So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

One of the things that’s always struck me in interacting with various folks over my time at EDN is how impermanent your careers have tended to be in comparison to mine. Many of you, for example, job-hopped a great deal during the dot-com-boom second half of the 1990s. And conversely, some of you have unfortunately also experienced layoff periods coincident with economic downturns, outsourcing, offshoring and other more recent trends. Conversely, subsequent to my graduation from Purdue with a BSEE in December of 1988, I’ve experienced atypical stability, holding various positions with only two great companies; Intel for the first eight years, and EDN for the past 14+.

However, as a phrase I’m particularly fond of notes, “the only constant is change.” (I’m equally fond of the phrase “may you live in interesting times,” which also applies in this case, but since it’s reputed to be an ancient Chinese curse…). Indicative of that reality, next Tuesday will be my last day with EDN. I don’t have any clear ideas about what’s in store next for me, at least professionally, although I hope to one way or another remain connected to the high technology industry that I’ve grown quite fond of over the past two-decades-plus.

Personally, on the other hand, I plan to spend this Memorial Day weekend doing as many runs as humanly possible at Squaw Valley before the downhill ski season ends. And after the snow melts, I also aspire to satisfy a longstanding dream to one-shot backpack the entire John Muir Trail (not to mention, depending on how things subsequently go, the Tahoe Rim Trail…and the Wonderland Trail…). Then there’s the mid-June Reno-Tahoe Odyssey, and the mid-July Tahoe Rim Trail 50K…

If you’ll indulge a few paragraphs’ worth of prose, I’d like to specifically acknowledge three key sets of folks. First off, my managers and co-workers over the years; you’ve uniformly been outstanding teammates, with an abundance of intellectual and other talents, coupled with a refreshing dearth of ego. I’ve learned a great deal from your technical ‘chops’, and they’ve pushed me to improve my capabilities and writing output far harder and more extensively than might otherwise be the case. And management has consistently navigated a tricky balancing act, giving me enough editorial ‘rope’ to keep me motivated (and therefore happy) without doling out so much that I’d end up ‘hanging’ myself.

Secondly, kudos go out to the vendors, along with their PR representatives. What fundamentally kept me enthused about covering this industry for as long as I was gifted to do so was a combination of amazing new technologies (and products based on them) defined, developed and supported by incredibly smart people. You, too, have encouraged me to linger long and aggressively on technology’s leading edge, and your diversity of opinions on various design issues (and resolutions for them), while understandably sometimes biased in particular directions, have enabled me to craft balanced and comprehensive perspectives on each topic.

Last, but definitely not least, my gratitude goes out to you, my readers. We haven’t always agreed, but our discourse has generally been respectful and has always been productive, at least for me. You’re intellectual powerhouses to a T, and I’ve also been impressed with (and motivated by) your outside-work interests and talents. While I can never hope to equal your depth of technical competence in any particular subject area, I hope that I’ve delivered a sufficiently adequate approximation of that comprehension, and that the breadth of topics I’ve covered over the years has been an acceptable trade-off which made our relationship mutually beneficial to you as well.

I previously used the subject line of this blog post, which science fiction fans may remember from a seminal 1984 work by beloved and departed Douglas Adams, in an email I sent out when I left Intel in early January 1997. I’ll augment this particular good-bye writeup with a few other quotes, all musical in nature. I’m bound to cover just a little more ground, however it happens and however long it takes, and I’ll also strive to let my life proceed by its own design instead of forcing myself in any particular direction. After all, it’s been a long strange trip so far, and truth be told, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Maybe I’ll see you again at a future step in the journey.

If you’d like to follow my personal and professional progress, I’ll be continuing the Brian’s Brain blog at http://briansbrain.wordpress.com; the RSS feed is here. It’s currently a placeholder page, but I plan for it to soon begin filling with content, so your patience is appreciated. I also encourage you to monitor my personal website, subscribe to my Twitter feed, establish a connection with me on LinkedIn, and/or ‘friend’ me on Facebook. And please bookmark the following placeholder domains for potential future activity:

• www.briansbrain.net and www.brianzbrain.com (along with the Brian’s Brain Facebook page and Twitter feed)
• www.sierra-media.net and www.sierramedia.biz (along with the Sierra Media Facebook page and Twitter feed, and a Blogger blog with RSS feed),
• www.thetechsplainer.com (along with the Techsplainer Facebook page and Twitter feed, and a Wordpress blog with RSS feed), and
• www.thetechsplorer.com (along with the Techsplorer Facebook page and Twitter feed, and a Wordpress blog with RSS feed)