And it keeps the synapses exercising ... staving off the inevitable. :-)

Oh yes ... coding for no useful purpose other than coding. I'm way retired and don't code for anyone else ... and have a large library of code I love to gander at and tweak and tweak to my heart's content ... ever delving into a better abstraction or simpler way to do it with less and more precise noun, verb, and property names (lots of refactoring) ... code that no one other than myself will ever see or care about. It's kind of like being one of those monks that spend days making incredibly intricate, delicate, and beautiful graphics with tiny sand particles and then upon a final reverent moment of acknowledging the impermanent nature of the universe, blow it away or scoop it all up into a bag and go home. Perhaps this is the truth of all code ... ultimately just bits in the wind. I say you can take the programmer out of the do loop, but you can't take the do loop out of the programmer. Programming: fierce and relentless abstraction audits achieved by creating or investigating large collections of mnemonics ... way more fun than crossword puzzles or video games.

I'm not getting emails and news letters. I did recently change my email/signon address. Could that be the problem?

I had mixed emotions about this ... on the one hand a "Jobs" like guy to herd all the development kitties into a deliverable ... on the other hand a "Jobs" like guy working environment that, when the "Jobs" like guy is no longer available ... becomes what? what is the company to do then? (Good luck Apple) It's good it is happening now ... while there are still innovators left there. There are brilliant minds there and I think they are all aware that if they don't collaborate, there won't be any empires to build upon. Julie Larson-Green and Tami Reller will carry on the "Sinofsky works" while the empires move to collaboration (or die). Who knows, maybe they can even attract back some their lost souls.