Electric Emotion

So first let me tell you: life has taken me on such a ride recently. This ride has been full of stress, insomnia, a complete sense of disbelief, and, most importantly, one of the greatest experiences of my life. And now that the project has gone public I can talk a little about it.

When I first started at Spaulding the "Peanut" project, as it was called then, was only in its early stages and I really didn't understand much about the device. Over the next year the project became more and more prominent as I started working on it as well (making an offline ECG viewer over spring break, etc.). When I came back to work over the summer, the PC client application (that interfaces with the actual device) was near completion. I used my own graphics knowledge to make the interface cleaner and prettier and also to added some functionality :)

However, when I was up in Wisconsin in late May, we started discussing moving from a PC client to something a little more portable. I attended a meeting where we discussed the possibilities. iPhone, iPad, Android? We finally decided, due to time constraints and legal matters, that the path of least resistance would be to get the application running on Android tablets (such as the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab), which just had a recent software update with built-in USB drivers (the IQ communicates over USB).

I was given a Motorola Xoom by the company and charged with porting over the PC code to Android. At first, it seemed a very daunting task and I was afraid the project would break me. I had never before done any mobile software development or interfacing with peripherals, so there was a lot of uncharted territory ahead of me.

However, as I started working on the project, the only thing that ended up being broken was my sleep schedule. I was writing something revolutionary, never done before, and I was loving every second of it. I was writing something so low-level, so complex, that it made me feel alive, like a true programmer.

My deadline was June 19th, when we would be showing off this new technology at DIA, an annual pharmaceutical trade show. As that day drew closer I became more and more absorbed in the project. I worked massive amounts of overtime. There was even an entirely sleepless night in there.

One of the downsides to having a mind such as my own is the fact that it will never stop. I laid awake and my brain was just swimming with thoughts on the project, and I couldn't stop them. After three hours I finally threw in the towel, sat down at my computer, and continued to code.

"This is what crunch time is like," I thought to myself, "and it is glorious!" The rush, the pressure, the caffeine abusing, everything that makes crunch time what it is, and I was in the middle of it. It was AMAZING! I operate so well under pressure that I was churning out code like never before, and managed to finish the project with hours to spare.

Last Saturday I did something that I had put off for way too long: I took my driver's test. Even though the instructor was a complete douche, I managed to pass the first try. I can now legally drive the car I recently purchased.

The next day, the deadline for the project, I drove myself up to Chicago to hand off the Xoom and software to the company. Driving up to the city the first day with my license was definitely a daunting experience. However, after throwing on some tunes and turning the volume all the way up I found driving to be quite enjoyable. It was actually quite relaxing: I wasn't thinking about the project anymore, I was just letting the music play as I traveled 70 miles per hour down the highway on a warm Sunday morning. I relished the experience.

Upon making it to the city (and let me tell you, that's when driving gets stressful) I found the convention center and met up with the others from Spaulding. We hammered out the details of the interface and oriented our presenters on the use of the device. Brock and I then cleaned up all of the last-minute changes that needed doing and we went out to eat. I ended up chauffeuring a few employees to the restaurant and we made it there without incident.

After eating, I headed to my hotel, which, I forgot to mention, was the freaking Palmer House Hilton. I felt like a celebrity walking into the place, it was definitely the nicest and most grand hotel I had ever been in, and I got to stay in it for a night!

However, when I got to my room, I experienced a panic attack for the first time in a long while. I don't know exactly why. Maybe it was the culmination of stress finally getting to me, maybe it was the lack of sleep the past few weeks, maybe it was the sudden rush of responsibility thrown at me from actually driving somewhere by myself, maybe it was just the fact that I couldn't believe how awesome this experience was. I don't know what it was, but I had to sit there for a few minutes and calm myself down. I had to lay out the situation right in front of me: the hard work that got me here, the work that still needed to be done, and the fact that I was now a fully-responsible adult with a great job that lets me not only do what I love and enjoy the hell out of it, but also treats me so well.

That night I was up late fixing up the code and getting ready to hand off the tablet for presentation. I then sat down in my bed on the 21st story and fell asleep watching a terrible movie on Showtime (just so you know, there is no actual orgy in "All American Orgy").

The next day I woke up, grabbed a bite to eat downstairs at the hotel, and sat down to start cleaning up the messy code that resulted from the massive rush to get it all done. I didn't manage to get passes to the convention, but I kind of wish I had. I really wanted to watch all the work put into this project shown to the world. However, it was also nice just being able to code in a nice hotel room, with some loud music and zero distraction.

I then checked out of the hotel and made my way back home, again just enjoying the ability to drive wherever I wanted. I rolled the windows down since it was a nice day and turned the volume all the way up as I put my iPod on shuffle. I reveled in the experience, the feeling of accomplishment, the absolute grandeur of my own life.

Words cannot describe this entire experience completely accurately. I'm realizing more and more that I am truly a professional programmer. I have already made this passion of mine a career, and it is accelerating me well past the days of writing simple DOS games. I'm writing complex code to interface with a revolutionary ECG-acquisition device. I'm making money doing something that I would normally be doing for free as a hobby.

Life just keeps going faster and faster, and not slowing down. I'm not complaining. This is great. I'm doing so much, learning so much, and finally feel like I've grown up.

I will leave you with the awesome song that inspired the title to this post (and is also EPIC to blast in the car):