With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

the fortress of doors

2005 September 09 00:56

Our lives are measured by transitions. Graduating from high school, college, graduate school, etc. Getting married, ending old jobs, starting new jobs, moving.

Sometimes, a transition isn't so physically profound as it marks a change in direction or philosophy. At the end of October 2001, I walked into the physics department office at Indiana University, turned in about 6 keys. Each of the keys I turned in had a code stamped on it that indicated what door it opened ("P37" or "P14" or something) along with a serial number that indicated which of that key it was. Each of those keys had belonged to many people before me; they were well worn. In return for those keys, I received a single key with "P" stamped on it, no serial number. It was brand new, the edges crisp; I was the first person to ever own that key. I received that key because as a postdoc, I was able to have a master key to the building, which would open almost anything.

Over the last couple of days, we moved to a new building at work, from an older kind of ratty building to a brand new one. This new building has been years in coming, but perhaps it too will signal a new paradigm of thinking and problem solving. (I got a new key too; I dig new keys). (As a side note, I get my computer set up with a three-screen Xinerama setup. Yay!)

Perhaps as part of that response, I cleaned out my Debian stuff (while watching the season opener between the Pats and the Raiders. Patriots won again; ho hum). It's been so long since I've actually done anything about becoming a Debian developer that the best thing was to flush all the files that I'd been trying to work on and start over. Perhaps this time I'll be able to get some momentum going.