Author: SK

I am reverting to the old ways of doing non-work related stuff. I have to stop that. I have plenty of stuff to learn. I have plenty of stuff to read that is non-dev. Then why am I reading non dev? This is a question that I need to be asking myself often. Who do I want to become? Where do I want to end up? Do I want to move up? I want to move up. I still don’t know a lot as a developer. There is no time for me to play around. There is no time for me to reading housing material/news at work. I have to stop. I can spend zero/null time on it. That’s what I should adopt.
I should actually remove the accessibility for that. I could move my news material into the Google Reader. I should try that and see how it works out for me.

I am happy when I am doing work. I am even happier when I am doing new work. When I have to design something, when I have to use some pattern… that’s music to my ears. I put on headphones and get into the “zone.” 🙂 It’s something that I really enjoy doing.
On the other hand, when I don’t have a lot to do, as was the case at Ask, I get bored, I get annoyed, I get irritated. I am a doer. I don’t like to just sit and do nothing. When that happens, I see myself slowly dying. I don’t want that.
I can see myself here at Markit for two or three years. People here are open. They don’t have an ego. My manager is demanding but fair. He is open as well. I like it so far. It’s only been a month, but still.
One possibility in a couple of years is moving out of state. My wife said she is open to the idea of moving out west. If I can convince her to go to California, or to Colorado, that would be great. We could do that for a few years. I totally see myself doing that. We could buy a condo and live there. I would love to try that. I should not have a big issue of finding a new job. Maybe I’ll start looking in 2008. I should find out where to move, though. San Diego sounds fine to me. Berkley is another fine choice, though a little bigger city. I would like it to be a college city. We’ll see.

When I got a call from Steven from Ask, I replied very nervously. I did not have a confident voice. I did not want others to hear me. I was simply afraid to talk. Is that the behavior of a confident, excellent speaker? I don’t think so. I must change in that regard. When I am on the phone, I should answer with a lot of energy. I should sound happy and relaxed. And no matter who that is! There is no excuse for behavior like today. There have been people that told me that when I pick up the phone, I sound like I’m doing it for the first time. C’mon stas, you can do better!
Did I do anything out of my comfort zone today? Not really. But when I had a doubt, I went to my manager and told him about the issue/concern. That is what I want to continue doing.
I still have some work to do with Toastmasters. I need to finally do some work at home.
I met up with my friends from my previous job. We went to Atlanta Bread Company. We had a talk. It was a good meetup.

Fabian is waking up at night several times crying. Marta thinks it’s because he’s teething. I think it might be because of something else. It seems to me that he just got used to it and he’s doing it. In any case, it’s not a lot of fun.
Our Toastmasters club is hosting the area contest tomorrow. I cannot really make it as I’m at work and don’t want to take off early. I might end up doing that, but I’d rather not. I have only been here for a month now, so I don’t think I should.
I had some great news yesterday. I received a bonus from work. From my old job, actually. It was for $7K, which resulted around $4K after taxes. Not bad. It’s actually my best bonus I had received. Hopefully, it will be topped next year here at Markit. Hopefully. 

I still have some work to do at Toastmasters as the president. Last year as the VPE I have been very active. This year, as the president, I have not been that active. But I have a reason for that. Ever since my son was born, I just don’t have the time! It’s like my time disappeared. Oh, well.
But there are still some things that I would like to accomplish. First, I need to finally setup mentoring. It needs to be up and running. I promised it a long time ago but I have not done too much in that regard. Two, we need to create a vision/mission statement that is appropriate for our club. It needs to be something out of the comfort zone. It needs to inspire us and pushes us to be creative in growing our club. Anything else? Not sure.
Even though I have not been that active, I think we improved as a club. We are getting some good turnout, the quality of the meeting is high. We are improving as some of the feedback we get points out.

I decided on one thing today. I want to simplify my retirement investing. I also know that I like Vanguard. It’s the best mutual fund company that I know. Plus, they have a great interface on the web. They allow me to invest regularly and that’s what I want. As a result, I’m moving my retirement money (mine and Marta’s) to Vanguard.
We are canceling tomorrow’s Toastmasters’ meeting because of a weather condition. It’s been snowing all day today. Not much accumulation but the conditions are nasty. Library might also be closed. It’s a good move. Jim called me and let me know about that.
I am looking towards the weekend. I love to play with Fabian. I get more time to do that. He likes to play with me, I noticed recently. When I bath him, he laughs a lot. I do as well. 

I just learned a new word: bona fide. It means in good faith. I received a bona fide offer to join another company. It means that I received an authentic offer.
What do I think about the stock market? I think it’s going to be a correction type of a market till the end of the year. The housing market will be a drag, as Greenspan said today. It could mean that there will be more opportunities to buy. Same with the housing market, which will probably be a mostly-down market till 2008, when it could start going up.
I thought about my career a little bit. My current company, where I have been for the past month is probably going to be good for 2-3 years. What next? What do I want to do? Where do I want to go? What should I concentrate on so I’ll be ready? I think I have to get better in J2EE, app servers, Hibernate, AJAX, Ruby on Rails, and Spring. I should also get myself really familiar with Web Services and SOA. I would like my next job to be either an architect, a team lead, or a manager. I think it’s possible. In either case, I should have something where I’m in charge and I’m the one setting pace.

I was getting bored at work today. Not much to do. Not at least till the end of the day, where we had a group discussion about my alerting projects. Throughout the conversation, which was mostly technical, I was getting lost. I don’t know a lot of the tools/architectures that they were talking about. Not that I should, anyway, since I have not been properly introduced to them. But as a result of the conversation, I think we can move ahead with the project. I also have some small things to do now.
I started looking towards moving my Roth 401(k) into Vanguard. What Vanguard gives me is a fairly good list of funds, as well as a good way to manage addition to the portfolio. It does lock me to Vanguard funds. Currently, I’m not really happy with my selection of funds at Scottrade. I should find a better alternative or move some funds to a different set of funds. I need to research on that. I do think it’s important for me to have auto incremental additions. Thus, my immediate task is to evaluate my Roth accounts, and either rebalance it, or move it to a new account altogether.

Fabian is waking up a couple times during the night and cries really loud. Not sure why that happens. It stopped for a day or two, and now it happened again for the past two nights. It might be because he’s teething. It could. But his two teeth are out. He could have gotten used to it. Possible. We’ll see what happens in the next couple of days.
Did I do something out of my comfort zone today? Yes, actually. I called Steven from Ask.com. Calling somebody is not something I do, it’s definitely out of my comfort zone. Second, I went up to my immediate manager and asked him what I should be working on. It’s something that I did not really do at my older job but would like to start doing from now on.
I don’t have time for anything now. Ever since Fabian was born, my time is limited to do anything. I just don’t have the time to do anything. I have to sleep at least 7-8 hours, so I can stay up till around 10, maybe 10:30, but most of my time I am playing with Fabian. It’s fun, sure, and I enjoy it. Then in the morning, I read for an hour, and have generally around half an hour to read WSJ, news, and email. Not enough. At my older job, I used to start at 10AM and I had plenty of time. Well, I switched and I have to deal with it. I might adjust my clock to wake up 15 till 6, or 10 till 6. It might help.
What do I want to learn? I think I have to learn Java, J2EE and Jboss in the immediate term. After that, I should read about Hibernate and Spring, possibly Seam. A lot of learning.
Currently, I cannot really read at work. I just started so I don’t want to do it anyway, but the environment here is not that open. I sit across my manager.

I am realizing that I need to be bolder when I’m communicating. When I talk, I need to be full of energy. I need to add some vocal variety to my way of speaking. I don’t want to sound boring when I speak.
Also, when I speak in Toastmasters, I need to be bold. I should not be afraid to be controversial. I should just open up more and not be afraid to speak up. Raise my voice. I’m ready to take it up to the next level. I am definitely ready. And excited.
One other thing that I noticed is that I move my head a lot when I talk. I get excited and cannot really talk in a relaxed, eye to eye way. This creates pressure on the other end and people feel pressured. I feel pressured as well. Whenever I talk, I just need to relax and slow down. There is no reason to rush. I do it with my wife. I just have to carry it to my other way of talking.