Snowboarding @ Sundance

Just got back from Snowboarding at Sundance Ski resort. I fell down a lot less than I did during my previous times. I'm also doing a lot more toe turns which has always been an issue. I decided to try the blue slopes today which was good and bad. I got over my fear of going down the steep sections, but I also got too tired to enjoy the green sections of the run. I can tell that I'm getting a lot faster these days because the runs seem shorted (or quicker). One more season and I'll be a pro :). 

After our snowboarding session, I had a near melt down. I couldn't find my car keys in any of my jacket pockets and I don't have a spare key for that car anywhere. I checked with the lost and found with no success and I requested the security to jack the car door for me. Right when they asked me to sign some release forms and were about to insert the lever into my car window, Yoshi comes out of no where (she decided to retire after a few runs) and declares that she has the keys. It was a photo-finish ending for a great day. 

I just love the fact that my wife can save the day no matter how much I manage to screw up.

Have a Schedule

After wasting about 3 hours watching old episodes of The Office, I had a sinking feeling last night that I'm not working towards any of my life goals. 

  • Learn JS
  • Release mobile apps
  • Get better at Python
  • Do a startup or at least join one
But thanks to my thoughtful wife, I didn't freak out about it. She gave me some tangible ideas to remedy the situation (not one of those "You'll be fine"). 

So new plan:
  • Set short-term goals. 
  • Work on my stuff and report the progress every week to my buddy Vijay. 
This should keep me accountable and on track. To actually show some progress, I'm going to fix my schedule and follow Seinfield's Productivity Technique.
  • Tue (6-9)
  • Wed (6-9) - bonus day
  • Thu (6-9)
  • Sat (5-9)
  • Sun (1-5)
Phew! crisis averted. Now back to work.

Leaders are genuine

I had a chance to watch one of my role models in action today. He is one of the young, intelligent managers who rose to the top of the ladder pretty quickly. He managed to do that without creating enemies along the way which is pretty hard to do in big corporations. Everyone who has worked with him will attest to the fact that he deserves to be in the top and has nothing bad to say about him. 

Unfortunately I never got a chance to work directly with him, but watching him today made me realize why he is different from the other managers. It all came down to being truthful. Just being genuine to your fellow workers can mean a world of difference. When he tries to inspire someone, he is not the one to throw around some business lingo. He doesn't just say "We really appreciate all the work you are doing" or "Keep up the good work". That is just a terrible compliment. When he praises you for something, you know he really appreciates your work.

One lesson I learned from him today is "Be Genuine", and I shall try.

Why do I hate Gnome?

I've been using Ubuntu Linux on my netbook for the past couple of days and I'm quite pleased with the whole experience, except for the initial issues (I just won't trust the auto-update).

Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop environment by default with a little bit of tweaking. Gnome UI designers have a sense of aesthetic cognizance to their designs. I've always appreciated the crisp icons and the polished dialogs. I've been known to throw around the word stunning, quite generously, while describing Gnome. 

All these initial infatuations almost made me forget the reasons why I abandoned Gnome a few years ago. I  hate the absence of a central control center to tweak the default behavior of Gnome. There is however a severely handicapped version called gconf-editor which is like a terrible cousin of Windows Registry. So now if you want sloppy focus on gnome that doesn't raise your window when you click on it, you just have to do the following simple steps:

  1. Open gconf-editor
  2. apps
  3. metacity
  4. general
  5. raise on click (uncheck)
Quite intuitive wouldn't you agree? 

Oh you want to enable compositing, so your gnome-do can have some slick skins, here's how you achieve that: 

  1. Open gconf-editor
  2. apps
  3. metacity
  4. general
  5. compositing_manager (check)
Why? Why would you think this is more intuitive than having a simple GUI driven control center? I'm told this was a conscious choice by Gnome developers because giving choices tend to confuse their users.

If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.

No wonder Linus was pissed at Gnome and started recommending KDE.

Education from unlikely sources

I've never understood the meaning of the term "Pearls before Swine" and never bothered to look it up (laziness mostly). I've chalked it up as an unfunny comics strip that is obscure. 

But today I read a blog post by Linus (yes, the creator of Linux) about his experiences at a Night before Oscar Party. It is hilarious, you should go read it, NOW. The title of the blog was "Pearls before Swine". This time I decided to look up the meaning of that term and I don't regret doing so. I think it'll come in quite handy in the future. :)

Pearls before Swine (from Wikipedia): 

things (such as pearls) should not be put in front of people (or in this case, swine) who do not appreciate their value