No More Tinkering?
Yesterday I completed a minor set of projects I have been working on since I lost my job. Since the company I worked for provided me with a laptop my home computer's desktop configuration drifted into obsolescence. I didn't really need to keep up to date on software that I only used occasionally, and considering my computer was mostly headless after our move it was easy to understand how little I actually used it as a desktop environment. I have been spending the last month whittling away at my desktop, slowly bringing it up to the speed of my life. Bit by bit I have been tinkering, compiling, configuring, and otherwise bending my machine to my will. Last night I completed my list of adjustments and upgrades, and now I find myself in a fearful position: I have nothing to do!
I have always loved to tinker. When I first got started in Linux it was the tinkering aspect that sucked me in and has kept me here. Back in my old days of DOS I was plunking around with assembly code pushing registers, playing with interrupts, tinkering with my system (often Windows 3.1 did not like what I was doing and would refuse to load). My first job as a Sysadmin drew upon my experience with tinkering, and I found I could fix most every problem in less than a day, and that made me very happy. Invariably I would run into the same problem at my job(s) that I have now: everything is running smooth and there is nothing left to tinker with. So what am I going to do with my time now?
I have long wanted to learn new programming techniques, new languages, and even get to work on some of my writing projects. This might be the opportunity I have been looking for, but then it is hard to motivate myself to start something new when I really want to work on getting a job (but when I've done all I can for one day I guess I should move on).
What a strange thing to face though. I get frustrated when I am forced to tinker with my system because something is not working. Yet I find it quite odd that I miss it when I am done and everything is running fine. Weird.
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