My work with STARE received an initial acknowledgement today 🙂 from
Prof. Ankur Teredesai ! Way to go.
I finally have a clear specifications for Project 3. The draft for the project will be revised and posted here.
My Distributed Systems Professor Prof. Alan Kaminsky is off to Seattle to attend OOPSLA and present a paper on Many2Many Invocation.
Today out of the blue, as I unwound in the library, I remembered myself at the age 14 (’92). On a fine summer afternoon. Mom was busy in the kitchen. I was hacking away on my first PC game on my XT. At that point I wanted to move a spaceship up/down/left/right so as to blast the incoming alien ships. Two problems dogged me, how do I use the cursor keys and how I might be able to ‘explode’ the alien spacecraft when they ‘contact’ with my lethal laser blasts. It took me some time to figure both out, I did it in both QBasic and in C. The point is not the solution to the problem, but the happiness that wrought my mind 🙂 at that time. I felt as if I had put not just 2 and 2
together, but 2 raised to 128 and 3 raised to 256 together. hehehe.
The spaceship would move and throw laser bolts at alien ships which would then explode. Jeez it was hilarious, I had to tell the first person I met, my mom.
In my opinion such happiness is true and is unfortunately now elusive. As an adult, satisfaction in my work is now masked and mired by deadlines and other peripheral matters, I don’t believe I can find the same thrill in my work that often. I desire to treasure that moment for the rest of my life. In the future I hope to find the same pleasure in my work.
Related Stories (2nd Feb. 2006): “Re-Igniting the Passion” – Creating Passionate Users. Kathy argues that the passion I find elusive is really inherent and that one cannot blame their job or their environment for letting that passion and enthusiasm slide. It is really yours to hold on to in the myriad of jobs that you will yourself indicate as part of your everyday routine.