Something to work on.

I get bored when I don't have some interesting challenge to work on.

I just finished a beginning Java programming class. At first it was a little dull because the things I was learning were things I pretty much already knew. But eventually it became more challenging.

It was an interesting class, and I created something I am pretty proud of. I went above and beyond what the final project actually called for, and that was fun.

However, I still kinda feel... like I wasn't creating anything that was particularly useful.

And now here I am, with so many ideas in my head. Ideas of things I want to learn... and no idea how to learn them.

For example, I want to learn more about PHP. I really want to create something useful in PHP... but I haven't really found anything that catches my fancy.

At one point, I was working on a PHP based ticket tracking solution to replace the one we currently have. However, that is proving to be... not so easy, and I am dealing with an unnecessarily complex database structure to boot. I would love to re-design the database and move it to a different RDBMS (MySQL which is much easier to use with PHP than Firebird), but the thing is, I feel that if I were to do this, it would not be used because it wouldn't tie in to what we already have.

I feel like we are limited where I work by the programming language that the founder of the company chose to write in. And we are limited in how he wrote it. I am only beginning to learn software engineering, but already I can see how the "structure" of our program is a support and maintenance nightmare.

Anyways, back to my original issue. I want to find something that interests me to work on because that is where I learn the most. When I am challenged, and I enjoy the challenge, I get excited about it and learn everything I can about it so that I can find the solution.

For example, at work we needed a way to let our clients have the ability to send out emails without restrictions. Their own e-mail providers were limiting the number of e-mails they could send out each day, and shutting them down if they went over their limit.

I did some research, and found that Microsoft Exchange cost money, but that I could set up a mail server in Linux.

So I did. It didn't take me as long as I expected, and I learned a lot along the way.

Sure, I have a lot to learn, but I did it, and it was fulfilling and exciting to find a real working solution.

And really that is what I enjoy, finding solutions to an interesting problem. And right now, I am in between interesting problems.

Which is when I get bored.

Of course, part of the issue is that I am really not trying all that hard to find interesting problems. Or at least interesting problems that are actually achievable at the moment.

So maybe I'll start making a list of all the interesting problems I can see, and start trying to figure out what it would take to solve them.

I like it!

See, this is why I write sometimes. It helps me work through things in my head.