Be Passionate - What I Do In My Spare Time?

Everyone winds down in their spare time. They spend time with friends, family and pursuing what they enjoy such as sports, art, music, or any other number of things. When people enjoy what they do you can see it in how they act. They make the time to do it. They work at it very hard and any chance they can get.

In my case that passion is technology. All sorts of technology. This is reflected in my own personal lab space:

• My own personal lab consisting of 6 linux (Ubuntu/CentOS) servers, 3 windows (XP, Vista, 7) workstations, and 2 laptops (1 macbook and 1 linux). I also maintain 1 Android handset, and all 3 versions of the iPhone (2g, 3g and 3gs).
• Virtualization to create on-demand resources on my servers for private clouds and to test dynamic allocations.
• Oracle databases both in standalone and RAC modes used for administration, development and testing. 
• MySQL databases used for administration, development and testing.
• Hadoop instances used for administration, development and testing. 
• Comparison of how the various data solutions (i.e. Oracle, MySQL, Hadoop) stand up and compare to one another for various tasks.
• Search engine technologies using Lucene and Solr on large amounts of data to create new ways to view information and find new insights.
• Create and maintain web browsing and cataloging robots and application servers on data that I like which also serve as a growing test data set for various tasks.
• Creating my own application and request servers using Java, C++, Scala, Python and Ruby. Mostly to see what the strengths and weaknesses of the languages are in terms of their development, maintenance and performance.
• Creating small web applications using PHP and AJAX to produce interfaces to various data sets.
• Create small applications for Android and iPhone to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the various SDKs. 
• Create examples of using incremental innovations based on newer technologies and approaches on typical corporate approaches. This builds on my experience in the field whereby technical staffs can start to tackle some of the newer approaches in an incremental style for themselves.
• Keep basic skills such as administration, scripting, programming, etc. up to date.
• Install, learn and apply new open source projects that sound interesting to me and how they might benefit a company if adopted.

Most of my friends and professional colleagues are always amazed at how much I have and how I apply it. I explain it my passion is the same as any other pursuit. It is constructed over time and in pieces and applied on a consistent basis. It interests me which is the bottom line. In truth creating a small lab like mine is actually pretty inexpensive and can be done quite easily if you know what you are doing. 

So what specifically interests me in technology is how it can help solve problems that have nagged people for a long time whether in a company or not. What is the most frustrating for most people is what I call the domain specific language which confuses everyone. This is the same hurdle encountered in every pursuit; sports has it's own language, so does running, bicycling, martial arts, collecting, etc. Once you decide to commit to something the language and terms should become secondary since you have to explain to the average person what you are doing and why it is important or interesting.

Like anyone who is passionate about anything that interests them, they will find a way to pursue it and excel.