Categories
Engineering Philosophy

Impatience is the Mind Killer

I am not a patient man. It is one of the main reasons I went into software
engineering. It is very quick to think of an idea and convert it to machine
language. This desire to do things as quickly as possible has served me well in
that past, but lately it has caused great harm. An example and then an
explanation. I have been working on some systems at work that require a lot of
tinkering with some of the special database sauce we use. An unfortunate side
effect of this development is the need to constantly replace rpms (a kind of
specialized automated zip file). I was having great difficulty getting the
system updated with my changes so in my haste I just uninstalled all the rpms
of a particular package so I could reinstall all my newly built ones. Of course
what I should have noticed was I was uninstalling rpms that I had not built new
versions of. There is a sudden clarity when your console stops accepting
commands. In that brief window before you get told for certain that you lost
your connection you curse the gods, which for me happen to be the trinity of
Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Ken Thompson. As you can surmise the
system died a quick death. And since the issue I was working on was hardware
dependent I had to develop on an actual blade instead of a virtual machine so I
had no snapshots or backups to revert to. Thus the afternoon was lost to
resuscitating the system via the HP ILO system and
its fantastically poor console. It was a huge pain, a waste of time, and
ultimately did no good to helping debug the problem. The solution it turns out
was far more targeted, I just needed to update a few system files instead of
blowing out all these rpms. So what is to be learned from this? Be patient and
be sure of what you are doing before acting.

The thing is, I used to get by wielding a giant hammer but I need to be more
comfortable with the scalpel. If I had just taken the time, talked to people
who knew the issue, and acted with a bit more foresight I could have saved
myself much gnashing of teeth. I chose an engineering example as I tend to like
thinking with that discrete mindset, but the lesson should be applied
elsewhere. The problem with impatience is its side effect, anxiety. I have been
kind of obsessed with grand schemes that can be rapidly achieved. Then,
inevitably, when things begin to drag I grow agitated that my plans are not
proceeding with the rapidity I prefer. Take my house hunt for example. Many
dreams, little progress in resolving them. I could buy a house tomorrow, but,
given the options available now, it would be a poor call. Rationality in
conflict with impatience creating anxiety.

Not sure how to resolve the quandary. Engineering-wise the solution is
simple: be more deliberate in action. I should work harder to understand the
systems I work with and only make the smallest possible changes at a time.
Personally though it gets harder to fix. If I do all I can to achieve something
and yet it remains unachieved the only result can be frustration. The beauty of
software is understandable systems where input produces expected output. When I
expect the same from the world disappointment will abound. Impatience is just a
byproduct of this unfortunate truth. It is as if I am desynced from reality,
like we are running on separate clock cycles. I expect one
speed of progress and get another. In time I hope to sync up, but until then I
remain impatient.

Aside: I goggled this title before using it and seems I was not as clever
as I thought. A regrettably common occurrence. I still like it though so I
am going with it.

Categories
TIANSTL Video Games

Things I Am Not Supposed to Like:Katawa Shoujo

Starting a new series if you will about things I am not supposed to like
because people tell me otherwise. The series starts with a photo.

LillyCosplay

This a picture of Lilly from Katawa
Shoujo a free visual novel novel. She is appropriately enough waiting in
line for a tea sampling. Neither she nor I got into the room, but that is not
the point. What motivates someone to cosplay as such an obscure character? I
have seen two Lilly cosplays in my life and barely anyone recognizes them. This
is from a game that has no retail release, had no marketing. A game whose
popularity is purely through the words of others. And yet here she is. If that
is not all the indication you need that is game is special, I doubt my poor
skills at wordsmithing will convince you otherwise.

This game is unique in its ability to capture moments. You have a game like
Call of Duty that can very skillfully capture a feeling. COD makes you feel
tense, or excited, or angry, but has it ever captured a quiet moment? Some of
Bioware’s offering get close, but all these big budget triple A games fail
again and again to capture the moment. What do I mean when I say this? A
moment, as defined here, is a single interaction between people. A moment is
not bombastic, its not life changing, its just people talking, just
conversation. Here is
a perfect example. It is not special, nor unique, but its eight minutes and 54
seconds of a dozen or so people’s lives. Its raw, its unscripted, its life.
This is a moment and Katawa Shoujo is a game that captures these interactions
between its characters better than any other game. There is a clarity to
dialogue that makes the interactions seem so natural, so unforced. That is why
I love this game so much. Who cares that it is anime inspired, or a dating
game, or a made by a bunch of people from 4chan. This game offers the greatest
thing any form of media can give: a brief look into the lives of others. Is
that not what anyone wants? Some games are empowering, they make you feel
things. To be fair this game makes you feel a lot of things, but that is not
the point here. The point here is to see a person’s life over a few months.
That is unique amongst video games, it is awesome, and it is why I love this
game despite what others thing.

Categories
Cosplay

Melting Metal:Attempt 1

A little while ago I read a how to on melting
metal in a microwave. So having more money and time than sense I figured it was
worth a shot.

First I needed some safety equipment for this job:

Here we have some metal tongs for grabbing the dish the metal is going to
melt in, some gloves that can hold hot things, and a face guard to prevent
molten meal from showering my pretty boy looks.

Now here is the general setup:

Microwave plenty of distance from anything that can catch fire, safety
equipment ready to go, and a fire extinguisher in case things get out of hand.
As per the instructions I fashioned a brick kiln in the microwave. The brick under the steel bowl is
silicon carbide and should provide a nice hot surface to warm the bowl.

In addition I sealed off the entry and exit vents of the microwave to try
and get the inside as hot as possible. We do not want our hot air flowing out
the back.

Bricks with holes in them was not ideal, but it was what I had to work with.
The metal to melt is zinc:

Yup, I hand cut that with a hacksaw and it took a ton of time to do. The
melting temperature of zinc is 786.2°F. Supposedly the max temperature you can
achieve using this microwave strategy is 900°F-1000°F so it should be possible
to get the metal up to melting temperature. Fumes from molten zine are
relatively harmless, but if you breathe too much it is possible you can get
metal fume fever.
The long term effects are negligible, at most it seems to produce flu like
symptoms for a few days. Here is a material safety data
sheet if you want to know more. Of course we are going to need a mold for
our molten metal:

A bit rough, but should work. This mold is made out plaster of paris with
wood blocks to give the plaster a form to mold around. Of course I broke it
getting the wood out so its been put back together and secured with a rubber
band. Nothing else to do but fire it up and wait. I turned on the microwave for
about an hour and here is the result:

buttons…

I was unable to achieve a high enough temperature. The metal and bricks were
certainly too hot to handle, but I had no temperature gauge so I have no idea
how off from the melting point I was. A couple things contributed to this
failure:

1. After 30 or so minutes the microwave front became loose reducing its
ability to build up heat inside.

2. I did not make a full kiln with the bricks, and the bricks I did have had
holes in them making it harder to build up heat in there.

3. The microwave I was using was $5 and was made in 1993, it is possible it
just does not have enough power to build up the heat I need. Over time the
magnetron inside the microwave will weaken based on how much use the microwave
gets. Since I have no idea how intensively this 21 year old microwave was used
this may or may not have started to happen.

4. It was quite a hefty chunk of zinc. Perhaps things would work better if I
had a smaller block.

So things were a bit of bust, but I have not given up yet. I may try again
once I get some more bricks to build a better kiln. A better microwave might be
found at a yard sale or I might try doing this the old school way with
charcoal. It might also be good to try and get a baseline for this by melting
something with a really low melting point like solder (370°F).

Categories
Philosophy

The Lazy Workaholic

I have a curious perversion of mine to speak about today. I call it lazy
workaholism. What it basically boils down to is I do not like taking days off.
Most people who say this are called workaholics. The definition of a workaholic
(via Wikipedia) is: ‘a
person who is addicted to work.’ That is not true in my case, I certainly like
not working and on the whole, given the choice, would prefer to not work as
opposed to work. Yet my actions are in conflict with this statement. I have
almost three weeks of paid time off sitting waiting to be used and yet the
longest vacation I have taken since starting was two days last July.

It is not like my job is even that important. There are plenty of people
(who are more capable than me) of filling in for me while I take some time off,
but I cannot break away. There are emails to answer, bugs to close, projects to
finish for approaching deadlines. Oracle has no expectation that I never take
time off, but I do. It is as if I fear the consequences of leaving for too
long. That something will break that I am responsible for or that I will grow
slovenly in the time off and dread going back. I like being in the groove,
working everyday, following a pattern. It is breaking the pattern that I dread
most. So I just keep working. Maybe I will want to stop someday.

Categories
Review TV

Review:Real Love

Real Love is a six
episode romantic comedy weighing in at about 2.5 hours, about a bunch of
friends living in a Boston apartment a few years out of college. It is not my
usual fare, but it was actually kickstarted
by some people I know so I had to watch it. As such, I am not sure I can be
totally unbiased (honest) with my review, but I will do my best. Some minor
spoilers abound so if you want a pure viewing experience skip to the
summary.

Plot/Script

Real love is a story about trying to find out whats next. In that sense it
captures the feel of TV shows like Freak and Geeks and
Undeclared. Without
spoiling too much of the plot, we spend most of our time watching the
interaction between Dylan and Beth. The back and forth play between them and
the other characters is funny, but still manages to be poignant at times. There
is a real good sense of characters just trying figure things out which
especially appeals to me. Some of the plot beats I found a little jarring, such
as the early marriage proposal between two characters and the strange closeness
already apparent between Dylan and Beth. I did not know the characters well
enough to understand why they were acting this way early on. Speaking more to
the script there is quite a lot of humor to be found here. A number of jokes
keep reoccurring and seemed to only get funnier the more they happened. I was a
little concerned things would get a bit cheesy, but the writing smartly avoids
these pitfalls and kept things feeling real. The plot moves along briskly,
there are no wasted scenes, and the dialogue is believable and not loaded down
with exposition.

Characters/Actors

There are four main characters, and three side characters. Of the main
characters my favorite would have to be Dylan. The actor, Patrick Skeyhill,
always manages to capture an otherworldly physicality that is really quite
humorous. He elevates normal scenes to funny scenes with just his comic
actions. Beth, played by Courtland Jones, is the emotional strength of the
series. She brings the gravitas and is a good foil to the general silliness of
Dylan. The other two main characters (played well by Richard Nickerson as Liam
and Jess Corey as Emma) provide a good compliment to each other and push the
plot forward. Jess generally plays it pretty straight, but her husband to be,
Richard, always has a non-sequitur to mix things up.

The side characters play effective roles in support of the plot. Eddie,
played by, Nick Wakely has a deep thundering accent and his strange thought
trains always keep the scenes he is in light. Adam, Beth’s boyfriend for most
of the film, is perhaps a bit too earnest, but that makes his deadpan line
delivery all the more funny. Finally Cara, portrayed by Katie O’Connor, is
perfect in her role as the crazy ex-girlfriend of Dylan. Her manic delivery and
borderline crazy voice provides a real believable edge to her character which
she uses to good effect.

Technical/Music

You can see the indie roots most clearly in the technical aspects of the
film. The film quality is generally good, but scenes with a lot of light
suffer. Windows and doors to the outside are often bathed in high intensity
light. It looks odd and it was distracting. In addition I think some of the
characters lines were overdubbed in post and it did not sound good. It was not
super noticeable, but I did notice it.

In general I liked the score, I am not much of a musical fan so it is kind
of hard to judge this aspect of it, but I thought it complimented the emotional
feel of the scenes nicely. That said sometimes it felt like the music was too
overwhelming. Some scenes would have been better if the music was less obvious
or quieter. Shot selection was pretty standard, nothing too creative. One of
the few times Real Love gets clever is the pan from midday to a night time
party scene. It is smartly used and makes the transition slick. I would have
liked to see some smoother cuts, as most of time the camera just seemed to
bounce from character to character.

Extras

If you buy the special edition DVD (which I did), you get all six episodes,
the prologue, the soundtrack, and two audio commentary tracks. I have listened
to some of both commentary tracks and they provide good insight and more
laughs. I wish the DVD had included the deleted scenes and shorts they mention
in the commentary, but that might have required another DVD so it is not a big
deal. The case insert is good quality and its simple design looks nice on the
shelf.

Summary

I liked this film, It had important things to say about life after college
and it was funny enough to not take itself so serious all the time. You can buy
it via their store.

Back of the box quote: “Real good, real funny, worth your money.”

Categories
Football Musings

A Few Words on the Greatest American Sport

Our long dark offseason has ended with the playing of of the Hall of Fame
game tonight. With that starts another season of the greatest American game,
football. Not that game with the round ball, the game with the egg shaped one.
I love football and many people think that is an aberration of my character. I
want to explain why I love this sport so much. So its time for my favorite
organizational structure, the numbered list.

1. I love the violence.

I am not going to pretend that football is not a violent game. Last year you
could literally hear the screams of a player tearing up his legs on live tv. Some of the most
entertaining plays in the sport involve the big crushing tackle from behind,
the power of players running over one another. This in fact could easily be the
downfall of the sport as it probably leads to long term
damage. Despite that, it is supremely entertaining to watch huge burly men
run into each other all day long. It is nothing refined, just pure, base,
animalistic love of violence.

2. This is a team sport.

All the other major sports in the US (baseball, hockey, basket ball) are
team sports too, but football makes full use of the team. Each play has 11
players try and work in unison to accomplish one goal. I do not mean to
diminish the team play of other sports, but no other game has so many players
working together at one moment. Football is a game the celebrates the
accomplishment of a team first and a star player second. Sure we all hear of
famous individual football players, but the actual impact these players have is
the least amongst professional sports. Tom Brady may be the best QB ever, but
if his receivers cannot catch or if his offensive line cannot give him enough
time, the team will lose every game. Plenty of other sports focus too much on
the individual or allow them to have too much of an impact. Basketball in
particular is notorious for this. A real good player can make or break your
team. Not so in football, it is all about the team working together.

3. This is a game of strategy.

When you have so many players on the field at once it can be a challenge to
get everyone working in concert, but that is the best part of football.
Watching 11 people (the offense) work in unison to accomplish a common goal is
amazing. Even better you can watch 11 other people (the defense) try as team to
mess that up. And this happens ever play. Plenty of other sports play lip
service to the idea of their game having strategy, but their game is so fluid
that it is hard to actually setup a play. To pick on soccer for a second, you
can see the players try and setup, as a team, favorable situations, but
everything is just moving so fast no one can really do anything but try and win
their individual battles. Football stops, resets, and lets each team make a
play. This allows a huge variety in plays a team can run, formations a team can
field, feints, and fake outs they can make. More diversity than all these other
sports means more options which means more strategy can be brought to the
game.

4. Each play has many layers.

When you watch a play in football, on the surface, the actual facts of the
play are very straightforward. Someone throws a pass and it gets dropped,
someone tries to run the ball and gains a yard or two. The actual enjoyment in
these not so showy plays is in in the details. Here is a
dense example of that. The thing to know is because football is such a team
game, tiny individual actions by each player combine to make big plays, or
small failures. In the example of a dropped pass, you can see the receiver
dropped it, but it really was not his fault because the QB had to throw it
early, he had to throw early because his offensive line was not able to give
him enough time to find better people to throw to, specifically it was the
fault of one player who could not block his assignment. All this detail happens
each play and happens to every player. It is that detail that makes both the
replay so satisfying to dissect and the actual play so complicated to
watch.

5. True league parity.

Every team in the NFL has a chance of winning the Super Bowl. This is
because the league works real hard through salary caps, drafting rules, and
trade agreements to ensure each team has a level financial field and an equal
opportunity to acquire and hold on to talent. This ensures that team that were
bad one year have a good shot at coming back the next year. A perfect example
would be the Chiefs who went from 2-14 in 2012 to 11-5 in 2013. Plenty of other
leagues are not so successful in this endeavors and it ensures teams wallow in
mediocrity for years. Not so with the NFL which means more exciting close
fought games and respect for a fan that sticks with a team in good and bad
times.

So here is to another exciting season and to watching the New England
Patriots win the Super Bowl again.

Categories
Home

Notes on House Hunting

I have been at the house hunting gig for over a month now and I have learned
a couple things I would like to put to words in an ordered list. This is mostly
me just complaining so if you have better things to do (which if you are
reading my blog you probably do not), go do them.

1. You are buying a house for the next person who lives there.

You cannot just buy a house with only yourself in mind. You have to consider
the resell value which means you have to consider who might buy this house from
you. This means things like three bedrooms, good schools nearby, a decent
neighborhood, is of great importance even if you do not care at all. That two
bedroom on a busy road might be nice, but how can you sell that 10 years from
now to the family with three kids? This should not stop you from buying a house
that appeals to you, but keep it in mind.

2. House hunting is great for nosy people.

The most private place you can have is your home. Now how would you like
letting a bunch of strangers tramp around taking a bunch of photos, poking and
prodding in all your little hidey-holes. I am just acting in my best interest,
trying to find flaws in the property, but it is another magnitude of social
awkwardness to look in other people’s closets. I also now have a great quantity
of photos of other people’s houses.

3. House hunting is about convincing yourself to spend more money.

The first time you start considering to buy a house you will arbitrarily
pick a number and start to look at houses near that number. For me it was
$150k. Every house below that price is a crack house. Every house above that
price is a mansion. So unless you want to live like an extra on The Wire, you
bump that number up. Then when you are at $200k the houses start looking
better, but you also start seeing some real estate euphemisms like ‘needs sweat
equity’ or ‘perfect for a diy person’. This basically means the house stands
up, but you are gonna have to fix some stuff. I am pretty lazy about things
like that so you start thinking well, maybe I can bust it up to $250k and not
worry about stuff like that. Houses at this level are nice and even livable for
the most part, but they just are not quite there yet. It is like having eggs
with no bacon. Either the road the house is on is too busy, it is too far from
the highway, it abuts a train track, etc. So then you start thinking, maybe I
should stretch to $275k-$300k. Then you realize you exceeded your down payment
and bank loan and you have to stop. The point is you can always spend more
money on a house, at some point you need to compromise on something that is not
the price.

4. The easiest thing you can do is not buy a house.

I visited four houses, and looked at around a 100 hundred online listings at
this point. If this were a bar it would be 7:00AM, aka amateur hour. That said,
you can always find something you do not like about a house that would make you
not want to live there. Chief among them at this point is all the houses in
Massachusetts that have oil heat. So many promising prospects dashed because of
oil heat. Natural gas is cheaper home owners! Get your neighbors to band
together and get the gas company in to install a line. Then sell your house to
me for a reasonable price. This is just one example, but it is a whole litany
of big/tiny things like this that just make it so easy to not do anything. It
is of course not helping that it generally takes me forever to change anything.
I literally have worn the same shoes for five years because I cannot be
bothered to buy new ones.

5. This task is not exciting, you are not a better person for doing it.

People keep saying, “It is great you are looking for a house at your age.”
or “It must be fun to go house touring.” The last thing I need is more people
to inflate my head
further. I am not especially smart or good with money, I just happen to be
easily amused which means most of my money ends up getting saved. It is real
easy to get a house down payment going if you just SAVE MONEY. Everyone also
needs to disabuse themselves of the notion that this task is at all
entertaining. Every other homeowner must be so much more level minded than me,
because I am going mental running through all the possibilities here. This will
probably be the most expensive thing I have ever bought. Which means I have to
be extremely careful I do not buy a dud or a home that needs a lot of work or a
home that will lose all its value or any number of other obvious/not obvious
pitfalls I teeter on the edge of falling into daily. I cannot wait until I am
done with the whole sordid affair and have to (maybe) never deal with it ever
again.

So despite all that complaining I still want to do this. If that does
not make you question my mental state, stay tuned readers yet more disasters
await!

Categories
Home

Why I Want a House

I have started to actually visit
houses with the intent to evaluate them
for purchase so it seems important that I justify why I am so insistent on
buying a house. My reasoning stems from the concrete to the nebulous.

1. A Generally Safe Financial Bet

Lets look at the big picture here:
Source

It is a bit misleading to see just the chart so the source bears reading,
but for the most part the chart tells a pretty convincing story. Generally the
price of a home will rise. The actual realized profit is mitigated by upkeep
costs, mortgage interest, real estate taxes, inflation, but in my estimation
this is a safe bet to make. In the best case I make some money. If I just break
even that is ok too, because then it is like I lived someplace rent free. If I
lose money, that is no good, but the market would have to be radically
different for the loss to be painful. Not to say that such things are
impossible, as evidenced by the downward trend on the graph. If I am going to
spend money to pay for housing I may as well try and have something to show for
it at the end as opposed to renting where I will have nothing.

2. Good Timing

Refer back to the graph and see how we are on a downward trend. Housing
prices now have not yet returned to their 2008 levels. There is no guarantee
such a thing will happen, but generally the housing market falls a cycle of
boom, bust, recovery.
We had our boom, now we are in a bust (slump) where prices are depressed.
Eventually, those prices will rise as we start to boom again. Best buy now when
the prices are lower and ride the wave up. This is no guarantee, but it is the
historical model.

3. I Could Never Live With A Landlord

I have always had a mistrust of authority. This does not carry over into the
workplace, as my employer buys control of me through my salary and benefits.
But the idea that I would willingly pay someone money and still let them exert
some authority of my domicile is not reconcilable. They may be completely
trustworthy and reasonable, but I would never be able to fully forgot that this
is their place, I do not own it, I have little to no influence over it, and
they can do as they will with it (minus certain legal restrictions). If I own a
house then the only authority over that house will be me.

4. I Need Space

I have spent my entire life living in a single room. Granted it is a
statement taken to an absurd exaggeration, but that is the way it feels. I want
space to spread things out. I want an office to fill with my book and machines,
I want a workshop stocked with tools and in flight projects, I want a living
room I can nap in. An apartment is not going to give me that, or at least my
budget is not going to allow for that. I house can give me all the space I will
need.

5. I Want To Build A Home

This is where I start to go off the track a little. Clearly if I am buying a
house that already exists I do not want to physically build a home. The idea
here is I want to build a place for the people I know. We are diaspora,
scattered. I want common ground if you will. A place anyone can come at any
time. Even more than that though I want people to think of it as their house as
much as it is mine. I may be on the financial and legal hook, but I do not want
to people think of this place as my home, but as the home of everyone I
know.

6. It Is Time For Some Risk

This reason is almost totally devoid from my standard character, but life
has just been too safe. This may be my most regrettable reason in the future,
but I just want more stochasticity. I want to take the risk that this plan will
absolutely lead to nothing but disaster. That is exciting or to put another way
exhilarating. I have always suspected I had some well repressed gambling
tendencies and this may be an unfortunate time for their presence to be known,
still I love the idea of taking a big chance, considering such a huge
payoff.

Categories
Convention Philosophy

The Best Endings Are Sad

Went to Connecticon last weekend and
took this picture: ConnecticonFromStairs

I very rarely take photos, but I got a new camera so here was a good place
to test it out. Turns out this is a pretty good spot to sit and watch. You can
see the almost the entire floor from these stairs and during the middle of the
day the place is packed with people. I really like watching people these days,
especially at conventions. Not sure when this became a fancy of mine. I like
compiling data and learning about things I do not know nor understand. In that
sense observing people is just an extension of my desire to learn. Consider it
my attempt to gain insight on how people other than myself interact. It is a
bit more than that though, it is a little glimpse into the lives of others. It
is watching how a person waves to someone they know, how they carry a backpack
or purse, what they do with their hands. All these little micro-movements,
these tiny gestures tell a lot about a person. Maybe they favor a particular
leg or they add a little regal flourish when they go in for a handshake. It is
the story of their life demonstrated through their physical actions. How a
person acts tells so much about them and we constantly ignore it. The way a
person moves is a story, a play, and from my perch on those stairs I can see so
many stories in motion below me.

And yet, upon seeing so much I am saddened. Because this flicker of motion
is all I will ever get to experience with most of the people here. I could
spend all day meeting each person, or better yet, I could have a booth and a
line for every congoer to go through (a congo line if you will). Even with all
that I still could not meet everyone, not even a tenth. It is that realization
that spreads like the night on a summer eve every convention Sunday. You are
going to leave, waiting for your train, badge hidden away in a pocket somewhere
when you remember what just happened. I had a chance to meet so many people and
I met so few. So many people with shared interests and common ground. So many
possible friends I failed to see to fruition. It is sad to think of what could
have been. Yet consider the alternative. Consider leaving and not being sad.
Not being sad because there was no one to meet, because there was no one worth
it.

I consider myself an old hat with conventions at this point having been to
so many. Each time I leave sad, but that is ok. The time I leave a convention
not feeling sad, is the time I stop going to conventions.

Categories
Engineering Philosophy

The 24Hour Programmer Lifestyle

I was on Imgur today and saw the “we’re hiring!” link in all red. Had to
click it. Look at the position closest to my skill set here. Pretty standard, including this
little blurb at the bottom:

if you’re passionate about coding or design, then we bet you have lots of
things that you’ve done in your spare time. Along with your resume, we’d like
you to send us some samples. They can be personal projects you’ve whipped up
during a lunch break, or a full-fledged application that you’ve created from
scratch.

I am going to coin a phrase here and call this the ’24 hour programmer’. The
kind of gal or guy for whom coding is akin to speaking. They read technical
journals for breakfast, listen to programming podcasts during their commute,
work a full day banging out code, and then go home and work on their open
source projects. I have had the pleasure of knowing some of these people and
they are very good at what they do. This is not how I operate. I give my
employer 8 hours (or so in either direction) and then I go home and do
something else. I may on occasion drop some code outside of the office, but I
have other non-technical interests. It may surprise my employer, but I do not
think of code all my waking hours. I do other things, like build costumes, or play
video games, or try and meet other people. It is a
curious perversion of the tech sector that we expect engineers to always being
engineering. Do we expect carpenters to always be building stuff? Is an artist
somehow less dedicated if they occasion to not draw or paint one day? Maybe the
peculiarities of the startup culture have somehow equated people who live code
all the time as the ideal programmer. Everyone else who does not do the same
must just not be into it. They probably just do it for the money. There is
another word for this: elitism.

Employers, do not pigeonhole yourself looking for these people. Yes they
probably make good employees and yes they might even be better, but you ignore
all the other equally good employees who do not act like this. In any field you
are going to have people who are solely focused and you will have others who
who have many focuses. Staff your company with the best employees, not just the
ones who live a certain lifestyle.