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I just heard something weird… I think Chris is not having a good time with his new hire. I am not sure why. He seems to me like he knows what he’s doing. Something is going on. Not sure why.
I am reworking my resume. I think it’s time for me to passively start looking. It’s a good idea for me. I am going to be more involved. Also, by doing that I can see what skills are in demand and what’s out there.
My longer-term goal has not changed. I want a leadership position. It’s going to be hard for me, that’s for sure. But I think I can do that no problem.
My boy Fabian is just getting bigger and bigger. Wow, it’s amazing. My wife treats him OK I think. She could do anything for him. That is great to see.

I have to stay positive. There is no reason for me not too. I don’t like my current task at work. That’s a fact. But I have to wait it out a little. It also gives me a chance to work on my resume. I want to resume the work on that and upload it on the job sites. If something comes up, I can grab it. I am ready to move on if something good appears.
My son Fabian is a lot of fun now. He’s seven weeks now but he is smiling more and more. I love to play with with. He is liking it when I read him Brown Bear. He really likes the mobile as well. It’s great. He is a fun boy. I love to be with him. I think he will be even better pretty soon.

I don’t like days like today. A day of inactivity basically. I feel guilty. I don’t feel good at all.
I have to ask the question: why am I getting paid? What are my goals at work? Am I going in that direction?
The answer to both question is a big no. I am not doing the work that I should be doing.
Well, it’s not really true. One, I don’t have any tasks assigned to me. That’s the problem. I should be looking actively for work myself.
Two, am I getting better as a developer? Yes and no. But overall, not enought. I spent a lot of time doing kacwin.com stuff. I should not be doing that. I should be reading dev material. I should be doing dev projects. I should be getting better as a developer and period. I know the stuff is exciting, but I should not be spending more than an hour on it. Really.
The way things are looking for me is that I will probably look for another job soon. I hate not having to do anything. I have no direction whatsoever. That is not good. I just need to prepare myself and be ready for everything. I have spent a year and three months here. I am starting to smell something more.

My main goal in the next year or two is to get better at just talking to people. I would like to be able to clearly explain what I mean. I would like to be able to explain the stuff I’m doing without any issues. I would like to be as effective when I’m speaking as I’m writing. It’s possible. I’ve never possesed this skill and ever since I was a boy I had this issue, but I’m willing to work hard and make mistakes to correct this issue.
Being able to communicate clearly is such a valuable skill. Not only at work, but everywhere. Everywhere I go, I need to explain what I mean. I need to explain stuff to other people. I need to be at ease when I’m doing it. It just the most important thing before I can move up with my career. No question about that.
I know what to say. I am nervous at times. I am avoiding eye contact at times. I need to stop that. I need to maintain good eye contact. I need to just be confident and sure what to say. A scenario where I’m lacking words should not repeat.

Service Oriented architecture. That is something that is getting bigger and bigger. It is getting more and more important. There are more jobs now with that. As an architect, I have to know it on a deeper level. I need to learn and actually implement some of the patterns.
Reading for an hour in the morning is great. It’s such a good thing. Because I am not interrupted, I can totally dedicate this hour just for reading. And it works. Plus, I can do it for 7 days a week because I wake up at 6 every day. Six out of seven is sufficient, but why not seven?
Fabian is growing. He is getting bigger and better. He is more active now. He likes to be held in arms. He was a little sick yesterday. He had a little temperature and had a stuffy nose. He was so quiet yesterday. You could see that he was not being himself. My heart was hurt seeing him like that.

My speech on Saturday was OK. I got good responses from the people. However, I still have a lot of things to improve upon.
I need to relax more! I really need to get better at that. I still seem tense when I’m up there. It’s not the way I want to be. Gertrude pointed out, that normally I am this relaxed person, smiling. When I’m on stage giving up the speech, I seem tense. I need to move a little bit. Not too much, of course, as I tend to sway a little to much, but enough to create a lively environment.
I need to smile more. I smile a lot when I am talking to people. It seems like I always smile. But when I’m giving a speech, I don’t.
As far as the eye contact, I really need to be bold. Whenever I speak, I need to do that. I talk to my father, look him into his eyes. I need to do this until it actually feels uncomfortable. I think that it is right away, and then I shy away.
Overall, a good speech. I think I am improving.

I am making a speech again tomorrow at my Toastmasters club. I am a little bit nervous, adrenaline is starting to go up. But I think that’s normal. I like that. What are my objectives tomorrow? I want to move less and have a better conctact with the audience. I am going to record it so I can watch it and see if I succeded.
I am still having problems maintaining a good eye contact. It’s OK when I know what I’m saying. When I have a problem, make a mistake or I’m not sure what to say, I lose the contact. I have to be bold enought and maintain the eye contact. It’s a crucial thing.
What is my speech about? I’m going to talk about how to create an ideas map. It just tell me, when I look at the speeches I made, that I am a true coach. I like to teach. I like to help other people. That is something to think about when I am thinking about my career.

I still feel a little nervous when I have to make a speech. Not really nervous, I think, but I like to do a good job in anything I do. My next project is to do create a presentation-type of a speech. It’s not something that is easy to do. It’s not just a regular speech. I have to use prompts. The problem is that I don’t have prompts. I have to think of something. One of the things I am thinking of doing is to create a speech on “How to Remember a Speech” and use a flip chart. I can have some prepared and I can have some that I can do on a fly. That’s interesting.
A flip chart. I just had to look up that word. It’s a big note-taking tool for making presentations and stuff.

I am learning a lot. I learn a pattern a day, which is great. Today, I learned about the Mediator pattern. As I explained on 43things, mediator is almost like a dictator: all of the control goes through it. And the mediator makes a decision what to do and whether to call the other object to update themselves. It a good pattern. It reduces coupling.
My wife went to Rutherford and she said she liked it. I like it very much. It’s one of the towns which I can probably still affort. I’m going to try to buy a house there in 2007 or 2008. Right now, the houses there are out of my reach. I’d like to buy something in 300-315 range. Right now, I’m dreaming. But we’ll see what happens.

My son has a small defect. It got discovered by his pediatrician. She said she hears some noise in his heart. My wife took him today to get checked out. It turns out that this is a fairly common thing. They did not say whether this is curable, but it is something that is not going to cause any harm to him. He is going to get checked out in 3 months.
It’s amazing to see my kid smile. Oh, my god. He gives me so much joy. It’s great to hold him and see him smile. There is nothing like that in the world. Amazing feeling.
More and more, when I think about my career, I see myself in a leadership position. I like to coach. I would like to help people get better. Today, I found something that tells me that good leaders need to be able to teach. Good leaders need to be able to create good leaders. That’s exactly what I want.