pirates

pirates
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

Ever heard of "Seagull Management" ?

A coworker and I were chatting about our current project at Yahoo! which we are about to release to the public. As we talked about who was really helpful, not so helpful, entirely useless or simply a pain in the butt, he brought up the term seagull management. Wonder what that is? It's managers, that fly in from time to time, aren't really well-informed, flap their wings and make a lot of noise and leave a bunch of crap behind for those people that actually do the work.

Anyway, on one or two occasions we had this happen on our project but overall it's looking good. Stay tuned for more on this? I am pretty excited about getting some of my work out to a large number of people. Never really had that IBM. I mean, we did cool stuff but unfortunately we never made anything available to the public because either IBM did not want to, could not decide in time or wanted to turn it into a secret ...
Let's see how things go. More later.

Two bad ideas ... or whatever happened to common sense.

On my way to work this morning I listened to NPR (National Public Radio) and they were talking about Jail for Judges. It's a measure that wants to do away with judicial immunity. What it seems to come down to is that, if the measure passes, judges can be sued if a grand jury decides that the sentence given out by the judge was a bit harsh. On top of that, the supporters of this measure want to apply this to anyone in public office. Does this country really need more opportunities for people to sue other parties? I don't think so. It already goes way to far. Remember the fat woman who bought coffee at McDonalds, put it between her legs and then burned herself by spilling it. She then sued McDonalds and was awarded an absurd amount of money for being just dumber than a brick. Now, we have warning labels on everything. Something like "Do not operate vehicle with this in place" on a sunscreen for car windshields. It even goes as far that a lot of companies and institutions cut services or ban certain things. For example, there iare several schools across the country that have banned contact sports like playing tag football or chasing games during recess time. Why? Out of fear for being held liable that a child gets hurt playing. What comes next, that kids have to wear seatbelts on their classroom charis because they could fall over. Or make them wear a helmet inside the classroom? In essence I am all for holding people responsible when they screw up but opening up more posibilities for people to sue the shit out of everything and everyone is wrong.

The "Bus" ...

Sonja and I have been debating for a while now to buy a bigger car. We owned a Volkswagen Jetta Wagon which did a fine job but was getting too small for us, the two boys and our dog. If we put the stroller in the trunk, our dog had to squeeze in behind a seat. Anyway, we have looked around and after a while it turned out that a minivan is the only logical choice. Why, you may ask? Well, we had a limited budget, so a nice Mercedes Benz wagon was out of the question. Additionally, while slightly bigger than our Jetta they would not have solved our space problem because having kids, a third row is noce to have. Then, there was the world of SUVs. The ones that are big enough suck in terms of gas mileage (some of the American brands) and the ones that are nice enough (like Lexus, Mercedes Benz and Audi) are too expensive and still suck in terms of gas mileage. We even tried the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, which has ok gas mileage compared to the regular model but nothing near where you would say this is phenomenal. On top of that, the third row seats it had would be uncomfortable for even our 4-year old and its price tag was ridiculous for the base model that had next to no options in it. So here we are, looking around and the only car category that would basically fulfill all our needs was the minivan category. So, knowing they are not the sexiest automobiles, we went ahead and test drove some of them. We really liked the Honda Odyssey and ended up buying one:

I have to say, it is one of the nicest cars, if not the nicest, that we have ever owned. Do I have a problem with driving a minivan? Not at all, the car is nice, my kids love it and we can haul all kinds of stuff around. And the car has a shitload of options that make it nice. Not to mention that it has twice the horsepower of our old Jetta and a gas mileage rating that beats any big SUV by a wide margin. A lot of people will make fun of us now but I don't care. Anyway, since the car is a lot bigger than our old one we have already nicknamed it. We simply call it "the bus" ... and we like it.

I like birthdays ...

Especially my own. People are nice to me on at least one day a year and I get to see a lot of my friends all at once. This year we met at Trader Vic's, a cocktail bar/restaurant. We slurped quite a few of their concoctions and I have to admit I had a pretty bad hangover the next day. It was fun nonetheless. And the band in that place even sang a song for me. They called me "Jorge" but if you have read this blog from the beginning you know that I am used to that.

We even shared some crazy cocktails with straws that were at least 2 feet long. Thansk everyone for coming and thanks to Sonja for setting this up. I had a blast.

Cool electric car ...

Came across the Tesla Motors site. They make a fully electric sports car that actually looks cool. No info on price though and I doubt it is affordable. But I think it's pretty cool that companies try to buck the trend of making ever bigger vehicles that suck up more and more gas. One would hope that politicians would actually support the development of fuel-efficient cars more than they have in the past. But it appears that they are even against it. So, watch out, owners of Tesla Motors or you will ask yourself Who killed the electric car?.

Playing in the sand ...

Our son Jonas (18 months old) and I were playing in the sandbox and we had great fun launching all kinds of vehicles in the sand. I thought this looked kind of cool.

He is not a puppy ...

This is my dog and his name is "Peanut". Yes, I know it is a silly name but he had already been given that name when we "freed" him from the pound. Well, we didn't exactly free him and it wasn't an adventure at all but it sounds much better than "when we bought him". Anyway, we got Peanut through the South Bay Purebred Rescue Service. Oddly enough, Peanut is a mutt, most likely the mix between a cocker spaniel and a golden retriever. The latter is probably the reasosn why he appears to be a Golden puppy even though Peanut is already 6 years old. Which brings me to my actual story. Whenever we go places, people ask us about how old our puppy is. Usually, we very dryly remark that our "puppy is 6 years old, approaching 7 fast". What happens then is similar to what happens to me in emails when people seem to believe that I can't spell my name "Joerg" but must have meant "Jorge". Some people won't believe us. Same thing with the question about his breed. We usually answer "coker-retriever mix, most likely" which sometimes is met with great skepticism by these freaks that, just because they have a dog on themselves, believe they must be dog experts. To those people we then say: "Well, we weren't there but if you have seen his parents do it let us know". Anyway, Peanut's great, he loves to play ball, chase cats and squirrels and he is great with our two boys. An he will always be our puppy... ;-)

Hiring great people is hard ...

Back in those days when I worked at IBM I did a lot of interviewing candidates for jobs we had available there. What I noticed back then is that pretty much all candidates sound reasonable on paper but very few were actually as good as the paper made me believe. It even appeared as if only mediocre people would apply for the jobs we posted. What's the problem there? Well, Joel's blog provides some good explanations for this and I encourage anyone who is hiring or interviewing people to read his post on finding great developers. I completely agree with him on the one point that truly great people never really send resumes out to job postings, heck, they never even enter the job market. Why? For one thing, good people carry a reputation and will go to new places through friends, former co-workers that now work for someone else. Or they get approached approached by the same circle of people. So who is left on the job market? Probably those who were rejected before or those who just start out. I for one think that is almost always better to take someone who is fairly junior with good basic skills over a medicore candidate who may have some (worthless) experience already. We are currently looking for someone in my group and I am interviewing again. Let's see how that goes and hopefully we will find someone great. But what makes someone great? Well, for one thing it is hard to find that out in 30-45 minutes. And anyone who is not a complete idiot and has worked on a topic will sound like an expert in that particular field. Unless the interviewer works in the same field it is somtimes hard to determine whether the candidate is phony or not. What matters to me? Well, when interview I look at how people approach problems. I don't expect anyone to know all the answers to my questions in the area of programming or algorithms. But I expect them to come up with a reasonable/feasible way of attacking the problem. Should someone be able to write the source code for QuickSort in an interview? I don't think so because I couldn't do that either and it does not really prove anything. What is more important to me that someone could tell me about its properties or where he would go to find out about it.

Yahoo Night @ the Park

Last night I invited a few of my friends to see the San Jose Giants against the Stockton Ports (courtesy of Yahoo). To be honest, the quality of baseball was not spectacular but hey, it is single-A baseball after all. We had a good time though. Beer and food were affordable (5 bucks for a Bud or Bud light is still too much but it beats the 7.50 at a major league ballpark or at a Sharks game) and not bad and they do a bunch of stuff for kids for entertainment. And the fireworks afterwards were nice too.

I think Yahoo! does this once a year. So see you again next year...

Another remodeling project complete

Image023.jpg
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

Sooooo, what started out as a simple job of replacing the linoleum floors in our master bedroom bathroom, turned into a complete remodel. I ripped out everything. There were a few setbacks, a trip to the energency room after I hurt my arm and a few tricky problems to solve. Not to mention the inhalation of (what can only be described as) toxic fumes form paint, cleaners and sealers. Oh and the obligatory 400+ trips to home depot and other home improvement stores (Thank god I live close to home depot). But hey, in the end I got it done. Here is a picture of the new sink setup. I built the pedestal myself. we still need to find a new lamp, mirror and a shelf but other than that it's complete and fully functional. Thanks to my neighbours who provided tools that I did not have or could not find.

Things to know about Management

Over the years at IBM, Yahoo and in other jobs I had my share of managers. With them came different management styles. Some of them were good managers, some of them were medicore and some of them plain sucked. I had very old guys as my manager and I had managers that were my peers and my age and then "moved on" to have their manager bit flipped. When I read Joels series of posts on management styles it reminded me of some of my previous managers and the way they interacted with me and my peers. There were the guys who felt they had to make a decision simply because they were the manager, ignoring the fact that they had no background or in-depth knowledge to even make such a decision. Then there were those that were afraid to make a decision. Or maybe not afraid to make a decision but rather afraid or scared to stick up for it. I admit it's probably not easy managing programmers because a lot of them have a self perception problem and think they are better than they really are. But what happened to "common sense"? I think if some managers would start thinking how they would like to be treated as a managee they would do things differently. So along those lines, here are some things a manager of a programmer should avoid:

1. Don't make decisions based on traditions. Hearing "This is how we used to do things" drives me nuts. Listen to your people what they have to say.
   
2. Don't treat everyone the same. Some people like to be told directly what's going on and others can't handle the truth. I don't suggest that lying should be part of a managers repertoire but it always drove me nuts hearing managers beating around the bushes and saying the most brutal things in such flowery words that it was almost impossible to figure out what they wanted to say. Let's face it, work is no kindergarten and if someone can't stand being told how things are they should find a different lien of work.
3. Becoming a manager for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't become a manager because it is the natural advancement on the career ladder. If you are kick-ass programmer, researcher that doesn't mean that one will be a great manager. I for one hate to deal with all the personal BS and I can't see myself becoming one soon. However, if one becomes a manager they often stop to think like a programmer because they have to fit into the management chain.
4. Not givning people some freedom. Micromanagement sucks. Constantly breathing down someone's neck sucks too. There are times when things like that are justified but again, these tools shouldn't be used in general but rather based on the individual managee. Some of them need the daily dose of manager interaction, others can go a week without it.
5. Not sticking up for your people. I once had a manager who seemed threatened by me and the work I was doing. Don't know why but we never hit it off. When evaluations rolled around he wrote a one sentence evaluation like this: "Joerg did outstanding work!" What's wrong with that you may ask? Well, sounds pretty good but it was just an attempt to hide the fact that he did not want to push upper management for also giving me the best rating which really mattered in terms of recognition (by upper management and through compensation). So I talked to him and it turned out that he never even tried, had no idea what my contributions were. So I told him he sucked, went to his manager and told him what I had said. Now, don't try this at home. You should be very certain to do such a thing. I probably owuld have done it anyway even without being in very good standing. But it does raise the point why some people become managers when they truly suck and how they remain in that position for so long.
   

There is certainly more and I do want to add that I did have some good managers. The ones that I considered good were usually very direct, straightforward and demanded a lot. But they were also giving back a lot. So, whoever is a manager or becomes a manager, remember the times you were fed up with your manager and try to avoid exactly those things. That's the best way of becoming a great manager.

What a weekend ...

Man, last weekend was rough. Like many others, too many if you ask me, we lost power on Saturday evening and didn't get it back until Monday morning when PG&E temporarily fixed it. They permanently fixed it last night when we were again without power for another 4 hours. Now, of course, compared to some people in Almaden Valley, San Jose or some folks in St. Louis this is a short amount of time. But not when it is this hot and when you have small children. On Sunday afternoon, it was 97 degrees inside the house. We don't have A/C so we use regular fans in the evening to cool down our house and that generally is enough. However, when you lose power you can't even do that. And the weirdest part was that it was only one block of 23 houses in my neighborhood. As soon as you crossed a street, everyone had power. An old transfomer blew up. So what did we do? Well, friends of ours were kind enough to host Sonja and the boys for the day (Thanks Anke and John, and to your A/C unit). My friend and neighbor Brett across the street was (and still is) hosting our small freezer. And while Sonja and the boys were chilling, I tried to figure out how to cool the house somewhat so that we can at least spend the night. If it would not have been for our children, Sonja and I would have just pitched a tent and slept outside but our two boys need their sleep. So I bought a backup generator and another neighbor (Thanks Rich) helped me hook up the generator to the breaker panel so that we could use things in the house. We turned off everything but the fans and the fridge and that helped a lot. And I admit, at some point we turned on the dsl modem ... ;-)

Now all in all, it wasn't a major desaster but rather a big inconvenience. However, it felt great how our friends and neighbors helped and offered shelter, cold beverages and whatever else we could have needed. Thanks to everyone. If one of you ever needs a backup power generator in the future, just call me.

Changes ...

FW:
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

This is a picture of a very good friend of mine. She is also the godmother of my two boys and pregnant herself. When we IM with each other we always call each other things like "hottie" and some other things. We sort of always flirt in joking way. We are both married but not to each other. Anyway, now that she is pregnant, obviously her body is undergoing somewhat drastic changes. We tell each other a lot of things and she was telling me about some pregnancy related changes. I told here to send me a picture of it, so she used her camera phone and did just that. A couple of hours later she was complaining that I had not put this on my blog. Well, not wanting to be rude, here it is. As you can tell from the picture, you can probably guess which body part we were talking about. Very impressive, from 34B to 36C in just 15 weeks. We have a bet going on how large they will become but I won't share the details on that one .. Anyway, May when you are reading this, you wanted it here but I wish you all the luck in the world and keep my finger crossed that you will have a healthy and beautiful little baby come January.

Almost didn't make it ...

Image012.jpg
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

... to work this morning. What's that in the picture you ask? That's what's left of the rubber on my rear road bike tire. I was minding my own business in the bike lane when that tiny asian lady in her boring Toyota Camry decided to turn into the entrance of a parking lot and completely cut me off ... After she had sat in the turning lane for an eternity and I figured she had seen me, so I kept going. Turns out I was wrong and she started to cut me off. I grabbed the brakes as hard as I could, got out of my clipless pedals and started sliding towards her passenger side. Fortunately she saw and stopped so that I could hop onto the sidewalk and jump off my bike. Got lucky, this time. What did the lady do? Rolls down the window, flips up her full facial visor (you know, the black ones you always see on tiny asian women in minivans) and asks me whether I was alright. First I thought I should yell at her and tell her to never drive a car again but would it have mattered? Most likely not. So I picked up my bike and noticed a wobble in the rear wheel. Caused by the missing rubber. I was going abotu 20mph when this happened and it would have hurt. At least that's what I think. My heart rate after that was about 180 for a while. What's the moral of the story? Watch out for those people wearing full facial visors. They may not see you because they have that thing in front of their faces. And further watch out for that certain demographic. They simply can't drive or are just too clueless. I am glad my brakes worked and that I made it to work in one piece. At least I get to go to a bike store again and drool over those ridiculously expensive bikes.

A Thing of Beauty ...

Porsche announced a new version of the 911, the Targa. The glass roof top slides in front of the rear window. Check it out on Porsche's web site. Skydriving, a thing of beauty.

Math for dummies ...

Check out math for dummies (from Amr's blog). I wonder what math teachers/professors think when they read/grade stuff like that.

Made the deadline ...

The past few nights I spent more time on my computer after work, trying to finish a paper about some cool indexing stuff with some of my former friends/coworkers from IBM. We made the deadline of July 12, 11:55pm PST. For a while we were debating what this means for our situation since we current have daylight savings (PDT) but we figured it out and submitted on time. It was kind of nice to work on some of the stuff again that I worked on for over 5 years at IBM. Hopefully, the paper gets in to the conference (ICDE 2007), held next year in Istanbul, Turkey. The only thing that sucks about writing a paper in your spare time is that it meant to work until midnight for a few nights in a row and I think I am getting too old for this. Man, I am tired. Especially, since my kids still get up around 6am and demand breakfast ... ;-)
But it was fun nonetheless. Thanks to Dan, Linda and Jeff, and our friends at Corona and Spaten breweries, as well as the Taste of China.

World Cup 2006 - Bottom 10

Ok, let's move on to the not so pleasant things about the past World Cup. And let's not confuse this with anything else, these are my bottom 10, feel free to disagree. ;-)

1. Italy winning it all. Well, what can I say. I am German and was hoping for Germany to capture their fourth titel.
2. Diving. Too much diving, play the game and only fall down if someone makes you. The worst teams: Italy, Portugal, Argentina. The worst individual offender: Christiano Ronaldo from Portugal.
3. Brazil has to be the biggest disappointment of the tournament. No team chemistry, lackluster performances. I didn't mind at all seeing them leave the tournament early. Most overrated team.
   
4. Overrated and overhyped players: David Beckham, Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney. None of them showed that the hype about them was justified. Beckham had one goal, so what? Seemed out of shape to me. Wayne Rooney should have stayed home.
   
5. England sucked (Most overrated team after Brazil). Not one of the games they played left you with an impression that they are one of the stronger teams. Thank god the English fans behaved.
   
6. Zinedine Zidane's red card. I love Zidane as a player and what he can do with the ball and I always liked that he wasn't a diver. But his behavior in the final was wrong, regardless of what the Italian player (Materazzi) said to him.
7. Materazzi, the Italian defender who provoked Zidane. First he claimed he didn't do anything and then he admits he provoked him. What they really said to each other we probably will never find out. But when Materazzi's soccer carreer is over, he will make a fine actor, as most Italian and Argentinian players will.
8. The scenes after the PK shootout between Germany and Argentina. I am sure some German players weren't innocent in this but Argentina came across as poor losers.
   
9. FIFA suspensions. What are they thinking and what footage were they watching? The Italian defender De Rossi gets 4 games after elbowing the American McBride who required stitches in this face. He could play again in the final. The Argentinian third goal keeper kicks a German player into the midsection after Argentina's loss to Germany and gets 3 or 4 games. They suspend the German player Frings after reviewing fishy footage. In that same incidence, teh Argentinian Maxi Rodrigues leaps in teh air to punch a German player from behind gets the two games. Wayne Rooney gets a two game suspension as well. They apprently don't compare and go by the book. De Rossi should have been suspended for the rest of the tournament.
10. Players demanding yellow or red cards for their opponent. I say, any player who does that should be given a yellow card. Play the game, stop complaining and try to score honest goals not by diving and whining. Overall, it was amazing to see how many players returned from the dead in too many games after being barely fouled.
    

World Cup 2006 - Top 10

Damn, the soccer world cup is over, what am I going to do during lunch breaks now for the next 4 years? Good thing that the Euro 2008 is only 2 years away. Time to reflect, here are my personal top 10:

1. The fans and the atmosphere. Being from Germany and seeing the enthusiasm and excitement in Germany. Made me wish I could be there. It was also great to see how Germans finally waved their flag without having to feel bad about what happened in the past. At times there were more than a million people watching and celebrating on the fan mile in Berlin.
   
2. Germany's performance. There weren't a lot of people in Germany or elsewhere that believed in the team and Juergen Klinsmann. But the young group played well and made it far. Too bad we fell 2 minutes short in the semifinals.
3. Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian team captain. Superb defender and clean player. Only likeable guy on an Italian team full of actors.
4. Miroslav Klose, the German forward. Scored 5 goals himself and assisted on another one. Won the Golden Show award for best goal scorer in the tournament.
5. Germany winning on PKs against Argentina. Jens Lehman, the German goalie was awesome.
6. Ricardo, the Portuguese goalie, saving 3 PKs against England. Admittedly, the English PKs were weak but Riccardo didn't just jump into a corner hoping he would get lucky.
7. The Italian defense. Say whatever you want, it's often not pretty but very effective. And even though I hated to seem win it all they played the most consistent soccer through the entire tournament and they were always dangerous up front.
   
8. Maxi Rodriguez game-winning goal against Mexico in overtime. Clearly a lucky shot but nonetheless spectacular. Goal of the tournament.
9. Zinedine Zidane's ball handling. Fun to watch. His action that led to a red card in the final was not but rather makes it onto the bottom 10 of this world cup (see next post).
10. Phillip Lahm, the young German defender who lit up the left side with his runs and dangerous crosses. Scored the first goal of the tournament which was a beauty. Got Germany rolling, which was very important.

Yeah, I know, the list is a little biased towards German achievements but hey, it's ok to take a side here. I am German after all. Now let's move on to the bottom 10 of the World Cup, watch this blog for a post on that.