My contributions definitely had an impact, but it was more local than global. Like I said in my post, I don’t like talking about my day job online, but over the years thousands of people have used the applications that I’ve written. I’ve had many people compliment me saying that the applications helped them out. (As a side note, I wish my Imposter Syndrome would remember those praises when it tries to tell me that I don’t know what I’m doing.)

I guess it’s just hard to see a lot of the things that you’ve worked so hard on over years being taken down one after another.

I do enjoy building LEGO. Not just the boxed sets, but I’ll get minifigures and then design and build biomes for them. After writing about my wife’s crochet, I realized that this is one reason why I enjoy this so much. I design a habitat for a LEGO minifigure using BrickLink Studio (a CAD program for LEGO)., I refine the build - both to improve it and to lower the cost of the build. Then, I order the parts and build it. (And then, I’ll often need to add additional parts to fix issues with the build that weren’t apparent until it was built.)

I’ll need to do some more of that building. Frankly, if I’m going to have a midlife crisis, it’s going to be a “build LEGO” midlife crisis and not a “buy a sports car” one.

Oh, there’s definitely upsides to that. There are posts I made to Usenet in my college years that I’m glad have been swallowed up by time and consigned to oblivion. I would hate it if all of those embarrassing moments were to suddenly resurface and become a permanent part of my present and future life.

But the idea that EVERYTHING that I’ve done will vanish freaks me out. Yeah, this is definitely a midlife crisis coming on.

Yeah, I think a big part of this might be a kind of mid life crisis. I’m not the “buy an expensive sports car” kind of guy, but I’m definitely the “worry that all you’ve done in your life was for nothing” sort of guy.

My wife crochets and I’ve got to admit to being jealous that she has a physical object when she’s done. I love programming. I love being able to take a big and complex problem, break it down, and construct an application that solves the issue. Still, at the end of the day, our works are 1’s and 0’s whose existence will be a lot shorter than my wife’s crocheted house elf.

I’ve been using DirectNIC for quite some time.