There's a small bright spot to my week: one of the patents from my work at a previous employer has been .

I had to update my internal resume at work as part of the annual review process (and doing so has been on my OKRs for nearly two years, so I figured I might as well get it done) On a lark I checked the status of the patent apps that got put in way back in 2000. One of the apps took, I guess. So I added it to my resume. I guess it looks good on your record, or if you change jobs or whatever.

I was responsible for designing and then implementing all the server-side pieces of that system, in case anyone was curious. It was a hell of a lot of work, and we did it in mere months. A couple weeks ago I was digging through the closet for something, and I found the original design documents I wrote for the ad server. I'm not sure why I kept it, but it made for a funny read. It was all so serious. :-) But that's good I guess, because a lot of content from my docs was used in the patent application. Now that I read through all he exhibits, it's been pretty well lawyerfied, though.

Anyway, I'm an official inventor now.