Something that I often run into in my work is people telling me how amazing it is that I know how to do it. “I can’t believe you did this! You’re so bright!” I hear such compliments over and over again. Which, while being very nice, aren’t really warranted 100%.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. More to my point, we each have our unique set of knowledge. Things we’ve learned at some point or another, some through formal means and some practically. To the people who know them, the things they know often seem easy. Especially if it’s something they’ve done frequently. For example, I’ve been doing database design for almost ten years now, and such there are basic principles of design that I know like the back of my hand. Same goes for using a computer or writing UNIX shell scripts. These are things that others might value and feel are difficult but most of the time they are not to me.
On the other hand, I can’t cook to save my life. I wish I were more creative and artistically talented. I wish I knew how to do real advanced math or physics. I can’t ride a bike. I am still struggling with driving. To someone who can ride a bike, that skill is no biggie. Just cause you can do it and have been able to do it since you were six, doesn’t make it easy. It just makes it something you know.
If we all realized that the world comes in two categories: stuff we know and stuff we don’t know, we could all relax and know that things can be moved from one category into the other. Some items may take longer to transfer. For example, I imagine it would take me much longer to learn the details of string theory than it might to learn how to cook peas. What matters isn’t how long it takes me, it is the fact that almost any item can be moved from the “i don’t know” column to the “i know” column with the right amount of time, resources, and attitude.
In my opinion, attitude is the biggest factor. If you have the right attitude, you can create the time and find the resources. Every bit of improvement starts with believing in yourself and your ability to accomplish your task. That’s why I cringe each time someone says “Oh, I could never do that.”
You most definitely could, dammit!
I spend a certain amount of energy every day thinking about what I’m going to write here. I formulate the idea in my mind and then think of how I will put it all down. It doesn’t all come together until I sit down to type it all up.
The last few days have been even more hectic than usual. I have started Childbirth Preperation classes and I have CPR and Breastfeeding coming up, too. I now have to go to the doctor once every two weeks and not monthly since I am much closer to delivery. I’m having an even harder time sleeping since my belly is heavy enough to strain my back muscles and give me random cramps. I pee even more than before, if that’s possible to imagine. So I am so tired that I do the typical bored student thing at my desk: my head falls over as my eyes close and I jerk myself back up.
My company will be closing for the holidays in ten days and by the time they come back I will be 36 weeks or so and possibly too tired, too big and too stupid to function. Thus, I am trying to squish in all the big projects I’ve been meaning to do. This makes my days full of frenzy and I don’t have enough personal time to get my own projects done. Thus the website suffers.
I am sure stuff won’t get easier when the baby comes but I am hoping I will eventually learn to organize everything back to some sort of schedule. Cross fingers.
All this is to thank you for visiting even when I don’t update regularly and to let you know that I am going to do my best to update regularly.
Ten years ago, today, Jake and I kissed for the first time.
We’d been friends for a while but it was just that. And then it wasn’t. We laughed a lot and spent hours and hours talking until wee hours of the morning. We hung out doing nothing, playing computer games, listening to music, watching bad TV, talking with friends. Basically what you do in college. I don’t think either one of us thought it was more serious than a nice relationship.
But then I graduated and we lived together that summer in New York. Then we did the long distance thing for a year. Then we moved in together permanently. Then we did the long distance thing again when I lived in Japan. Then we got engaged and then married. Now we’re expecting a baby. All of which started with that semi-innocent kiss ten years ago.
It’s amazing to me how we never got into the relationship thinking it might be the last one we ever have. How we never really evaluated each other as potential husband/wife all those years ago and yet we managed to get a solid, lasting and wonderful marriage out of it. If I had met Jake two years ago, at 28, I would like to think that I’d still have had the wisdom to recognize that he’d make a wonderful husband and a great father, but I am not really sure. I feel like as we get older, we look at relationships more critically. We’re older and in a different place in our lives and have different needs and wants than we did at 20. Thus, when in college I might have prioritized choosing someone who is fun to be with and makes me laugh, today I might have been looking for a man who’s successful and responsible and has a long term plan. Or something like that. I think the extra level of stress and requirements that we add, make it much harder to find and keep a successful match.
Maybe I’m just thinking that cause I don’t know what I’m talking about.
What I do know is that I’ve been in the United States 12 years and have spent 10 of them with Jake. I’ve now spent a third of my life with him and I can’t wait to spend every single moment of the rest of my life with him.
I love you, Jake and thank you for being with me.
ps: This post was written on Thursday, December 2. I’ve left the text as is and will be posting it as if it’s that day. FYI.
I am amazed that in today’s world where companies are in a race to offer the better deal, no one is paying attention to another avenue of customer retention: good customer service.
I spent some time “chatting” with a service provider and with a cable company today. Both services were horribly bad. The hosting company is offering a deal for new clients only that allows them to pay the same price as current clients but gives them several times more bandwidth and storage space. The person I was chatting with insisted that the deal was only available for new clients.
I can understand the company’s desire to get new clients and thus offering an enticing deal to them but isn’t it stupid to make your current clients so upset that they leave? You may or may not get the new clients even with the enticing deal and thus it seems like a bad idea to lose the ones you do have. Am I missing something here?
This seems to be common practice in the industry. Cable companies, phone companies, and many others practice the same deal. It seems to me that keeping your current clients happy should be a high priority and companies shouldn’t have the mindset of “I already got that person so who cares?” attitude. It’s probably partially the customer’s fault for not revolting enough but still it’s all so slimy.
Along the same lines, I think most companies don’t pay enough attention to having good customer service. I’ve had two major exceptions to this norm: Skytel and Tivo. Both companies have phenomenal service and have made me loyal consumers. I would easily pay a bit more to get excellent service than to pay bottom price and have an attitude each time I need some help. But maybe that’s just me.
Even so, I am annoyed at the “only worry about getting new customers” attitude the companies are employing these days and wish that enough people would get together to show them the power of exisiting customers and why it’s important to not blow them off.
I love car trips. Ever since we did our cross country trip I love the idea of piling up everything I love into the little car and driving to fun places. Being in California and having a car has meant that we can leave town at the drop of a hat. Since we’ve been here, we’ve taken around one trip a month to somewhere within California.
I am hoping this fact won’t change when the baby comes. On Wednesday, Jake and I drove up to meet his brother and parents in Santa Barbara to celebrate Thanksgiving. I am thinking this will be our last trip out of town before the baby comes. Especially since I’m already almost too big to sit in the car comfortably.
Our current car trips already include 7 books, 10 movies, a cooler with lots of veggies, fruit and water, several gigs of music, 2 laptops, several chargers, camera with three lenses, several sets of changes of clothes, and a blanket and pillow. All this just for a four-day trip. I can’t begin to imagine how much more complicated it will get once I have to bring along diapers, baby clothes, baby blankets, baby food, baby toys, and a million other baby needs. Our little Civic isn’t the roomiest car there ever was but it has accomodated us very graciously.
Pithier and longer entries when I’m back in town. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your weekend.
I am a few days away from week 30. That means we have around 10 weeks before the baby is here (assuming it’s full term and not early or late.) A few weeks ago the doctor worried that my uterus was too small, but now I am measuring exactly where I am and all my tests (blood and diabetes) came out healthy. The baby’s heart is beating loudly and at the correct speed. So all seems to be fine.
Except that I’ve gained a lot of weight. I spent the first five months gaining a tiny bit of weight and now I’m gaining like it’s going out of style. I’ve gained a bit over 22 pounds and I don’t show any signs of slowing down. The thing that makes me mad is that I’m not eating any chocolate or chips or ice cream or anything that’s your typical pregnancy food. The only possible culprit is that I drink Orangina (maybe a glass a day) but I can’t honestly tell how I’m gaining all this weight. At first, I really freaked out. I asked the doctor if the weight gain has any bad implications on the baby. He said that there’s no correlation between weight gain and a big baby. The main causes of baby size are diabetes or a genetic disposition to having large babies. The main downside to gaining more than the desired amount is that I’ll have more to lose afterwards. (There are other disadvantages like my back might hurt a lot, etc, but I am not anywhere near that range for now.)
So all my worries are from being vain. The baby is ok. The pregnancy is coming along fine, yet I am spending hours crying because I’m gaining more weight than I would like. How’s that for a good mom?
As I am growing bigger and bigger, my daily life has changed quite a bit. In the last week, three times, I woke up at 3:30am to pee and lay in bed for about an hour before I gave up on sleeping, got up, read some stuff on the computer, watched a bit of TV and went back to bed. As someone who used to be a night person, I really really don’t enjoy being awake at 3:30am unless I haven’t gone to sleep yet because I am coding something fun. Now, I wake up in the middle of the night a lot and I am in deep sleep by 10pm most nights.
I spend most of the day in my nightgown unless I am going out. Loose clothing that breathes a lot is the only option lately. I am hot almost all the time and there’s nothing I can wear that’s comfortable in every position (meaning lying down vs sitting vs standing).
I am tired all the time but not able to sleep. I used to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime. I slept so hard that earthquakes wouldn’t wake me. Now, I spend many afternoons attempting to sleep and I am constantly unsuccessful. When I am actually sleeping, it’s very light and a hiccup can wake me up. The only good side of this is that I seem to do a lot of lucid dreaming lately.
I used to do all my work on the couch, in front of the TV. Thanks to my tummy, sitting on and getting up from the couch has become a challenge. Unless I sit up right, my stomach is going into my ribs and hurting me quite a bit. So, now I sit at the table, up right like a stick was shoved up my ass.
Oh and have I mentioned I can’t seem to read anymore? I am so slow at it and my concentration is way below normal. I can’t go to the movies anymore since I have to pee several times in the middle of the film. Each time I bend down to take a macro shot, it takes several minutes for me to get back up. And, of course, every piece of food is viewed with: “Will this still taste good if I am burping it up all day long?”
The fun part is that I know things are going to get more interesting as I move from month seven to eight to nine. I just hope that my back doesn’t give out. That would really suck. Ahem, and I am aware that my life will change considerably once the baby comes but one day at a time for now.
I spent a large portion of today looking for baby items that I am supposed to have before the baby comes. According to several places, I am supposed to have like 248 things before the baby even comes home. The small problem is that I absolutely hate shopping. Of any kind.
After reading the completely contradictory reviews on each item on amazon, I’ve decided I can’t do this online. I can’t do this alone either. I need someone who loves shopping to provide our trip with some enthusiasm. I am hoping my mom may fill the void. My sister is doing a huge amount of work over the net but I need a physical person here with me.
There are too many decisions to make and all of them seem incredibly important. I imagine all that matters should be that I get a bed, a stroller/carseat, diapers, and some clothes. Is everything else really urgent?
I figured carrying and having the baby would be the hardest part until the baby came, but I must say that the shopping is proving to be quite painful.
I have gotten way too little sleep last night to write this as eloquently as I want to but I figured I’ll start it now and can always adjust it tomorrow. So please don’t get mad at me if it’s not so well-put.
I have decided that there’s a big difference between people who are Well Versed in a subject and those who are simply biased. There are people who already hold a specific belief and read anything and everything that backs up their opinion and nothing on the opposing side. I find these people to be more annoying to talk to than the ones who haven’t read at all. At least with completely uninformed people I can tell myself that they don’t care enough about the issue to read up on it and have just formulated opinions with no facts to back them up. It’s easy for me to not get into a conversation with such a person.
A person who has only read books/articles/papers that agree with his/her point of view is a totally different kind of fighter. This person has facts and refuses to consider the possibility that the things s/he considers facts might be biased but claims anything on the other side of the issue is biased or distorted. Such a person is incredibly frustrating to deal with and completely pointless to talk to. The only reason I would like to talk to someone who disagrees with me is because I’d be interested in their way of thinking or the information they might have interpreted differenly than I did. This allows me to see the world from different angles and thus allows me to grow. But if the person I am talking to is just there to prove their point and is completely closed to mine, it makes the conversation very argumentative and my main goal is never to argue or to convince someone of my way. It’s simply to understand their way. For this, I need to be open to the possibility of seeing the world from their eyes. And they need to be open to the same. If they completely refuse to listen to or read any of the opposing thoughts, I can only assume they are parroting points from their reading, not ideas they have actually developed through thought and comparison of counter positions on issues.
Talking to someone who’s simply repeating other people’s words is useless to me, I might as well read that person’s words (and get the word from the original source). I prefer to deal with people who are well versed and spent time thinking where they stand on an issue and why.
To be fair to entries like this and this, I think it’s worth pointing out that today was a very good day. Nothing particular happened. I went to work and the day was mostly smooth, quite productive, and yet free of too much stress. Things went right, for the most part.
On the way home, our 72-degree weather and cloudless skies added to my mood and I decided to take a stroll instead of going home. It’s days like this that make me glad we moved to San Diego. Days like this that make up for the other days. Days like this that remind you what a wonderful place the world is and how many great things I have going for me in life. It’s not that I don’t know them at the back of my mind all the time. It’s just that sometimes I really feel it.
And those days are really special so I wanted to make sure to have a record of one.
Pregnant women pee a lot. This is a known fact. Most of them have a hard time peeing a whole bladder-full at a time and thus take many unsuccessful trips to the bathroom.
That’s not my problem.
Each time I make a trip to the bathroom, it’s a worthwhile visit. My problem is the number of visits I make to the bathroom in any given night. We tend to go to bed somewhere from 9 to 10pm. I generally lie in bed and read for a little bit so help me to go sleep. In the 15 minutes or so that’s my “get ready to sleep” time, I go to the bathroom three times. There are many days when I go come back, go into bed and have to go again. It’s not “psychological” either. I pee each time. More than a few drops. So don’t go around thinking I am insane. I just seem to be producing pee in Superman speed.
Once I go to sleep, my lovely bladder wakes me up every one and a half hours for a trip. That means that on a night where I sleep from 10pm to 7am, I wake up six times. If you add that to the three I did right before sleep, I go to pee NINE times between 9pm and 7am. It seems to me that that should be physically impossible. But it’s not. I am living proof.
After several nights of this, I have decided maybe I should just move into the bathroom at night. Sleep on the toilet. It might be a bit comfortable but I bet, if I work on it, I can manage to pee without waking up and actually get a full night’s sleep.
Since I work from home, I do a lot of email correspondance. One of the things I’ve noticed lately is that people feel a lot more comfortable being rude over email.
It must have to do with the fact that they don’t have to visualize a human being on the other end. Some people just let it all out and say stuff you would never say to an actual human being. When I get one of those emails, I don’t even bother to write back anymore. I pick up the phone and call the person. I start the conversation on a very cordial and kind tone and they change almost instantly.
Within a minute or two, they are apologizing. Listing the reasons why they had the assholish tone in the email and how stressed out they are and how they were having a bad day, etc. We then move to the part where I explain to them that it’s perfectly understandable and we all have bad days and then we manage to actually talk about the issue and often resolve it without much problem.
They didn’t need to send the nasty email for me to call them. Nice goes much farther than nasty ever did. Nasty means I am never going to bend over backwards for you. Nasty means I’d never bend the rules for you. Rules were invented for me to have to enforce them on the nasty people. They’re my protection. So why go with the nasty approach?
I just urge everyone to remember that even if it’s easier and faster and doesn’t require personal confrontation, it doesn’t mean that an email is not read by a human. I can’t stand people who don’t have the balls to say something to my face and choose to write it and send it away instead.
Fuck’em.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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