The Pros and Cons of Dropping Your Hard Drive

Long story short:
I dropped my hard drive on the floor. It stopped working. The only stuff that wasn't copied elsewhere was music. I bought a big new hard drive. I copied a metric crap load of music from my brother's computer. I copied files from a whole bunch of MP3 CDs. I copied a bunch of music from my ex (from a hard drive that used to be mine). In the end, I have a lot more music than before and still have most of my original collection.

( Long story long, a clear indication I'm not meeting my Write More Succinctly goals )

Current library stats (including a few thousand missing songs, excluding some audio books, but including others I haven't reclassified):
178,731 tracks
495 days, 17 hours, 21 minutes, 59 seconds
1,021.56 GB
8158 distinct artist names
12673 distinct album titles (lots of Some Album Disc 1/2 titles need to be fixed)
845 genres, though some are frivolous

Largest folders:

"Artist"	GB
Compilations	91.83
Various Artists	11.82
Unknown Artist	9.95
Frank Zappa	7.63
Grateful Dead	6.82
Arte Flamenco	5.8
King Crimson	3.45
Martin Simpson	2.58
Oregon	2.56
Pink Floyd	2.44
Tom Waits	2.38
Cocteau Twins	2.08
Yo-Yo Ma	2.01
Bob Dylan	1.99
Kronos Quartet	1.96
Joni Mitchell	1.96
John Hartford	1.95
Pablo Casals	1.93
Lonnie Johnson	1.92
Johnny Cash	1.84
John Fahey	1.84

Time spent on this project: Way too much.
Next project: Figuring out a genre/world music arrangement scheme so when I'm in the mood for something I have some idea what my options are.

With Low Expectations, Pleasant Surprises are Possible

I've felt down or blue a lot in the past few days. At first, it was probably from eating milk chocolate fun size candy bars, but there was also a fair bit of self--doubt and existential moroseness. Thinking it through, I figured I'd internalized my perceived outside chance at getting hired by Google. Consciously, I knew my good answers were more frequent than even hits by guys in the World Series, but I had lots of time to think through all the little mistakes I made and things I said that, when written down without the full context of the moment, sound pretty dumb. I even had a dream in which I got a call with my recruiter and I asked for a list of reasons my points got docked.

So fully expecting I wouldn't get hired, but knowing that it wasn't a certain fate, I answered the phone this morning. I was pleasantly surprised elated to hear that the hiring committee was impressed and thinks I should be Google's next employee. As Neo said... Whoa.

There's still some paperwork and reference checking (but no pointer arithmetic) to do, so it'll be a week and change before I get an official offer, but I have now officially reached the easy part.

I could ask to be part of the Mountain View office, but I think it will be easier to start in Boulder with a closer group and a more familiar environment. If I decide later that California is the place to be, I can ask for a transfer. I'm sure I'll have a few chances to visit the fabled Googleplex in person regardless.

In summary: Yayberries!

Edit: I think the self-doubt I had is tied to doing consistently A minus work. My GPA was 3.8. My SAT and PSAT scores were high, but not high enough to qualify for merit scholarships or (probably) to get into top technical schools. A lot of code I've written has been good, but far from perfect. I spend time doing well-rounded things rather than being driven to near-perfection on a narrow band. While I'm generally happy, there's often a nagging sense that I could be top caliber, but I'm not quite. But since I'm clearly well above average, I'm not satisfied doing solid B work or being the big fish in a small pond. So the call I got this morning is a vote of confidence that I can be a growing fish in a big pond of excellence.