After all those years of doing remote detonations, where we just push a button and something explodes, to actually see a nice big fat line of black smoke heading toward something that will blow up is very satisfying.
Mostly I make lists for projects. This can be daunting. Breaking something big into its constituent parts will help you organize your thoughts, but it can also force you to confront the depth of your ignorance and the hugeness of the task. That's OK. The project may be the lion, but the list is your whip.
The 'Mythbusters' crew, we monitor the Discovery boards, we look for the new ideas that are being forwarded on those boards, and we keep track of what's going on, we keep updated.
I go home at the end of the day and I rarely talk about what I did that day. So my wife's experience is just like that of anybody else whose husband goes away to a blue collar job and comes home bruised and dirty and often proud of the work that they're doing.
I am incrementally a pessimist, but I see the international debate that Edward Snowden has engendered, and I think this is exactly where the discussion should be. So, I would say I'm more optimistic than pessimistic.
Again, like I said, my life has been about being fascinated by objects and the stories that they tell, and also making them for myself, obtaining them, appreciating them and diving into them.
I think the whole thing that Jamie [Hyneman] and I have in working together is that we are constantly simplifying each other's designs, and we both appreciate that the quickest and the dirtiest solution is usually the most elegant, the least expensive, and the fastest.