Category: Thoughts
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Relationships: The Moving Landmarks Of Life
During my stint in EDA software, I had a lot of dinners with sales guys and their friends. Inevitably dinner conversation turned to comparing Rolodexes* . What ever happened to Soh Insoh, one would say? He’s at Apple working with Frank. Frank left Azul? etc. Every industry is a small world. Of course, sales guys aren’t…
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Screen-protectors & Regret
Some years ago, I forked out birthday money for a 32GB iPod touch. It was time to join the horde and experience iOS myself. I purchased a screen protector and case to guard my new expensive possession. No one wants to use a scratched piece of technology. After a few weeks, the screen protector has…
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The Benefits of Ruts
Variety is the spice of life, that’s true. We only notice things that change, things that don’t simply fade into the background. Change creates the flavor that piques our interest and makes us want to take another bite, but if there is too much spice, not so much. This is the side effect of variety.…
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The Complaints of Youth?
Yesterday on the subway, a two-year old was whining over wanting his mother to sit next to him on the train. It’s easy for us to judge children as they complain about the trivial things in life, but how often do we do the same. Every age of life has its own challenges and difficulties.…
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What We Take For Granted
One of my good friends grew up in El Paso, but had lots of family across the border near Juarez. Before he was born, his mom had bought some land in Mexico and some of his family setup some buildings with whatever material the could find and made a camp on the land. He used…
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Where do superstitions come from?
Designing computer chips is a fairly complicated affair. One of my friends who does this described the job this way: Imaging being 4-inches tall and climbing into the cockpit of a 747 — you sit down and look to the left and it is a sea of switches and knobs. You look to the right…
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The Standing Desk Disconnect
Recently, I started experiencing some back pain and started thinking about improving my work ergonomics. I had never tried a standing desk but noticed a number of the people I worked with had them and I’ve wanted to try it ever since reading about the perils of sitting to much. Fortunately, I was able to…
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Ennui : Why We Need Challenges
Earlier this summer we bought some tomato plants. It was too late to make a garden to plant them so they stayed in their rich potting soil, received great sunlight and were watered (usually). They flowered quite a bit and produced a couple tomatoes. Mostly they just sat there. The fall came along with the threat…
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Trusting Science over Reason
In Technopoly, Neil Postman writes about a trick he loved to play on his fellow professors. When he greeted them in the morning, he would ask whether they had read the C-section of the paper today. If they responded that they had, he would continue making small talk and carry on as usual. If, however, they…
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Not Knowing What You Don’t Know
Last week, I borrowed a nice SLR camera to take some pictures of a wedding this last weekend. He suggested giving it to me a few days early and did, so I would have some time to try it out. He went over the basic functionality of the camera and the external flash. I’ve taken…