Out of a rut and onto the trading floor

May was my last month with Novell, and the OpenOffice.org project. Working with Michael, and the rest of the Ximian/Novell team, since my son was born 6 years ago has been great. It doesn’t get much better than earning a living writing free software. However, while taking an unplanned hike through the Czech country side, discussing spreadsheet data-structures (isn’t that what everyone does while hiking?), Gnumeric came up, and I remembered how it felt ‘back in the day’. An important part of open source development had slipped away without my realizing it. This is supposed to be FUN!

OO.o is an important project for the free software cause, but after 2 years, I was still 1-2 orders of magnitude more productive in Gnumeric. Spelunking can be interesting, but it wears thin after a while, and when something isn’t fun, it becomes work. When an old colleague from the investment world called with a job offer, I accepted. It was time for change.

  • Time to leave my basement (at least for a while) and commute into downtown.
  • Time to play with C#, ASP.NET and some nifty toys (you can make almost windows feel like Linux now)
  • Time to eat sushi and decent Thai food on the patio of BCE place.
  • Time to sit on the trading floor and interact with live people, with the latest financial news (eg Paris Hilton leaving prison stay)
  • I’m even contemplating making the jump from vim to emacs (only very briefly, vim7 drew me back)

Change is billowing through my daily routine, and with a clear separation of work and fun my Gnumeric time is back.

A quiet day

Walked through the backlanes to the library with Ryan. It went quickly even though I only carried him part way. The innoncence of a two year old with a serious case of the ‘Why?’s is an excellent balm for the soul. I don’t think we’ll tell him about bub. It seems too soon for him to come to grips with the permanence of mortality. A nice copy of Winken, Bliken, and Nod suits him better just now.I’d best get back to working on a eulogy.

Grandparent #1


Beatrice Gittle Goldberg Sep 23 1922-Jun 1 2004

My grandmother (on my father’s side) passed away a few moments ago after
struggling wth cancer for several months. I’m very lucky the kids had a
chance to meet her.