A couple of weeks ago Tim posted his must have software and tools. Always one to steal a good idea, and wanting to balance out his Windows focus, here’s my list.

General Apps

Safari - I’m not a huge browser plugin guy and Safari is pretty darn fast.

Firefox - The above being said, having a backup browser is a good thing.

Mail.app - Solid mail client with excellent free form searching.

iChat - I never got into Adium because this guy has always worked for me.

iCal - Really looking forward to true Exchange integration with Snow Leopard. Google Calendar integration means I actually know what is scheduled at home now.

iTunes - Does a wonderful job with podcasts and video podcasts.

Bloglines - All my RSS in the same place on any computer.

Twitter - Still not sure why I like it so much.

OmniFocus - No program has saved me more often than OmniFocus. Plus it integrates perfectly with Mail.app which makes Inbox Zero easy.

OmniGraffle - People always ask if there is a Visio for the Mac. The question is wrong. It should be is there an OmniGraffle for Windows? (Answer: No.)

Comic Life - If you have ever read one of my design documents you’ll know how much I love this one.

MS Word - Word is the standard for business documents.

Keynote - All my presentations and screencasts are done in Keynote. The animation support alone is worth the price of admission.

Snapz Pro X - Speaking of screencasts, this is my screen capture program…

QuickTime Pro - …and since I’m unable to do anything in a single take you gotta edit.

BBEdit - As far as editors go BBEdit is old school. Sometimes it is good to be old school.

Parallels - For those times when you have to run Windows.

Transmit - An FTP program that costs money? I know, but it makes up for it by being brilliant.

Developer Tools

Terminal.app - Before OS X I was on Linux/Unix. You can give a guy a great UI but you can never take away the command line.

TestTrack Pro - I have used this just about every day for the last seven or eight years.

Surround SCM - Well, since I kinda work on it and all…

Xcode - It baffles people coming from Visual Studio world but it has really turned into a nice IDE.

Instruments - Because sometimes we all leak memory.

Shark - And sometimes we just run slow.

UnitTest++ - Best cross platform C++ unit testing framework I have found.

BuildBot - Nothing more fun than getting emails about broken CI builds. Wait, there’s lots of things more fun than that.

So I have two interesting pieces of news.

1. I know now for sure that a Honda Civic can be rear ended by a Ford F-150 and drive away with far less damage. In fact, the truck couldn’t drive away period.

2. I’m a developer again.

The first item is pretty self-explanatory. The second requires a bit of a story.

A few weeks ago I went to a funeral for my wife’s Uncle Craig. Out of the clear blue sky he had a heart attack even though he had no previous heart problems. Just days before we had been up for his daughter’s wedding where he walked her down the aisle. For the funeral she had to be called back from her honeymoon in Jamaica.

He was only 52.

Too young, too early, too unexpected, too unfair, too badly timed, all these things apply. I’ve been to funerals before but this particular one stood out. This was the first one that I’ve been to since I’ve had my own kids. Looking over at his kids, even though they are adults now, I couldn’t help but think of mine.

I couldn’t help but think that life is too short.

When I first met Craig about 15 years ago he wasn’t much older than I am now. It was clear from the beginning though that he was a stand up guy. Even though the extended family is large and a gathering, like say Christmas, is best described as “freaking humongous” he always had time to come say hello even though I was just the boyfriend of one of his many nieces.

Over the years I got a chance to watch his kids grow up. His daughter is now a beautiful school teacher and his sons are the types of guys that you want to be in your crew, the kind that you know will have your back. I hope my kids turn out that well some day. I hope I do as good a job as he did.

While I hate to think about it, watching all this made me ponder, “What if all I have left is twenty years?” I remember when that seemed like a long time. Somehow it doesn’t seem like that anymore. It’s cliché to say, “Live each day as your last” so I won’t do that. Besides, that’s just not possible. What I will say is that you shouldn’t live each day doing something that you aren’t truly happy doing.

It is with all this in mind that I moved back to writing software. It has been an interesting year in the marketing/strategy world and I now know that my brain is not wired for that type of work. Thinking about positioning and messaging are the sorts of things that wake some people up in the morning, including some people that are very good at it here. I could do the work but it wasn’t my ambition. It isn’t who I am. And there’s not enough time to spend doing something that isn’t you.

Life is too short.

So I raise a beer to Uncle Craig. Goodbye, God speed, and thanks for inspiring me to try to find happiness.

Craig Snyder (1955-2008)