My early retirement has ended. It ended a few months ago when I joined Playdom. As with most new jobs, especially in growing companies, I was slammed. I have finally dug myself out of my work debt hole and decided I should finish this post I began when interviewing.
For every gap an a person’s resume, there should be a good answer. This is my answer for this gap. In short, I learned things that I had been wanting to learn but could never get around to. Since I started working, that list has begun to grow again and will likely not shrink until my next retirement.
Bread
Frustrated by a sudden inability to make simple honey wheat bread, I went deep into breadmaking. I have an electric oven, so I had limitations.
Breadmaking lead quickly to making decent Italian style tomato sauces. This started because I needed to cover the pizza dough I was generating. Tomato-based pasta sauces were a natural extension. I can now improv a decent tomato sauce from scratch.
Breadmaking also lead to making yogurt. The basic process is actually incredibly easy, but I’m a details guy. I ended up reading about 100 pages, and scanning another few 100 pages, of an industrial yogurt production textbook I found online. I even dug into patents regarding how to make a yogurt with a more neutral pH.
Technical Geekery
I continued with my geekery, of course. I continued to follow social gaming news. I finished up two Silverlight projects that I had been playing with (and which used to work in their related posts – check the project pages for demos). I learned Windows Azure, the Bing Map Control, jQuery, and some jQueryUI.
Other
I had an idea about origami long ago that I finally had time to play with. I have far more complicated ideas along the same lines, but those may manifest as clues in a scavenger hunt so I can’t reveal them.
I explored more of my new home city of San Francisco, finally visiting some more neighborhoods and parks.
I enjoyed and tended to my plants a bit more. Since working again, they have suffered. I’m about to discard one of my orchids, ironically one that grows nearly wild in this city.
I’m certain that I’ve forgotten more than I’ve included. Everything I have done in and out of retirement tends to flow from a basic motivation: Learning.
Post a Comment