April 29: Impatience & Expertise

Work life for me here in Nerdvana is a lot faster than it was back home. I've found that in adjusting myself to the new pace, I'm less and less tolerant of minor slowdowns. I don't mean to say that I'm becoming one of those type-a impatient types, just that I'm aware of the fact that whatever I'm working on is taking me significantly longer because, say, my Internet connection sucks and it's making my SSH connections all laggy. These momentary delays, usually spent staring at a progress bar hovering near 100%, provide a good time for reflection on what I could do to improve the process. It's important to separate things into things I can improve and things I can't, and to not get too annoyed by the things outside of my sphere of influence.

It's on that note that I've decided to finally bite the bullet and learn a real text editor, in this case xemacs. I've been fighting with nano, the only Unix-y text editor I can use whatsoever, since I got here. It just doesn't work well for me most of the time — the screen gets corrupted, key bindings are wonky, all kinds of stuff. Plus, it's a bit embarrassing to be an Expert Computer Nerd(tm) who doesn't know Vi(m) or (x)emacs. I am strongly annoyed by emacs' crazy terminology, which is completely different from the rest of computerdom, but recognize that it is outside of my sphere of influence, and therefore not worth getting upset about.

As I flipped through the emacs manual at work, I sort of chuckled to myself about the fact that I was finally learn emacs because I was impatient. Who would've thought that being impatient would be what drove me to start scaling a famously daunting learning curve? Based on my nerdly readings, I've noticed that two of the most obvious personality traits of nerds (I'm thinking of famous ones like Linus Torvalds or Larry Wall) are laziness and impatience. These two combine to make people want to have powerful tools they can master. A long learning curve isn't a problem if it saves effort in the long run — nerds don't mind those sorts of value propositions. It's okay if it takes you months to become proficient at emacs if it lets you work twice as fast. Impatience breeds expertise.

Hopefully.

April 21: Noise cancellation

I got new headphones, and they're awesome.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. I know this is a mind-boggling statement. Bear with me. They are Philips SBC HN100s and I love them dearly. They have noise cancellation magic built in, so it constantly sounds like I am in a quiet room. Plus, if I cover the little microphone things that make that work, it makes things sound like I'm underwater. It's literally hoursminutes of fun.

Anyway, things are good down here in cloudy California. It's been a bit chillier the past few days than I would like, but things are fun and I'm keeping busy. This weekend saw SHDH 24.5 (also known as Mini Happy Dev House and Startup Happy Dev House). It was a lower-key event than usual because it's in between two big ones and basically just existed for the benefit of folks who were attending Startup School. Still, I had a good time nerding out and got some work done, which is good.

Speaking of good things, I'm FINALLY getting an Internet connection at home. I've been putting it off forever because I'm lazy and couldn't make a decision about which company to go with, but I've settled on Comcast because (a) they're the fastest and (b) DSL isn't available in my area anyway. As a bonus, I managed to whine my way out of the $99 installation fee. I'm not sure what sort of karmic debt this will put me in, but for now, I'm happy. Theoretically, as of 4 PM this Saturday, I'll be wasting my days on the Internet in style. Huzzah.


Alas, I must get back to work. Until next time.

April 11: Aaaand, we're back

Howdy, world. It's been absolutely ages since I have had the time or inclination to actually update here, which sucks.

Mom was out here last week to help me get more completely settled in. She got me some pots and pans and forced me to unpack — standard motherly things. She also dropped off emergency rations from home — several boxes of Kraft Dinner and a few bottles of IRN-BRU. It's weird the things you miss. Anyway, thanks to her efforts, the apartment is starting to feel a bit more like home, although it's not without its problems: it's surprisingly cold, at least on the lower level. The first few nights I slept there, I had no heat, because I had foolishly extinguished the pilot light (retro!) on the heater and couldn't figure out how to get it lit again. I am awe-inspiringly bad at practical things.

Anyway, whilst Mom was here, we did all sorts of fun touristy things, like visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Winchester Mystery House. I tried to show off Silicon Valley nerd culture a bit by dragging her to the Mozilla 10th anniversary party, which was quite fun. It's always surprising how fast time can go by when you have someone visiting.

This week has gone by pretty quickly, too. PBwiki went on a teambuilding activity yesterday, indoor skydiving at iFly in Union City. Nathan has posted a heap of pictures of the event (look for lots of fun pictures of me looking ridiculous in my flight jumpsuit thingy). It's crazy how big this company is getting and how well everyone gets along with each other. It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see what the next event will be. Lynn has been soliciting suggestions from people in the office, with responses ranging from the pretty standard (rock climbing) to the outlandishly insane (re-enacting the Stanford Prison Experiment).

I love PBwiki.