Category: Work Page 7 of 9

Day 801 of 1000

I have had a great, but very exhausting time over the last several months getting a new product ready for introduction early next year.  The part I was supposed to play was pretty much complete at the beginning of October.  I absolutely love the work I do.  Part of that joy is in the schedule.  Not only is it necessary to get it done, but to do it fast enough to hit a market window is part of the thrill.  I was given a director level position that had to do with internal politics and the small size of the company which meant that, even though what was required was not at the center of my skill set, I was the only one old enough and experienced enough to handle both the technology and the internal and external political pressures required to do the job.

I finished that part of my job, so now I have been moved to a director level position that is exactly at the center of my experience.  I will coordinate a world-wide team of consultants and collaborators to develop intellectual property in image processing and machine vision.  It does not get better than that for someone like me.  My new title is Director, Image Analysis.  Sadly, though, technical and resources issues have raised their ugly head again.  I am the only one with enough bandwidth and technical know-how to handle the shortfall.  So, I am pulled back into to the 24-7 development fray until the end of the year and possibly through January.  The good part is that my contribution will be mostly technical this time and not political.

I will love this.  The down side is that I have already been doing it for a long time and I am pretty tired.  I have never been this heavy (fat) in my life due to lack of exercise and eating on the road all the time.  There is not much time to do anything other than write code, eat, and sleep.  Maybe if I quit eating so much the fat problem would take care of itself.  The project is very distributed so I work with people in Australia, India, China, and all over the US.  That means my work day does not start at 8 and go to 5.  I have phone and Skype calls all hours of the night and day.  The only thing to do in situations like this is to just dive into it and enjoy it.  I figure I can do that for two or three more months.

Then, I will have my dream job–working with the most talented people in the world in the field of machine vision and image processing and I get to pick my own team.  Most of them are already on board.

Day 785 of 1000

I spent more time in Prescott, Arizona over the last three months than at home with the family.  That is because my company has given me responsibility to get images out of a new camera we designed.  We were able to do that last Wednesday.  Supposedly that would return me to a more sane schedule where I can fly to Prescott only one or two weeks per month for awhile.  It also meant that I could quit working weekends until the next big product development cycle requires me to do this again.  The bad news is that the work we did uncovered new “opportunities” which will require my apt attention.  That means, my schedule will remain pretty much the same as before until the end of the year.

I love the work I do and really do not mind the hours because if I were not working on those technical things for which I get paid, I would probably be doing the same kind of thing on a volunteer or hobby project.  It all works out OK because the kids are getting hammered from now until the end of the year with the toughest classes of their undergraduate degrees and the need to apply to graduate schools before the end fo the year.  They both should have an easier go next semester, but not THAT much easier.  I hope to have a schedule where I do not have to spend too many weekends away from home by then.