Mental Blabberings

In a previous post I wrote about how I structure my work log notebook . That's my daily driver and it helps me keep on track for the day. I use it to look back on things I've accomplished, tasks that have fallen through the cracks, and whether there are any themes that keep arising. There are other kinds of notebooks that I use for different purposes and here I describe how I use work notebooks or "workbooks". Project Workbooks I usually have at least one ongoing project at work at any given time, where there are well-defined goals and tasks. In my software engineering practice, it would include things like diagrams, formulae, calculations, various kinds of set notation, and all sorts of insights and notes. For projects that have enough complexity that it will span multiple days, I'd place those in the same notebook for short projects. If a project will take multiple months/years, then I'd have a dedicated workbook for that. It can sometimes get wasteful if I ...

I have been keeping a journal for my personal life with some regularity for the good part of 4 years. The difference between my earlier attempts at journaling before four years ago is the regularity and the structure. I started with a very structured and regimented journal (doing it everyday with prompts and blanks to fill), to a ruled journal notebook, then a plain notebook (no rules nor grids in the pages), and then settling on a dot-grid notebook. This allows me to doodle and write free-form to help me commit thoughts and observations of my day but it was mostly for archival and looking back to "feel good" or reminisce (also to sum up a month, a year, etc.) The approach helps a lot with self-improvement in terms of my mental health and my reflection to see where I was a specific amount of time ago and whenever I was reading it again. In a previous post I wrote about keeping a work log, and I realised I only mentioned that in passing. In this post I detail the structure of ...

One of the things I do a lot on a daily basis is write emails. I suspect it's the nature of the job that communication would be a primary function that I should be able to perform well. There's certainly an art to this form of writing which is very different from other kinds of messaging. If you've ever wondered why you'd want to learn to write emails well, consider the following computations: If you spend 2 minutes writing an email and you need to send 10 of them, that's already 20 minutes. This doesn't count the time reading the email, formulating a response, and figuring out what else you need to do after responding to the email. If you write 10 minutes crafting an email and send 10 of them then that's a 100 minutes (1 2/3 hours). This doesn't include editing the email, so it's a lower-bound. If you receive 100 emails and read each one for 2 minutes and reply to 10%, then you're spending 200 minutes on 100 emails reading and anywhere between 2...

Sometime in 2018 I experimented with a strict 6-hour workday. I negotiated this with my manager who at the time said it was worth the experiment. The idea would be for me to be at the office by 10am and be out by 4pm. This didn't preclude me from continuing to work while I was in the train, or at home. It was an experiment where I can remember some good and bad parts and this is a post looking back at that time. Ruthless prioritisation The first thing I needed to do as an individual contributor was to ruthlessly prioritise all the tasks I have to accomplish. This meant I had to put a budget on the amount of time I'm spending doing certain things. Additionally this meant I needed to remove  all unnecessary meetings from my calendar. This was defined as whether it was something I was needed to make a decision on anything. Being an individual contributor at the time the answer it turns out for most meetings in my calendar was "no". Some examples of things I've stoppe...

I know I've written a lot of times already about how awesome the company I work for is and how much fun I've been having at work. This time though I'd like to reflect a little about how I get into the groove of being productive and learning more about the different situations I've encountered in the work I've done in the past and now. Although I can't talk about the exactly what I do in Google, I can tell you that it involves writing code (lots of it), making sure things are going according to expectations, and doing open source development. That sounds like a lot to do and the rest of this post is about how I get things done at work.

So I'm back in the office now. It's not a joke this job that I do... It's not a joke by a long shot. So when there are meetings, conversations, things to do, and other issues that need to be resolved the last thing I want to think about it eating. But then when you're in a metropolitan city where all the conveniences of the modern life -- and modern food -- are at an arm's reach, how can I avoid thinking about food? The answer is I don't. I think about it like I ought to think about it: what I can eat and what I ought not to eat. I can talk about it and I can think about it but I stick to the food that I should eat. I get it from friends and work mates: "So what *can* you eat?". The answer is simple: only those that's good for me. That means low sodium, low fat, high fiber, low/no sugar, virtually no cholesterol, all good natural food. And that's not just because I'm on a diet to lose weight, that's also so that I can stay a bit longer ...

Here's a good thing that's happening in the world today: online applications that have client-side interfaces . I just wish Blogger would have something like an Adobe Air based client... Or wait a minute, I can't wait to get someone spinning an Air-based client for this one project I'm working on (currently still a bit of a secret, until we actually launch it soon). I have got to get up to speed with all this Web 2.0 happenings. It's about time I jumped the bandwagon. CHill!

I'm still at the office and I don't feel bad about it. I have just implemented a feature or change which required me to take two days of very little work and a literal escape (went home to Laguna and bonded with family -- and my niece and nephew) and lots and lots of mental cartwheels. I implemented the fix for a couple hours and just now I'm waiting for it to get tested. That's a couple days of work done in a couple of hours. Thank God for rest and inspiration. Now though I need to let her (the lady I love) know that I'm still alive, and that I just needed to step away and concentrate. I also need to get some sleep but my brain is racing. I am psyched that I actually think I've got this problem solved in close to record time! CHill!

I'm working with a friend of mine building this site based on a cool idea. I really think this one will fly, and I'm having fun learning and using TurboGears . Okay I'm swallowing my pride and admitting that it's really productive programming with Python . That being said, I still love C++. The project is still going on, and I'm doing it in my free time. CHill.

Last week I seemed distracted by a few things which had nothing to do with my work. But my work seemed to be distracted nonetheless. I guess this is because I haven't been sleeping much and that I've been doing much more than what was required of me. So now I'd like to get back into the groove: I'd like to get into the office by 8 AM in the morning, get out at 5 PM, get to the gym by 6 (or earlier), get home by 8, and have a maximum of one hour checking my mail and working on an open source project. This is something I hope to achieve next week, right after the Philippine Elections and the fiesta in our little town of Calauan, Laguna, Philippines. I just hope I can do it and stick to this schedule. CHill!

Usually the tough fight it out with the going. It's when the pressure is high and the deadline is near that the tough people suck it up and put their arses on the line. Then you'll know who's tough: when you stand by what you've done and take responsibility for your actions -- and deal with the consequences that arrive. This is true for relationships, for careers, in projects, and especially in teams where people tend to rally around either one person or rely on one another to pull through and tough it out. I just hope this phase gets done so that I can go back to doing what I really love and not have to worry about group dynamics... CHill...

I haven't done this for quite a while: the hustle and bustle of deployment and staying overnight babysitting an application running in a window, watching server stats in a couple other windows, and yet more reading and speculating on the code regarding where the next bug might be and what it could bring to the system. I missed this so much I don't mind going through one of these sprints once in a while. CHill!

I'll be flying back to the Philippines on Sunday Feb. 25th, arriving Feb. 27th. I sure hope the Philippines is just as I remember it. It's been just a couple of weeks, and I don't miss so much the place -- but I do miss the people. CHill!

I stayed up until 2 AM today before hitting the sack (or more like tossing and turning in the bed) because since bug hunting season was open I had been faced with a certain challenge a simple fix could not remedy. Because of this, I'm not 100% right now, and might not be able to perform productively. It's never a good idea to stay up late and try to fix things but it's an ordeal developers usually have to go through -- and almost always for the wrong reasons. Trying things left and right and seeing each trial fail can be called an "exercise in futility" but I look at it in a different view: every failed approach lets you know how *not* to do it in the future. Life lessons learned should be life lessons shared. CHill! (quite literally, here in San Francisco)

I came in around 9 am into the Friendster office, and have been very productive since. We've squashed a couple of nasty bugs causing problems in the tests, and will be continuing to go ahead and hunt some more bugs pertaining especially to memory management issues. It's definitely something else being able to work on really interesting stuff. I'm learning a lot reading code and understanding legacy systems better. Though I'm a ground zero design/implement kind of guy, I'm getting the hang of working with other people's code and putting into practice some debugging and re-design/re-implementation techniques I've only been able to read about. Although a major re-design won't happen anytime soon, I'm definitely looking forward to being more productive as the days go by. Mental note: when modifying someone else's code, it's always a good idea to put yourself in another person's shoes and try to understand what he was thinking first *before* y...

It's my first night in San Francisco, and I'm definitely excited about what the day would be like tomorrow. I'm still up and about, and am going to be getting a couple of beers at the bar downstairs just to get myself soused enough to sleep. We were served breakfast at the airplane an hour before we landed, and that's screwed up pretty much my body clock. Though I'd like to go out and grab something to eat, I'm feeling a bit apprehensive about the prospects of walking alone on Market Street at night. So if you're in SF, CA and would like to meet up, it would be an adventure. I'm here until Sunday next week, unless Friendster wants me to stay a bit longer *hint* *hint*. :D CHill!

I just came back from the DFA, because I had to renew my passport in time to go to the US. All I can say is that the queues can drive you mad, especially if the people around you are not considerate of the concept of "personal space". But I guess here in the Philippines, people don't really have a concept of "personal space" -- just check out the MRT, busses, and jeepneys cramming everyone into a metal container like sardines in a can. Though the queue was hellish, it's worth it: I'll be able to get my renewed passport on the 9th. I just got wind that I'll be leaving for San Francisco on Sunday evening Philippine time, and will be arriving on the 11th there. I'm definitely psyched to visit San Francisco again, having been there once before for just a few hours. Now I get a week to stay in San Francisco and figure out what other cool things I can do there, and perhaps meet up with people who are just around the vicinity. I suppose I'd like to ...

I started yesterday at Friendster, and I should say I think I'm going to have the same fun I've been having at O&BSL in this environment. Not only am I surrounded by brilliant fun loving people, the work I'll be doing is definitely interesting especially to me. I'll most probably be flying to the US next week to meet the people there and get the hang of being "part of the team". I definitely look forward to working with the people here as I move on to a new chapter of my life. Not much else to say, but that I'm psyched to work with Friendster for the year 2007. CHill!