I work 16 hour days - have for 3 decades - not every day, but enough to make it count. I take big breaks though - self-employed gives you at least that benefit.

I have customers that have lots of money so they always have latest hardware, OS, database - all that great stuff.

I'm getting a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 that just got it's UPS shipping label created two hours ago - that's a week before the much-talked about October 25th delivery date! That's like having a baby in my world!

In the past 5 years I've coded for a pocket-pc - that device went away - great application I made though, got great reviews from users. Shame...

I've newly learned C++ and JavaScript - wow - if you told me 30 years ago that this old-school BASIC programmer would be doing C++ (or let alone some web scripting language like JS!) - crazy!

You adapt - you keep to only bleeding edge - cutting edge was yesterday.

Even if you don't use it you got to know about it - I read threads here that have nothing to do with my moment but the learning is what it's all about.

@jalexander - I would hire you remotely to intern if I thought you had any real time to offer! Getting someone sped up to actually produce takes lots of time - and that's expensive in and of itself.