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I did an rtb presentation today. I got good feedback from the guys. However, there was a long discussion about Inventory. It is not natural. It was confusing. I should update the presentation to make sure that this comes out a lot simpler, a lot easier to understand. In fact, I should have examples from the table so it’s a lot more clear.

But other than that, we kept it open. Questions were asked.

So this presentation allows me to get back to rtb. It also allows me to polish the presentation and make it great. I will try to do that.

My kids don’t want to just sit home all day on a weekend. Neither do I. I made a goal recently that I want to take them somewhere on a weekend. So this weekend, we went out for bowling! It was a lot of fun. We played a game. Even Victor played! That’s something. He still needs to throw better, but getting his shoes on was an accomplishment. 

So overall, I think it was a great idea. And my kids enjoyed it.

So I guess a learning lesson for the day is, yes, keep taking my sons out every weekend. Money should not stop me, as there are places we can go that are not super expensive. So bowling for a game for 3 of us costs $26. That’s not too bad.

I did a presentation at work today. It was about making sure we don’t make things worse when coding. And 2, about making things better. 

I pushed myself a bit to make the presentation. I relied on a lot of material from the book, Working Effectively with Legacy Code. It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. It’s going to be one of my top 10 books. It is filled with lots of material on how to tackle different scenarios when working with legacy code.

I wasn’t nervous, so that’s good.

I did not prepare enough. So that’s not good. I would have polished the presentation a bit more. In a few places, I would have used better words and descriptions. 

But overall, I think I am making pregress when presenting. I am confident. That’s a good sign.

Lately, my head is spinning a lot. I am learning a lot of information about cassandra. It’s great. I love learning about it. But it does occupy my time. Bu

It’s good to have a general undestanding of how the systems that we work with work.

Take for instance Cassandra, or Hive, or Kafka. It’s good to understand how they work. 

Wickus is forcing us to learn, based on the questions he is asking. But I told him, that at some point, we’re going to have to get results. Learning is great, GTD is what we’re there for. We’re paid for GTD.

I have a presentation tomorrow that I still have to prepare. I should go ahead and do that.

Hard work yields results. Not always the way I would expect them, but always something to show.

I think that’s the biggest lesson for today.

We had our demo at work. We signed up for a lot. I doubted that we can finish it off by the end of the sprint. But we managed to get it mostly complete. 

It’s a big accomplishment. I saw my team work hard together. That’s very good. That’s good progress. And that’s what I can expect from them. Hard work.

I’m seeing better effort from T. I am encouraged by that. I want to see whether he can build on that. I will encourage him.

I saw hard work from J. He gets things done. That’s excellent. Not a flashy demo, so perhaps that’s one thing he can improve.

And W. I have to approach learning on the job the same way he does. He just wants to learn and he works hard to make sure he does. It’s awesome. But now is time to show some results. We’ll see.

So overall, my team gave its best effort and we were able to accomplish more than expected. Good job!

I appreciate my team. Effort is there. Teamwork is there. What else can I ask?

One thing we have to know, and this is not our fault, that we are not magicians. We can’t creat stuff from nothing. It’s just the way it is. But we can raise a few issues. We can help create an environment where things are not hidden under the rug.

We can make the dev process better. We can make sure we’re improving.

That’s why I am going to propose that we make a few changes.

We have 4 x 8 man days. That’s 32 days in a sprint. I am proposing that we use 4 / 32 (12.5%) of the time, as allocated by team lead, on tech debt / innovation. This will make sure that we use that time to our needs and that those days are well spent.

I will think abou it some more, but I think I like it.

Learning on a deep level requires dedication. I have to force myself to do that. I am collecting pomos every day. I just have to make sure that I’m learning in that time period. Not checking email. Not transferring money. Learning.

With time, I know I’m going to increase my domain knowledge.

With time, I know I’m going to increase my technical knowledge.

I have lots to learn. I learn constantly. But I have to learn on a level that I can explain it to others. I have to learn so I can practice the knowledge that I acquired. It’s not easy. It’s learning on a deeper level.

I’ve had this goal for a while now.

Learning just for learning will not cut it for me anymore. I have to learn the systems so well that I can explain them well to others.

I have to create a great documentation that others can benefit from.

No pain no gain.

Having a goal of doing something every weekend with my kids is a good goal. It makes a way more interesting weekend. It forces me to think about my kids. It exposes my kids to different experiences.

So yesterday I was thinking about Camden Zoo. But it’s close to 2 hours to get there. So I found a zoo in CT. Maritime acquarium. It was a good experience. Lots of animals. You could see seals up close. You could touch sting fish. And you could even touch the sharks.

And talk about the sharks. They had some huge ones in the acquarium. I have a few up close pics of their teeth. It was amazing.

We ended the day by seeing an IMAX movie about the great white shark. It wasn’t breath taking but it was cool. I liked it.

We then decided to go to Applebees. I am getting a little worried that we’re spending money left and right. We don’t have that much money. But what wife wants, she gets. But there was another scene. I said we should get chips and dip. She wanted wings. She then said we can have chips now and some other day, we’ll have wings. I said fine. However, after the wings arrived, she really got the nerves. She started complaining. She got really upset. I was surprised. I did not feel good. Why did I take them to a restaurant? Why am I doing that for them? I don’t need that!

It wasn’t a good experience at the restaurant. As for me, in the future, I learned to keep away. Let them have what they want.

I am learning that I have to learn better. Deeper. More agressive. Learning to remember.

It’s tough.

I feel kind of stupid and sometimes embarrassed.

I’ve been there for over 3 years. I still don’t really understand prospecting.

I’ve been doing software development for many years now. I still don’t know or don’t feel comfortable in front of others on the board.

Will I ever be?

Do I need to be?

It would help me. And I need to learn. I need to get comfortable with the techniques. Once I am comfortable, then at least it will be easier.

But I have to learn more because we got a new star on my team. And he’s been asking us tough questions. And he demands that things are explained to him. And that’s the right approach. If we are going to work on something, we should learn how it works first. This switching project has its cost. And it does not come for free.