- May, 2007
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experienced vs. being engaged
A few weeks back I was talking to my manager about why some people are "self managers" and some people need someone to tell them what to do next (i.e. being "driven"). I proposed that people with more years of work experience are self-managers since they are "experienced". If you have been around in the industry for sometime, you might have an idea of the weight placed on your "work experience". However, my manager had a different point of view about this. The following is a largely abridged version of the 45 minutes discussion we had about the matter of being "engaged".
Years of experience do not matter when it comes to your proficiency with a tool or a language or the amount of insight you have into a problem. What matters is how "engaged" you are with it. For example, take the example of a fresher deeply interested in the topic of starting and keeping a website running. This means that he should know about writing user facing webpages as well as designing database schema that will give back results in milliseconds as well as know about design patterns to help him write better code. He will also research on how to do load balancing, take backups, kickstarting a system (to replace failed hardware), which kernel parameters to tune to increase tcp throughput, which algorithm to use to search your database faster etc.
Someone who is not "engaged" will be happy putting up webpage by copy/pasting snippets of code. Even if he has on the job for 5 years, it will not make him wiser about how he can increase the throughput of his site or how to save his server from being pwn3d.
Hence, saying that someone with less (or null) years of experience cannot be a self manager does not make sense. It all boils down to how interested he is in what he is doing.
As a sidenote, this insight too came from the same discussion
What happens when you read a book ? If the book is well written, what you are effectively doing is "absorbing" the experience of the author. A well written book, in most of the cases, tell you about pitfalls and alternative ways of approaching a problem (the design patterns book or programming pearls are good examples of this case).
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ipod battery
if you own an ipod, check out this nice FAQ about their battery. An important question is What is the best way to handle charging/discharging/storage of lithium ion batteriesAlso, many, many factors affect how much you get out of each charge, as well as how long the battery will last overall. The main factors include charging patterns, the routine amount of discharge (i.e., Do you use it until it dies? Use it for an hour or two and recharge?), temperature, storage, usage frequency, etc. Lithium ion batteries do not take kindly to frequent full or complete discharges. When possible, the optimal usage pattern - for any lithium ion battery - is a partial discharge, followed by recharging. A partial discharge can be anything less than a full discharge. However, an occasional full discharge is desirable (e.g., once every 30 charges) to calibrate the battery. Lithium ion batteries do not significantly degrade, or develop "memory", even if charged at irregular intervals; irregular charging is acceptable. An iPod can also safely be attached to external power for extended periods of time. (For extremely extended periods of time, such as months, the battery will essentially be the same as if it were in "storage"; lithium ion batteries do not store well for extended periods of time at full charge. However, there is no way around this under these circumstances.) When possible, always use the AC adapter (or vehicle adapter) for extended charging, not a FireWire cable attached to a computer.
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- April, 2007
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summary of 3 weeks of my life
I have been in Sunnyvale, California since the 17th of April. The work, traveling and shopping have kept me pretty busy.
USA is an experience. I think it is a great country with absolutely brilliant people. The flickr stream of my pictures will give you an idea of all the weird and cool stuff this place has.
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two thought experiments
here is a thought experiment to keep yourself entertained.
Imagine how our world would look like if our reality was only two dimensional, instead of being three dimensional
I tried this thought experiment while driving to the office. Imagine what a road and the traffic would look like if things would exist only in two dimensions. It would mean that vehicles would not be able to travel next to each other - they would travel in a single file. How would a car look like in 2D ? That will be a hard question to answer. I can imagine two wheelers in 2D.
Next comes the question of what type of houses would we be living in ? I would say that we would have them in single file too. The rooms would be next to one another, something like what we see in stick figure drawings. How would be mark out fences in such a world.
I imagine that the world would look like a stick drawing. I can imagine thin people in that world, but how would the fat ones look like. Since there would be no 'sides' to expand to, they would grow in the front.
Here is another thought experiment to try
If our reality exists in 3D, but we are able to only perceive in 2D, what would our world look like So, think what if we could not perceive depth - only the XY axis.
There are no 'moral of the story' in these thought experiments - they are means to keep yourself entertained.
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much ado about nothing
If you follow the top 100 blogs, you might be aware of the blogbullies getting too much attention. I had followed the story with mild interest and I think that this penny arcade comics captures exactly what I think about the whole incident.
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what if analysis
Seen on a mailing list
User1 says : "Every project has its central figures. What if Ballmer got hit by a bus?"
User2 says : "Would the bus be drivable? Would any passengers get hurt?"
User3 says : "Can we ... umm set this up to happen? I'd even be willing to sacrifice a bus-load or more of lawyers and two or more buses. "
User4 says : "I object! Would be a real shame to do this to an innocent bus... Would be a good use for a scraped tank or submarine, though. 8-)"
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