The first blog back is always the most difficult

Whew, it's been almost four months since that last one. That's pretty weak right there.

I imagine this one won't be too long, as I'm writing it as I'm on hold with HP customer service. I swear, buying that Compaq laptop back in '03 was such a poor decision. I've had nothing but problems with that thing. Anyway...

Over the past few months, life has been.... interesting. Work has been frustrating as all hell, as I've been moved away from graphics-related projects and instead onto general application development. Gah, I may as well be asking, "do you want fries with that?" At least at the fast food register I was doing math. "Alright Shane, this class needs to be threadsafe and serializable." No thanks. A few weeks back I hit rock bottom at work (for my time at NE), where I'd wake up in the morning and not want to go to work. I don't know what other people experience, but that was a first for this current job. I'd come to work and just be pissed off at everybody here for no reason in particular. That really sucked. It's gotten better over the last two weeks, but that's all in the relative sense. And it's been bad enough recently that my 5-year focus has shifted away from staying with NE for a long time. Instead I'm looking more seriously at breaking off in 2-3 years and doing my own thing. I'm not entirely sure what that is right now, but I'm in the process of figuring that out - not too worried at the moment. I've definitely shifted away from wanting to be a software engineer. Or maybe I just don't like being a software engineer underling, where I feel removed from business decisions at my company of 20-25 people. Anyway, I won't complain too much, as (a) I'm employed, (b) I'm paid decently well, and (c) I've got a bucket-load of stock options that could treat me well in a few years if our scanner takes off. I just miss my dot products, my cross products, my intersection routines, my graph paper and pencil, and the mental stimulation that comes with solving 3D geometry problems all day.

After a three year break I've picked up ultimate frisbee again. I'm pretty much at the same level as I was when I left - a good handle some of the times, a tenacious defender with a tendency to poach off my guy as I tire, a ridiculous hucker/puller with my backhand (though still not consistent enough with it). There are a few things that have changed, though. My forehand can go a lot farther than it used to. I can't jump quite as high. The one that has me puzzled is my (relative) lack of competitive fire. I remember playing in high school, screaming at times when I couldn't contain my emotion (be it good or bad). Now, I seem to have a, "whatever," attitude towards it all. I actually got a taste of that fire during pick-up play last night. After two very poor throws on my part, one of my teammates told me, "you're not picking up the disc anymore." Right. I'm going to leave out some of that back-story (and leave that person anonymous) and just say that it felt good to have a reason to compete. I'm going to try to carry that state over into tonight's game and see how I play. I remember a story about Michael Jordan, about how he'd make up conflicts between him and his opponents as a way to motivate himself. I always liked that story....

Anyway, this has gone on long enough.