So I'm at the coffee shop this morning, chop-chop-chopping away at some vegetables. Chop-chop-ch.... Oops.... Well that's no good. I chopped about halfway through my left pinky. My Cub Scout first aid training kicks in and I run it under cold water, then apply pressure with a paper towel. I go find a co-worker: "Um... I just nearly chopped my finger off. Can someone take me to the hospital?"

So she drives me to the hospital. After about 30 minutes of applying pressure, the bleeding had stopped, and the clotted blood had stuck the flap back on the rest of my finger. After another hour, a doctor finally sees me. "Hm.... Looks like that will heal nicely on its own. Let's get you a tetanus shot and a bandage."

Compared to my experience with other hospitals, this one wasn't too bad, actually. Also compared to my experience with other hospitals, this one had much cuter nurses (though just my luck, I didn't get one of them). Maybe I'll go back there sometime. ;-) Though it is kind of interesting what kinds of reactions you get from people (e.g. cute nurses) when you walk into an emergency room wearing a chef uniform and with your finger half falling off....

When we finally get back to the coffee shop (so much for checking out at 9:30), apparently the line had gotten out the door right after we left, so all the troops had been rallied, including my assistant chef, who finished chopping the vegetables for me. I also got this big hug from one of the shop girls because "Ohmygosh, I missed you sooo much last week!" Can't imagine why. (No, it wasn't her. She had moved to a far away place, and last I heard, she was having a lot of fun there.)

¶ 1:00 PM 9 comments

Met up with an old friend of mine on Tuesday and Wednesday. It's been a long time, but it was worth the wait, and certainly worth every minute we were together. We had two days of fun under clear blue skies, warm sun, and a stiff breeze. I had a date with a sandy beach.

Down by the sea, the sand is hard-packed and very smooth. With a good breeze and the right kite, one could take the buggy on a slow crawl by the water's edge, or a fast run across the middle of the spit. In the steady breeze, tacking upwind is so easy. The crosswind reach is very fast once you get the kite in the pocket and the sail trimmed. I probably topped out somewhere around 25 miles per hour between both days. After that, I couldn't tack anymore because I would drift off course leeward because the wind was so strong, losing a lot of speed to sliding. But right before that I got in some really good crosswind and downwind runs.

Tuesday was the more interesting of the two days. My favourite all-purpose kite is my 4.5 m² Libre Bora II. Popular in European circles, the Bora is also starting to gain a following in the U.S. It's a very stable kite, very tunable. I have it set up for upwind performance, which it excels at, even in low wind conditions. Anyway, when I got to the beach on Tuesday, the wind was light, 5 to 7 miles per hour out of the NNW. The guys who had been there all day were flying with 12 and 14 m² kites, and were moving along at a decent clip. Being from an area where summer winds are generally light to non-existent, I get a lot of low-wind practice in the buggy, so I know how to work my kites to get optimal performace out of them.

So I get my gear together, get all set up, and declare, "That's my cue!" which got a response of, "Yeah, good luck!" to which I responded in turn with a straight shot downwind onto the playing field. Fast I was not, but moving I certainly was. I could almost keep up with the 12's and 14's, and was routinely overtaking the guys with 7's and 8's. I luffed maybe twice, but for the most part I was running with the big boys, as it were. Basically there were 4 or 5 people out, most with 12's and 14's, and one (me) with a 4.5. I think I dropped a few jaws as I tore up the beach with smaller kites than what everyone else was flying.

Today was the obligatory and traditional stuffing of the face with tryptophan-laden poultry and many forms of complex starches. Mmmm....

So that's my vacation so far. Tomorrow is watching college football and swigging orange soda, a tradition for the last few years. I should be back home on Saturday. I have to go home to take care of the cat, and rest on Sunday so that I can go back to work at 5am on Monday.

¶ 11:03 PM 2 comments

In talking about recent news with different friends from all my different disjoint circles, some common themes seem to have surfaced.

Everyone has noticed the change in my attitude since sealing my fate last week. People say I seem happier, or lighter. As I step back and look at myself from their eyes, I can see it too. And stepping back in and looking at myself from... well, myself... I can feel it. The old saying, "Can't see the forest for the trees," seems to hold true, just as it has for so long. Looking at the forest now, I don't think I had fully realized how heavy unnamed technology company hung on me.

People also like to point out to me how everything seems to be falling right into place. The only thing I can say to them is that this is all part of the Big Guy's Bigger Plan, of which I am a willing and obedient participant. The Plan is perfect, while I am not.

Anyway, I'm desparately trying to get out of town right now. I still need to pack my bags. In about half an hour, I should be on the road headed toward the beach with a carload of kite gear and a digital camera. I'll try to come back online later tonight with pictures and a report.

¶ 7:07 AM 0 comments

As I type, I am quite possibly the happiest useless engineer at unnamed technology company.

Last week, a flurry of annoucements (preceeded by a mere few days of rumours) came down the pipe from the big-wigs over at Division Headquarters. So essentially, the team I've worked with for the last two years, totalling a few hundered developers and testers, both client- and server-side, has been torn in two, and the pieces scattered to the wind. Well, not quite. One piece went over to a subsidiary to do more product development (which, in a way, started with my local department 2.5 years ago), and the other piece absorbed into its parent product family.

At my local site, three sibling departments (two development, one test) were basically ripped into two pieces each, and the resulting bits mixed and matched into the two aforementioned groups. My manager held a department meeting with the pre-re-org department, outlining our post-re-org assignments. Interestingly, my name was conspicuously not with the others. But to make the paperwork easier for my departure, I stay with my pre-re-org manager until I'm gone for good.

So now, for the next six weeks, I'm just collecting paychecks until 31 December 2005. It's kinda fun being a short-timer. Incidentally, I finally got my salary information for the coffee shop. I'll start out making a third of my unnamed technology company salary, with an expected raise as soon as business proposals are finalized with potential investors. Incidentally, we are going forward with plans to expand into a second coffee shop in the neighbouring town, and to subsequently expand bakery operations. I'll be heavily involved with setting up a new, bigger kitchen.

This week, I'm on vacation, 100%. I'm not going to either of my jobs at all until week from tomorrow. I'm going to try to spend some time on the beach this week, and spend the afternoon at kite club today, and visit my family, and watch some college football.

¶ 9:54 AM 2 comments

About 30 minutes ago, I sent an e-mail to my boss at unnamed technology company, officially serving notice of my departure from unnamed technology company on Friday, 30 December 2005. New Year's Eve will have a whole new meaning this year.

The plan is to quit unnamed technology company at the end of the year, go full-time at the coffee shop 2 January 2006, and start culinary school in February or March. I like the idea of having normal 40-hour weeks for a bit. Then around this time next year, I should be starting my externship for culinary school. I'm hoping to do my externship in some exotic locale, like Hawaii, or New Zealand, or Europe.

It's still so hard to believe that I've effectively thrown away the last 3 years of my life to projects at unnamed technology company that all got the axe without any sort of closure at all. Even right up to the very end here, I'm working with a team with three other engineers, spinning our wheels in the muck doing busy work that's going to be thrown away within six months (if current plans hold). When your countless efforts go unrecognized, and everything you've worked for, everything you've poured all your energy into, is tossed aside like refuse in the dust bin and forgotten, it's hard to say, "I care about the work I do here."

A lot of the people I work with have fallen into the Money Trap. And I admit I was there too around this time last year. But you know what? I'd rather be happy and poor than sad and rich. I mean, what good is money if you're not going to enjoy it because either you don't have time to spend it (working too much), or you buy all this crap and realise you're still unhappy. Life is short. I learned that the hard way.

Life is short.... My back injury two years ago taught me a lot about life.

For those of you not aware, I was sent on a trip on business with unnamed technology company for three weeks. My workaholic team lead worked us literally 80 hours a week. The main problem was that we sat at desks 80 hours a week for three weeks. I know at least two of us developed back problems during that time, though mine was the worst of the lot. I ended up with a herniated disc between vertebrae L5 and S1, which meant the protrusion was pinching my sciatic nerve, the main nerve trunk that runs down into the legs. I spent a week on my stomach, trying to get to the doctor several times, losing 20 pounds, and then I was hopped up on drugs for a couple of months.

I learned a lot from that experience:

• "Life's too short to let life get you down," meaning that life can get in the way of true happiness, and when it does it's time to start going after a life that compliments the true happiness you want.


• I understand drug addiction. Though my experience with prescription narcotics only scratches the surface of the very tip of the iceberg, it's easy to imagine myself falling into chemical dependence on opiates. When all you've known for a week is intolerable physical pain, the fact that a little pill or a few drops of liquid could take all that away is a very powerful fact to know. Morphine, Demerol, Vicodin, Diazepam. All very nice things. Naproxen (the active ingredient in Aleve) doesn't work on me anymore. Had too much of that.


• Life has a lot to offer. There's a lot of stuff to do in this world, and we're only here for a short time (see Bullet 1). I battled depression and suicidal thoughts during my recovery. I finally concluded that there's so much more to see and do that I haven't seen or done. And seeing and doing a lot of those things involves taking risks. Sometimes big risks.

So here I am. I'm quitting unnamed technology company, taking a huge pay cut to work in a coffee shop, and going to culinary school. Some people think I'm throwing away five years of nationally-ranked univeristy education. I'm not saying that I won't ever go back to software engineering, but right now this will make me happy, and that's all that really matters right now. I feel a little sorry for leaving my friends behind at unnamed technology company, but I'm also hoping I can inspire them to have their own epiphanies.

¶ 12:18 AM 3 comments

An alien came down from the tree. It parked its sled by the dinosaur. It crawled up to my uncle and said, "My brain is a phone, and my mother wants him to buy bread." My friend, who witnessed all this, said, "I can't see my spleen. I would ask that you not stand on my shadow."

By this time, the car was getting restless. It cried out in pain as its porcupine swam in the pudding. Then, from out of the nose, penguins rolled in, dressed in hospital gowns, singing. The maypole they were carrying was pink and quite heavy, and a legion of dwarves was worshipping it.

The pencils began to crumble. Cookies set alight the clay spire. Dancing chickens summoned forth the electric mouse with their irregular pulses of eggplant. Papers rose up from the buckets, lighting the way to the orchard. The blight had driven many to tomatoes, but now it was up to the dust bins to say when.

Failing that, the eyedrops would be the third to produce the sceptre while the coleslaw was being trampled. Neither the cup nor the window could be called upon to wash the rocks. No, only the basketball could cry.

And so it was. Water flew from lemon to lemon, bringing twist ties to the ice cream. All who were kneeling in the box would be blue forevermore.

Fin.

¶ 3:31 PM 2 comments