Look forward

My ex-classmates are talking about "risks" in their blogs. And I'm about to join them with this post.

It's nice to think of risk as the price you pay for change rather than it being a byproduct of change. I don't consider myself a risk-taker. And I don't just feel that way, I am that way. Months of trading in a virtual stock exchange called HSX (Hollywood Stock Exchange) tells me so. But from time to time I do take risks.

One such time was last month (I forgot the exact date). I was asked whether I'd be willing to transfer from Development (where I make programs) to Support Services (where I co-administer servers). I didn't have to answer immediately. But I did. I said, "Yes." It was not a split-second decision, but within minutes I answered, "Yes."

I love to develop programs. Computer Science, the course I took in college, is much more than that, but in three years of developing programs I've come to love it more than any other aspect of Computer Science. It's a creative process. One day you create how to accomplish a job, the next day you are creating another way to accomplish the exact same thing. It saddens me, sometimes it frustrates me, that our development manager doesn't see programming that way. Sticking to familiar ways of accomplishing things is not bad, perse. But it stops you from discovering better ways that are out there waiting to be found. And in our case sticking to the familiar doesn't even enable us to deliver projects on time. Something must be wrong with what we are doing. I see it. My colleagues see it. Unfortunately, our development manager doesn't. It's no wonder I agreed within minutes to transfer to Support Services.

I'm sure it will be hard the first few weeks, maybe months, of my new job. I'll be off my comfort zone. I will have to deal with new people and learn new stuff. But I'm determined to make this new job my new comfort zone. I have no problem with studying new stuff. There are so much out there that I'd like to learn that the problem really is choosing which to do first. I'm taking a risk. That pasture that I will soon moved on to may not be as green there as it is from way down here. But then if I don't go there I wouldn't know.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Got my copy last Saturday. Finished reading it yesterday.

I think Half-Blood Prince is way better than Order of the Phoenix. 'Half-Blood' is not significantly shorter than 'Order', but 'Half-Blood' is way leaner. Somehow for a book the size of 'Order', it contains too little muscle compared to this new book. JK Rowling has definitely cut the flabs in this one and if only she did the same with 'Order', it could have been a much shorter book.

Whoever pens the screenplay for this book will have lots of headaches, however.