Rui CarmoI have been mildly unsuccessful at doing stuff in my free time this week due to personal and family concerns that somewhat limited my ability to sit in my office, so it was only sometime around Thursday evening that I realized John Dvorak passed away. It was weird to read about that since I (well, along with a small coterie of local geeks) had dinner with him when he visited Lisbon in late 2009, and at the time I was preoccupied with loads of other things besides the start of the arc that would eventually make me leave Vodafone, so I don’t even have photos (but they’re out there).
For those tuning in today, almost two decades after that happened, going through my notes from 2009 brought home how tired I was of Vodafone at that time, and how my career change the year after was essentially driven by a period of exhaustion that is not that different from what is going on right now, and that I tried to “fix” by running into the fire and taking on Vodafone 360.
Well, that was a mistake I’ve definitely learned from. Mostly.
The good news is that unlike my near-burnouts in recent years, I am now both mentally and physically tired but with very clear ideas of what I want to do next, so I’m taking advantage of summertime and preparing to batten down the hatches and finish/pause some of my ongoing projects to focus on more hardware stuff, which takes longer and is less glamorous but has two primary advantages: it gets me off the AI treadmill a bit in my personal space and should hopefully be healthier overall.
Oh, and I have loads of gadgets to write about. I’m making a conscious effort to finish all of my pending reviews and long-term follow-ups even as I endeavor, once again, to clean up my office.