moffett field, we have a problem

Yesterday Peter Norvig came by the office for lunch. Before Google, Peter was at NASA for three years. Yishan and I told him how Ed Lu (former Google manager and also former NASA astronaut) comes to the office from time to time.

Me: "I feel safer when Ed is around. If there were some catastrophe, he could MacGyver a solution to get us out."

Peter: "If the office started losing oxygen rapidly, he would know what to do."

Me and Yishan: "Yes, exactly! You understand."

hardcore risk

I had brunch with a few longtime friends on Sunday. Later in the day, over IM with one of them:

xevirt: btw I don't think you went over the line this morning when you teased Octo about his dog
niniane: that's because you don't know that his other dog passed on a few months ago
xevirt: oh wow niniane, that's a hardcore risk you took there
niniane: I know.
xevirt: i'm surprised he didn't start climbing over the table to attack you
niniane: haha yeah. You would've not understood why. You'd just be sitting there, "Whoa. I don't know what's going on."
xevirt: well there's little needed to understand once people start climbing tables

canadian technology

Omst has decided to move back to Canada, where his parents and sister reside.

Omst: "lol i remember a googler saying to me 'you're moving back to canada? are there even computers there?'"

I relayed this to my brother.

Tom: haha are there computers in canada??

me: omst can tell us when he gets there
me: if he tells us via phone call, we'll know the answer is no

Tom: what's a phone again
Tom: is that what they used before skype

me: it's iphone-skype
me: that reminds me of this: book google.

book google

When you need to figure out something, so you look it up in a book, like in the olden times, when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

Guy 1: Quick! What's the definiton of "callow?"

Guy 2: I don't know! My iPhone 4 doesn't get signal here!

Guy 3: Book google that shit!

another blog of mine

Yishan and I have been doing a Brute Force lunch tour, eating at every adjacent restaurant along Castro Street. We're keeping a blog of our experiences at http://sunfire-lunch.blogspot.com/

delayed rewards

I've noticed a pattern of some young engineers getting discouraged because they're not receiving much recognition for their work.

This happens disproportionately amongst people who don't fit the standard stereotype, namely female engineers and some minorities. The young engineer does a bunch of work, and hardly anyone notices. They start to experience self-doubt.

What exacerbates the situation is that they look around and see a senior engineer receiving accolades continually. They see Bob winning another award, or getting another five patents, or overhear people praise how amazing Bob is. The young engineer decides that he's not in the same league as Bob. Sometimes they wonder if they should switch to a different type of job.

A good manager can ameliorate this by giving instant feedback, but not everyone has that luxury.

The thing they don't know is: there's a lag between when you do the work and when you receive the recognition for it. The lag is typically a year or more. When you're doing the work, and even right after you finish, the reception is usually silence. You have to take a leap of faith that one day, your work will be warmly received. Experienced engineers get into a rolling-recognition situation where at any moment, they're reaping appreciation for work they did a year or two ago.

The journey always looks grim in the moment. When Frodo and Sam took the Ring to be destroyed in Mordor, it was tedious drudgery, they were hungry and cold, and they kept fighting with each other. Afterwards, they were praised as gods, and epic songs were written in their honor to be passed down throughout the ages. But at the time, it didn't look so rosy!

Same for working in software. I will leave it to the reader to make analogies for what Mordor symbolizes for you.

astute

Mike: "PR teams are shameless. CEO resigns in disgrace? Quick, prove P ≠ NP!"

:)

don't say 'if N = 1' (everyone else already made that joke)

The big news today is a circulated proof that P != NP. Researchers are analyzing the proof, and so far no one has found a flaw in it.

Me: "Did you see the 88-page paper? It is so understated. It starts off so cavalier: 'The P = NP question is generally considered one of the most important questions in computer science'..." [sending along the paper]

Stuttgart: "The title of the paper should be 'OMGWTF P != NP', and then the rest of the paper should be a dry technical proof."

but you can't juggle while driving a car

I visited my brother over the weekend. On the way home from dim sum, he was talking about where he could go to meet smart girls in the LA area.

Tom: "Maybe I should swing by Caltech."

Me: "You'll be competing for a few girls with a ton of guys."

Tom: "I can take on Caltech guys. I'll just say, 'Ladies! I take showers!'"

Me: "Caltech guys shower too."

Tom: "'Ladies! I wear shoes!'"

Me: "Oh, that's a good one."

Tom: "'Ladies! I get around in a car instead of a unicycle!'"

Me: [laughing]

Tom: "'My choice of transportation has four wheels!'"

Glassblowing!

I went to a glasswork class with my friend Ione, in San Jose.



Ione making a glass paperweight. It is extremely hot in the glass studio, and we all regretted wearing black.



Me using tongs to pull on the edges of my glass flower.



The glass is fluid, so we had to roll it back and forth to avoid it dripping into a puddle on the ground. Here you can see the flower in progress, from the side.



The finished glass flower. I gave it to Elaine as a Sunfire flower ornament.



The finished paperweight. I gave it to Yishan as a Sunfire paperweight.

I eventually passed 4 songs on Hard!

Playing "Rock Band" with a few friends, including a work colleague.  I am doing the vocals.

Me: "I am going to switch from Medium to Hard!"

Friend: "Time for hubris, I see."

Me: "It's hubris if we fail.  If we succeed, it's called ambition."

Colleague: "I think we'll be saying that one a lot."

Flood of tweets (fleets?)

Eating burritos with LG (now working at Twitter), Jon, and EDX.

Me: "LG, have you been watching the World Cup?"

LG: "Yes, in fact I watch the games very intensely, because the instant a goal is scored, we switch the Twitter GSLBs to point to a colo with better write performance.  Usually traffic is optimized for reads instead of writes."

Me: "Awesome."

funny chart

starcraft, chess

Conversation with a Korean games company executive, "Jun".

Greg: "Why didn't anyone in Korea make an RTS to compete with Starcraft? You guys had ten years!"

Jun: "That's like saying, 'Do you play Go? Why didn't you make another version of Go? That game is 5000 years old.' We didn't make another version because we were already playing Starcraft!"

Me: [lol]

Jun: "It's like if you said to someone, 'Would you like to play chess, or a chess-like game whose rules I made up?' They'd say, 'No, I'll play chess!'"

Spoiler alert for Sixth Sense, Star Wars, 300

Today LG and Jon drove down from SF to work out of Sunfire for the day.  During lunch at a kosher restaurant:

LG: "I have a T-shirt that spoils a whole bunch of movies.  Like, it says 'Darth is Luke's father.'"

Me: "That shirt is horrible.  I read several lines on it before realizing they were spoilers."

LG: "Haha yeah!  Or 'Bruce Willis is a ghost'."

Me: "That's so bad.  Sixth Sense is such an amazing movie when you get the twist."

LG: "Or '299 die.'"

Me: "Wait, what's that?  I don't know that one.  [horrified realization] Oh my God!!  LG!  Why did you do that?  Argh!"

LG: [laughing sheepishly] "You haven't watched it yet?  I'm sorry!  I didn't know!"

Me: "I can't believe that shirt ruined another movie when you're not even wearing it."

Retrofitting

At Sunfire yesterday, we had a couple of visitors from Google.

Me: "I got several recommendations to read this book called 'Good Calories, Bad Calories'."

Reena: "Don't all those nutrition books say the same thing?"

Me: "No.  For example, they differ over whether meat is good for you or bad.

Reena: "It's bad for you."

Me: "This book says it's fine."

Augustus: [joining in] "Oh, I want that book.  I'm looking for a book that will recommend the way I'm already eating."

Me: [lol]

iceland gay marriage

This is great!

Iceland Legalizes Gay Marriage, Prime Minister Marries Partner

Iceland has not only legalized gay marriage this past weekend, but its Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir married her long-term partner on the day it took effect, making her the world's only national leader with a same-sex spouse

Original article.

amusing iphone video

Thanks Sharam for showing me this.

yield a step, give an inch

My aunt has a best friend "Bea" in China.  I've met Bea a few times.  She is always cheerful, with a big smile.  She talks often about how she appreciates her husband of 30+ years for his kind heart and loyalty. Three years ago, I told her during a trip to Beijing how much I wanted to eat candied gourds, because I read about them in books but never ate them.  She took me around street vendors until we found a good place that sold them.

Once, Bea told us about how much she loves the fruit market near her house.  She said that the vendors all know her and greet her by name (or call her "sister" as is the local custom).  They save her favorite fruits for her, off to the side.

My aunt was curious, so she went the next day with Bea.  Afterwards she told me, "Those vendors gave her fruit that was over-ripe!  Those fruits are going to rot in a couple days. They were basically cheating her, yet she's still so happy."

I felt sympathy that Bea was being scammed and didn't even know it.  I thought my aunt is so much more sensible for catching on to the fruit vendors' tricks. But now I think Bea is the wisest one of us all.  She is happy-go-lucky and carefree, eating her overripe fruits, surrounded by a legion of friends because she is so fun to be around. She has one of the best marriages I've seen. Her daughter and son-in-law get along perfectly with her, and visit her frequently.  She is over 60 but looks at least 10 years younger. 

Bea gave me a hand fan once, which said in calligraphy, "Cherish being oblivious". 



As she gave it to me, she said that if you calculate every penny and argue every grievance, life is exhausting.  Instead, let yourself be oblivious sometimes.  "Yield a step," she said, "Give an inch.  And you will see that life is as limitless as the ocean and the sky."

technically your friend was correct

(All names have been changed.)

Rob: "I went on a date with this woman Melissa. It was a setup by my friend. She said that Melissa is smart, has an interesting job, and is stunning." [showing me a photo of Melissa, who is not attractive]

Me: "Did you know what she looked like when you went on the date?"

Rob: "Melissa sent me a different photo beforehand which looked a lot better than she does in real life. I was tricked because my friend said she's 'stunning'."

Me: "Well, you were stunned, right?"

R-rated octopus joke

At Azer's birthday dinner tonight, at Garçon in the Mission district.

Flora: "I heard a joke yesterday from my nephew.  What did the male octopus say to the female octopus?"

Me: "I want to see your Octopussy."

Flora: "No.  He said, 'I want to hold your hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand.'"

Me: "Mine's better.  Or alternatively, he said, 'I eight her out last night.'"

Flora: "My nephew is 5.  I'm not telling him these."