Clicking Paul's snowflakes.
Like digital bubble wrap
Strangely addictive.

I have discovered one of the deep, dark, ancient secrets of my predecessors at work: how they generated bar codes.

This occasion calls for a beer. Too bad my throat's sore and I can't eat/drink anything.

It makes me chuckle, especially since I've ended up literally playing the game backwards, moving from Raleigh, then seeing Lance diamond the first week I got here, to seeing the American side of Niagara Falls, and finally looking for someone cheap to live.

(This was originally a comment on (e:jim)'s Macworld journal post, but it started turning in article material when I started ruminating on my current station in life).

I am a 40 hr/wk mac/Cocoa programmer and I've never been able to afford the time and money to go to either Macworld or, more importantly, WWDC (Apple's yearly Worldwide Developer Conference for mac programmers). My current employer certain won't pay for me to go to WWDC, because the previous programmers turned down the offer for the company to pay them to go to it (and then proceeded not to renew the company's Apple Developer Program), which pretty much shut the door for me when I came after them.

The only opportunity I ever had to get a free ticket for WWDC(which costs $1500+) was when I was in college working in my mac programming work-study job, and I had to pass that up because it was summer school and I couldn't take time away from the last class I needed to graduate.

In short, I think I hold the monopoly on (e:strip) of sucktastic experiences missing Apple conferences, unless I happen to share a duopoly in that industry with (e:zobar).

Why am I complaining? Because it's hump day, that's why. I'm allowed to gripe like a 3 yr/old and shake my fist at the world, as well as having delusions of grandeur like starting my own mac developers conference in Buffalo and starting a Buffalo chapter of CocoaHeads where I am the sole member, the president, and still find time to call for my own impeachment.

Time for positives now. I:

Am employed
Have a decent-paying, fairly challenging job
In fairly decent health
Am well/over-fed
Have people who love me
I am living a life that 95% of the world's population can only dream about
Will get to see my son when he pops out in 4 months

Okay, so there probably are more important things in my life than going to nerd conferences and I'm making way too big a deal about missing them.