Rough weather July 9, 2007

I’m frustrated, fed-up, irritated and annoyed with everything and everyone always hiding a dark side disguised by a prentend-to-be-holy, gold-shining halo. Ulterior motives for personal benfit hidden deep inside a complex web of manipulation covered with lies and deceipt.

I’m sick and tired of laziness that envelopes people and expose their ability, at every opportunity, to try and get out of a dreaded chore or task that they might have to do. I’ve had it with people that cannot take responsiblity for their actions, who would betray their own mothers to shift the blame and pass the buck to whomever is unfortunate enought to be standing close by, feeding the insatiable addiction to immoral corruption that their inner-hipocrite craves.

I’m fedup with incompetent, incoherent blabber that so-called services companies spit in my face to cover up the mistakes that underline their inability to find, hire and keep intelligent, hard-working, honest people that exudes integrity and honesty. Who would rather save a buck than deliver a proper, respectable service to the very people that line their oversized pockets with tons of gold.

Yes. Today I am a pessimistic cynic. Hopefully tomorrow the winds will change and it will blow over.

Birthday message July 1, 2007

Life is a continuous experience.
It is given to us in stages, one day at a time, and this is enough.
Do not look back and grieve about the past, for it is gone forever.
Do not be troubled by the future, as God will provide.
Live in the present and make is so beautiful that it will be worth remembering…

Oh time, oh so precious May 22, 2007

I attended a ‘Time Management‘ course on Friday presented by my company’s in-house training institute. Frankly, after the previous course I wasn’t looking forward to it (let’s just say the facilitator wasn’t my type). I think the fact that my time management skills was SO bad, and the real urge for me to fix it, overcome this fear. The course turned out to be very useful and this facilitator _much_ better

So, Java certification? I’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time now but I haven’t had the time. Yeah, I know, it’s everybody’s excuse. Let me put it like this; my dynamic personality has the ability to take on either the chronic-procrastinator-persona or the obsessive-workaholic-persona. It doesn’t leave much space for anything else. In the course they talk about Type A and Type B personalities. Most people know about these already. Type A is the workaholic, perfectionist, I’ll rather do it myself and be sure it’s done right type. Where Type B is more laid back and relaxed.

I knew this stuff before and I knew the characteristics of both applied to me. What I didn’t realise before was that I am Type A at work and Type B at home. To the extent of opposite extremes. In other words, I really did need that course and I really do need to do something about how I spend my time. The certification will require for me to overcome my laziness at home and do some proper hard work. Eek! I do so much like to lie in bed and watch episode after episode of Prison Break or Numb3rs or whatever after a long day of obsessive overindulgent urgency at work…

I’ve created a schedule that sort of loosely sets out a plan for how I will spend the time that I have to myself on a daily basis. It takes into account time for going to gym three times a week, social nights twice a week, and open weekends. The open nights and weekends can really be used for anything and I can for example swop a Wednesday’s open night around with the studying of Thursday or the reading of Tuesday; to allow for things to happen when the time fits and so not to be too strict.

To start me off on the certification I found that JavaRanch has a lot of useful information and help. I also trolled over to Amazon and found a few books that will help me along, specifically “SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide“. While I was at it I created a Amazon wish-list. *nudge nudge wink wink*

Right, so according to my schedule…hmm… I was supposed to be in bed 36 minutes ago! *sigh*

Why do you do it? (updated) April 10, 2007

This morning, trying to get back into the working mood after the long easter weekend, I got a good dose of ‘Coding Horror’. Keep in mind, in the back of my head I was completely confused, comtemplating which direction to take my life (very long story) and questioning the motives I had for the last 10years. It’s a little tough when you start to think that you may have gone off and spent a lot of time and effort in something you’re now not so sure about…

Anyhow, Jeff’s post SEOs: the New Pornographers of the Web (see the qoute in the grey box) kinda struck a cord with me where he tells the story of his cousin Steven. Steven wanted to be a musician; I reckon he saw a band one day and thought that it was way cool and that being on stage in front of thousands of people should be his dream. He ended up chasing this dream relentlessly, but he was chasing it the wrong way. He was going for the dough and not for the dream, he was hunting fame and fortune and not the passion that comes with a true love for music.

I sit with almost the same kind of problem. I’m so worried about my life and the things I want to achieve that I get impatient with the pace my career is going at. Instead I should focus on that which I love about development and enjoy that everyday. I hope this is just a phase that will blow over…

(…update – 16 April ‘07…)

Coincedentally, a few days later on the same blog, Jeff’s post again touches a subject I think is closely related. In “Is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a Failure?”, Jeff questions whether the idea of paying people small amounts for small tasks, specifically Amazon, really is beneficial to their business. The reasoning is that reviews at Amazon and other sites are useful because people aren’t hunting a few dollars, they do it because they want to give something back to the community that’s been so helpful to them. Jeff calls this the intrinsic motivation: “The theory of intrinsic motivation goes a long way toward explaining why Amazon’s unpaid user reviews are so popular and effective, and yet the paid Mechanical Turk service appears to be withering on the vine.”

I’ve always had the belief that this intrinsic motivation is what makes any successful website really successful. slashdot.org, digg.com, distributed.net, seti@home, wikipedia.org, youtube.com etc to name just a few. It is true that there are people that will always try to exploit this intrinsic motivation for monetary gain, but the reason that the majority of the general public contribute, is this intrinsic motivation. It’s being part of a community and seeing your contribution being accepted by your peers (for example digging and your digg count).

At the end of Jeff’s post he quotes from Mary Poppendieck’s Team Compensation (pdf). It argues whether giving children allowances based on work they perform is such a good idea. I’ve been brough up this way, my dad argued that it would teach me that one needs to work to earn money. That it would show me that nothing in life comes without hard honest work. I agree with that to a certain extent and I can understand the concept now, back then of course it was a little more difficult  

The opposite is that children are not paid for doing household chores. At first I didn’t see the point, but after thinking about it for a while, it did start to make sense. In fact, it made more sense than the opposing theory. Remember the intrinsic motivation I mentioned earlier; that is the core of the second theory. Instead of being tought that every bit of work you do, you do it to earn money, you are now tought that maybe it’s (also?) about something else. You mow the lawn because you have to help your dad who is sick, or you wash the dishes because your mother made the food and your brother cleaned the garage. Whatever the reason, you learn that it’s not just about money.

Could this be part of the reason why so many people (it’s probably just me)  when you ask them about their work say: “…it’s not the greatest job in the world, but it pays the bills…”.

Regarding myself, I wonder why I did and still do many things. I feel that if you do something just because “…it pays the bills…” you will never be happy. Let’s face it, the average person spends between 8 and 9 hours a day at work, which accounts for atleast half your day. After chores and whatnot, the time left for personal endeavours isn’t much, all the more reason why a job that you atleast like a little bit can make you a happier person. I think you should find a balance between something that pays that bills and something that you love doing. I also believe that your job should not be the same as your hobby, it’s about balance and getting your mind to take a break.

What is it then that drives you?

To LCD or not to LCD… March 21, 2007

…or rather, which LCD? I’ve been endlessly prowling around the internet, computer magazines, forums, chatrooms, you freakin’ name it (!) trying to find as much information as I can on which LCD would be worth my hard earned dollars (or in my case the less worthy Rand ).

I am not the kind of guy that goes with what the general media tries to sell, and with this I mean adverts, television and the worst of them all, magazines. They would review some brand spanking new product delivered to their door by the manufacturer, which of course they don’t want to bad-mouth or they’d lose getting new stuff to play with! Instead of writing an honest review you’d get something sort of okay that gets the pages filled up. Like the other day I read an review on a MP3 player that was released almost three years ago, and this magazine was going on how this would be a good buy for the people needing “a funky new player”. A funky NEW player?! Are you kidding me!

This could bring us back to the whole “why we need the press if we have the internet” debate, but I’d rather just shutup and leave it be. For me, you’d be a fool to think that whatever you see in the shiny gloss pages of the latest print is anything to go by for your next buy. I know of something better. You may have heard of this, it’s a technology that’s as old as the internet itself. It’s very simple. It’s called a forum. Smile

All it requires is a little patience, and a little time. The point is you want to get right down into the nitty gritty where some weird person named Rambo53 tells you about his gripes with his brand new (but not so shiny) player that was supposed to be the latest and the greatest. It’s right there where you realize, reading about real experiences of real people, exactly what that MP3 player is all about. It’s right there where you realize that this player you’ve been drooling over really is just a piece of crap and you might just as well stick to the 10yr old Sony walkman that you’ve always loved so much despite the schlepp with tapes… Or not. NO NO NO! Send a letter to that magazine that told you lies and make sure they damn well know how much you think they suck. And never listen to them again, atleast not until you’ve done proper research.

A magazine should have talented people that can put together articles about something interesting that required research and time. Something that you can read with curiosity and lose yourself in on a cool Sunday afternoon on the sofa without feeling confused about consumerism taking over your life…

Anyways, the story about my research will have to wait for another day. I did find the one that according to the people is the best for what I need for the money I want to spend. So I started shopping around and to my amusement found that Incredible Connection (a local computer hardware/software retailer, in my opinion mostly over-priced) had it priced lower than anywhere else! I queried Digital Planet, an online retailer and all they could responded with was:

“Unfortunately we are unable to beat that price and the best price that I can do is R x incl. VAT as advertised on the website.”

I could guess and understand their reasons for that, but sheesh, how do you expect to sell your stock if you cannot even beat the more expensive retailers with a physical store!?