My weaknesses

For some reason I feel like analyzing my weaknesses. I think it's an attempt to boost my mood, but I don't quite understand why that would help. So here they are:

1. self-doubt
2. dancing
   
3. recognizing faces
4. keeping in touch with friends and family
5. timeliness
6. sales skills
7. hard on self
8. karaoke
9. issues with back pain
10. billiards
11. poor vision
12. mild acne from time to time
13. decorating
14. poker

besides the internal naggings of self-doubt, which I imagine is a struggle for a high percentage of people in this world; I don't think any of those are that bad.

I'm sure the positive would far out weigh the negative. Which I suppose is what I'm trying to tell myself. ok then, I'm glad

...

I didn't initally intend to make a list of strengths, but somehow the weaknesses by themselves leave me unfullfilled, so here goes:

1. open-minded, experimental, adventurous
2. optimistic, glass is half full view of life
   
3. persistent
4. learn new things fast
5. believe that every person / situation has something to offer or to teach
   
6. see other's perspective: empathetic, thoughtful, considerate
7. disciplined and hard working
8. analytical & contemplative
9. solution finder
10. sense of humor (that occasionally makes others laugh in addition to myself)
11. self-less (sometimes to a fault)
12. not unattractive
13. like to read, life-long learner
    
14. generous at times
15. I don't abuse substances or people
16. generally friendly and get along well with others
17. Although I often feel that I should do more to help others, generally supportive and helpful
18. there for any friends in need
19. productive software developer
20. decent memory
21. generally healthy
22. love my family
23. honest with myself and others
    

23 strengths vs 14 weaknesses - score! =)

I hate halloween

ok, that's a bit extreme.
I don't actually hate halloween. But I do have more bad memories than good ones.

Growing up in the middle of the woods didn't present much opportunity for trick or treating. I think I basically missed out on this holiday (except for once as a kid when my MoM helped me make a pacman costume - I remember being happy that year).
After I was in California I didn't know how to enjoy it. They have a different style of halloween here. When I was little I embraced the idea that it was most impressive to make your own one of a kind costume, and then wear it in public daylight hours. Perhaps 'cause I didn't have money? but money never seemed like a halloween problem - childhood naivety covered nicely for any have-not inadequacy. In so-cal though, it seems the most impressive costume is the most expensive or the costume that shows the most skin. While I can't fault chicas for the later, it doesn't help me at all. And even though I could now afford to spend plenty of money on a costume, it wouldn't tie in with any fond childhood memories and would just feel rather empty.

So, my typical halloween experience is promising myself that I'll dress up next year... that's the same this year. The gf is in Dallas and I have no plans to do anything tonight. Oh well... suppose I'm just about too old to learn to enjoy it now anyway - might as well drop the promise for next year.

Most overvalued acquisitions

I submit these as probably the two most overvalued/wasteful acquisitions of all time... but which is worse?

1. Verisign buys Network Solutions for $21 billion
2. SBC purchases AT&T for $16 billion

The AT&T purchase boils down to a huge stack of money for a name. I imagine a few AT&T assets might pan out, but I think SBC readily admits that the only asset they were interested in was the name.
SBC's annual revenue in 2005 was $43 billion with profit of less than $5 billion. Is it possible that the name recognition they gain (costs of switching names for SBC, sub-brands, and Cingular will also be in the billions) is worth $16 billion+ or 3-4 years of profit? How long will it take for such a intangible benefit to make sense?
Let's see... How much is the calculated value of a mega brand like Coke? According to Forbes it's 55 billion - I don't know how they arrive at that valuation, but it does somehow make it seem potentially reasonable to pay >$16billion for perhaps the #1 telecommunications brand name.

Initially I thought that the AT&T purchase was worse, 'cause SBC gains nothing tangible...

Verisign combined with another company who had been a pillar of the internet up to that point. A company that for years was involved in every single site on the internet (to the tune of at least $35/year/TLD). The number of TLD's is many millions and growing rapidly.

Verisign's core revenue source (especially back then) is based on a similar "we were there first" advantage of being a certificate authority installed by default in every SSL enable browser. They charge ~$800/year for a certificate to provide secure communications over the internet. This is a prerequisite for accepting any type of payments through your website.

So far so good - but at the time of acquisition, domain name registration had been deregulated long enough for around 100 other registrar's to open up shop. Network Solutions was no longer a monopoly. I haven't seen an article come right out and say it, but I can't view this purchase as anything but a blunder of nearly unimaginable proportions. According to registrarstats.com today's top registrar is GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy is privately held (I think by one guy). I'd be willing to bet the initial investment was much less than $10 million. Even if we say the March 2000 value of GoDaddy.com was $21 million (which I really doubt), Verisign paid 1000 times as much for a business that today is worth MUCH less. They could have just established themselves as a registrar and starting selling certificates for somewhere in the ballpark of $1 million - including the salaries of all employees involved in the work and all related expenses.

I propose that the $21 billion purchase of Network Solutions is the most wasteful corporate acquisition of all time. The AT&T purchase looks completely reasonable by comparison. Perhaps the acquisition was already planned before registrar deregulation, and Verisign didn't realize the impact that had on the value of Network Solutions?

Am I somehow under valuing the business? Or perhaps you know of an even more wasteful acquisition?

Crazy fires

San Diego is being ravaged by fires for the 2nd time in almost exactly 4 years. I never expected to see such a similar tragedy so soon after the Cedar fires. I'd hate to think that people are setting these fires, but it is really suspicious. Not sure if it's prudent to write thoughts like this down, but if I was a terrorist... ... not going to finish that sentence.

Wikipedia is awesome, people posted all kinds of info on the fires: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_wildfires_of_October_2007
And it gets updated as new info is made available (very fast).
A few of the news outlets used Google maps to create fire maps so people could see where the fires were, evacuation areas, evacuation centers, etc. I'd say the coverage of the fires was much better than the Cedar fires and I love the progress the internet has taken in the past 4 years. Becoming more community driven and improved applications like Google maps.

It seems the emergency services did deal with these fires better than the Cedar fires, but I don't like hearing people comparing to Katrina - especially when they are saying that San Diego gov't did so much better than in New Orleans, and Qualcomm stadium (the largest evacuation center) was like a party versus looting, etc. Yeah, only a percentage of SD's population was even affected, so the other 90% were available to chip in and help. That's not really the same situation as Katrina.

Dad headed to Michigan

It's weird how emotions sometimes don't really seem very useful. I suppose I've been emotionally sensitive lately; the intensities are all out of proportion.
This morning I left my Dad in the driveway, truck fully ladden, almost ready to head for the open road and a ~2400 mile drive to my birth town of Irons, Michigan.

I feel guilty, like I'm pushing him away before he was totally ready to leave; but I also feel happy about the separation. He's been living with me for 8 months. I think it allowed me to work out some issues with him (or in my own head), but come on... I shouldn't have to feel guilty to say that I'd rather not live with my parent, right?
All these intense contradictory emotions don't seem to be very useful... I mean, what is the intent? Just to get some kind of reaction, any random reaction - and maybe that will be better. Are emotions akin to what a mouse experiences in a maze? An electrical shock at a dead end and the whiff of cheese around a corner? sooner or later, we'll stumble our way through...?

Now I have a garage full of left over items which didn't fit in the truck. Need to sell some and ship some... that will take some time.

Wintriss Technical School

I met Vic Wintriss at the August 21st meeting of the San Diego Java Users' Group. He's a retired gentleman who had 3 or 4 kids in tow for the meeting. They were his students, as young as 10 years old, who were excitedly presenting their class project which turned out to be a Java-powered Sun Spot interfaced with a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot - designed to be a maze running robot.
After listening to the presentation, and seeing the excitement in the kids eyes, I was hooked.

I couldn't help but to reminisce when I was around that age, and so excited about life and also computers. I remember the Speak and Spell that we got when I was no older than 8. I took to it so much that for my ninth birthday I was able to obtain a Commodore 64 - It was $100 at that time. We hooked it up to an old TV and then I spent hours on end in the basement with the Commodore. I considered it playing, although these days it would be tough to describe it as such. Without any persistent storage, I was presented with a fresh system every time I powered it up. I had a Basic programming book and learned enough to program some simple programs. At that time there were magazines which published programs that could be manually typed into the computer. One of my favorites was a game called Marbles, which was published in hexadecimal assembly code. As I recall, it took me at least two hours to type it in, and then I could play a colorful game with nifty digitized sounds that required rapid hand eye reflexes. I wonder what language the program was written in... Assembly, or a higher level language? Either way, all I saw was meaningless rows upon rows of hex characters. If you mistyped part of the program (after typing for hours) then it wouldn't run. VERY different than the experience that today's kids have with computers.

At one point I decided that I wanted to get a program published in my favorite magazine, 321 Contact. I thought that I had a good chance, since most of the programs were fairly simple. During this pre-Challenger disaster time, the space program was a popular topic in school, so I decided to create a program which displayed a space shuttle blast off. I got the program working to my satisfaction - must have transcribed it from the computer to paper manually with a type-writer, and then mailed it in. I wish I had a copy of that code, but it couldn't have been very good. I even remember worrying that it was too long. It was an ASCII space shuttle that slowly blasted off. I'm sure the organization was terrible. The worst part was that I never got any response back and as I was disappointed each month when checking the magazine to see if it was published, as only an excited kid could be, my short term enthusiasm for programming faded. I didn't have the opportunity to get back into serious programming until 10 years in college. That's why I think what Vic is doing is so great. It's awesome to have someone focused on encouraging kids who are interested in computers. He said it, and I agree, that his program really can change kids life. I imagine that if I have that encouragement when I was ten, I would have become a strong programmer and created tons of useful code at a much earlier age.

It was only natural to volunteer to help with future Wintriss Technical School activities, including the maze contest or teaching future classes. Today I sat in on a class and it appears there are tons of things I can help with, including Object Oriented Design, source control, JUnit, Test Driven Design, UML diagrams, and other tips and tricks I've picked up over the years. I'm excited to contribute and that's a good feeling right now.

Local Star Wars Rocket Event

A group of San Diego rocket engineers built a 21 foot long 1:1 scale X-wing rocket including R2D2 droid co-pilot:



One pre-launch quote stood out to me: If it holds, the X-Wing will be fully recoverable.

I believe it launched over the weekend (10/6 or so), and suffice it to say, R2D2 did not survive:


Full Gizmodo Story

I checked and my R2D2 is still safe and sound in my cube, if you would like to offer condolences for his relative.

Breakthrough!

After a few days being back in San Diego, and some up and down emotional swings, during which I believe I have avoided expressing any anger to her (although I have let her know how hurt I've been), my girlfriend has conceded that perhaps some of the discussion we'd had is accurate. She doesn't necessarily need to split completely from me, but rather we can continue in a relationship, with the change that she'll have her own apartment and we can use this time to sort through our issues and make the relationship stronger.

I was feeling quite a bit better after that discussion last night - it appears she actually will give me a chance, and although we definitely aren't out of the woods, I now feel that it's likely I will have input into events as they evolve, where before I felt like everything was happening outside of my sphere of influence. Today around lunch she even called and asked to put my relationship counter back on my myspace page... (ex: we've been dating for: )

As much as I tried to remain calm, thinking that it's just a symbol, it doesn't mean everything is perfect, my guts were doing the opposite of the past ~3 weeks, and I felt an overpowering sense of joy and happiness. Funny how that shift was so immediate, extreme, and out of my normally tight emotional control - which requires that my emotions make sense to me. now to let some time take effect and restore a bit of a natural balance to my life...

why is this happening?

Whenever I mention the relationship issues to anyone (and I haven't mentioned to too many yet), there is a question immediately asked or implied, and that is something along the lines: "You two seemed to be doing so well, what happened to cause this rift?"

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer. The immediate assumption is that she wants to get married, and although I've considered that, I don't believe it fits the situation - especially since I was planning to propose, and whenever we talked about marriage, me revealing an inclination towards getting married only seemed to make her more disconnected as opposed to getting closer.

From there, my mind jumps to a fear that I'm not worthy of her. However, that really doesn't make sense either. I've always treated her extremely well, and just as I've been happy to be with her, she should (rationally) be happy to be with me. I think we have to be a relatively good match in order to have 3.5 happy and harmonious years together.

I finally came up with the three best reasons that do make more sense to me

• stress of my Dad living with us, new management position / weddings / vacation travel
• Even though he's moving out this week, having a parent live with a couple for 8 months is definitely a strain on any relationship
  
• She recently took a promotion to an extremely stressful manager position, we've been planning for a couple friends weddings, and also squeezing in vacation travel to visit my family in Chicago and Michigan.
  
• Under this type of stress it's only natural to start thinking about your life, longer term goals, etc. Not only that, but she has been meeting new, interesting people in new position. Definitely a time of transition for her.
• I didn't fully realize the impact of this until the last month, but even since the beginning of the relationship, she has been keeping certain walls between us. I assume to keep herself protected - but that also meant that she wasn't as connected to me as I thought. Whenever the topic came up, I avoided it instead of working with her to break down these walls
• At the beginning of the relationship, I was a bit of a challenge to her. To some extent a challenge in a partner is good - it keeps interest up and allows growth. After she realized I wasn't a challenge at all anymore, and she wasn't feeling more connected than before - it was only natural to look for the next challenge

They are not as easy to articulate as "I think she wants a ring", but at least those three reasons give me something to work with / stand on. For right now, I'll focus on trying to break down the walls - maybe that can help us get closer again.

What is our status?

After returning from Savannah Friday night, my emotional levels have continued to be much more agitated than normal. Although it's been a rollercoaster up and down as opposed to just being down - so perhaps that's a reasonable improvement.
The first thing I had to tell her (I'll admit, I thought it out before) was that:
I understand that she's doing what she feels is right and I accept it.
That doesn't ease my pain, and I'll need to do a lot of healing, but it's my responsibility to do that.

She seemed happy to hear that. I almost added that I would only ask for her to not feel guilty, but re-thought that as I'm sure I'll ask for many other things before this suddenly unstable relationship stabilizes one way or the other...

After some relatively normal interaction, there was a question I needed to ask even though I didn't really want to hear the answer. Sometimes being completely uncertain of an outcome feels worse than becoming certain of a less desirable outcome. With that in mind, I had to ask what our current status is. The fact that she's moving out was understood; however, the specifics of what that means seemed up in the air. One time she'd say she can envision us working it out, and the next she'd say that she can't see a difference between "taking a break" and "breaking up". After a bit of discussion we settled on the status "a return to dating". Of course the reality is that the status is at her whim, and I'm not sure I'll be able to think of her as other than my girlfriend anytime soon...

I hate being clingy, but it's going to take some time to work through the sense of loss. Some of the more practical questions floating in my head involve how to describe what has happened, what I call her now, etc. I haven't talked to more than 1 or 2 people so far, but I definitely feel the need to discuss with more people. After my last breakup, it was the support of a wide group of friends that allowed me to move on. Even though I'm not quite ready to move on, if I keep all this bottled up, I'm likely to explode.

...

On to less melancholy thoughts:
I've been watching the last 5 episodes of Entourage tonight... Over the past 2 weeks I've been unable to feel excited about anything longterm, but Entourage is great short-term relief.
It's an amazing show in that (at least to me) it has such a different impact than almost any other show I've watched. Many shows that I like have unrealistic premises (space or time travel, or even just unrealistic portrayal of illegal activity), but Entourage seems like a very realistic portrayal of how 4 guys (one of them a successful movie star) would hang out and approach the world. I'm filled with a deep desire to scale my life to that level. I do want to meet and get to know the most interesting people free myself from the 40+ hour/week grind and fulfill my potential.

I know that I can do it - perhaps part of the reason behind this relationship shift is that I am getting a bit of a swift kick in the ass to remind me of that!

Why a blog?

These days it seems the why for writing a blog is: why not? everyone's doing it

I first created a website as a freshman in college (1995), since then I've planned to increase my online presence. I also have a fondness for writing, so a blog is a natural idea - I've just been putting it off.

Since most of my early posts will probably be quite personal in nature, perhaps a better question is whether I'm comfortable sharing these private thoughts in public.
I'm not sure that I'm fine with that, but I do feel that writing can be therapeutic. I don't know why, but somehow publishing them seems likely to increase that effect.
So we'll see how it goes

If you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to post them =)

And if you are my girlfriend, just understand that they are not targeted at you.

Delayed in Atlanta

October 5th, 2007 7:30pm - Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport - gate T5:
The flight to San Diego is scheduled to leave in 5 minutes, but it's apparent to me that we are not leaving on time. I don't know this from announcements or updated signs, but due to the fact that there isn't a plane waiting outside the gate. So far, my experience with southern airports is that they are not very serious about boarding and departure times. A previous flight from Memphis to Savannah boarded at least 30 minutes late and still arrived approximately on time.

It's been a hectic and emotional last two weeks. Almost an out-of-body experience. Feels good to finally be headed home, but there is also a significant helping of anxiety mixed in. During my short (or long?) time away, a shift has occurred at home, and I'm no longer certain if it will really feel like home anymore.

Flash-back to January 2007. I had a great feeling of exuberance and excitement about the year - much different than other years. I was doing work that I loved, I felt extremely close to my girlfriend of almost 3 years (perhaps she was "the one"?), I had many close friends and family living nearby in San Diego. The holidays were awesome - other than that I can't put a finger on it, but the year just felt like it had so much promise and potential - I knew that it was going to be a great year. The first 9 months were filled with lots of good times, like

• attending the Marshall Sylver Turning Point Seminar which I gave my girlfriend for Christmas
• a touching Valentine's day
• a romantic anniversary trip to Big Bear
• successful projects at work
• a new kitten named Jesus
  
• general excitement over the future
• learning ruby on rails
• planning and beginning work on a business
• fun times with friends and families

But there were also a undeniable chain of unexpected and sometimes painful events including

• the end of my Dad's 2nd marriage and him moving into my condo for a time
• my MoM quitting her job and moving to Memphis, Tennessee
• my little brother moving back to Northern California
  

Sitting here, waiting for the flight details to work themselves out, half heartedly munching on a quesadilla, I contemplate the most recent event in the chain....

I'm not used to being so torn up inside. Normally I'm a strong, stable person and pride myself on being able to exist in high pressure situations without breaking a sweat. After hearing that my Cutie, someone I'd grown to consider before myself, had obtained a lease for her own apartment starting Monday and "needed her space"; I felt as if parts of my internal organs had been forcibly ripped from my body. And somehow, it was the part of me that I liked the most that was missing. I'd always felt that I was most myself when I was around her...

8:05pm: as some confused change of gate information filters into the crowd (not through a loud speaker and the monitors are not updated yet of course), I'm left dwelling on a potentially conclusive thought:
perhaps life is about learning to overcome tragedy?