Small world.

Jun 092010
 

I noticed through linkedIn that a guy I used to work with was now working at Apple.  I looked him up, we sent a few emails back and forth, and then I realized that he was working with more dudes that we used to work with and they got bought by Apple.  Siri.

These were the guys that I used to play basketball with in a 3-3 tourney against the Paris twins.

Cool for them.

But remember that guitar open house that Catherine brought us to over the weekend?  There was a dude there that used to work at Dejima too. I didn’t remember his name. But I remembered he wasn’t very good at his job, though I don’t really remember the job either – product marketing maybe?  Something vaguely product.

Anyway, his daughter was noisy and troublesome during the class. And I was thinking, yeah, a guy that was that bad at his job would probably be a very organized parent.

As we were leaving, I was asking Catherine if she remembered the guy at all, or maybe his name and she didn’t.  She just said when the mom came over after the info session was done (the kids were in the back at a table drawing and entertaining themselves) he growled at his wife: “She peed on the carpet!”

Yeah.  I don’t miss working with that guy.  Whatever his name was.

Another company, another challenge at the gym.

May 282010
 

31pxLM2bc6L._AA300_Though I’m taking it easy with this one, mainly cause I don’t really want to do it.  I don’t like running- would rather bike. But those high tech work out shirts ain’t cheap…and if you run or walk at least 50 miles by July 2, you get a free one.  That’s a really low bar compared to the “row 100k” challenge…so even though I thought I’d be able to walk away from it, hearing people talk about it in the office today changed my mind. I mean, who wouldn’t be convinced to join by the “League of Lardy Programmers”?

The catch?  Gotta buy into the Nike+ system with your iPhone.  Or the Nike+ system with additional sensor for your iPod.  And have special Nike shoes. But if I go and get all that stuff, it ends up being more expensive than the value of the free t-shirt…

Except that I’m getting an iPhone soon.  Well, I have one.  But I’ll get to leave the office with it soon, I think.  And buying the sensor is cheaper than the sensor and the iPod adapter.

And instead of the shoes, you can buy a 3rd party pouch to attach the sensor to your shoe.

Now we’re down to investing $23 to get that fine high tech shirt.

And if I walk to work every day, that should be 10 miles a week. Just throw in a couple of weekend walks with the dog and kid and we’re set.  Saved some gas money while we’re at it.  They’re practically paying me to get that shirt…

(That photo of the shirt is of course, a generic one I got off of Amazon.  Not allowed to show the actual shirt until 4-6 weeks after July 2nd when the shirt is released to the public.)

0 to Fan-boy in 3 days.

May 112010
 

Catherine was impressed, or maybe startled, with the rapid change in attitude I had when I joined Yahoo! 6 years ago. I was going around correcting people when they used Google as a verb, setting every default home page I came across to Yahoo! and was pretty much touting our services any chance I got.  For my parents and in-laws, a well configured my.yahoo page is really their perfect starting point for the internet.  Though 6 years later, I’d have to admit my conversion rate isn’t what I thought it would be.

iPhone Mail Team - here I come...But having seen my quick transformation she didn’t doubt my ability to go from a 10 year Blackberry fanboy looking down at the iPhone, to iPhone-atic at the flip of a switch.  And though that switch won’t officially be flipped until May 24th (I’ll be joining the iPhone development team, working on the mail app), she’s gotten used to rolling her eyes as I start encouraging people to buy Macs, iPhones and iPads.

I guess she thinks all that eyerolling will make her a lock for an iPhone upgrade come June?

I’ll really miss all the folks in the sports team and what worries me the most is that I’m not going to realize how much I’ll miss them for another month or two.  It already weighs heavy on me as it is…not looking forward to the full impact when it hits.  But this iPhone thing is an intriguing product and it was an opportunity that I would be silly to turn down. They’re in an incredible place right now and to be part of the team will be exciting.

I’ve already begun sighing heavy as my 8900 goes to garbage collection every 15 seconds while browsing the web or loading a map – while looking longingly at Catherine’s iPhone. The side-by-side tests that I was afraid to do 2 months ago, since I had a pretty good idea that my 8900 would lose, I enthusiastically kick off whenever I have a chance.

The only drawback I see is typing – I’ve foundthat I’m used to sliding my fingers from key to key on the bberry and that habit doesn’t translate well on the iPhone, but hopefully I’m human enough to adapt.

Or fanboy enough.  We’ll see.

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Annual reviews…

Mar 192010
 

We’re closing up our annual review process now, but a while back, while the feedback was being collected, Kelly shared with me some of the direct feedback I got from my team.  Specifically in the “needs to improve” section.

  1. hair style
  2. sportsmanship

Which was funny, but left me very curious.  Sure, it’s supposed to stay anonymous, but how could one not wonder?

With the hairstyle, I was a little surprised, cause all I had was a shaved head.  Well, a shaved head that was growing into my asian puff.  But it was pretty simple and not really that far out there.  I shower in the morning so I don’t go to work with bedhead.  I didn’t see my hair as a target I guess.  But, my initial reaction was to start looking around.  If you saw who I worked with, you’d see how this was the case of some serious kettles calling the pot black. It is like we’re making our own Flowbee brochure.  And that’s on a good day.

So the hair style one was easy to shrug off and use as an excuse to get a flattop. Which I’ve actually enjoyed more than I thought I would.  Maybe we’ll still do some team bonding later this year and all get make overs…

The sportsmanship was the one that I was more interested in.  At first, I thought it’d be EJ, because he was offended at one of the payouts for a bet I had with Travis and Ben.  The loser would have to turn the ball over in basketball, 2 times a day, when ever the winner asked for it.  It would change the dynamics of the game and would cause some tension within the team.  Not that turnovers are rare in our game, but being all alone on a break away with an easy basket (actually, neither of those guys have easy baskets) and then having to toss the ball out of bounds cause I yell “turnover” is a big advantage.  And EJ takes winning basketball seriously.  Even though I never used the turnover control I had, it was still a cloud looming over the game.

But EJ denied it was him that gave that feedback.

So I went to Ben and Travis – the guys stuck with the “turnover” curse.  I guess if you can’t win a bet, might as well get back at someone during their annual review.  But they denied it as well.

Then we’re talking about it during lunch and Klaus comes forward saying it was him.  And it’s funny, cause it’s so far from my mental model for him to make a comment like that in a review.  And I go on with trying to figure out the reasons other people would have to knock me for sportsmanship.  But he’s persistent that it was him.  Really?  What’d I do to deserve that from him?

Turns out, during one of our soccer games, I was passing the ball and instead of it going directly to a teammate’s feet, like it normally does, I hit the ref.  Then I laughed. At her.  And that’s something that stood out in Klaus’ mind.

Forget the fact that one game Brian nailed Klaus in the chest with a much harder shot.  While Klaus wasn’t even in the game.  Or even upfield.  He was square with Brian and standing in the bench.  It was as if someone had bet Brian, “Hey – I bet you can’t hit someone on the bench in the middle of the game!” and Brian actually took the bet.

But Klaus accurately pointed out, he was not asked to review Brian. He was asked to review me.

So, I couldn’t help but think of that last night, during our soccer game, when the other team cleared the ball and it went over the wall, into the netting, which has gotten a little loose over the years, and so it stretched a bit, and the ball actually hit one of their fans, who was standing close to the netting to get better video, and it made that hollow, slapping sound that when you hear it, you know it was a solid hit and it couldn’t feel very pleasant, and I started laughing.

At the kid.

So, umm…well, I’ve got a flattop now at least…

Bravo!

Nov 192009
 

delight_purpleOne of the things that came out of our internal hack days was a Bravo! system within our intranet.  People could tag co-workers with a Bravo badge that basically said they did a good job on something.  For instance, the “Delight” Bravo can be given to someone that’s had a really good experience with users, or partners, or even co-workers.

I use it to play some social games, trying to Bravo the people that I think will feel guilty enough and Bravo me back.  I’m not that successful.

The other thing that came to mind was the sarcastic Bravo.  There are some people that rub me the wrong way, or maybe it’s the other way around.  Either way, I’ve thought about giving them a sarcastic Bravo, but so far, I haven’t been drinking enough to actually do that yet.  Though thinking about it now, it might help a relationship or two.  But that’s a big might.

Then today, I was going through the list again, looking to give an honest Bravo when one of the titles stuck out to me.  They switch up a few titles every few months to keep it fresh and so some people can have some “classic” Bravos.

But this one Bravo stood out to me, and I thought it’d be nice to give one of these Bravos to a co-worker.  It fell into a new class of Bravo – not honest, not sarcastic, but one that was best without a caption or any descriptive text.  And then I started to wonder how well I could play innocent during the conversation with HR…

nailed_it

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Me and my advice.

Aug 012009
 

Last month, Sandy was telling me about Ethan’s soccer dilemma.  Does he stay at camp to play in the 2nd day of the all-star game (already played in the first day) and miss class, or does he leave the camp early (as planned) and get to class.  It’s some summer business class at the community college, versus getting recruited by a college team and a potential scholarship.

I said goto class. He made the all-star team, so they know he’s got skills and then by going to class and being dedicated to his summer courses, he shows a maturity that would be appreciated by coaches when offering a scholarship.  It helps answer some of the questions about character when one has priorities set like that.

Then yesterday, I get a meeting invite for a team dinner Tuesday night.  The product and engineering leads from around the world are gathering here and having our first team dinner.  I’ve also got an indoor soccer game to play at 7:45.  I missed our first game last week cause I was working in Santa Monica.  What to do?

Well, given my limited career opportunities and the fact that I haven’t yet established myself as a starter on the team, its pretty easy, isn’t it?  I’m going to soccer.  We already know I have character issues. Plus, it seems kind of lame to be meeting to talk about a World Cup soccer website and pretending to be a fan of the beautiful game while abandoning one’s own indoor soccer team, doesn’t it?

Though, I do have reservations about the game.  I kind of have already lost, before even playing, as somewhere along the line, I’ve been quoted as saying that soccer is my “best” sport.  This frustrates people that play basketball with me cause my height advantage overshadows their skill/speed advantage.  So, I think there are expectations for my game that I will not be able to meet, and I will get harrassed regardless.

Though that’s not enough to make me goto dinner.

But it did make me think about my advice giving techniques.  Sean was bringing up how he heard through the grapevine that soccer was my sport.  He’s a leading scorer on the team right now (3 tied at 1) and so he can be cocky.  I went on to explain that it wasn’t my “best” sport, but the sport I am the most trained in.  I’ve had years of organized soccer while I’ve had 1 trimester at JV basketball as far as coaching goes.  And our coach spent most of the time trying to figure out how to hit on our female classmates.  Which was educational as well.

So I went on to say that with soccer, at least, I know how the game should be played and that Sean should expect me to yell at him about how to play.  That would be the main difference.  I won’t be any better, but I’ll think I know more.

He told me I already yell at him.  Which made me feel bad for a moment…

“Well, then I guess I’ll yell at you more in soccer.”  I hide my feelings pretty well huh?

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