Work and Life

If I had a nickel for every time someone has asked me that question I'd have enough change for a year? Inspired by my friend's post here , I thought I'd write about how I ended up doing what I do now. Then I thought about it some more and decided to write about something else. Is it important to know where you are going in life? If you aren't moving forward in your career does it mean that you are doing something wrong? What does "moving up the ladder" even mean? I am going to attempt to answer these questions for myself. Its almost 5 years since I began my professional career. It has been great so far, lots of ups some downs as well. However, once in a while when I get the title question it still throws me off. It is usually my parents or well meaning relatives, sometimes friends that ask this. I have nothing much to say to them except "I enjoy what I am doing right now, haven't really thought about the future". But the truth is - I have thou

I have the worst luck when it comes to getting wrong calls on my phone. Why do I say that? It started a few weeks ago with a phone call - "I'm calling to ask about the Nissan altima you have on sale". I replied saying wrong number yada yada etc. After the third call like this, I finally asked them where they found the ad and it turned out to be Craigslist. One google search later I found the ad listing my number, probably a typo. Contacted them via Cragislist and asked them to correct it. End of story, right? Two days later, I got ANOTHER call, here is how it went. Caller: Maam, Im calling about the toyota four runner for sale Me: You mean the Altima, that was a mistake in the ad. I am not the seller and it has been corrected in the ad online. Caller: Is your number 602-*******? That's what's on there.. Me:ARGGH Another google search, and I find a DIFFERENT Craigslist ad in another city, listing my number. What are the chances of this happening to the same perso

I happened to be near Austin's Apple Store last Saturday when hanging out at the Domain with some friends for a girls evening out. At 7:30 pm, 12 hours after it became available, I see a huge line in there and the place was packed with men, mostly young (20s to 30s) all jostling each other for a chance to play with demo i-pads. All of us decided it was too weird to go in and went our way. I must admit I was a bit disappointed at the experience. As much as I'd like to think we live in times when gender stereo types aren't true anymore and women are as interested & into technology as men, that store sort of brought me back to reality. Why aren't we out there in droves reviewing it? Maybe its because we've got a better way. After all what's the point in standing in line for hours for a few minutes worth of "I got to play with the I-Pad the day it was released"? There are enough videos and reviews online that give you a sense of what it is about and e

There was this article in TIME last year about " Helicopter parenting ", their term for the kind of parent that constantly hovers & worries about every detail in their child's developmental milestones. In my opinions, some of the other things they do are: Constantly reads parenting articles and books and follows whatever the experts recommend. Keeps up to do date on all crime statistics in their neighborhood. Starts reading ISD reports on their elementary school even before their child turns one, just to watch out for performance lapses, if so its time to move, although they did originally decide to live wherever they are for the school district. Enrolls their kids in atleast five different classes before they turn 5. Their pediatrician always sets aside extra time for them because they tend to ask many questions. I've always felt guilty that I was never like this..Then from time to time someone in my friends circle would mention something along the lines of the

Saw this article in one of the ACM blogs that cited a recent study in an educational psychology journal on how teaching introductory Cs students to program by having them write code actually has a detrimental effect. More details here . I absolutely disagree with the author that this study has implications in CS! First of all it cites a study done with teaching algebra so it is a different domain. I think that the problem is that there is too little programming going on rather than too much. I also wonder of anyone has considered that an introductory programming class probably has a mix of two very different types of students - one just exploring CS as one of many career options, the other the kind that took their dad's computer apart in the garage and started programming at age 8. The latter kind still have to take the introductory class because of degree requirements but now it gives you a class sample that's skewed and hard to make any conclusions about. If everyone that to

My mom has a thing for sudoku, she is always solving a few each day and is very fast at it too. I can't ever match her speed, and she is 60! Recently, she has moved on to "Extreme Sudoku" with difficulty rating of 5 and above, and I still take 5 to 10 minutes for the easy ones. I am so proud of her, but (sigh!), I better catch up!

One of my friends shared this in Google Reader - most of them are items I already knew about and been rehashed in several programming articles/books. I do feel like #5 needs to be repeated over and over again for me. " You are not the best at programming. Live with it. - I always thought that I knew so much about programming, but there is always someone out there better than you. Always. Learn from them." One must never forget the fact that we are all "standing on the shoulders of giants". Well, Isaac Newton put it that way but you get my point. Everything we accomplish in our field today is because a few pioneers in the past did the ground-work to get us here. I understand that, but tend to stumble at the "Live with it" part. I do realize that I have to keep learning and keep improving myself, but its hard for me to calmly accept that someone is much better than me. I don't mean that I don't acknowledge my weaknesses, its more along the lines of

http://www.ncwit.org/thefacts

I've had several failed attempts at blogging before, but it was always because of this primary reason - is it okay to reveal thoughts and feelings that I consider private? When I thought about blogging about geeky/work related stuff, I hesitated because I didn't want to appear stupid. After all what is the point of writing about information that is already available at a click of a button online. I didn't know if I had anything unique to write about. The facebook generation we live in has changed all that. I see people posting the most mundane details of their life and still getting tons of replies. I realized I don't have to be perfect to start blogging. My posts may be banal at first but I am hoping the process of writing something everyday will make it better over time. The theme of this blog - my life - Maya, my work, what I read online just anything that comes up that day.