Monday, November 28, 2005

And another one ...

True to the name of this blog, I have another Starbucks name story to tell. Same scenario: Bunch of work people and I have a bagel (actually two bagels today as it was a two-bagel-day) for lunch and then head over to the Starbucks to get a cup of coffee. Well, there is the few of us that order girly drinks like eggnog latte or peppermint mocha. The rest (including me of course) order manly drinks like pure coffee or Americanos. (Yes, I am that shallow ... ;-) and it's really irrelevant but always wanted to say this)
Anyway, my turn, I order my Americano and she asks for my name. I say it and she starts writing, and writing, and writing, strikes everyting through and keeps writing, then she gets stuck (like a deer in the headlights). She started out with -j- -u- -j- and did not get anywhere. So I spell my name for her ... twice. Guess what was written on my cup? -J- -U- -G- -R- -E- Truly amazing ...
Later in the afternoon, I go to Peet's and get another coffee (yeah, I know I spend way too much money on coffee). There I spell my name and she gets it right...

One more week ...

In a previous post I mentioned that I will be leaving IBM soon. Well, time went fast and I am in my last week. Feels a little weird knowing I will be doing a different commute soon, seeing other people and doing different work. There are a lot of things I enjoyed here at the IBM Almaden Research Center. I worked (or still work) with incredibly smart people, worked on some interesting projects and learned a lot of stuff. After this week, I will take a week off and then start my job at Yahoo!. Right now my official title at IBM is "Senior Software Engineer". At Yahoo! I will be called a "Technical Yahoo". Don't quite know yet what that means, but sounds pretty funny and less serious. May be part of my job will be to shout "Yahoo" all the time ... who knows. As I said before, leaving IBM leaves me with a bag of mixed feelings. I am excited to do something new but at the same time I am a little sad having to let go of a place I spent more time than at home (at times at least). But in the end, things at work developed differently than I had hoped. Now that I am getting ready to leave (cleaning out my fabulous window office), all I am hoping is that I made a difference in what I did and that Dan and Jeff don't find too many embarrassing bugs in my code. The treatment I got from my management after telling them about my resignation leaves absolutely nothing to be desired. They have been treating me very well and told me to come back should things not work out at Yahoo!. I guess that is a good sign that they liked what I did?
Anyway, just wanted to make clear that I am not leaving because I am bitter about IBM or people there. I strongly believe that my time has come to try something else and to seek a new challenge. I sort of made it at IBM (in ways that matter to me). Don;t get the wrong idea, unfortunately that did not make me rich ... ;-) Now, I want to see whether I can make it elsewhere. There is lots of other little issues that weighed into my decision to leave IBM but I don't want to bore you with all the nitty-gritty details. Let's just say that I believe that Yahoo! and the things it is offering and doing aligns better with my interests than IBM does. With that I am off to finding the remaining two bugs I don't want to hand over ...

Monday, November 21, 2005

Another name story ...

This afternoon, before heading to the grad class of boredom, my buddy Jan and I stopped at one of the local Peet's coffee stores. I order my Latte and the girl behind the counter asks for my name. I tell her my name which left her totally disoriented on her little touch screen. So I go ahead and spell my name for her: J - o - e - r - g
She types it in (correctly that is) and feels compelled to say something because the name strikes her as not being typically American. So she asks me where I am from and I tell that I am German. Oh boy, what a mistake. She starts telling me that she is German too. She doesn't speak the language and was born in the U.S. (which she tells me w/o me even asking for any of that), and that she is partially German and Norwegian. She asks me whether I get this a lot. Not sure what she meant I say: "Do you mean that every American is partially German?" I think she got my hint ... But how come that once people either figure out that I am German (or after I told them) feel compelled to either tell me that they are German as well or, run down the list of all the German words they know. They all seem to know the same words, which are either lame curse words, names of towns or names of food. What do they expect? That I hug them because I am so happy I met another (partial) German? All I wanted is a cup of coffee ... but at least she wrote down my name correctly.

Trying posting to my blog using email ...

... because I am sitting in class (Computer Networks at UCSC) and I am incredibly bored. Thank god for wireless access. This is one of the worst classes I have ever taken. It appears as if the professor is only teaching this class because he has to fulfill some teaching requirement.  This class truly sucks even though the subject is rather interesting ... for geeks that is ...
Anyway, hopefully this will be my last class before moving on to my dissertation ... Wish me luck that I don't die of boredom in this class before then.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

A car I really like ...

I have always been a fan of the Porsche 911. Ever since I got a driver's license, I wanted one, maybe even before then. What I like about the 911 is that over the years it has maintained its Porsche form. You can still find style elements of the original 911 in today's model. There were a couple of model years which could have been better but the new one looks really cool.
And now they have come out with something that's almost as cool. The Porsche Cayman. Some say it's a a mixture of Boxster and 911 ... I don't really care. I think it looks compact, great and fun to drive. Wish me luck that I make enough money down the road that my dream of a Porsche comes true. Until then I will keep driving my VW Diesel ...

Thursday, November 17, 2005

I quit my job ....

About a week ago I quit my job. After 7 years working for IBM Research and coming close to leaving about 6 months ago, I decided to move on. From previous posts in my blog you could probably tell that I wasn't 100% happy anymore with what I was doing and the direction my project was headed.
Starting December 12th, I will join Yahoo!. I am really fired up about doing something else in a new environment. I am sad about having to depart from some very cool people I have worked with and became good friends with. I am also thankful to many people within IBM Research who helped me get where I am today. They all know and they understand that I wish to do something else. Thanks Jan, Dan, Paul, Ron, Linda and Jim for still being supportive.
If I feel like it, I will post more on what made me quit. (An ex-coworker of mine described it pretty well, although I have never been worried about losing my job.) But for now, I am very excited about the new thing at Yahoo! and I am a little sad having to say Good Bye to Almaden.