Mike Ball

I now believe I understand the full meaning of “burnout”. The last month or so has been spent in an all-consuming effort to write a proposal to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to develop the next-generation supercomputer. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard, given that we’ve spent the last two and a half years doing the research that’s supposed to go into this proposal, but, well, uh, it didn’t quite work that way. You see, the research being done had very little connection to anything that Sun could actually produce. So we’ve been going through this process called “convergence” in which we try to create a design that Sun can produce, and DARPA might want to buy. It hasn’t been easy. Then we had to cost it out, and of course it cost about twice as much as the budget, and then… Well, you get the picture.

When night came around, I’m afraid that I didn’t have much gumption left, and all I wanted to do was be passive. You know, listen to music, or watch a silly video, or read something mindless. I thought about writing something several times, but somehow couldn’t bring myself to hit that first key.

Now it’s done, in the final edit, and gets shipped off to Washington. I’m on call until Thursday, but barring emergency shouldn’t have to do anything. Come Saturday, I’m heading for the Bahamas to sit on our new boat for a while. No Sun, just sun. I’m looking forward to some heavy-duty indolence.

You may have wondered about those lists on the right side. They seem to be a popular feature for blogs, and are another bit of personal data for the curious. There used to be a “currently reading” list, but I just removed it. I’m usually currently reading several books at once, and most of them are the sort that would only interest somebody else in the business. Are you really interested in “Things Computer Scientists Seldom Talk About”? Well, maybe that one, but how about “Learning PHP”? Anyway, I wasn’t updating it, so I just dropped it. If hoards of people leave comments about how much they miss it, I might put it back.

The one I did leave there is “Currently Listening”, which is the current set of lectures or book on tape that I’m listening to when I go to the gym (or drive long distance). The link takes you to a description of the lecture. I’m very fond of lectures from The Teaching Company, but there are other sources as well. If you do decide to buy something from them, be sure to pick something that they have on sale. The prices are about a quarter of their usual price. These days, I buy the downloaded audio and listen to it on an ipod. CD’s are so last century! If anyone is interested enough to leave a comment asking for it, I might write short reviews as I listen to them, but I think the website that the point to is probably enough.

The last couple of weeks have been mostly quiet and boring. The most interesting thing was Andy’s return from a trip to England with his choir. He had some nice pictures and some good stories, but those are his to tell, not mine. I spent a week flat on my back with some kind of GI virus. The house where we were playing D&D had a sick baby. That was Friday night. By Sunday three of us were down with the virus. The other two had already had it. I managed to call in to a meeting on Tuesday, and heard “Oh yeah, that one took me about 5 days to get over.” It seemed to be what’s going around. Only its ubiquity made it slightly amusing.

At work, we are in the process of writing a proposal for a very large Government contract. We don’t have long to do it, so there’s lots of pressure. Oh, did I mention that the process is boring? I did? Oh well, it is.

Somehow, in all of this, I haven’t had all that much of an urge to write. I do have a couple of topics saved up, but I’ll use them a bit later. For now, I think I’ll go to bed….