Changes

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strange)Turn and face the strainCh-ch-ChangesDon't have to be a richer manCh-ch-ch-ch-ChangesCh-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strange)Don't want to be a better manTime may change meBut I can't trace time -- David Bowie

I'm more than six months into my new position, and there have been a lot of changes over the past few months.

I dropped my eldest daughter off at college last week.  I still haven't adjusted to that.  I found myself wondering at 4:00 today why she wasn't home from school yet.  Oh yeah, I reminded myself.  November for Thanksgiving.

Next week I finish my last class in my Masters in Bioinformatics.  That and turning in my final capstone paper are all that stands between me an my degree.  I've learned a lot over the last three years in that program, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Bill Hersh has put together a great program at OHSU.  Whether you go for the certificate, the masters, or even just the 10x10 program, it's all good stuff.

My standards work is slacking off as my implementation work is picking up.  I'm principle architect for three teams working on Interoperability stuff.  I wear three hats. Some days I'm an architect, others a product manager, and others, an engineering manager.  Some days I do all three, sometimes at the same time.

My schedule is split between three time zones, the usual left-coast right-coast for the US that has been the norm for most of my life, but now also about 4 hours in the middle of the night (12am -4am) Bengaluru time.  I sleep when I'm tired, which is not as you would expect to be "most of the time".

I still struggle with what I want to be when I grow up, forgetting that since I managed to reach 50 without doing so a couple of years back, I don't actually have to grow up, and I have a certificate from my family to prove it.

I suppose that some day when I retire, I will want to teach full time, rather than spending about a third to half of my time doing that.  What I think that really means is that my projects will become my students, rather than having students because of my projects.

Now if I could just figure out how to get the next six things done that I need to before the day is over, without moving to somewhere like Mars, or worse yet, Mercury or Venus.

   Keith