Results tagged “life” from The Cattle Grid

After reading larsen's facts, I challenged myself in this game. If you want to play, these are the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or other mean (Twitter, Facebook ...).

So, some facts about me:

• I work as computer programmer. It isn't always great, but I think I'm blessed because I have the opportunity do do what I like every single day.
• I live in Maniago, which is located in North-Eastern Italy. In the past I thought I didn't like this place, but after seeing a lot of places in the world I'm now confident this is among the best where to stay. I maintain a web forum related to my town.
• I play the bass guitar in a brit rock band (the Gin Tonics), but don't really know much about it as I never attended a single lesson regarding bass or music in general.
• I believe "fair play" is fundamental in every aspect of life.
• I'm often worried for many things, but I rarely admit it if asked.
• I haven't got a best friend and I consider myself lucky for this, as there is more than one person who I regard as a best friend.
• Should I ever need to escape somewhere to stay for some time on my own, that place would be the Orkney Islands.

I know the rules want me to tag seven people, but the ones who come to my mind don't have a blog - so I have to skip this.part of the game. ;-) If you're reading this, I'd be happy if you consider yourself tagged and play.

I'm 30 years old today.

Wisdom, be with me!

Information age society tends to grab most of, if not all, the time you have at your disposal, and often still asks for more. Since time is your most important resource, you need to manage it aptly, and - surprise - if you are an independent (that is, you work on your own) coder, you can do that.

If the past 12 years of coding on my own, I enjoyed good and suffered bad times. I hereby summarize some practices which work well for me, and which should help you increasing the good moments and decreasing the bad ones.

I've been seeing (or even looking at, at times) floaters (or another site) for nearly 10 years now. My ophthalmologist keeps telling me I shouldn't worry: sometimes I don't even notice them, sometimes I notice them but I don't mind them, but sometimes I just can't stand that crap (especially when I need to code a lot in front of my PC).

The news is I now learned the English name for them, and therefore discovered that millions of people suffer of the same problem (I won't call that a disease, nevertheless it's quite annoying). so I'm a bit reassured I'm not the only one (even though at present I really can't stand those floaters...). ;-)

OK, so you're a coder and you want to work in my company. What would be your favorite working environment? An office where you're all alone, or dot-com era open space?

I started to think about this some weeks ago, as the programmers in my company began to tell me their concentration (and, therefore, productivity) was suffering because of the environmental noise. We have open spaces, we've always had open spaces, and everybody seemed to like them. But then, until recently, I was the only programmer, and I usually work on my own, buried into my home basement instead of the main office. I wanted to discover how this problem is solved in the Valley, and it turned out they use offices, or at least cubicles, and no open spaces at all for programmers: no more, now that the dot-com era is over.

In the end, two important truths surface:

• Anyone who needs to concentrate can't stay in a place where other people come and go, talk, listen to music (from different sources at the same time, maybe).
• A coder needs to concentrate.

Open Spaces Are Evil For Coders

Since the end of the year is approaching, I'm thinking about a few things about myself I could (maybe should) try to fix:

• My desk is a bloated mess of several layers of papers and I've got no interest in organizing myself.
• I often go out in the evening during week-days and sometimes drink too much (so I'm almost fucked up the following day).
• I always go to bed after 2 am, and almost never wake up before 9.30 am.
• I work till late night, and during week-ends.
• I make people promises I cannot keep.
• I'm determined, but too lazy.
• I used to read a lot of books, but now I find myself not having time to read something that is not a technical manual. This point is not related to book themselves, but to how I need to improve the way I handle my time.

In 2007 I'll be 30 years old, so it's about time to try to behave a bit differently from a late-70s punk rocker. I'll keep you posted regarding my achievements... ;-)