Sat, 8th Feb '03, 3:35 pm::
There is a certain type of pleasure that comes from writing good software. It's very different from the excitement of a victory. It's unlike the ecstacy of finishing a one-mile run. It's quite different for the delights of everyday life. It is more of a calm, steady flow of satisfaction and confidence, that slowly and slowly makes you happier and happier. That's exactly what's happening to me right now.
Last night, I wrote Chime Away! - it is a tiny program that automatically downloads and sets new away messages for Aim every minute. You can select messages from tons of categories like Food, School, Shower, Sleep, and Work etc. Eventually there'll be 50-100 categories to choose from, and maybe over 5000 away messages! Took me about 10-12 hours altogether to write the client software, create the server database, write the server scripts etc. But now, I'm done :) It's a pretty sweet software and I'm proud of it.
I realize that my best programming work comes only when I'm programming non-stop and yesterday I had some time to kill. I still have a few larger programs to complete (Ajooba, Glass2k etc.) but I don't care. Those progs are gonna take a while to complete. Prolly 10-12 days of non-stop programming each. And I still have a lot of websites to complete. I woke up @ 11am even though I went to bed @ 4! Dammit, I just can't sleep during the weekends. Actually I woke up because I was really excited about Chime Away! and wanted to complete it. Hopefully it's all done now. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Ahhhhhh life is good. I love programming and web-designing, and finally after 22 years, I can do as much of it as I want. Sure... my family's gonna be all scared now thinking I'll turn into a loner or something. Well don't worry. I work hard when I have to and I'll party hard when I'm tired of work :) Though this week, no parties. Lotsa work and some good reading time. I gotta finish the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison; like 70 pages left. And then I'll start reading another novel: A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee.
Life isn't very exciting at the moment. There are no *hot* chics that I have a crush on. But I feel so calm right now, that I don't really care. My mind's at peace and that's what matters... I think my brain loves programming. Hehe.