Out of a rut and onto the trading floor
July 5th, 2007 — jodyMay 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.