MrAnnoyanceToYou's Journal: More random ramblings in an Internet-enabled world.

I've never held a job in a big corporation for this long. I guess it's that they don't really ask anything of me beyond presence for 40 hours a week and the ability to answer all their questions promptly and efficiently. I've been using my spare time continuing in Engineering classes (physics at the moment) and so far it's going quite well, I guess. And glassblowing.

If you collect / like the look of glass, um, well, I'm going to have a website up as soon as my stuff's worth looking at. Funding this particular hobby is a little rough. But it's everything I ever hoped for in a passtime. And maybe eventually a profession. If only I felt about programming like I do about glass, I would already be wealthy beyond what I could ever need. Sad. But it's worth it to love something I'm doing for once. And the engineering degree, well, with that I can eventually get into doing something good for the world.

I've now got a five year plan and I'm waiting for the monkey wrench. But I finally think I'm on the right track, and capable of defending my direction.

Job's still utter crap, though. Thank goodness for iPods, or I'd be spending my days listening to everyone unbelievably angry at Bank X's credit card department going off the hook. I've learned a lot about biting my tongue and swallowing my bile and working with tools built to handle half of what I'm asking of them.

Anyways. Statements aren't thought provoking, so I have a question. I've been working in computers for a very long time at a scut level. I do VB script code like a champ, but I've done lots of more interesting things in the past - I coded Mandelbrot series calculations in parallel in high school, fer chrissake. The last few years I've really been just programming the MS Office applications to do more than office applications should. But I don't really care about what I'm doing, and I feel stuck in it. I would like to get back into coding interesting things. So my question is this: how? I've spent so long not programming in OOD-based languages that I've forgotten most of what I knew about it, (I've gone through the Head First series learning some Java, and done some .Net classes over the last six months) but I can still answer half the basic questions directly from memory and look the rest up in less than thirty seconds. Should I just lie my head off and get a job that I can grow into within three months? Should I continue to pursue the certification track, or will that keep me stuck in the same environment I'm in now? Should I just pack it in on the hope for a better job and keep taking stuff that requires little mental effort in the anticipation of getting an engineering degree in something physical so that I have real personal value in what I do? The only problem with the last option is that I feel like I'm going braindead in my cube.

I'm apparently successful. People tell me so occasionally; I make a decent living for where I live. Way over the fifty percent mark. My co-workers and boss value both what I have to say and how productive I can be for them. But I'm dissatisfied with my own accomplishments. I know I can do more than sit here and test bank software. I want more. This is driving me nuts.

my two cents

[Paradise Pete]

I don't know how old you are, but it seems like you're just getting started. If I could go back and give advice to my younger self it would be this:

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Invest every penny you can possibly spare. Don't buy anything at all frivolous, and cut corners wherever you can to save (and invest) more. Don't buy a fancy TV and stereo. Don't buy a nice car.

Time passes. I know it doesn't seem like it, but the years do go by, and compound interest is the most miraculous of things. What it will mean to you later is tha

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[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

I'm not collecting, I'm glass blowing. It's um... Like an art. Learning a second trade, I guess. Creating something I can see and touch and have a sense of accomplishment about. I have wanted to do it for a very long time and learning to do it now is what I consider teh most worthwhile thing I do all week / month is. Sure, I'm going to school. That will increase my earning power quite quickly over time. My goal is to be able to design things that will make the world a better place.

My goal is to h

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[Paradise Pete]

My goal is to have a job I enjoy for the rest of my life, not plan to retire in thirty years instead of fourty.

I didn't say retire, I said do whatever you want. And no matter what, you will later be extraordinary glad you invested whatever you could spare. But I'm not expecting you to believe me. :-)

But I'm not saying you should live in a box. If you have something you love, by all means keep at it.

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[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Heh. I live with my Mom. I'm not exactly a huge spender here. I'm still young enough that working my tail off and going to school and eventually getting an ME will really pay off. I'm just about five years beyond where people normally do that kind of thing, which makes it harder. It takes a particular kind of person to say, "Well, I've got a philosophy degree and a decent career in computers, let's learn to blow glass and do Mechanical Engineering." But that's where I am, and what I want to do. So I'