Back in the good old days of being a full time student I was pretty geeky/nerdy (which ever you feel works). I had my fingers in all sorts of random projects + I had a room of computer hardware that I could use to build something fun, cool, useful or random. Once I started working it became hard to be as dedicated so most of that stuff went away …

Now I’m finding that work leads me to implement solutions that, can be bought off the shelf, but often are WAY beyond our budget (like 10 times beyond considerable). I’ve also found that I miss having my Huawei E960 to “hack” – just for fun and because it looks like someone might finally have a working toolchain, maybe.

Which brings everything in full circle: what I wonder is whether I should re-take up some involvment in open source projects, building custom hardware products, etc… I am not overly good at business marketing; I just don’t have the salesman gene. So there is limited fiscal reward. Work needs some of it: but there is danger in having an entirely custom built with no community support product. I believe in open source so contributing back is a good thing in my opinion (i.e. that’s a positive).

Where do I start? Hmmm that question is one that drives me to get out of the technology field all together. Which leaves me thinking that perhaps I need to find project or product that I’m truly passionate about and start on it as opposed to asking an open ended question.

And then sometimes it would be nice to simply preach the gospel and see where life goes.

Geez that’s bad. But oh well. Happy new year to all. Etc… Etc… 2008 was pretty long in my opinion. It was definitely a full year; full of new experiences; and full of challenges personally and otherwise. But it’s gone now and we all have to start writing dates ending in 9 now.

I haven’t really, at least publicly, spoken much about some of the potentially bad things that happened this last year. And I don’t propose to now. I took opportunities that were presented to me in the past; quite some time ago now I guess; those opportunities furnished me with experiences that I am glad for. The long term strategy didn’t play out as planned: life is quick though; you can’t live for the long term strategy.

To quote Albert Einstein:

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.

Spontaneity and diligence are the keys. And for me that’s what 2009 is all about.

Just in case you don’t know. December is going to be one second longer than usual.