Combination of burnout and no longer doing what I enjoy.

The burnout came during a really rough, 3-year development cycle. We spent three months planning with the principal team. They approved the plans and let us run in one direction for a year before dropping a bombshell on ALL the partner teams. We had to drop what we were doing and start over with a completely new (and woefully incomplete) API, tool chain, and environment. Roughest two years I've spent in software ever.

Had a former manager swoop in and rescue a number of us. Spent three years learning new stuff and enjoying my work and team. Then a big re-org came. Moved to something I'm not really enjoying and I can feel the "don't give a shit" attitude building up.

Top it off with a death in the family and it's time to go.

Fortunately, a great stock and housing market will allow me and my partner to enjoy some time off. Hopefully a year or two of doing what I want to do and exploring topics I want to learn will help clarify things. I'll find my passion for the work again or find another thing to fire my passion.

Good point about the Data Breach Incident. Granted, NewEgg is not in the business of wiping drives but if this does qualify as a DBI then NewEgg may have some liability here. This would be similar to pawn shop owner that receives and resells stolen property. Even if the owner wasn't aware that it was stolen, they still have some liability if they didn't do their due diligence to find out.

IANAL, but you might consider sending the drive back and explaining the situation to NewEgg. If it's not a DBI, they'll wipe the drive and restock it. If it does qualify as a DBI, you might just have spared them some legal hassles.

Just my 2p.

I wholeheartedly second that recommendation. I've been reading Linux Format for the last several years and I've enjoyed almost every issue. The writing is fresh, engaging, and above all, useful.

Some of their humor reminds me of Marcel Gagne from older issues of Linux Journal.

This sounds suspiciously like part of the Stephen King story "The End of the Whole Mess": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_Whole_Mess. Are we sure they're going for geothermal power and not an attempt to "pacify" humanity? Just asking...

Cool. Does it say "Front toward Assailant" on it? Those with Army or Marine Corps service will know what I'm talking about.

Unfortunately, managers love the term "granularity" and have been using it as a cudgel. They've locked on to "Agile" programming and SCRUM project management as methods for driving this granularity into the development and test processes. They want tasks broken down to 15 minute increments and balk when any task takes more than a couple of hours to complete. All this so that they can achieve "visibility" and "predictability" for a given project, i.e. they get more status reports with pretty charts and graphs. I really despise the term "burn down" which springs from the whole thing as well.

Now, I may sound bitter about this but, I do understand that for all parties involved in a project, especially a large scale project; there needs to be an understanding of where team is at, where it's headed, and where the bottlenecks are located. This is not any easy problem to solve; it involves lots of guess work and dependency graphs that would make Euler weep. I suppose that's what makes it all the more irritating when managers think they have yet-another-silver-bullet for project management that they misuse causing more Maker frustration and possibly increasing the chance for failure rather than ameliorating it.

Sorry, end of rant.

I for one welcome our new Galactic Overlord.

From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!
For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!

Priest: And thus spake the Great Devil Kahn at our saviour, The Kirk. Here endeth the lesson.

Congregation: More power to the engines!