2 posts tagged “work”

I picked a very convenient neighborhood to live in, mostly for Hitomi's sake since I work, or at least used to work out of my home office. (By office I really mean kitchen counter, though I have plenty of space throughout the house I can be working instead.)

Since acquisition by TCS, I've been going into work about every other day. There's a couple of options:

1) Drive, which Google Maps estimates at taking 15 minutes, 25 in traffic. Requires $8 more for parking and gas etc. I have not tried, but this is not bad, theoretically. In the morning, getting to work is likely okay, especially since I usually start work a little late, like 9AM. Getting on I-5 in the afternoon is likely a slog.

2) Bus, which is about 30 minutes, plus 15 for walking. The walk takes me through Pike Place Market and nice parts of downtown, which means I can integrate shopping in with my commute. Bus fare is $1.75-$2.00 each way. On the 66, there's always a free seat it seems and on the way back I'm on one of the first few stops. I can listen to music, surf on my Blackberry, etc.

3) Bicycling, which is about 25-30 minutes there--I'm fast and it's mostly downhill--and about 35 on the way back, if I take Dexter Ave and Stone Way, a more bike friendly route than Eastlake. There's a freed lane (no parking) going southbound before 9AM all the way to South Lake Union, so I have a lane to myself, which is nice. Still, some's occasionally parked or stopped illegally in this lane.

So, at least on the good weather days, bicycling is the winner. If I had to commute daily, I'd probably bike in the morning and bus in the afternoon. The trick, of course, is getting a bus outside the Ride Free Zone.

Adam Carolla's morning radio show has a segment they do about once a week called "Blah Blah Blog" where they "Match the blowhard celebrity to their retarded online rant." They read an online posting and have Adam, Teresa, or Bryan choose from a list of three celebrities. Celebrities they have to chose from include Donald Trump, Chuck Norris, Alan Alda, etc.

Listening to the segment, I'm immediately reminded of the blog The Server Side, which has a lot of online rants, not from celebrities but from self-important developers. I don't think a lot of consideration (editorial control) goes into what gets posted since there's a lot of weak sauce. Perhaps having controversial "flame bait" generates more traffic for this site? Most recently this ignorant post was made. It's a perennial favorite to shit on popular ORM systems (Hibernate comes to mind) and watch the peasants get out the pitchforks and torches.

Most of us have enough sense to watch from the sidelines and get on with our business.

Although these people mostly live on the Internet, I've come across a lot of closed-minded developers who were fairly unpleasant to work with. At best, they made life difficult for themselves. At worst, they made bad decisions and I had to clean things up. As was pointed out to me in Calgary, there's a lot of people at any company who should be fired, but somehow make a place for themselves by improving the morale of senior management.

But worse than the people who are for boosting morale are those who don't know what's going on or are unwilling or unable to figure anything out. These people are generally time wasters and energy sinks. One solution is to simply ignore them and hopefully they leave you alone and go bother someone else. It's sort of like Business Aikido.

I got to practice more aikido.