Saturday, August 8, 2009

"My God, It's Full of Stars"

One day a couple of months ago, something wonderful happened. It was a friday; the end of a very long workweek. An arduous week - I'd been working overtime to get high-performance ALPR working in Australia (namely New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria), the trains were not cooperating, and a lot of energy was spent trying to arrange to buy our house. It had been rainy and cloudy the whole month - not exactly a good summer. By the afternoon of that friday, I was beat. Spent. A lifeless husk.

Four o'clock finally came, so I grabbed a beer with my colleagues and executed a final superhuman effort to get the software written, vetted, and out the door before the weekend so that I could rest easy for a few days. I groaned and sweated as my fingers punched the keys, and I reached the last few keystrokes. Committed the code. Executed the build/release script. Hit 'Send' on an email to the guy who delivers code to customers.

Done.

When I exited the building the clouds finally broke, and the sun spread cheer across the village. I unlocked my bike, got on, and started rolling down the street. The clouds had turned to white wisps in the broad blue sky, and the sun was a bright lance high above. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by glittering light all around. Large shining drops falling in sheets around me. I spread my arms and soared through a great galaxy of shimmering diamond rain, weaving lazy splines over the empty village streets.

The moment, like all good things, ended without fanfare or tragedy. The rain diminished to a drizzle, then stopped, and those wispy clouds passed over the sun and unsaturated the early summer blooms.

I thanked the great cosmos for granting me this experience and for allowing me to appreciate it as a reward for a hard job well done, and continued to the train station to go home.

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