Family Life

Today I put in a full day of work. That is to say, I actually worked all day on stuff that was immediately useful to the customer, that directly used my abilities, and that I enjoyed. This is notable because the last few months have been filled with paperwork, maintenance and training. Necessary things, but they don’t engage my brain, they’re boring, or they’re just plain distasteful. Today, on the other hand, was a good day at work.

I posted this photo because it’s a good example of the (lack of) visual appeal of what I do. This particular machine has the unusual feature of being clean. The better-off machines remain clean for about a week after we install them, but most end up grimy and greasy and oily mere days after going into service. That’s the nature of an industrial manufacturing environment, and today’s job was no different. In other words, nothing much to look at, nothing to write home about.

What I’m best at is software, but how do I show you a photo of that? I could post a flowchart or some lines of code. That would be even more boring than a row of dusty motors. The beauty of programming is all in my head, and I can’t show you a picture of what it looks like. Finding an elegant, complete solution to my customer’s problem, then writing out the code and discovering I can use some clever tricks to pare it down to a minimalist expression–that’s what brings satisfaction and fulfillment to my working day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 9:58 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.