I am not your fucking teacher

I know a lot of you take Paul Graham seriously and he had said, for a startup every customer is valuable. No, I am not going to spend the next forty give minutes trying to find that advice. You can either take my word or fuck off.

Thirty minutes into John's house and I've got two thoughts in:

1. Jump off the second floor window, or

2. Look the old man in the eye and simply tell him to give me some fucking space.
   

It's been a little over six months since I went freelance and it has been a great fucking ride. I can talk about the woman who called 1am in the morning asking me to play tennis with her next day, the guy who called me 15 times cuz I refused to work on his computer, or the guy who's been inviting me to his house for dinner in exchange of my service. In these last six months or so, I've ditched four regular customers. That meant regular streams of cash for one phone call. I did make one exception to that, and I will come to that at the end.

For the sake of time, let us simply get on with John here. Ten minutes into his residence/business and he's telling me about the old tech, Shawn.

'Shawn was too BRILLIANT for them and he would just fix things & leave'.

I examine Shawn's work, and so far the guy has done a pretty good job. But John here, wants me to not only fix things, he wants to be in control while I show, tell & explain to him how things work.

Well, I am sorry mister. But I am a tech/geek/nerd, whatever pleases your appetite. You see, I don't work that way. In fact, I ask very detail questions even before taking on any assignment. Not because I am scared, but that way I know what to expect. I tell my clients to make a list. I go through the list, demonstrate my work at the end and ask for any changes. What's that? You didn't get it??!! Here it is in three simple steps:

1. Give me a list of the things that needs to be done,

2. At the end, I will demonstrate the solutions to each problems on the list,

3. If you want any change, for your convenient ass, I will make that change and demonstrate again.
   

I guess not good enough for John. He is INFURIATED ( in his own word) after I setup his photo printer on the network without showing him or better fucking yet, having him do it himself. I am really sorry, but if you are trying to learn how things work so that way you don't have to call on me next time. You can either google crap yourself or just take a freaking class at your local university. In this instance, it would be a class on networking,Windows 20000 would come in handy too. You get the picture here, I hope. If not, shit.

But instead of jumping off the window, I got out of there. I was suppose to be there for at least six hour, but after three hour, I just couldn't handle it anymore. Of course, I made sure to put things in order, organized, self-explanatory; not for John but for the next unfortunate tech. They kept insisting on me coming back, I simply don't fucking think so. I didn't even pay attention to if they got my name right on the check. I simply wanted out of that place.

Now let's talk about the exception I have made. The only exception I made is an art advisor. Why?

Because she will let me do my things while watching over my shoulder. She won't ask any question while I am fixing an issue on hand. She just wants me to show her what she needs to do to make things work properly and she will take extensive notes. Let me demonstrate with an example:

The art advisor, we will call her Sue, wants all her data backed up to her external drive. I can set up the program Sue bought to perform incremental backup every night automatically. Sue, on the other hand would rather backup data manually, herself. This is where Sue, will give me the time to setup the program while watching over my shoulder and not ask any questions or bother. Let me murmur/talk to myself. At the end, Sue just wants me to show how she can do the manual backup. In this instance, I take great pleasure in explaining how things work and walk her through each step giving her the time to take notes.

So, what is my philosophy here?! Well, life is too short my friend and not every customer/client is fucking worth it.

My usual browsing

I usually start my day with a big cup of tea, browsing on my laptop. First, I will check all my emails. I have three different email accounts & go thru 'em all. From there, I will check my bank accounts for any unexpected charges. After that I will spend about 30 minutes on my Google reader. I have subscribed to bunch of RSS feds but I usually read only the following ones:

Lifehacker

Google News - Sci-Tech

Slashdot

From there I will usually spend the rest of the day on reddit & other sites reading on different topics. Amy winehouse checking into rehab or checking out doesn't interest me at all, I like reading about various science topics. With that said, I thought I would share some of the things I read/killed my times on this past weekend with either a brief description or my opinion.

1. Fish out of Water: Your Inner Fish: this is an interesting article. Basically it talks about the evolutionary transformation of mammal from fish & the limitation of our body. Then it presents five great examples to establish how we weren't designed but evolved.

2. The Repeater: the New York Times presents this opinion on how evolution repeats traits in different environment at the genetic level as well. It asks an awesome questions of multiple earths all beginning at the same time. Will we see different or similar organisms on each planet?

3. Venus & Jupiter in the morning

4. Top 10 Horror Movies of All Time: I remember watching Evil Dead 2 with my roommate. Funny, he couldn't sleep the next two nights. I loved it. An American Werewolf in London, remember vaguely since I saw it as a kid. Halloween, Jaws & The Exorcist are all awesome. After watching The Shining, every time I would feel light-headed. It's weired but always fun. I think it's fun to watch that movie when you are stuck home & office/school has been canceled due to heavy snow.

5. Evolution: Education and Outreach: this is actually a lot of articles put together by different authors. I am still going through 'em.

6. Do you understand evolutionary tree?: as the name says, this is part one. I came across this article on reddit. Great one & waiting for rest of the parts.

7. When the world's great scientific thinkers change their minds: My favorite of course is number 2, Steven Pinker. I remember reading the actual article he's referring to when he talked about we (human) have stopped evolving. Now to see him come out & say that ain't so, is fascinating. I also like number 3 & 8.

8. Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time: I am familiar with the name Teslar & his contribution. But I wasn't aware of his experiment in Col. Springs. It was simply great to read about it.

Well, there you have it. These are the things I have been wasting my time on this past weekend. Now, do not forget today is Darwin Day.

Happy Darwin Day to you all.

Well, if all these reading really got you bored here's something to cheer you up =)

Oh, Red Wine

After a long day, I get home last Sunday, log on my laptop & start drinking my half bottle Merlot I bought over the weekend. The weekend was a trip itself. Went to Westwood after a long time. That Morning, I was at the library when JoEl called from LAX. He was in town & was checking to see if I am down to party.

Hell yeah. Saturday night I showed up at my old house with a Sam Adams 12 pack. I only had two & it took less than 2 minutes for the whole pack to disappear. Everyone was just having a great time after the guys won a game. Back to my bottle of Merlot, I finished the whole thing that night. I was simply tired, burned out.

I love tea & I drink a lot of it too. I also hate the stain tea leaves in the bottom of the glass. I can't even reach down there, how the hell I'm suppose to clean it. I hit the sack that night leaving some wine still in the glass. Next morning, I rush out of bed putting on some clothes, trying to brush my teeth at the same time while ignoring my glass with wine in it.

Two days passed & I still didn't touch the glass. That's dirty. A glass with red wine in the bottom.


On the third day, I got the chance to buy some salmon (love fish) & other vegetables. I marinate the salmon with some salt, pepper & butter and leave it out for 15 minutes while cleaning the dishes. And that's when I noticed my glass, my glass sparkling and there's no tea/wine stain in the bottom.

Nice. More reason to drink red wine now., eh?!!

My Curiosity

Sunday night I spent about 20 minutes going through all the contacts on my cell & deleting the ones that I don't recall the name anymore, won't be talking to, will not need to or want to talk anymore. And then something happens. My curiosity takes over.

If I get my hand on another phone, I like to take it apart. See how it's assembled. I also like to take the SIM card from the other phone & plug it in my own phone. And vice versa. Also I will look for codes on the Internet & try it on my phone to see what I can do. Well, that night I got my hand on a ATT prepaid phone. Those one time phone you would buy to use for few days & then throw it away. It was a Motorola. First, I take the phone apart, then take out the SIM card & put it in my. Wow, 15 voice mail & a whole lot of txt messages. I always like to start from the end, it's easier that way to get a lot of info. I'm going through some of the txt when it hits me. These are all my txt messages. But what about the names? It's only showing the numbers & not the names. Having done this before I had a bad feeling. Immediately, I take the SIM out & put mine back in. I lost all my recent contacts. Fucking shit. Immediately, I tried to remember my brother's cell & couldn't. Funny I didn't panick, figured I can just ask everyone for their number again through facebook or myspace.

FYI: I am not a big fan of using either one. Never been a fan using bunch of lol....

But thanks to youmail, I didn't have to even do that. Youmail is a great service. It lets me customize the voicemail for each individual caller, a group & others not in my contact. I can listen to my voicemail online for free, respond to it with a click of a button & it doesn't cost me a dime. I love their service & recently I added all my contacts in my youmail account. So I spent the next about 2 hours going through all the names & adding them back on my cell. I still lost few business number that would've been nice to have on hand. But oh well. If I hadn't talked to 'em in 2 months I don't expect to talk to them anytime soon.

By the way, with youmail I can upload my own personal message to set it for someone specific. This way business caller hears a professional greeting while my friends get all the craps from me. Love you all guys....=)

UPDATE: I am really happy with youmail's service, but yesterday I stumbled upon Grand Central. From their FAQ section it appears Grand Central offers the same service as youmail (i.e. customized voicemail) with tons of other features as well. Some of the features include conference call, call recording & such. Recently Grand Central has been acquired by Google & their service is free as well.

Like I said, I like Youmail & I'm going to stick with them for now. But here's the link to Grand Central.

My New Year's Eve Celebration

As the clock was ticking towards midnight, everyone is getting excited, thrilled to celebrate new year's eve. Around 11.00pm, I was home. The house was exceptionally quite. Jesse was in Hollywood, not sure where Eillen & Monica went out to. Everyone was out to welcome 2008. I put my phone on silent mode, sipped two spoons of Tylenol Multi-Symptoms Severe Cold, laid down wrapping myself in blanket & began to surf the Internet. I could hear the fireworks around 11.30ish. There was a nice rhythm to it. Listening to the fireworks I slowly began to drowse & before I knew I was fast asleep.

This was by far the lamest new year's eve I have ever had. I was suppose to be either in Westwood or in Delano to celebrate like everyone else, but didn't happen. Why?! Well, keep reading.

The next day, I don't have any energy left on me to even get up from bed. I lost my appetite completely, don't want to eat, can't get myself out of bed. By noon, I figured if I don't put something in my mouth, I'm gonna get worse. So, I went to McDonald's and ordered a large fries & two BBQ snack wraps. I couldn't finish the whole meal, but was enough to sip two more spoons of Tylenol.

Going back to the 31st, I went to see my doctor around 9.00am. Hoping to get in early & get checked out. Lo behold, his office is closed until the 4th on January. The next day someone told me about another doctor on Hollywood. I got her number that night. I dragged myself out of bed that morning around 9am, called the doctor's office & asked for the earliest appointment. Lucky me, I could see her that very morning at 10.30am. Great, even though she's not my doctor & it was going to cost me more but I needed, wanted to see someone fast.

10.30/45am I am at the doctor's office. I am sitting on the edge of the bed as she examines my eyes, tongues, ears & then my nose. She stops at my nose and says:

"Oh my god."

I am calm, waiting for the worst news. I knew something was up. It's been over a week since I came down with a nasty cold, fever & cough. I've never been this sick & I could tell I wasn't getting better at all. Next thing she hooks up a little tube in my mouth & asks me to breath through the tube and this machine is going on making whirling noise. After all done, she says I've got acute bronchitis & symptoms of asthma. Just fucking great. I had a feeling that I had bronchitis. Cuz 4 years ago when I picked up smoking I was diagnosed with this shit. But I haven't smoked since then so what gives?!

Well, according to her the traffic, the fucking polluted air is not liked by my lung. It's not the cold, cuz the cold here in LA does even stand a chance compared to Ks. More or less, I am used to extreme cold & it doesn't even fucking snow in LA, damn it! So, I got home that afternoon with 4 different medications. After taking the medicines, we head out to the Getty Center. We were suppose to go to the Long Beach Aquarium, but I was still feeling crappy & didn't want to be anywhere near water.

The Getty is an amazing place. It's an art museum. Initially, I was having a good time until my friend started nagging. He cares more about the women in tight clothes than an art preserved from 1738. That was really irritating me, soon I started to get a headache. Before I know, the headache was too painful. We decided to cut the whole thing short, grab something to eat & then go to my house. I needed some pain killer bad. I hit the bed early again that night.

I am getting better now, feeling somewhat better as well. And I better after paying $68.00 fucking dollars for 4 pills, only 4 pills. I still get a nasty headache from time to time. I can't wait to get well so I can go out & party. I asked the doctor if it was OK to go running, she said running is fine. It's been almost week & a half since I've run. Me & Jesse, we will be going out for a run this evening.