Art of Growing Old

Most of you know that I’m quite the workaholic. I enjoy spending my time in front of a computer when it involves learning something new, pushing the envelope, and working on a project that I genuinely find interesting. You must also know that before this project, I’ve never had the privilege of working on a project like this for work. Instead, I would find projects to work on with friends outside of work that would engage me. So what happens when my job is to work on a project that I find interesting?

In short: I disappear for weeks at a time.

It’s been a rough past few weeks. That’s not to say that I haven’t enjoyed every minute of this experience, but the overall fact remains that this immediate switch has taken its toll on me. It’s been a true test of my abilities to see this project come together — and we’re still only roughly 70% complete. If you asked me what I expected to be doing when I first started here, I would have never guessed I’d be managing and leading the development of a project from scratch.

I’ve expanded my knowledge of so much these past few weeks and I have every intention of sharing what I have learned. I’m in the process of moving http://blogs.rev-net.com over to the server hosting this blog, and I will begin my technical blog at http://blogs.rev-net.com/jmarnold (along with Dave’s at http://blogs.rev-net.com/ddewinter).

In the meantime, if you haven’t heard from me too much in the past month or so it’s not that I don’t love you ;). I promise, I’m trying to get into the habit of allocating at least half an hour to writing everyday.

I’ll be back soon!

So, earlier this year, my friend Jason had a brilliant idea. There was tons of hype in the development community around Google’s android platform. Being the genius mastermind that Jason is, he began working on an idea to combine the aspects social networking, location-based services, and his love for mobile development. Not long after some brainstorming sessions, I found myself opening up Eclipse and working with him to develop and consume our REST service.

There were long days and there were tons of hours thrown into this project. Not only were we staring at a rough deadline with only two developers (that have full-time jobs), I moved to Austin in the middle of it! It’s also worth noting that when it comes to location-based services, EVERYBODY wants in. We saw competing projects popping up every single day. Despite the competition, we rest assured that our core idea was solid and more suitable for the general public than the services being developed. We kept moving forward.

We didn’t quite finish everything that we hoped to accomplish in time but we still made a LOT of progress and turned it in time. I don’t know what kind of competition we’re up against but I guarantee you, we’ll give them a run for their money ;).

In a combination of tears and synthetic surprise, we bowed our heads in sorrow as though our hearts weren’t as black as the ties we all chose to wear. Perhaps it was the presumed self-applauding sob or a transparent tear that won the crowd. It was as if one tear would make up for your apparent loss of regret; a glorious performance worthy of Broadway, no less.

We hung pictures and lit candles, following the mindless routines of millions who’ve entrusted their hopes and dreams into melting wax. Perhaps we’ll soon attend a similar gathering for the loss of inviolability as devotion shifts to conformity but we were not here to discuss this.

We were not there to argue,
We were not allowed to question,
We simply could not fight back the tears.

In a visual sensation of your last standing breath, we awaited our turn to graciously award you our sympathy. We wrapped it tight in hand-made baskets, filled with scented hopes, and handed them over in our Sunday’s best as we blessed you with our deflated remarks.

I sincerely wish we knew what the hell we’ve become.

I’ve rediscovered my love of ATB this week. Depending on my mood, I find that particular genres of music can be horribly distracting for me. I either spend too much time focusing on the lyrics or I get wrapped up in some nostalgic moment as I reminisce over the first time I heard the song. When I’m listening to ATB, there’s barely anything on my mind save for the task at hand. I’ve seen a spike in my productivity at work since I transitioned back to trance/house for work music.

My life has changed so drastically this year that it’s hard to keep up. That’s not a complaint by any means. In fact, this is the first time I’ve been truly happy with my position since Neumont. I’ve been given an unexpected amount of authority on this project and while it’s certainly intimidating, I am loving every second of it. Contracts are still being worked out but I hope to be able to give some information about it before our launch date. Either way, I’ll post the live address on June 1st for all to see.

I have some inspiration today to write something creative so please forgive this random post. I thought I’d get some brief updates in before I get some work done today. I’ll be writing something more interesting sometime tonight.

It’s taken me a little bit longer than I had planned to get back to blogging. Even with all the supposed “down time”, it feels like life has been moving at a 1000 miles per hour this past two weeks or so. Moving halfway across the country has the tendency to do that to you, I suppose. Nevertheless, I am back and I’ll start with a brief summary of what’s been happening with me.

Not too long ago, an opportunity presented itself. It would be risky and it would be stressful; but above all else, it felt like it would be worth it. After exhaustively discussing the situation with my family and quite a few of my close friends, I accepted an offer in Austin and put in my two weeks notice. I was “excused” from work two days after giving notice and had some down time to work on side projects and get ready for the big move. Needless to say, I spent more time on the side projects…

My friend Ben was kind enough to join me on my adventure across the country. We left at roughly 2:00am on March 20 and after two LONG days of driving/sleeping/and being completely disoriented, we found ourselves in Austin that Saturday night. I made a last minute decision to take my car out here so we followed each other the entire way. Word of advice? Don’t ever do that. Also, walkie talkies are the coolest invention. Ever.

So…I’m here in Austin, living with my friends Rex and Drew while I look for my own place, I’m part-managing and lead-developing my first project at work, and I am LOVING it. I’ll be posting regularly again and probably getting back into some more insightful and creative writing. It’s late and I need to get some rest but figured I’d get in a quick update.