Art, Craft, Trade

One of the best things about attending the Linuxconf is the renewed sense of enthusiam for my field (lightly dampened yesterday by battling with @#@^#%$!^% PulseAudio, which is the worst thing to be inflicted on desktop Linux in a long time, and today on arriving home to discover a household box had literally cooked itself, likely beyond repair).

A lot of the last near-decade has, for me, seen my interest in what I do wane, damn near finished off by two years of release management. I had become, well, barely a tradesman, practically an assemblyline worker; interested in doing my job properly, but largely devooid of a vast care factor beyond that.

The last while working on zLinux has helped considerably with that, and LCA has piqued my interest mightily; I want to get back into hand-rolling Postgres releases to play with the new features, I want to play with new technologies and tools and follow their development, not just because I want to be better as a craftsman of my job, but because I can glimpse my former interest in the art of what I do; of doing a thing for itself and that alone, rather than merely because it turns a crust. On that front, LCA is a huge personal success as well as providing me with a bunch of professional value, and that’s (hopefully) a genuine improvement in the whatsit of my life.