LeeMobile

I ran into this great quote from Paul Graham today:

“People who’ve done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can’t help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject’s life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they’d seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that’s one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it’s not our fault if we can’t do something as good.

I’m not saying there’s no such thing as genius. But if you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.”

 That’s from his essay to high school students, which is a great read: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

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One of the best things I’ve learned as I’ve matured, is that I can make up for my lack of intelligence through great amounts of effort, and that there are very few truly smart people in the world.

Paradoxically, realizing that you are not smart will lead you to become smarter.

Today is my 26th birthday.

I’m now past the halfway mark of my 20’s, and I feel old.  Really, 26 is pretty young still by today’s standards.  Some people still live at home at this age!

But I guess I feel old because my life has turned a new leaf.  For one, I’m a father now, and with that brings in all sorts of responsibilities.  I’m also busier now than I’ve ever been, leaving no real free time for “me” time.  I guess being young is characterized as having lots of “me” time to go out and enjoy and be free from any responsibilities.  Young Lee could go out and get ridiculously drunk and not care; old Lee now thinks “if I get totally hammered tonight, I probably won’t be able to help out with the baby”.

I’m not really griping though, because old Lee doesn’t want to go out and get smashed.  It’s not nearly as enjoyable anymore, and I feel that there’re other more enjoyable things to do.  So in that sense, I feel much older than my age. Gad, I wonder how shattering it’ll be when I hit 30!

Having Alison now in my life I have renewed my priorities on how to spend my time.  The less spare time I have, the more valuable it becomes.  In my pre-Alison life I would tend to procrastinate and slack more in my spare time.  Now that she’s here, eating up most of it, I really focus my time on things that make me feel productive.

It’s so ironic that I now have the fire to work on my side-projects when I have the least amount of time.

So really, for the past few weeks since I got back to work my life has been a repetitive cycle of this:

• Sleep for a couple of hours in the night.
• Head to work for 10 hours.
• Come back home by 5 pm, and by then Renata is exhausted from taking care of Alison all day, so I soothe and take care of the baby until  11 pm or so.  That gives Renata enough time to get in a couple hours of sleep so that she doesn’t die from sleep deprivation.
• Sometime between 5 and 11 I squeeze in maybe an hour or so of learning Python/Pylons or work on my side-project.

Some days I feel so completely exhausted with nothing left in the tank.  But most days I feel like I wouldn’t have it any other way.

At any rate, my TV/movie/video-game consumption has pretty much dropped to zero, and it feels great.

Three months into my current job, I had my performance review by my supervisor.  He gave me a glowing review and asked me what my career aspirations are, and where I see myself in 5 years.  He also alluded to the idea of developing more experience in a management role, and that taking baby steps would help transition my career into a “management” position later.

I told him then that for now, I’m focused on increasing my technical skills and that in 5 years I hope to be still be programming (although as a much better programmer than today). I wondered whether that was a good answer, or if that’s what I really wanted.

After all, being a manager means that you have people under you, working for you.  It’s a more prestigious title than being a developer, and usually comes with a nice pay bump.  Traditionally, moving into management equates to moving up the ladder.  Saying that you’re a “director”, “supervisor”, or “manager” totally garners more respect than to say that you’re just a developer.

Speaking purely from my love of programming and as a developer, I think I gave the right answer, and here’s why:

1.  I don’t have any inclination to manage other people.  I would rather spend time writing code and getting better at programming than to learn how to juggle individuals’ personalities and idiosyncrasies.   I don’t want to create time-lines, charts, reports, and sit in hours upon hours of meetings.
2. Titles are purely arbitrary and it’s easy to get caught up in them.  For $200 I can register a corporation and call myself a CEO.  Does that equate me to the CEO of Google?  Obviously not.  Will calling myself a CEO inflate my ego?  Maybe.
3. Pay usually does follow the traditional structure of Boss > Supervisor > Grunt, but in some companies it doesn’t.  Look at some of the large and successful software companies that pays heavily for strong technical developers.  There are some places that offer career tracks for technical people that match or pay more than management positions.
4. Management is not always a necessity.  A group of independent working developers  can manage themselves.
5. The learning curve for management skills are not as steep as technical abilities.  Don’t get me wrong, being a good manager requires good “people sense”, but it seems like there is a point in skill where it is just “good enough”.  A bad manager may squeeze 25% productivity out of a team, a good enough manager 80%, and a great manager 90%.  But the difference between a poor developer and a great one may be 1000% worth of productivity.
6. Extending the point above, managers are easier to replace than good developers.  A company may get by with a “good enough” manager, but some technological challenges cannot be overcome by mediocre developers.
7. The demand for managers is much less than for developers, since the ratio of developers to managers should be greater than 1 (one would hope).
8. A developer can fill in the role of management, but a manager cannot fill in the role of a developer.  The number of CEOs on the Fortune 100 list with a technical degree (engineering/computer science/etc) outnumber those with MBAs or some other business degree.  Bill Gates was a really good businessman, but he was also extremely technical.  Having the ability to detect technical BS is really important.
9. Programming can be really fun.  Supervising people to make sure deadlines are met, that they are doing their jobs…etc… is not fun.  I’ve never met a manager hobbyist, but I know tons of programmer hobbyists.
10. With technical skills, it’s much easier to develop and produce a product which you can sell and own.  Sure, some MBA in a suit can hire a team of developers to produce his vision… but that requires that you already have a lot of capital.  It’s hard to bootstrap a start-up without some technical skill.  Also, most of the failed dot-com companies were composed of MBA suits that paid to develop some product.

Having said all that, I really believe that it takes a lot of time and effort to become a really great programmer.  Peter Norvig gives a pretty compelling argument that it takes 10 years to become a good programmer, and that it’s worthwhile.  I would rather spend my time developing my technical skills than to distract myself with “people skills”.  I’m not trying to downplay managerial skills at all, as I think they are definitely valuable in themselves too.  But between deciding which direction I want my career to take, definitely keep me on the technical track.

Alison Leigh Nguyen was born January 16th, at 1226 at the Ottawa General Hospital.  She came in weighing in at 6 pounds and 12 ounces.

It’s been a whirlwind since that time, and finding spare time to write this or to post pictures for people is very rare.  My friends advised me that I’d completely run out of free time once she’s here.  It’s so very true, and it’s something I never understood until she arrived.  Before Alison was born, I couldn’t have imagined how demanding it is to ensure the survival of an utterly helpless human being who wakes every 2 to 3 hours to feed.  Now, I still can’t believe how things have transpired… how for the last week and a half she’s been born, I’ve been going through this repetitive 3-hour cycle, all day, every day.  Night and day loses any meaning, and the days of the week go by in a sleep deprived haze.

She is absolutely worth it though, and she brings me so much love and happiness.  I never thought I could love someone so much, or how someone could change the meaning and view of my life so greatly.

There’s now so much more meaning to living. I now live knowing that I do it to make sure that she’s safe and sound too.  I can now live only as recklessly or irresponsibly as her well being permits, and that means that I can’t be reckless or irresponsible at all.  It’s not to say that my life was meaningless and empty before, but now it’s that much harder for it to be just about myself.

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I’ve been taking lots of photos of her and the experience and have them posted up:

http://picasaweb.google.com/leemobile/AlisonLeighNguyen#

I’ve been reading Outliers by Malcom Galdwell.  It’s a pretty insightful book on the causes of successful lives.  I’ve also been pretty inspired by it, as Gladwell points out that great success and mastery in life is not directly correlated to innate talents.  Instead, success is the result of hard work (putting in 10 000 hours of practice/work) and the right opportunities.

Among the examples used, he told the story of Bill Gates and Bill Joy, and how they owed their success to putting in thousands of hours of work and practice before becoming successful.

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I guess I’ve always had this notion of wanting to start my own business, and becoming my own boss.  I don’t even want to become super-successful to make tons of money.  I would be happy in making enough to not work for someone else and still take care of my family.

I would like to be financially independent.  More importantly though, is that I would like my work to be “meaningful”.  Gladwell uses the term “meaningful” to refer to work which directly provides gain.  I would like my own work to bring me direct merit.  For example, someone who sets up shop selling hot-dogs on the street-corner is someone who is doing meaningful work, as each hot dog he sells rewards him directly.

Right now, the work that I’m doing is not meaningful.  I am paid a fixed salary to do work.  And whether or not I work really hard and do a lot of overtime, and putting my best work out there, I’m going to be paid that same fixed salary regardless.  There is no direct correlation between how hard I work, and how I am rewarded. I may get a pat on the back and some appreciation, but that’s not going to pay my mortgage.

Of course, I still work as best I can to become a better programmer, and to achieve a sense of satisfaction.  To me, without continual self-improvement work becomes meaninglesss.  But there is still missing that sense of meaningfulness… that whatever profit my work may produce will not return to me.

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So being inspired by Gladwell’s book, and reading through Paul Graham’s essays I’m back to working on my start-up idea.  This time I’ve partnered up with some like-minded people to help keep the momentum up.

I’m by no means quitting my job to work on this.  I have no real capital to do this and support my new family (I am going to be a father in less than a month).  But whatever free time I have to afford, I will try in earnest to build this project.

It seems that the key to a successful startup is hard work and determination, above all other things.

So the city transit strike is totally turning my life upside down.  With none of the buses running in the middle of winter, I have no option but to join the masses and drive into work.  Renata and I carpool into work while picking up a few co-workers along the way too.

The problem is that the increased traffic forces us to wake up at 5:30 to make it out on the roads early enough to avoid the gridlock.  We left one day 30 minutes later, and what normally would be a 50 minute commute turned into 2.5 hours of drudgery.

The bus drivers (and/or their union) are a bunch of knobs for striking.  I realize that their intent is to inconvenience the city as best possible to get their demands, but to do that in the middle of the winter is heartless.  Add on to the effect that they’re blocking privately chartered buses too, and picketing the streets… they’re not going to win any hearts.  As an essential service, they should not be allowed to strike at all.  From what I understand, they get paid quite well too.

What also is flipping my life upside down is that work refuses to let us telecommute during this period.  Which is strange because telecommuting does work when used effectively.

There have been vast and complex software systems written by teams that are geographically disparate.  The nature of software development is mostly solitary too.  At the same time, having a team of developers who are tired and frustrated from the commute will not help productivity.

Coding is not a repetitive activity like assembly line work.  The quantity and quality of work is not determined by how many hours you spend in front of the computer, or at your desk.  A fresh mind can produce great code in a few short hours, whereas a dulled and tired one will output garbage, with the risk of lost time spent debugging.  After sitting in traffic for hours on end, without proper sleep, you’re not in the optimal state for productivity.

I personally prefer to work in the office, but for the selfish reason that it fulfills my social needs.  I enjoy seeing and working with my colleagues.  But the real truth of it in terms of productivity, is that if I were to work from home I’d be much more productive.  It takes a lot of time and mental energy to understand and juggle the sections of code that you work on.  It may take sometimes hours of thought and reading to get a clear mental picture of the problem at hand, and once that stream of thought is interrupted, it may be hard to get back on track.  Obviously, the volume of distractions at work greatly exceeds anything you may have at home.  If we had our own private offices, it might be different (Joel Spolsky style)… but that’s not the case at work.

For those reasons, telecommuting makes total sense. It’s a win-win solution to a shitty situation.  The development team is more comfortable for not having to slog through hours of traffic, while at the same time product development is shorter and we have a higher chance of successfully hitting our target dates.

It’s been two weeks now since I got my little netbook in the mail, and I must say that I’m quite impressed.

Impressed in that it has satisfied exactly what I expected it to be.  It is a very portable and capable laptop, which came in at a very cheap price point.

Asthetically, the laptop is well built and has that glossy white Ipod finish to it.  Under the hood, it has enough pep to do basically everything I need it to.  It can decode compressed divx video, run most all applications with a lot of snap, and can even handle 3D desktop effects quite well.

It has made my bus rides much more enjoyable, and time seems to fly while I use it.

I did however install the latest version of Ubuntu linux on it (8.10) and I suspect that has helped with it’s snappiness.  The 3D desktop effects that come with it run quite smoothly, and the boot-up time is very short (around 30 seconds).  The pre-loaded Windows XP was usable too, but was a touch slower.  The McAfee anti-virus program included really slowed it down however, and felt sluggish whenever it was on.

Am I saying that you need to run linux to make this netbook usable?  Not really… but it makes for a much better experience.  At least you can avoid viruses without running the resource pig that is McAfee.

A really nice benefit of using Ubuntu is that the multiple desktops really come in handy when using a smaller screen.  It at least allows switching between applications to be much easier when on the bus.  The little trackpad isn’t the greatest interface on a bumpy ride.

I guess what makes owning an Aspire One great is the that it seamlessly allows me to to access a computer anywhere I am.  It does everything that a laptop can do, with the added benefit of being ultra portable.  Or, it does much more than what my Blackberry can do yet it’s almost as portable.  Either way, it has enhanced my connectivity in a very intimate way.

I love Fiest and her music.  She’s a fantastic song-writer, singer, and performer.  She’s got so much spunk and talent, that it’s hard not to love her music.

Seeing as how she was going to be in town, I got a chance to pick up two tickets for the concert last weekend at the NAC.  It was kind of strange that she wasn’t playing at a smaller venue like the Bronson Center, but I guess she’s a lot more popular now that she’s won all those Juno awards.

So anyways, Renata and I went to see her on Saturday night at the NAC, and we were both surprisingly dissapointed.  She put on a great performance, and her music is even better live.  She’s got more energy and emotion when it’s live.

However, for whatever reason, she decided to add shadow puppets to her show.  I shit you not, boy-scout campfire style shadow puppets.

Each song would have its own shadow puppet theme, complete with props for the overhead projector.  And each shadow puppet show, was just as frustrating and distracting as the rest.  It was so in-your-face pretentious that it distracted from the music and Feist herself.

We came to listen to a concert, and were instead bludgeoned with an overly artsy light show.  Too bad.  If she simply didn’t have that part incorporated into her show it would’ve been an amazing concert.

So I’ve caved and bought a laptop just like everyone else.  I’ve never really liked laptops.  I’ve always found them to be really underpowered, pricey, and not as comfortable as a desktop PC.  I enjoy the awesome luxury of my dual 24 inch screens too much to be cramped up by a small 17 incher.  That is so 2001!

I guess it’s out of pure utility that I am finally getting one.  The long bus rides to get to work are starting to wear me down.  It’s good reading time, but on some days I want to do something “productive” while commuting.

Back when I worked at Waypoint, the commute was only 8 minutes each way.  That left me with enough energy and time to squeeze in an hour or so of extra-curricular programming once I got home.  However, now that I spend almost 90 minutes everyday on the bus that’s no longer there.

So, my requirements for this laptop are pretty low.  I just need it to be small and light.  I’d like the battery to be decent enough.  And other than the standard stuff like ethernet/USB/sound ports, there’s not a whole lot more I need.  I don’t even need a DVD drive for this thing.  I just need to be able to pull it out while on the bus for a quick job (that sentence sounds so dirty!!).

Luckily for me, this year has been the year of the ultra-portable sub-compact notebooks.  The Asus EEE-PC, MSI Wind, and Acer Aspire One are just a few models that have come out.  They’re all small, light, and cheap! Especially since I’ll be loading them up with Xubuntu, the hardware should be more than powerful enough for my needs.  Cause really, all I need it to do is to load up my favorite text editor and I’ll be emacs’ing away.

So anyways, I ended up picking the Acer Aspire One in the end.  From a cost/feature perspective it seemed to be right in the sweet spot.  The Asus EEE-PC has too small of a keyboard to be usable, whereas the MSI Wind and Aspire One both have larger screen sizes and keyboards.

The Aspire One model I ordered has a 160 Gig hard drive, 1 Gig ram, 1.6 Ghz processor, and a 6 cell battery.  I got it for about $400 from my favorite online PC store NCIX.  The MSI model has a larger screen by an inch, but with identical specs would’ve cost me $600 instead.  A 50% premium seems a tad too high.  They both come with a copy of Windows XP, but as I mentioned before I’ll be loading up Linux to keep the performance overhead down.  And really, unless you’re playing games (which sucks on a laptop anyways) there’s no real good reason to be running Windows!

So now I eagerly am await my new laptop!  I’ll probably post a little review of this little gem as soon as I get it.