Magic moments

I was feeling down for some time lately. The underlying reasons being multiple, some personal, some work related and some bureaucracy related. Overall I had too many items on my daily schedule and as always, not enough time. After completing all planned errands on a given day, I wouldn't have the energy nor the will to do anything fun for myself or with my family. Not necessarily big fun, waxing the skies , washing the bike kind of fun. I need these small fun activities to take my mind off of tomorrow's new errands. Now they were gone, and it was my fault. Due to the daily burnout I could not push myself to do anything fun in my free time.  Consequently my overall mood was going down.  Declining mood was actually a minor thing in comparison with helplessness and indifference I felt. I was in a self perpetual state of "MEH" , which aggravated me further more, in a viscous circle. I was angry, because I was helpless, because I was lacking motivation, because I was lame...

  I elicit smiles every time I mention to people: I sniff saw dust . Further more, I can distinguish wood species by their scent. Besides being funny, it is true , smell is the most potent memory revoking sense in humans. It's like going back to your old school, the smell is to blame for bringing back all those emotions. I miss my wood shop, damn I miss it a lot. But why, one might ask. Don't you have enough things to tackle everyday? How do you find a time to do woodworking, or any hobby for that matter? These all are the wrong questions. The right question is way simpler: Why would one prioritize a hobby over other immanent tasks? The answer is actually even simpler: Because it makes me happy. Chores will come and go, all jobs have expiration date, we will all retire one day, aren't we? Except our happiness, that is forever.  It takes a special kind of thinking and planning to make something useful with your own hands, whilst being unique, not mass produced, not made to f...

  Change is good, change is fun, change makes our blood boil. It turns everyday chores bearable and life worthwhile. Unless that change means entering a new realm of knowledge and skills, then its turns from excitement into unease and constant self doubt. Welcome imposter syndrome . Whenever we join a new company, a hockey club, subculture or even start listening different music, at the beginning we feel like imposters. The poor feeling of not knowing everything or being pushed over is sometimes sufficient to give up and default to our comfort zone.  As everybody else, I am no immune to this behavior either. What I have learned over the years however, is how to tame this beast. There is no silver bullet though, one has to find its own way. In order to have enough versatility in life (and avoid boredom), one has to be able to redirect the imposter feelings into motion that will push you to get better.  Jack of all trades Many people know the proverb: Jack of all trades, ma...

  People are creative, that's just a fact. People also need tasks, to stay focused, to feel useful, to have a purpose in life, or to just have fun. Regardless of the need, business or a hobby, tasks must flow through our life. I wrote about the importance of company culture already , so this post goes along the same lines. The purpose of a company management is to propose, plan and organize the business tasks so employees can handle and finish them in a timely manner. When the company culture is bad, the employees adopt and they adjust to best suit the environment.  We all have a certain set of skills, we acquire them through experience. Some skills are technical, some skills are soft skills, and some are specifically designed to keep us out of harms way. When we encounter an unexpected event from the environment (like a boss being a drama queen ), we come across an instinct inside us: fight or flight . If we repeatedly observe that fighting doesn't work, truth is irrelevant o...

  I have been working remotely for on and off through my career. I started back in the day when Skype was actually working good and video calls were still not a thing. Web cams were just making a break through and the calls were slo-mo by default. I have seen and tried almost all of other tools as well, mostly by necessity and I don't have a favorite, every tool for the proper job. Even though VoIP tools are irreplaceable long distance communication tool, my opinion is that they have been abused since day one. These tools are abused on so many levels, the biggest being the abuse of time. I will get to that later, I first want to share a couple of misuses I have been doing as well. Heavy data storage. I find myself often sending files to someone just so I have them for later use on another device. Its stupid, I know, but I still do it sometimes, I'm just used to it. Light data storage. Talking to a person sitting next to me. This is again for recall purposes and for chat history...

I have been fixing and tweaking bicycles since I had my first bike. So it comes as no surprise that I know how to change a bike tire. I have changed tires and patched tubes even on the trails with the bare minimum of tools, while raining. Regardless, I recently got new tires for my mountain bike and replaced the old ones in less than 5 minutes. However, after a test ride, I noticed that both tires were lopsided and improperly sited on the rims. I thought to my self, I probably inflated them too quickly, so I tried again with no success. Then I removed them and put them back on, tried again, and again and again. Same outcome, I tried multiple approaches. Nothing helped. I was doing something so typical for programmers, that this behavior even felt natural to me. I started a typical debugging rampage: I checked whether the rims were straight, I started suspecting the tubes were damaged or their walls thinned out. I even considered returning the brand new tires back to the store. The stan...

 Can you imagine army generals being forced to start as privates or corporals at the beginning of each war? Or if they change unit? Can you imagine having to start over as first grader everytime you change schools? Its absurd, isn't it? Now do you know what happens when one changes a programming company? Gets degraded 1, 2 or in some cases 3 ranks. It makes you wonder why? I have tried to rationalize this behavior, I have even heard the actual reasons, but it never made sense to me. It's even put into law, at least everywhere I lived and worked so far. The new employee is on a trial period in the first 6 months, and this is by law. Why? Companies don't trust their own recruiting process? What do they expect to happen in 6 months, that can't happen after 6 months and 1 day? What is the drawback of this? Its a lose-lose scenario for the companies. Considering every software company has a shortage of developers. Here is my logic: Great profiles hesitate to switch companies...