We had our offsite last week. We had this game where we need to come up with a musical presentation within 45 minutes. Having musically inclined people and natural leaders within the group, we came up with the best presentation. I don’t know if it is because of lack of ideas or lack of leadership that the other groups gave subpar performance. The way to determine the winner was to vote. Vote the two best team except for your own group. We almost lost. There was a tie. We only won because of our team leader’s skills in rock, paper and scissors.

This is one of the few reasons why democracy sucks. The system can easily be gamed. When the moderator announced that we will vote I know for a fact that the team that everyone thinks that will get the least vote will get the most.

Last year when I visited him he needed to hold on my shoulders to walk. He was too proud to bring his cane. He even flipped over when I tried to walk fast. That got me scared.  I heard a loud thud when he fell with his back first.

I had him called by their office receptionist. He was taking a long time to come out. Maybe his condition was a little bit worse than before. After twenty minutes of waiting, he finally got out. I was right. It got worse. He is now on a wheelchair. His motor skills are deteriorating.

I rolled him off the building. We were going to Teriyaki Boy at the gasoline station. It was opposite their building.  He was surprised that I know how to push a wheelchair. He told me that when he and his officemates go to KFC they just push him down on the slopes(when the slope is a bit steep its better to pull the wheelchair with the back first). I reminded him that my father is a paralytic.

While crossing the street I asked him what made him change job. The reason was growth. In his old job, all the code are splattered on one place. In his new job the codes are better and he was able to use different Java frameworks like Spring, Struts,  Acegi etc. I was surprised. Its as if he has no dilapidating condition.  He  is still thinking of growth. He is still thinking of his career. He is still upbeat on his future.

As we chat during lunch he is still as tactless and loud like before. He told me how his teammates were annoyed with him because he was telling them that they are contradicting what they say the day before. He even has this girl he was eyeing. He was actually eyeing two. But the other one is not giving him any attention.

Live your life as if this is your last day. Screw that. Today I learned to live your life as if you will live forever.

Two million worth of friendship*

It was down to five briefcases(or six). Johnny Litton and Maurice Arcache, partners in the now defunct show “Oh No Its Johnny”, was asked by the Deal or No Deal host if its a deal(get the PHP 320K) or no deal(open another briefcase).

The looked each other. The two and one million briefcases(the two highest briefcases) are still unopened. Maurice said: “deal”. Johnny disagreed. One more try he said. After all, they have been having a lucky streak so far. They sought the audience’s advice. Deal! They consulted their families opinion. No Deal! Its even. The audience told them to deal, their family told them not to deal. The looked at each other again. A few seconds later, Maurice told Johnny: “I will go with your decision”. Johnny then said: “Ok”. He then said “No Deal!”, then he pressed** the deal button. Everyone was surprised and gave him a look of disbelief.

Screw the money. Hooray for friendship!

————————————–

Note:

* Their briefcase contained two million

**Johnny said it was an accident

Only insanity is capable of beauty

I really like the essay, How Beauty and Love Are Meant to Be Incomplete and Crazy. It was recommended to me by my teammate. Below is probably the best paragraph of the essay.

Only insanity is capable of beauty. Because, it is only that, which will allow a body to be used towards a senseless end. Beauty does not make sense. It is not achieved by prescribed achievable steps. It is mistakes and accidents and forgotten selves. The impermeable grounds of logic are neither broken nor desecrated. They are merely surpassed. The mind gets left behind. Beauty has no use for it.

Weddings and Cynicism

My friend told me about the wedding she attended that made her cry. The couple told their story on how they met and the letters they wrote. As she was telling bits and pieces of the their story I can’t help but sigh. There is something so innocent and so true when you hear those stories. It’s like a time machine that takes you back to a time when you are not that jaded. Its an oasis in a barren and arid desert. Its a blackhole that tears reality and pulls you to a place where everything is well and good. For an instant in time, you want to throw away all your cynicism.

And sometimes you would want to stay in that place. Until life gives you a big kick and you will be hurled back to reality.

Sigh. So much for wedding stories.

—————————————

It also reminded me of my previous post on my previous blog:

There is something sweet with weddings. May it be simple or extravagant, civil or church, the simple exchange of “I do’s” can turn any cynical and jaded person believe that there is love.

Getting the incentives right - On why people prefer management than a technical career

Me and my groupmates in college have a novel way of dividing tasks when doing our machine problems(projects). There are only two tasks in any machine problem, doing the programming and doing the documentation. Our problem is, nobody wants to do the documentation.  Those assigned to the boring task of documenting the project are those members that can’t program or the least in terms of programming skills.

What we did was that each of us code(make a working prototype) the machine problem. Whoever finishes first will continue coding and the other guy(s) will document. If you don’t want the stigma of being the documenter, code like hell and deliver a working prototype first. We got the incentives right. The best coder(s) will work on the project, the others document. We strive to be better. Not improving means being a documenter in future projects.

This is a stark contrast to what is happening in most software companies(or software arm of a company). Entry level developers wants to better. They study new technologies, languages, frameworks and design patterns. Then they become senior developers. Developers usually stop learning at this point. This is where people wants to start “moving-up”. Not as architects(or whatever technical position available that is higher than a senior developer) but as managers. Why? Because the incentives are not right.

What do you get from being a manager? You get a higher pay. You have the prestige of people working under you. And what do you need to do to become a manager? Gain experience in managing projects. Lead some people. Go to management trainings etc.

What do you get for advancing you technical career? A higher pay of course. You also set technical directions or be a technical guru. What do you need to do then? This is the painful part. You need to study more(technology, languages and even math). My friend and I usually joke that the more you try to be technically astute the more uncool you become. Studying takes time. And usually people would rather spend it on something else than reading a book on another programming language.

I’m not saying that managers don’t study and read. The good ones do. I’m going out on a limb here. To advance in a managerial career path is easier than to advance in a technical career path. Its easier to detect if a technical person is not good than to detect a bad manager. A successful project would not mean that the manager is good. The manager might be bad but if the developers are good they can pull it off. Vice-versa, an unsuccessful project does not mean that the manager is bad. I doubt if you can reason the same if we are talking about technical designs.

If we want people to advance* their technical careers, we must get the incentives right. If a higher pay and prestige can be obtained with less effort then who would want to advance their technical careers?

_________________________

I was actually thinking of posting this in dftf. But I feel it’s a bit incomplete.

Notes:

*Advancing is not the same as staying as developers.

Some lyrics that I recently liked.

Under Pressure(Queen)

….

It’s the terror of knowing.
What this world is about…

…

Bleeding Love(Leona Lewis)

….

My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing…

…

Newspaper Economics

“Globalization at Risk(Because of Rising Prices of Fuel)” was the headline last Monday. Because of the rising prices of fuel, some manufacturers are now relocating their factories nearer the market.

The headline strikes me as stupid. Globalization is a means, not an end.

—————————————

Reading the paper I saw another stupid article(or letter to the editor). The writer claimed that the box of F1 tickets are wasteful since the box could house eight tickets. If you order just one ticket you get the same box.

Would it be more wasteful if the F1 organizer have different boxes for different number of tickets?

This will probably rate as one of my shittiest week ever. We are days away on our second QA release and I forgot to run some of the old unit test in the code base that I was working on. Its not part of the module that I am working on and most of it is either incomplete or looking for something non-existent. The thing that I am angry about is the fact that I missed it. That I did not run the other test during the development phase. No point in delving over these things. But it made me a bit sad that I made that mistake.

If there is something that saved the week for me it is that I am now good in merging codes. Our release engineer told me that I can now work as a part-time release engineer(I promptly refused of course. I don’t want the pain of being a release engineer).

———————————-

If you want to read but you are eternally distracted(like me) or do not have the discipline to do so, try reading at the train. Yesterday I played badminton with my friends at a court that is an hour away(Almost crossed Singapore). I brought a book and was able to read a lot and concentrate better. In the train there is nothing to distract me and I have no other choice but to read.

———————————-

I watched Dan In Real Life this morning. Chris wrote some of the lines in her blog and got me interested on the movie. It was a about Dan, a writer and a widower, meeting a stranger in the bookstore where he instantly connected with her. Turned out that the stranger is his brother’s girlfriend and will be staying at their house for a week to meet the family.  One of the interesting scene is where the girl told Dan that all of his brother’s best lines were Dan’s(she read his book). She thought that it was Dan, through the lines used by Dan’s brother, that she loved. This reminded me of Cyrano de Bergerac. Do you love the person or his/her soul?

I met with some ex-officemates last week. We had the usual catching-up conversation. What struck me most was that they sometimes send Outlook invitation for lunch. The strange thing is(at least for me), they find it fun.

———————————-

I had my first QA release today. Its not production release but the stress is a bit high since the database change involved a very large table. One of the database scripts lasted for five hours. If there were problems, it was mostly on the process.

The change involves adding a column and adding some data. While testing the script I filled-up the transaction logs three times(requiring the DBAs to rollback) and dropped an index on the wrong database. I now have a notorious reputation with the DBAs.

———————————-

If one does not attach himself to people and desires, never shall his heart be broken. ….But then, does he ever truly live? I’d rather die a mortal, with a care for someone, than to live as an immortal free from his death.

-Lu Yan(Forbidden Kingdom)

The ironic thing about what Lu Yan(Jacky Chan) said is that he is a Buddhist. Buddhism teaches about detachment.

While we are at it, it is interesting that Christianity also teaches detachment(Luke 17:33 - Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it). I am not that familiar with other beliefs, but it would be interesting to learn if other beliefs also espouse detachment.