| | |

Born Lucky

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:59 -0700

I was born in the United States, a country that has relatively great living conditions.

I was born in the Bay Area, a beautiful, sunny area that is full of diversity and really smart people.

I was born to an immigrant family that stressed hard work and humility.

I was born to a pair of parents who put their children’s happiness above their own.

I was born to a family that stressed education and payed for tuition, knowing that education was key to their children’s success.

I was born to a relatively well off family in which my dad worked, my mom took care of my brother and I, and I focused on studying and having fun.

I was born to a relatively stable family in which family struggles remained minimal and were always resolved.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because I recently received a full time job straight out of college, a feat that is becoming harder to do nowadays.

I didn’t receive the job because I’m an exceptionally smart or hard working person. I received it because I was born lucky.

Sure, I worked very hard, but I would argue that people working in minimum wage situations work just hard if not harder to barely scrape by.

Sure, I’m intelligent, but I was not born intelligent. My parents instilled in me an appreciation for knowledge and learning because they believed those to be the most important values to teach their children.

I would not have gotten to where I am by myself.

Not to get all political, but I’ll end with a snippet from an Obama speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO6zd3cnL6I

Photo

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:19:50 -0800

A Must Watch

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:30:39 -0800

A Must Watch

Photo

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:55:19 -0800

Internet Addiction

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:38:38 -0800

I’ve recently realized how addicted I am to the internet, particularly the site reddit. I spend so much time each day going through link after link on the front page and on the r/videos page. The wonderful thing about reddit is that the content is so dynamic that I can visit the site multiple times a day and get new stuff. In other words, I do not get content fatigue on reddit, which is great for their site but bad for my health.

After noticing my habit, I realized that I don’t actually want to spend time on the site. I want to do other things. The problem with reddit is that it forces me into a consumer of useless and entertaining information, when I’d rather be a creator and a consumer of useful and important information, such as the news (which reddit does have but I do not take advantage of).

Now, I don’t want to go cold turkey on the internet as a whole because I rely on it so heavily for work and communication. However, I do want to kick the habit of going to my web browser, pressing cmd + t, typing “r”, “e”, and then pressing enter without even consciously realizing what I’m doing.

Audio

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:29:20 -0800

Trying out a Standing Desk

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 21:01:06 -0700

I’ve been seeing a lot of news articles about how sitting for long hours is very detrimental for your health. I’ve also been having some back problems and feel pretty terrible whenever I sit down for hours on end at work. So, I stumbled across an article on making a desk for $22 from parts from Ikea.

First and foremost, try to avoid shopping at Ikea at all costs. Try anything other store. I went through 6 brackets until I found 2 that matched, which brings me to my second point. If you ever try to buy two brackets, make sure they are an exact match, such that you don’t have to drive all the way back to the store and exchange them.

That being said, I have finally built this standing desk contraption. After ten minutes of use, I have already noticed that everything shakes whenever I type, and my legs are tired.

Let’s see how long I last.

Rajiv's blog: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:18:41 -0700

Rajiv's blog: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1:

eranki:

Rajiv Eranki
I was in charge of scaling Dropbox for a while, from roughly 4,000 to 40,000,000 users. For most of that time we had one to three people working on the backend. Here are some suggestions on scaling, particularly in a resource-constrained, fast-growing…

pitchfork: “Sweet Life”, from Channel Orange.

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 10:58:48 -0700

pitchfork:

“Sweet Life”, from Channel Orange.

Killer Mike (Taken with Instagram)

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 11:16:36 -0700

Killer Mike (Taken with Instagram)

Sbtrkt (Taken with Instagram)

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:08:23 -0700

Sbtrkt (Taken with Instagram)

Father's Day Events

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 22:29:34 -0700

A whole bunch of things happened this past Father’s Day weekend.

1. A nice asian lady asked me to try on suits for her husband while we were in line at Macys. I was quite taken aback when she asked me, but I complied. I don’t know how much I helped her though.

2. While walking around in Macys, some guy gave me a stare akin to the staredad meme. He would not stop doing that. I kept glancing at him, and only when i nervously laughed, did he let up the stare.

3. Some guy, after explaining what “pleather” is to my mom, felt like she thought he was joking, so he put on a failed attempt of a serious face trying to explain to her that pleather is a serious thing, especially among animal activists. It was just a funny moment.

4. My dad came back from India. His mom found out she had a tumor in her brain three weeks ago, so he rushed back. It’s interesting to see how a serious illness halts everything else in life and brings a family close together. My dad’s brother and sisters all came to see their mother.

Gaslight Software Blog: Backbone.js Views Done the Right Way

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:09:57 -0700

Gaslight Software Blog: Backbone.js Views Done the Right Way:

gaslighters:

As soon as you build an interesting application in backbone, one of the challenges you are likely to encounter is wanting to have composite views, or views that are contained within a larger view. I’ve solved this problem several ways in different projects and I thought it would be fun to…

The Working Environment

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 09:44:55 -0700

I had no idea how important a good working environment means to me until now. Currently, I am working with 6 other people on one crammed conference table in one crammed room. I feel claustrophobic and unable to move. I don’t know about others, but I can’t sit in the same position for 8 hours straight.

Lunch is generally a morbid affair where we move from the conference room to right next door to an even smaller lunch table. They are generally very quick and quiet.

If the working environment was more open, I would be (at least I think) so much happier. The 40 minute drive would be a lot easier, and the time spent in the office would be far more enjoyable.

This has become my favorite song of the summer at the moment....

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 12:26:42 -0700

This has become my favorite song of the summer at the moment. It’s 9 minutes of pure amazing.

I think the track is about the downfall of women or the double standard that women must deal with.

Either way, the lyrics are awesome and the beat complements FO’s voice so well.

Sending Mark Zuckerberg a wedding card

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 12:21:57 -0700

whatshouldwecallme:

The new Walkmen album is just amazing. You can stream it on...

Wed, 30 May 2012 18:45:00 -0700

The new Walkmen album is just amazing. You can stream it on NPR’s first listen for a while

Opening track to Killer Mike’s R.A.P Music produced by...

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:33:10 -0700

Opening track to Killer Mike’s R.A.P Music produced by El-P. Raw

I Hate Building C

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:32:22 -0700

One thing I never had to deal with was linking files together in C when building a program. Usually, in class projects, everything is in the proper directory and the make file is given for us. Recently I spent a couple of hours just trying to figure out how to build a test program. I have to play around with paths and make sure that everything is placed in the proper location. I just want to have everything set up for me, but that’s not the case with the double edge sword of C, where you have all the control and the power. Let’s see if I actually understand how compiling works though because even though I am able to build my file, I have no idea what’s going on.

Days 2 & 3: Lessons about Development

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:36:45 -0700

Lesson 1: Codify coding style within a company, such that everyone’s code looks the same. This means organization of code, comments, naming conventions. Make everything explicit. It’ll add time to the development process but make everything easy to understand.

Lesson 2: Implement peer review within teams such that code is pushed only after someone else looks at and understands your code. Kind of like peer reviewing essays. Definitely slows down the process of pushing code, but keeps people on the same page.

Lesson 3: More C stuff. Pointers to pointers can be used to allocate memory within a function call. All the string functions are wild. Use strcpy.