Repurpose

I needed actual shelves for my room. My first idea was to look at the big name stores for ideas for pretty shelving and brackets. I saw some things that looked pretty good but soon found out that they were not standard. I would essentially be locked into this purchase; If I needed anything I would need to go right back to them.

I have noticed in my travels (around NYC) things being used for a purpose that was not originally intended. I have seen doors used as tables, mason jars used as glasses and puppies used as handbags.

Nowadays its all about the vintage clothes and the rustic look. People pay a high premium for stuff that was owned by people a long time ago. I can see some of the joy that can be derived from owning something that has been on the earth and used by someone decades before. I plan on keeping all my clothes and passing them down to my grandkids in my will.

I love the planet and all so I know it is actually better in most cases to reduce and reuse than it is to recycle. In that spirit I decided to do some repurposing of my own. My first stab at repurposing was with the shelving in my room. Floors hold things and that's what I want shelves to do so why don't I used my floor as a shelf. I can't keep everything on my floor, so I thought to use excess flooring in my storage area for shelving.

Before I knew it the shelves were up and I was trying to figure out what else I could do with the extra flooring.

Shelving




Under bed storage

Order of Operations

I punch a bunch of numbers into my phone calculator the other day and got a rather weird result. Weird only because I totally forgot that my phone understood orders of operations and did not just calculate from left to right. This should not be ground breaking information as most devices are programmed in this manner. I only bring this up because I also forgot the order of operations as it applies to my life.

I recently accepted a job as a Software Engineer, my dream job. I however forgot that there were other parts of the equation that really needed to be considered. First of all I really liked where I was. The work was interesting and the people were totally awesome from the day I stepped in the door.

I've remarked to my people at home many a time that "this will all pass" and "they're being nice to the new guy." I figured that once the new guy shine wore off I would get the dirty looks and the sharp tongues. I waited and waited and waited to get down to the business as usual but it never came.

I dreaded the day I had to resign. For the first time in my short existence it was real difficult to leave a job. This was perhaps more difficult than when I left Kodak at the end of college when everyone around me was pink slipped. That time was more tragic because guys who were with the company over 20 years were being let go but it was expected given the hardships of the company.

The next problem is that my dream job is in New Jersey. As I understand it currently my choices are as follows:

1. Drive to Jersey 1.5 hours everyday with a possibility of a 2 plus hour drive in the winter

2. Take a 2.5 hour subway to path to bus ride to Jersey daily.

3. Move to Jersey

Choices 1 and 3 will cost about the same. Choice three would also mean that I would essentially have a weekday and weekend home.

It's all a bit much for me. As of today I now have 12 day to have all of this figured out. I've essentially wasted two days doing housework for a place I may not be officially in within 2 weeks.

Dreams

Since I was a little boy I wanted to be a scientist. I recall watching sci-fi shows with my pops before there was a channel dedicated to it. These shows all had some sort of evil genius putting their knowledge of "science" to do harm to others. Usually with the goal to conquer the world in some way. By the end, the evil person's dastardly plan would be thwarted by the do-gooder. The destructo-robot would be engineered and repurposed into a super building-bot.

After entering college I realized I had no desire to actually build a robot or a futuristic propulsion system. I do enjoy solving problems. I found my bit of the problem-solving pie in the puzzles posed by programming hardware and software. From the instant I got my hands on a microprocessor board I was hooked. Assembly language made so much more sense to me than Steinbeck or F Scott Fitzgerald.

Assembly was just a gateway into Hardware programming languages like VHDL and Verilog and soon I found myself chasing the dragon. Poor choice of words. Putting together an embedded project is like getting two siblings who are always at odds to get along. Whenever something odd happens they always point to each other.

I've finally arrived. I am now an engineer, actually I am between jobs right now. On the 26th of this month it will be super official; one of my dreams will come true. I will be an engineer. A software engineer to be specific.

Please do not pinch me.