December 2010
10 posts
Rented Life
God I love living in a rental house. Amazingly better than living in a house I own. First of all, in Australia, the rent for the house is about 1/2 what I would pay in a mortgage for the same house. So it’s cheaper. Second, I don’t have to repair or maintain anything! Hey look there is a crack in the wall. Well, too bad for the guy who owns the house, I don’t care. At the...
5 Fingered Shoes
I am a big proponent of barefoot running. Before I ran with my wonderful 5 fingered shoes, I suffered from knee problems and shin-splints. With them I went from couch potato to marathon in 9 months. But alas, they wear out. I guess you only get 800K per shoe. My big toe is wearing through the front of my Bikilas which I imported from the States. However, this conflicts with...
Minimalist Experiment
My new years resolution is in the form of an experiment. I am going to attempt to not purchase anything in 2011. I’m embracing minimalism for the year and rejecting materialism. The Rules: 1) I can buy medicine, food, drink, fuel, hygiene and other consumables. 2) I can reuse any packaging from consumables. 3) Any gifts received which do not comply to the rules, must either be returned or...
Minimalism
I am embracing the new minimalism. No more purchasing crap. I want to reuse what I have and own less next year than this year. I really don’t need yet another thing made in china, produced for no good reason and shipped to me. This year is all about reuse and saving money towards real goals. Like freedom from work, having a lifestyle I want and not having obligations to others. Is stuff...
Upward Spiral
Personally I have been caught in downward spirals within my life. Something happens and perhaps I start participating in an unhealthy lifestyle. Then because I have started down that path, I continue with more unhealthy activities. Thus begins the downward spiral. But the nice thing is there is opposite situation which can occur. You can be caught in an upward spiral. A spiral of AWESOMENESS....
Getting Motivated
Sometimes I have difficulty in finding proper motivation. Money is usually a good motivator for people, but I find that I’m not so interested in buying things. However, money does buy freedom. In the sense I can use it to buy some peace and quiet in the terms of a little land and space. However, I need more than just money as a motivator. So now, I think I’ll move forward with the...
Bored
I figure that people who like to achieve something at their job, or really any task must follow the following chart. I’m either stressed because the task is way beyond my skill, happy because I’m in the zone, or so bored because I am working below my capacity.
RACI
Using the RACI model in my agile project. Actually think this works. It’s a concise way to assign different levels of participation in a project. In a project that has many different teams with stakeholders, I would use this method. Some reading here.
Vendor Ecosystems
When starting on a new project, how do you decide on which platform to use? IMHO, there are 2 viable cloud application platforms, Azure and Google App Engine. How do you decide which to use? Is it really the technical aspects of the system which influence the decision? Can you write better applications in C# than Java / Python? I suspect the real answer is which vendor ecosystem you want to...
Nouns and verbs
For the most part, things really don’t make me happy. I pretty much hate owning things. Because even if you like a thing, entropy comes into play, and that thing gets old, gets worn or if you are a geek like me, just becomes obsolete. For the most part, I can’t think of a time in my life that I look back on and think to myself, “I am so glad I bought that thing” or...