I am really unsure what happened last night. I have been waking up at 3 am for many nights now. Last weekend I did not feel very good so I took a 2 hour nap on both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday I took another 2 hour nap and that energized me to finally finishing editing my book around 3 pm. I then raced around the yard finishing the mowing in a record time of around 1 & 1/2 hours. Today I will have to go back over it and collect the extra grass clipping spread all over the yard, but at least it is cut! Last night my middle son and I went out to eat Indian food at Udapi. I have no idea what happened but after chatting with my son in California for a while about his MacBook "x" battery problems, I finally told him around 9:30 pm that I was tired and needed to go to bed. I am not sure I ever really feel asleep last night and finally at 4 am gave up and got out of bed. Maybe it had to do with my wife and two youngest kids returning home this evening. I have no idea but will definitely be taking a nap this afternoon after my Sunday morning cricket match.
These are some of the things I kept thinking about last night:
1) I really like this thought provoking comment about the Taj Mahal in India: "The typical was used to create the outstanding"
2) Somehow this thought kept coming up "I firmly believe that each of us has a unique reason to be alive, part of our pilgrimage on earth is to find it."
3) I have talked more with my middle son while my wife and other kids have been gone than we have ever talked in his whole life, which is a great thing. We were talking about what makes a skilled laborer when we thought that my oldest son, who is a wonderful artist when the urge hits him, would be a great tattoo artist since he has been getting many tattoos lately.
4) somehow I thought of this list of sports activities I have done in the last year at work either at lunch or after work:
Cricket, Volleyball, Wallyball, Racquetball, Sqash, and Tennis
In the past I have also played the following at work:
Basketball and Flag Football
The only sport I want to try one day at work is:
Ultimate Frisbee
Does good design really make a difference? Implementing software often has no relation to life outside work, where chaos seems to be the rule rather than the exception. You may not be able to control life, but let's not practice chaos when developing software.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sunday, September 14, 2008
busy weekend
Friday when I got home from work, my wife started mowing the yard. This means that I have to finish since it takes too long for her to complete the whole yard. No problem as I think of mowing as walking exercise.
Most of the remaining weekend was spent cleaning the garage and fixing stuff around the house. My day started off removing the downstairs toilet as one of my next to oldest son's friend's dropped his cell phone into the toilet and flushed the toilet thinking the phone would remain in the bowl. All his friends had fun trying to get the phone out by using a clothes hanger and finally after a couple of hours gave up. I was neglecting it hoping it would fix itself, which never happened. I removed the toilet and went to Home Depot to get a new one. Once I got home and took it out of the box, I saw the toilet was cracked, so I returned to Home Depot. Not a good start to my Saturday morning I must say. I got the next better model for $99 and with a little effort had the new one working. While feeling handy, I started working on the downstairs bathroom as the ceiling looked pretty bad. This is a mini story in itself as last year one of the kids broke the upstairs toilet by accident and the water leaked downstairs through the ceiling. I did not complete the ceiling repairs as I should have, so I spackled the ceiling and then repainted it.
The next task was to help my youngest son as he is switching rooms. He decided to paint the walls VaTech orange and maroon colors with two walls maroon and the other two orange. The clothes dresser, which used to be in the room, covered up my handy work, where I ran a TV cable from the adjoining room and left a hole in the wall. I had to repair that hole with drywall and spackling and then repaint it. For once I left the painting to other members in the family. Just as I finished my handy man tasks, I had to quickly clean up and be preentable.
It was time to attend a very good friend's graduation ceremony at the Dean Smith Center at UNC (my affectionately known as the Dean Dome). I remember watching so many Tar Heel basketball games when I was a kid, but have only once been on the UNC campus. To actually be inside the Dean Dome was like holy ground for a UNC graduate. They had photos of every UNC basketball team since the late 1970's in the area where you walk inside the dome. Inside the dome itself there were tons of jersey's hanging from the rafters as well as conference titles and championships.
Today I took some rest and walked with my wife and then took off to play cricket with some Indian friends. Last season I practiced my batting skills, but this year I am practicing my bowling skills. I had fun today as I really bowled well. Once I got home I had to finish working on the downstairs bathroom and take some stuff to the local thrift store in order the finish the garage cleaning ceremony. After so much activity I had to take the Sunday afternoon ritual nap to round out an active weekend.
Most of the remaining weekend was spent cleaning the garage and fixing stuff around the house. My day started off removing the downstairs toilet as one of my next to oldest son's friend's dropped his cell phone into the toilet and flushed the toilet thinking the phone would remain in the bowl. All his friends had fun trying to get the phone out by using a clothes hanger and finally after a couple of hours gave up. I was neglecting it hoping it would fix itself, which never happened. I removed the toilet and went to Home Depot to get a new one. Once I got home and took it out of the box, I saw the toilet was cracked, so I returned to Home Depot. Not a good start to my Saturday morning I must say. I got the next better model for $99 and with a little effort had the new one working. While feeling handy, I started working on the downstairs bathroom as the ceiling looked pretty bad. This is a mini story in itself as last year one of the kids broke the upstairs toilet by accident and the water leaked downstairs through the ceiling. I did not complete the ceiling repairs as I should have, so I spackled the ceiling and then repainted it.
The next task was to help my youngest son as he is switching rooms. He decided to paint the walls VaTech orange and maroon colors with two walls maroon and the other two orange. The clothes dresser, which used to be in the room, covered up my handy work, where I ran a TV cable from the adjoining room and left a hole in the wall. I had to repair that hole with drywall and spackling and then repaint it. For once I left the painting to other members in the family. Just as I finished my handy man tasks, I had to quickly clean up and be preentable.
It was time to attend a very good friend's graduation ceremony at the Dean Smith Center at UNC (my affectionately known as the Dean Dome). I remember watching so many Tar Heel basketball games when I was a kid, but have only once been on the UNC campus. To actually be inside the Dean Dome was like holy ground for a UNC graduate. They had photos of every UNC basketball team since the late 1970's in the area where you walk inside the dome. Inside the dome itself there were tons of jersey's hanging from the rafters as well as conference titles and championships.
Today I took some rest and walked with my wife and then took off to play cricket with some Indian friends. Last season I practiced my batting skills, but this year I am practicing my bowling skills. I had fun today as I really bowled well. Once I got home I had to finish working on the downstairs bathroom and take some stuff to the local thrift store in order the finish the garage cleaning ceremony. After so much activity I had to take the Sunday afternoon ritual nap to round out an active weekend.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
walled offices vs. cubicles
I moved into my walled office this week, so I have to comments on comparing working in a walled office versus cubicles. Having worked in cubicles for 8 years out of a total of 23 years of my working life, I am speaking from experience.
As an aside, I read an article by Joel Spolsky once of what he thought about this topic. I see he is still writing about this topic as they are considering moving to a larger space. I am in no way as creative in my thinking as Joel, but then again he runs a company and wants the best for his employees, which is a great thing.
For me, there are both pluses and minuses about either walled offices or cubicles. At the moment I cannot decide which I like better.
As an aside, I read an article by Joel Spolsky once of what he thought about this topic. I see he is still writing about this topic as they are considering moving to a larger space. I am in no way as creative in my thinking as Joel, but then again he runs a company and wants the best for his employees, which is a great thing.
For me, there are both pluses and minuses about either walled offices or cubicles. At the moment I cannot decide which I like better.
Good | Bad | |
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Walled Offices |
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Cubicles |
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Labels:
cubicles,
Joel Spolsky,
office,
walled offices,
work
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