That's it. In a few moments I'll be shutting down this machine that I've had for two months. A short while after that it will be wiped and reformatted for use by someone else. It's always kinda sad to close your machine for the last time. You check your email one last time, you check the blogs one last time, you make sure to put mail rules to forward everything into your home address and more stuff. everything to avoid that final shutdown. Once I even opened the machine again just to make sure I still have some sort of link to reality. Face it, a developer without a machine is like a turtle with nothing on its back. Totally exposed, you wander through the halls of the company, asking for favors ("Can I just send an email from here?") and feeling left out. your machine is so private that a lot of times you feel as if people looking at your desktop are looking into your private room, along with all the garbage you've accumulated over the time you've been there. It's funny how serious I take my machine at work. It's so customizable to fit me that sometimes other people find it impossible to use if they need to. It's so much customized that it is an extension of my body and I can do some actions without even thinking (shortcuts for most used programs, status checking of memory and other stuff).
And now I'm leaving my home again. This is not the first time yet it hard every time. Not only leaving it (how traumatic) you are also destroying everything that you've created inside it. All the thoughts, the searches, the wondering and the various files you accumulated that you thought were cool enough to try out. It's a reflection of your brain over time. Your likes and dislikes, your color preferences, the way you work, who you spoke to using emails, you chat logs, you whole developer life is there. And now you're wiping it clean. Starting fresh.
There's something very nice about being able to start fresh too. You get a new machine, you make your promises about your new home ("this time I won't fill it with so much garbage so quickly") and you get to reconfigure your life. It always amazes me the amount of change required to make a clean machine into my machine. It could take a day or two (sometimes even a week until I feel really comfortable).
I did a stand up "goodbye" meeting with all the developers. It was kinda touchy. The place was starting to grow on me I guess. It was fun going through these 2 months, seeing the effect you can make on people and learning lots of new stuff about yourself and the way you work with other people. Overall this was an amazing experience and I feel that i've grown both as a developer and as a trainer because of it. I got lots more confidence in a lot of things that I felt I needed to improve on. I also met lots of new people, saw an amazing countryside and got to live as one of the locals for two months. Believe me, if you have never rode a buss at 7AM in the morning in Norway in the middle of December, you have not lived at all ;)
Anyway, after I leave work today, I need to start packing. 6 AM tomorrow morning I get up, and get to the airport. The plane leaves at 7 AM (it's like a family airport, everything is laid back and easy going) and I'll get to Oslo about an hour and a half later. Next I have 2 hours wait in Oslo followed by 2 hours flight to Brussels. Next I have a 5 hour wait to catch a connection flight to Israel (another 5 hours). Landing at midnight in Tel Aviv will bring this into the 12 hour commute range (Israel is one hour before Norway). Hope I make it.
I knew I'm gonna have lots of time to wait, so I printed about half of the Art of Unix book(read online), and should also have a good time going through COM+ and the Battle for the middle tier. Between he two of those either I'll be reading with interest or sleeping like a baby ;)
See you all on the flip side!