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Something Old, Something New
It's been coming for a long time. I've been trying to reach escape velocity and rocket away from my employer for a long time, but you know how it goes. The job starts to suck and that suckage combines with the overwhelming fear and dread of constant layoffs, so you decide it's time to get out and find something worth spending your time on. You throw yourself into the search, but then the job gets a little better and you think "Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe I can make it work here." So your search sort of peters off and you sink back into the mire of false hope.
Because finding a job is tough. Finding a job is a full-time job, and trying to do it part time and still be fair to the job you currently have is tough. And when you toss in a second full-time job (Dad), it's fairly unwieldy. So you hope things will work out where you're at, so you can concentrate on being successful.
But they didn't work out. Well, at least not for me. Things came to a head, and I took a Voluntary Job Elimination, which means my employer axes my job and my position. I get some layoff benefits, which made the decision easier, and now I can concentrate on finding the right job, full time. Also, as a side benefit, it's given me a little extra time for my second full time job (Dad, remember?), which has been great.
So, I'm hitting the virtual bricks, sending out resumes, making phone calls and doing research. I'm confident that I will find a job, and not just any job, but a good job. ("Good" here does not mean "high paying", but "spiritually satisfying". That's a long story that I will save for another day.)
Meanwhile, in order to keep my skills sharp and my resume attractive, and to build up a bit of a 'portfolio', I plan to tackle some projects in both Java and Python. One would be working through the Design Workbook as I mentioned below, but there are some other things I want to try as well. My first task will be to build a program to solve those triangle peg-jumping solitaire games. It's not a simple task, as the grid is a triangle, so a regular array won't cut it. I'll have to think of something clever, which is of course the fun of it.
I'll publish the results (and possibly the code) when I've got it working.
Oddly enough, I actually solved one by hand the other day. Here's the solution I found, numbering the holes from 1 at the top through 15 on the lower right:
With the hole at 1, move these pegs: 4 9 11 12 3 14 2 10 1 7 6 12 15
This should leave you with a single peg at 13.
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