Joshua Go's Journal [entries|friends|calendar] Joshua Go [ website | My Website ] [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

Mouthwash. [02 Dec 2006|09:07am] The morning is a dangerous time. I just know that one of these days I'm going to drink my mouthwash.

Binding of the self. [08 Nov 2006|10:50pm] Choosing to cast your lot in with others means sometimes doing things that you don't want to do. On the upside, it allows other people to bring out the best in you. I was messing with DragonFly BSD late into the night yesterday. Then during the day I had to investigate using Adobe Flash to build a tool for a client. The thing with open source is that it's so fragmented, and even when it's not fragmented, the API changes and it's a moving target. It makes it a nightmare not only to support but to develop on. I can adjust just fine but even as someone who is experienced using the platform and is comfortable tweaking it, all that tweaking just takes time away from doing real work and making something new. With something like Adobe Flash, it's easy to get work done. It may not be the best technology out there, and yes, it's controlled by one vendor, but it's good enough. I can see how the old single-vendor problem can be an advantage in many cases by serving as a stable, good-enough-but-not-best platform. The world of commercial software is like American politics: it's stable enough, not the greatest thing in the world, and really dirty. But it lets people get things done. Open source is like warring African warlords trying to impose their system on everyone else because they choose to pre-optimize their political system: while they may be right, what ends up happening is nobody gets any work done because the foundation is always shifting.

Women have it tough, effective periodical marketing, charity list. [26 Oct 2006|12:39am] This weekend, I went to the mall with Sophia. While she was trying stuff on in the dressing room, I waited outside and sat down. I looked around and there weren't many other customers. I saw a girl, I figure around 11 or 12 years old, waiting in line. She looked insecure like she didn't belong there, but she was wearing one of those short denim skirts that girls like wearing these days. Somehow, it didn't seem to fit. You could say she was still in her awkward stage--a little chubby, not yet blossomed. I think I realized that's it's tough growing up a girl. Even if a girl grows up to be beautiful, there's always this pressure to chase the dream of staying beautiful and becoming even more so. And if you don't grow up to be beautiful, life is even tougher. Maybe I should just expect people to suck it up. It's easier to say that when I'm a guy though. I can be ugly but just present myself all clean-cut and demonstrate my ability to achieve--in whatever area--and still get by just fine. Well, maybe we should move on to something a little more dry and, let's face it, a little more myself. I am pretty sure The Economist sends my address to similar publishing institutions of repute. I've been solicited by HBR and the WSJ. I eventually subscribed to the HBR through a gift subscription from my older sister, but I only asked for it after I read some it at the library. Perhaps these periodicals would be better off sending people one free copy rather than telling them to surrender credit card information for four free weeks or whatnot. It involves a lot of work on the user's part. Someone should tell WSJ that. I see a lot of links to their website from Yahoo! Finance, with interesting headlines, but I can never read them. I think I'm still being consistent with giving my money back to the Lord, only I don't give it to a church. I like to diversify my investments, and after reading Isaiah 58:6-7, I've been moved to donate to causes which are more directly practical. Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? I rotate between charities like Doctors Without Borders, the Smile Train, Grameen, or the Village Enterprise Fund. I just get kind of annoyed at all the solicitous mails I get from them once they know I'm willing to donate to them. They should let me opt out of receiving additional material from them; pretty much, don't call me, I'll call you. Well, in any case, I'm glad to see other people donating to Compassion International and such, but I think it's so far removed from our lifestyles that it's hard to feel like we're really making any difference. At least I've got African memories to remind me of how effectively such money could be used. I've wondered a lot lately about why I'm not normal like the other 23-year-olds.

Get your sexy on. [17 Oct 2006|11:37pm] It seems like there are no new thoughts going through my head these days. I'm a pretty big snob when it comes to choosing who to spend my time with. I don't want to associate with the rabble and the riff-raff. I consider my good name highly important. I also value my alone time, but I don't want to end up an isolated old man. When people get old and remain isolated, they wither. But I've seen some pretty vibrant old people who seem to do it by remaining active and being connected to their communities. For some reason, when I read literary pieces from the past, I expect people to be completely different and have totally different sensibilities. It's re-assuring to know that some things don't change; people still think the same things and feel the same way. I think it was more acceptable throughout most of history to have stalkerish tendencies than it is today. I think today, people are supposed to flood their minds with other things and stay so busy and occupied that they don't have time to stalk. But then we've got Facebook, which facilitates stalking and greases up the gears of stalkerdom. The Last Days of the Dollar by Robert Kiyosaki. I've tried to understand how foreign exchange works, and there's probably a good reason I have trouble understanding it as clearly as I can understand my own code. It's muddled. That's a skill I'd like to develop: being able to work through a muddle and distill it into a lucid explanation. There aren't a lot of companies I'd be willing to give up my independence for. Before, it was down to Apple and Google, but I can see myself learning a lot if I were ever to write for The Economist or develop my leadership ability at GE. There's just so much to learn and I'm already keeping myself pretty busy learning the things I want to. There sure is a lot of knowledge locked up in people though. It's not in books and it probably can't be learned easily by reading or doing problems, like in the hard sciences. You learn that kind of stuff by talking to older people. Sometimes I wonder why I am so mild these days. I'm not sure if there's even any colour left in my personality. Some of it is re-surfacing, though, and now I'm hesitant to let loose because I'm not sure the world can handle me.

Lessons for myself. [19 Sep 2006|11:30pm] I woke up this morning and had a good time to focus. Outside my new apartment, we've put a couch on the patio. It's a great way to relax, and I sipped a hot beverage while sitting there this morning to catch my breath before work. Work is less stressful, but I feel like I can make progress now. A good lesson I learned was to take a step back, split up the work, and delegate it. I also realized that it's not a problem with me trusting others to do work on my behalf--it's my own laziness in stepping back, splitting up the work, figuring out what needs to be done, and who can do it. Thinking is hard work. While it doesn't physically hurt my brain, it's uncomfortable to shift mental gears from technical/engineering mode to management mode. Now that everyone's got their part and is making progress, it's actually comforting to hear them all trying to talk to me at the same time with status updates and questions. I also had some random thoughts. I used to feel bad about taking time off work to exercise--maybe a bit immature for trying to preserve the habits of my college lifestyle. But an 8-hour workday sitting down is pretty brutal for one's health. Combine that with the need to balance family and social life with work life, and life starts looking pretty tough. Ideally, I would hit the gym in the morning, but I have to bring myself to the point where I can wake up that early. I think I'm growing a thicker skin. It may require maintenance.

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