Waiting For The Worms

30 years I waited.  It was worth it.

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Differentiation

Apparently in order to compete with Google companies feel the need to adopt the opposite motto to Google's "don't be evil" mantra.

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Money Cant Buy Me Love

I have had Linksys wireless routers for several years now.  Annoyingly they all tend to drop the wireless connection every few days, so I've gotten accustomed to rebooting the devices pretty frequently.  Recently, based on recommendation from a colleague, I flashed my router with dd-wrt, an open source firmware.  And lo and behold, ever since then the device has been functioning flawlessly.  Identical hardware, similar environment, and under the same workload, but with a renegade alternative to the "professional" official firmware.

Indeed, quality is a product of passion, not of money.

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Perspective

After spending several years with my previous employer I realized that Scott Adams was not a cartoonist; rather, he was a historian.

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Homey Feeling

Relocating to a different country is accompanied by a good dosage of anxiety.  It is very reassuring, then, to find out that lobbyists, politicians, plumbers, electricians, and government workers behave the same way you're accustomed to.

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Is The Apple Rotting?

Recently Apple started prohibiting other companies from cultivating potential alternatives to the iPhone and the iPad.  Is Apple no longer confident in its ability to succeed based solely on the intrinsic merit of its products?

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The Angel Of Death

About 10 years ago my friend brought bad karma to all the projects on which he worked.  He was a good software engineer and all, but somehow all his projects ended up being cancelled just as they were ready to ship.  It was very frustrating.

Then one day Marketing forced us to implement a feature we, the software developers, absolutely hated.  We tried to fight the decision to no avail.  Finally, in a stroke of inspiration, we assigned my friend to the project.  And as if by magic the feature, which by then was running solidly in QA, got cancelled a month before GA.

Indeed, everything in life has pros and cons.

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Theory Of Relativity

It's truly impressive how dedicated and committed I am to folding laundry, washing dishes, etc. when tax preparation is due.

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Looking For Venture Capital Funding

... to finance my new startup: time-zone-aware 9 volt batteries (for smoke detectors) which never run out of juice in the middle of the night.  To be marketed anywhere earplugs are sold.

Zzzzz...  (pun intended)

A Good Compromise

Recently I noticed that I really like meaty vegetables.

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Flintstones. Meet the Flintstones.

[Dedicated to Apple's iPad]

Recently I had to move a couple of C++ methods from one file to another.  This seemingly simple task required a painful hour in which I edited multiple files: the source and destination .cc files, .h files, build files, and unit test files.  Several rounds of long compilation attempts followed, each revealing yet another caller which required updated #include's.

Yup, folks, working in C++ amounts to digitally flintknapping bits.  We do have some bronze and iron tools such as IDEs, higher level languages, and other advancements, but overall I'm still looking for signs of computers adapting to human beings instead of us adapting to them.

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Inspirational Motivators

The CEO of my friend's company recently advised all the employees not to expect a salary increase this year.  When asked why the CEO responded that 2009 had been a tough year economically and that the competition was not hiring.

This reminds me of the joke about the two hikers who were charged by a bear.  While one hiker started panicking the other calmly removed his hiking boots and put on his sneakers.  "What are you doing?" said the first hiker, "Sneakers will not help you outrun the bear".  "I don't need to outrun the bear", replied his friend, "I just need to outrun you."

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A Sense Of Entitlement

Have you noticed that all the women-targeted TV commercials nowadays end with "because I deserve it"?

I feel bad for people who feel that they don't deserve. I feel equally bad for people who feel that they do deserve. But above all I feel that those advertisers who try to take advantage of people's insecurities don't deserve anything.

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