Just a quick update on life, happiness and everything.

Not that anyone really cares – save the two people effected by it – but I have forgotten to mention that I have a fish! Donut no baka. Well, Baka for short. He was a gift from someone that bought him for work but couldn’t keep him due to corporate policies and/or politics, and I’m happy to give him a new home. In fact, I might bring him into my office at some point seeing as that’s where I spend the majority of my waking hours, especially these days. Oh, for those of you that don’t watch anime – or read manga – baka is means idiot or moron, but as a term of endearment. Like “How can she be so clueless? Idiot!” And no denotes possession: Donut’s Idiot, more or less. I s’pose people that speak Japanese would know it too, neh?

And yes, I’ve been working ten to sixteen hours a day lately. Thursday was the marathon of the week, with twelve hours in the office and another four at home. Yes, there’s a big push for the projects I’m working on. Yes, that’s projects: a few months ago I started double dipping on more than one project. And yes, this is all tied to the MSDN-connection with Visual Studio 2005. Since that’s all been announced via TechNet last month I can say that without having to worry about “spilling the beans”. Am I bitter about the long hours? Nah… it’s nice to feel needed in a technological capacity again. It’s been a long, long time since that’s happen.

It’s been so long that I started to think about the last time I felt “wanted” at a job… at my last full time gig – the one that had the ugly commute in Connecticut and spanned almost seven years – I felt more like an assembly line worker or a natural resource, than a “wanted” employee. I was tolerated and I was used (or consumed to if ya like the resource analogy) but I never felt like the powers that be “wanted” me in the corporation. I think the last time I was “wanted” by a corporation was way back to my time with Symantec… and that was over ten years ago. Ugh.

But anyway, yeah, the long hours got me started thinking about my last job. I worked long hours there too – having an offices in Europe and Asia meant I worked 18-20 hours a day at times – but I started to think about all of the bile the place caused me to generate. I mean, I made a very, very conscious decision to never talk about my active job on my blog years ago. Call it self preservation if you want to. Some people would call it being scared; they’d be right! A blog is accessible on the Internet. People read blogs. Bosses read blogs. I wouldn’t ever say anything on my blog that I wouldn’t say in public. And more often than not I need my job.

I need my job now, but I feel that I can talk about the technology behind my job without worry. It’s the internal stuff that I’ll never blog about while I work there, and that’s how it should be. So my current job is off limits.

The company that caused me all that bile is not my current job, though… and that means they’re no long offer limits. *wink*

All of this got me thinking about my two “inactive” writing projects. One of the projects is a sequel to my first book Memoirs of an Italian Geek. That’s an anthology of fictional stories from when I was about four until I was 18. Yep, fictional. Well, mostly fictional. More like “inspired by people that I knew as I grew up”. Some of it’s true – I really did learn how to count by learning how to play Blackjack – but I still maintain that it’s fictional. The sequel – Further Memoirs of an Italian Geek? – would pick up where the last one left off and carry through until I turned 30. I think. Possibly. I have an outline. I’ve had it since I finished the last book in 2003. Maybe if someone actually bought a copy of the damned thing I would have more incentive to publish another one – *smirk* – but we’ll see. Either way I’ve got the whole thing knocking around in my head and have been thinking about putting down on paper.

The other project is a diary that I “kept” while working at the bile producing company. Great co-workers and a great manager, but for fuck’s sake – they couldn’t have given free air to citizens of planet Spaceball. I might call it Diary of an Abused Programmer. I haven’t officially titled it yet, but it’s a started project. I would say it’s about 1/3 or even 1/2 done, actually. It will eventually run from 1997 to 2003, but I’ve written about 1998 through 2000. Damn shame the good stuff – and the eventual degeneration of sanity – doesn’t start until 2001. I’ll never admit that all of this one is true [errr, this book really is all true!] but I’ve taken the precaution of renaming everyone in the story. Again, part of the self preservation instinct… but I really, really want to share my experience of working for a completely confused company before, during, and after the .Com bubble – every engineer could appreciate it and they might even value their own current position a bit more after reading it. I occasionally throw a story from my time there to my current coworkers, if they happen to complain about something… perspective is key to career happiness.

The problem is where and when should I work on these projects? Whenever I try to work on these things at home, I never seem to make any headway… and for the last year I’ve been exploring my little corner of WA – I didn’t want to start up any of the “solo” hobbies that I used to have in CT. Those used to keep me in the house and I didn’t want to do that when I first got out here… a year has passed. I think it’s time to blend the old with the new, and that means getting some of my old hobbies back. Am I’m going to start teaching at a local university again? Probably not. Am I going to start writing again? Probably. The biggest problem there is that I’m a long way away from the Starbucks in Orange, which is where I wrote the majority of my last book, so I need to find a new writing spot.

Enter Kirkland, WA. I’ve been coming to Kirkland for different things a number of times over the last year… it’s where the closest Costco and Outback are located… [ever wonder why Costco sells their own products branded as Kirkland? They started there] Like most towns in WA, there’s at least fifty Starbucks in Kirkland – nothing uncommon about that. One of them caught my eye though… of all of the Starbucks that I’ve been to – even the one in Hong Kong – they’ve all looked the same on the inside, but their exterior designs have always been different. This one in Kirkland, however, looked strangely familiar… it looked just like a fast food place in Shelton, CT. Go figure.

This Starbucks used to be a Burger King.

For reasons that I won’t get into now, I can safely say that this has got to be the ideal location in both space and time (and irony) to hold up in. Hell, I might just crank out both books from here – call it good karma or something. It doesn’t hurt that all of the female bariste (one barista, two bariste) here are hot… it’s close to home, it has power outlets for my notebook – I think I could write here, easily.

But not today. You see, today, I’m currently suffering one of those unexpected side effects of WA life. There’s two guys that are sitting at two different tables… each table is covered in books, sketchbooks, computers, and/or random mobile devices. The guys are facing each other from the far ends of their tables and carrying on a conversation across the place. Loudly. As in, “my iPod can’t drown them out” loud. Why is this a WA life related episode? Because in CT I would have thrown something at them and told them to get a room together or something obnoxious. In WA, I’ve been forced to remember that it’s a public place, and they shouldn’t have to talk quieter just to please me. Well, to please me or any of the other nine people in the place that are glaring at them with me. Like I said, they’re being obnoxiously loud.

Besides, it’s only in WA that this situation would include a loud, 15-minute babble-fest praising the virtues of Direct X and Indigo in a public place – that simply doesn’t happen anywhere else.

Honest.