Up until now, I have studiously avoided having an online presence, which is at least supposed to be unusual for a “technology professional” such as myself. I ignored Facebook until my eldest daughter signed up, at which point both my wife and I opened accounts in order to “monitor” her. (And that so-called monitoring lasted about a week or two, at which point we decided to make the lazy decision to trust her. I haven’t logged in in… I probably shouldn’t say. Our daughter has somehow survived largely unscathed despite our lack of oversight.) I accepted a LinkedIn invitation not long after it appeared, but then proceeded to largely ignore that as well for months on end.
Why? I’d like to think it’s because I had more important things to do, but truthfully, I can and do waste time as well as the next guy. Am I a bit of a Luddite? Yeah, perhaps. Is it because I have nothing useful or interesting to say? Well, I suppose we’re about to find out 🙂
I’m certainly not afraid of speaking in public, and, in fact, I’ve done a fair amount of that (albeit not in a professional capacity). I am, however, perhaps a bit afraid of writing in public. I am acutely aware that the written word, which may be read, re-read and otherwise steamed over, is a completely different beast than the ephemeral spoken word. Once it’s on paper – or even worse, the Internet – plausible deniability goes out the window. As the well-known Mark Twain quote goes, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
So, to appropriate the immortal words of the Admiral Stockdale, “Who am I? Why am I here?”
After completing a math degree during the Reagan administration, I was “seduced by the dark side” and found myself living in the Boston area and writing software. I discovered that I truly enjoyed this work; at least most of the time, I also thought I was reasonably competent. Several years later, I moved to Seattle and took a job with what I now usually refer to as “a large, formerly local, aerospace manufacturer”. I spent the next seven years modeling and simulating manufacturing systems, using a number of different simulation packages.
These were generally excellent tools; nonetheless, I couldn’t help but to put my software developer’s hat back on. Wouldn’t it be cool if the software worked like this instead? Could I build something better? I spent the occasional weekend or evening noodling on it. But the ideas were barely formed, and they never seemed to coalesce into anything that felt like a workable concept.
Life intervened. I had kids. I moved on to other jobs. The ramblings disappeared into farthest, darkest regions of my home desk drawer.
About ten years ago, I was at a medical device startup, doing MRI image processing software. It was very cool, and a lot of fun – until we ran out of money and went splat. I took on a fairly heavy-duty volunteer position along with some contract work with a previous employer.
I had some more time on my hands once my volunteer responsibilities eased; I began to noodle a bit more seriously on simulation. I took up Python, figuring it to be both a useful (saleable!) skill and a tool of choice for those that do discrete event simulation. I ran across Stackless Python, and soon had a working, if primitive, simulation library base on Stackless tasklets. (Later, I found the greenlets package and moved back to a standard Python distribution.)
Earlier this year, I found myself at a professional crossroads. My contract work ended. It was time to answer, yet again, that age old question of what do you want to do when you grow up? I had options, thanks to a wonderfully supportive spouse. Ultimately, I decided to pursue this project. I didn’t know where it would lead, but it was time to find out. And much as it sometimes frightens me, it was time to put myself out there as well.
So here I am. I need to do a little catch-up on the “putting myself out there” front, but my goal remains to chronicle this process. I still don’t know where it will lead, but hopefully the ride will be interesting.