Author: SK

What a day. I will probably never forget it.
I was driving to work on Parkway. I was going north, close to the Saddle River exit. Suddenly, I see a car, going on Parkway Souch, a Ford Mustang, getting off the road and driving down the uphill divider (not sure what you call that). The car was going directly at the cars driving North. What do I do? I keep driving and I though I might just pass by. I see that the Mustang hit a car in the next lane. But because it was at a high speed, the car turned around and was going in my direction. It was not the original car but one of the ones that got hit. I look on the right side and I see a car almost hitting me. I turned left a little bit and somehow – miraculously – I avoided being hit. It would not have been a big hit, but still. I hear car after car being hit. Maybe around 7 cars that got hit.
Oh, man, my adrenaline got pumping. I had to stop by on the side of the road. The whole traffic was stopped. I should have walked to the scene, but I did not want to see any injuries.

I don’t like days like today. Nothing seems to work. 🙁
I tried getting blojsom to work with what I need. Namely, I would like to post XML-RPC entries to a blog, but it was complagning about something missing, etc. How am I supposed to know how to do that if there is no documentation? I installed pebble and I got the same problem. I was onto something… I figured out that I was not passing the correct params. I downloaded some stuff from the web and just before I was ready to leave I got it to work!
One of my everyday goals is to do something that I fear. Something that is out of my comfort zone. I would like to keep doing that. Did I do anything like that today? No.
What is the new word I learned today? Coalesce – I just looked it up in the book now. It means to unite together.

Am I improving in my communication skills? I think so. I feel more confident when I’m doing my opening remarks as the President. I feel more confident when making a speech to a group. I have better eye contact.
I’m still struggling when I make a Table Topics speech. It’s still not smooth. I am still having trouble just answering them. What I should do is come up with some sort of a technique that I can incorporate into my daily life.
It all comes down to story telling. I want to become a better story teller. That is where I struggle. And had always. But in order to become a good communicator, I need to get better at it. I need to just be able to say whathever I’m asked about.
One other thing I should try, and John L is very good at it, is become more expressive. I should go wild from time to time. Show and tell! I should definitely try that.
My vocabulary needs to improve as well. A lot of times, I am at lack of words. I don’t know simple words. I struggle. I am trying to learn a word a day, for instance, I learned the word “maligned.” It means to give somebody bad overview.
Thus, as I can see, my communication skills still need a lot of improvement. But the most important thing: I am improving. I am happy about that.

Here at Markit days are going very fast. Why? Because I have stuff to do. There is a lot of learning and getting to know stuff that I need to do. The systems here are very complicated. Maybe too much, but what am I going to do? But it’s interesting to actually work with these guys. My manager – team lead – is on vacation, so things are more relaxed and Tom and I can work freely. But we’ve got stuff to do. So we’re occupied.
My son Fabian is just a beautiful baby. He looks so handsome. People say he looks like me, but I’m not so sure. He is too pretty. 🙂 He’s handling the teething process very well so far. I know he’s in pain, but he handles it well.

This was a cool day at work. We’re debugging this admin tool for the whole day. Oh, man. Some people just make things work and make it work in such a way that it is impossible to debug them. Good luck trying to do that. That’s why I think great developers make things as simple as possible. It takes a lot of skill to do that. Not everyone can do that, actually. If people that modify the project you had worked on don’t have issues, then that’s great.
I felt tired today. My son is waking up during the night. He’s crying a little. Not too much, which is great. But he wakes up a couple times during the night and he’s crying. He’s in pain. I feel him. But he’s so adorable. I brought a picture of him to work. The lady that sits next to me said, “oh, he is so adorable.” Almost everyone says that. That’s great. Because he is.

I interviewed another guy here at Markit. He had a good broad knowledge, but on the coding level he was not so sharp. I asked him about threads and he did not how to answer the question. He had good overall OO knowledge, which I think is important. He could write a simple program, which is good. But I am sure if I grilled him deeper, he would crack. That’s what I have to do. I have to develop some harder questions for people.
One such question is about the different data structures and their algorithms. I could ask people how to do the comparator class.
One other question, which Tom asks and I think it’s a good one is to ask the candidate which data structure you would use if you had to limit the size – not go over a certain size. I still have to find a solution for this. One way would be to use a Queue, or a Stack, but searching is not so easy. Maybe another way is a LinkedHashMap. In either case, it would be interesting to see what the client goes through.
What I liked about the candidate is that he had the concepts correct. He would be a good team lead. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re going to hire him. I told Vlad he was good, but that he is looking for more of a team lead/mgr position.
Fabian, who crawled on Tue, took a step back yesterday. He could not make any progress crawling. It could be that he was tired. When I was bathing him, he did not really feel like playing.

I’m in my 3rd week here at Markit. I had a different experience today. It was a first experience of such kind. I actually interviewed a guy. Vlad, my official manager, came up to me and asked whether I’m willing to do it. At first, when I heard him, I felt really nervous. But after a while, the nervousness subsided. And after the handshake, I was really relaxed. I enjoyed interviewing the guy. He was average. He had decent experience but he was not very detailed. Besides, his threading was completely wrong. He did not have too much knowledge about the new features in Java 5. He was just an average, or below average guy. Not really a top notch candidate we’re looking for.
I got my first paycheck today. It looks pretty good. Not much different from my old paycheck, but still a decent check.
My son Fabian is actually making good progress crawling. He started crawling yesterday. Well, not really crawling, but with effort he can get from one point to another. It’s really exciting. I started doing the bathing with him. It’s a lot of fun for me and for Fabian. He really enjoys it and goes crazy. Having a kid like Fabian really changed our lives. Especially my wife’s. Oh, man, she loves it and would probably kill himself for him.

I am making good progress at my current project at Markit. I’m able to do some Swing staff. It’s a new project so that makes it more exciting. It feels pretty good. The people here at Markit are friendly. They don’t have an ego. This is a very good change that I have obsevered so far. The current location is also better. It’s more central in White Plains. I have walking distance to Walmart, B&N, Target, and more. I like it.
So far, I am happy with the move. It’s even more than I expected. We’ll see what happens in the future. Like I said, my goal is to be here for 2-3 years at least. Can I last? I think so.
One negative thing is the time it takes me to work and commute for 9AM. It’s worse because I had a 10AM commute at Ask which worked great. I might be able to do that here down the road.

A somewhat boring beginning to the day. Actually, when I think about it, it started out pretty good. I discovered how to actually display “balloon messages” using JDIC. Pretty simple stuff. Tom liked it. I like it as well.
One thing I’m noticing about myself is that I cannot talk freely. My dictionary is very limited. I have to work hard on getting my dictionary improved. I have to become a better story teller. I need to have a better eye contact. My vocabulary needs to improve a great deal. In order to become a better communicator, a well-rounded person, and have the ability to advance, I need to be a more open speaker and speak freely.

I started my second week at Markit today. So far so good. I actually like it. The guys here are very technical. But my immediate manager and his manager are good. I like them. They’re trustworthy. They say what they mean. They don’t have an ego. They’re demanding, sure. But that is something that I can deal with.
I competed in an Evaluation contest in Toastmasters. I did a pretty good evaluation, I though. I placed 3rd, and we had six contestants. That’s not bad. Especially, when looking at the competition. But I’m not totally satisfied. I thought I might place first. But that is wishful thinking, I think. Bill and Sara do excellent evaluations and they placed before me.
Fabian is a very pretty boy. People cannot stop saying how beautiful he is. He’s precious. I love him more and more. He’s not sleeping by himself. We have not trained him to sleep by himself. We installed the crib yesterday and he slept most of the night in it, but several times he was crying. He wants to sleep with us. My wife wants him to sleep with us. But he should sleep by himself. We have to work with him on that.