britton thinks out loud

I want Apple to design a shoe, so I can have an iPod, an iPad, and an iPed, all at the same time.

Imagination seems to be the theme for the day. Check out Lego Universe, the MMO where your main "weapon" is Imagination, and the players are the guardians of same. Makes me wish Peter were just a little bit older -- here's a game I could really get behind! And it's right up his alley -- his lego (well, duplo) spaceships and robots routinely look better than mine.

I bet he could get a job with CCP doing ship designs for EVE.

And speaking of spaceships, I took a gamble and Netflix'd "Titan A.E.", Don Bluth's animated feature about 31st-century humanity in Diaspora. Sure enough, Peter loved it. He's got his own movie-watching style, though; about a third of the way through, he'll start trying to interact with it. This time, he pushed together a little table and some other kid furniture, arrayed console-looking items on them, and voila! A pretty convincing spaceship cockpit, complete with keyboard and flightstick. As the protagonist's spaceship weaved through the ice nebula on our TV, he issued orders to "turn left!" "slow down!", which I (as first officer and co-pilot) readily obeyed.

I readily agree that too much TV rots your child's brain. But just enough of the right TV can set it on fire!

(In a good way, of course.)

My church has a bunch of similarly-themed posters up in the main corridor (sans logo), courtesy of Rick Patrick Photography. I like.

What a difference that little word makes.

The last time I started a new job, back in 2004, I had quite literally half the industry experience I have now. Expectations were low when I started my contract with Silicon Labs; I was going to help out in a few key projects that no one had time for, and then go on to the next job. Because expectations were low, however, I was able to blow them out of the water, and I ended up with a permanent offer within a couple months.

Now here I am, back at Silicon Labs, starting afresh in a new division. But this time, I've got the word "senior" on my business card. Senior Firmware Engineer. As in, "this guy knows what he's doing". For the first time, I feel as though I'm expected to take a leadership position right out of the starting gate, despite the fact that I'm still familiarizing myself with the architecture and the black magic that my new team employs on a daily basis. I can't afford to fade into the background until I bring myself up to speed, at my own pace; my teammates are counting on me to help solve their current problems as quickly as humanly possible. So I'm coming in to work early and remoting in from home at night, playing catch-up. All because of one little word on my business card.

And I gotta say -- it's hard work, but it's fun.

Go outside during a rainshower and try to catch raindrops on your tongue.