Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Slave to the grind

Taking a brief respite from work right now (I've allotted myself 10 minutes to write this), as things have gone quite a bit nutty since yesterday morning. I've been here since 8am this morning and I didn't leave the office last night until a little after 10pm. This was especially sucky because I was supposed to go see Derek's band last night.

It’s times like these that the whole "bein' filthy stinkin' rich" thing really would appeal to me.

I know I am lucky to have a good job. Still, there are times when the disadvantages of having a position of responsibility (i.e. time commitment, stress level, etc.) outweigh the advantages (i.e. decent pay scale, challenging work, etc.)

Sometimes I wish I'd just been a carpenter like my father.

I think this has a lot to do with the nebulous and transitory nature of what I do. Sure, in most cases I'm starting out with almost nothing, simply an idea in my or someone else's head, and ending up with a finished application or website. But this hardly compares to starting out with a pile of wood and ending up with a new set of cabinets or a deck or a whole house. Those are the kinds of results that my father gets to see.

Me, I'm just some programmer geek. If you were to come back in 50 years, the things my dad builds will still be here (valuable antiques, no doubt). In the same 50 years, people will be too busy communicating telepathically and dodging laser beams from the Star Wars program to bother with databases and the other stupid shit I do. This is because mine is a field with an innate obsolescence. Sure, I change with the times and learn the new languages, but because of the ever changing nature of information management, the old simply becomes the old. There's no such thing as a classic in my business.

More succinctly: you'll find people who will pay thousands of dollars for a chair some average guy made in the 1600s. You'll never find ANYBODY who would pay ANYTHING for a database written in dBase in 1983.

OK. That took only 6 minutes, not the full 10. Good for me.

Ideas that have been forming in my brain for some time:

Skinny Puppy - Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse
(ambient percussiveness?)

Hardfloor - TB Resuscitation
(ride the acid line to funk)

Dimmu Borgir - Enthrone Darkness Triumphant
(growl roar and roll)

Bassomatic - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Bass
(William Orbit does the dance thing... really really well)

Enduser - Apocalypse Music MP3 Compilation
(lovely bits of breaks from here and there)

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