed versions)..

  Ok, but I didn't really post just to rhapsodize about rhapsody.  Which brings up the question why am I posting?  I guess because I've had trouble sleeping, and thought perhaps writing something here might help.  Getting my thoughts out often has.  I think it is likely I will change jobs soon.  I haven't been challenged at work for about the last 8 yrs.  That's a long time to not really have interesting and challenging work.  But I guess it's what I wanted for that time.  I don't think I'll completely leave Lithium, but I will definitely be less involved..  And - well nothings for sure yet, but I can feel it..  And, it's sad..  They are almost like my family.  They've supported me through a lot, I'm a co-founder.  I've been there from the start, made sacrifices for the company and put my heart into it.  And they helped me in times I needed help.  It will always be a part of me, and I know I left a positive mark on the company, and I will always remember what I helped create there..

  But, while I can still contribute and am valued there, they don't need me anymore.  They can survive and succeed even if I'm not there, and I need to find interesting work again.  I want to find things that I get excited about.  Here's a (totally nerdy) story. So those of you familiar with my work know I work in the IT department, mostly with Unix systems and networking gear.  About three weeks ago, a friend of mine at Lithium in the Dev group, issued an "anagram challenge."  He gave the framework for a contest where everyone had a week to write the fastest anagram-finder they could in java, that ran in 64mb or less (there was a given dictionary of about 450,000 words).  And I got that email, and totally got into it.  The first two or three nights I stayed up until about 3 or 4 am working on my anagram finder, thinking about it a lot - finding ways to make it go faster and faster.  So at the end of that week, 6 of us had submitted entries (or 7 including a "just to see" entry by the contest organizer).  And I ended up winning, beating out all the entries submitted by the actual developers.   But what it made me realize was how bored I was by my job.  An anagram challenge comes along, and I get so excited because my job is contrastingly so boring to me.  And there are times I just feel like my talent is being wasted, one of my coworkers had trouble connecting on VPN the other day and I was helping him troubleshoot it.  It's not that I don't want to help my coworker fix his VPN, it just really made me feel underutilized, and how much more potential there is inside me.

  So this all might sound a little prideful too.  Maybe it is, I know that's something I've been dealing with as well.  Pride is not only ugly and something that I personally find a turn-off, but it's also something that holds us back.  Pride is having our mind on our past accomplishments and fear that we can't replicate them again, and courage is looking forward to what in the future we can do to be a positive force in this world.  But I know the thought enters my head at times that I'm better than someone, or "why are they doing that?" in a judgemental way..  So it's something I'm working on.

  • 7:08 am
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