Archive for 2015

I love travel but I love coming home to my Jura J9. It is the simple things in life that make it worth living. And when I say “simple” I really mean a state-of-the-art automated coffee robot full of technological wizardry. It’s not the J9 that I miss specifically. The product is great. But that’s…

My wife is on a diet, which means she only orders salads at the restaurant but constantly picks food off of my plate. And she wonders why I am always hungry. The message we tell someone else, “I’m on a diet” is not always congruent with our behaviour. Which is why I don’t believe my…

Just wrapped up the latest Android project for the client. Now for the iOS version! All “native” code unfortunately, so other than concept and algorithms, I cannot take anything from Android to iOS. Android to iOS port is going to be a complete re-write, damn it. The annoyance is not at having to do the…

Tangerines – for some reason they always taste like Christmas to me Of course smell is one of our most evocative senses. I am just glad that most products and services have not yet figured out how to associate particular smells with their brands. And yet… How long until they do? T-Mobile has a certain…

If you’d be willing to work for free for six months on this project, it would really help us out! Hahahah! NO! If you cannot figure out why that is such a ridiculous request, I can guarantee you wouldn’t know what to do with my work were I to undertake the project.

Look! Style without substance – I must be SF. Or maybe it is LA. Or Portland. The geography changes, but the stories being told remain the same. Some places have a soul. And yet other places, will never have a soul, because the population is too fluid to permit that to happen. It might have…

I need more storage drawers for my office. These ones are full of collected junk. Out of sight and out of mind, even if well organised, is still out of sight and out of mind.

That feeling of cutting up vegetables after you have just had your Wusthoff kitchen knives professionally sharpened. Certain objects feel different either when new or after being serviced or cleaned. You cannot quantify the feeling, they “just are.” It’s why there is never quite the same feeling you get from unboxing your original Apple laptop…

I have a below room temperature IQ and I am not afraid to use it on you. For all your cleverness, if your customer (me) isn’t smart enough (or is too busy) to understand your offering, you will never be able to reach me. Do you even want to reach me? Market segmentation, even between…

Right heading off to teach. Back soon. Or as I like to think of it, talking to a bunch of like-minded individuals about a subject we already know about, but just want to swap some useful tips to ensure we know the same stuff.

This is a blank status update that has no purpose but it will be more popular than my other status updates. When we’re trying to be too clever, our message can sometimes be lost completely.

Bad words? Words are only bad when you don’t use them properly.

Staring at very old code of mine from 1984 when I wrote my first C compiler and thinking “Wow! I went ugly early!” There is not enough beer in the world to make me want to touch the code in that project.

“I have an idea for a game.” Bye now!

Built a better mousetrap – now I just need to figure out how to sell it.

The problem with listening too much is that other people automatically assume that they have the right to talk.

Some days I wonder why I talk to some leads: The project is technically challenging. The project requires a very specialized skill set. They need it yesterday. The timeline is overly aggressive. The amount works out to around $12/hour for the job. And the kicker – they’ll pay me on project delivery. Yeahhhh… No.

I give you this ancient Chinese curse: “May you permanently retain all of those employees you failed to invest in or develop.”

How to get fired as my client: Send me an email at 4AM requiring extensive research before answering. Bitch and moan at 8AM that I have yet to respond. Pay all invoices more than 90 days late. Negotiate an excessive 30+30 term. What can I say? I too was young and stupid once.

Woohoo! Eagle .brd files sent to manufacturer. That was 48 hours of nerve-wracking hell I don’t want to live through again.