Jul

29

See the world, but never forget the drops of oil on the spoon

Filed Under goal setting, quotes, strategy, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, time management | Leave a Comment

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon”.

Yeah, me too. Never forget the what?

I got this quote from Wikipedia’s entry on the book titled “The Alchemist”. First of all, I’m pretty much a straight up technology nerd/geek/whatever-they-call-it-these-days. I don’t pretend to be a domain expert on chemistry or biology. Sure, I took some classes in college, but it never really interested me as much as all things technology did, or even math. Matter of fact, I hated math when I was a kid. My parents and high school math teachers will testify how much I failed at the subject, hated the subject, and faked liking the subject (I sort of faked liking school too, but that’s a different story altogether to tell another time). I’ll bet that my teachers then will be shocked to hear today, that not only did I get a minor in math, published an original research paper in math, but actually like and appreciate math.

That being said, during my geeky nerd years doing my B.S. (ha-ha) in C.S., I pretty much thought of chemistry and biology as an “overhead cost” to getting my degree. It just wasn’t that much related to tech or math (sure I understand that CPU’s need electrons for the transistors and logic gates, but outside of that .. ?), and it was pretty much required if I wanted to graduate, so I knew that this isn’t something I could walk around and forget. When I graduated, a good friend of mine who graduated with me gave me a graduation/parting gift. It was a book titled “The Alchemist”. Now that you know my love-hate relationship with all-things chemistry at that time, I naturally thought to myself, “uhh .. what on earth were you thinking?” Nevertheless, I accepted the gift with a smile, thanked her for it, and well .. chucked it a side.

Just to put things in perspective, back then, I only read stuff like Slashdot, Onlamp and O’Reilly. Back then, there was no Digg or Reddit, but if there was, I would be reading that. I hung on on mailing lists, like for FreeBSD. I wouldn’t even touch business. Today, I read lots of business. So back then, if it wasn’t tech, I pretty much didn’t care. Ok, I read a little bit of national news. A little international news too, but 95% was tech, tech, and tech.

Many times when ridding my garage of bloat, I thought of ridding myself of a book that I knew I would never read, but it reminded me of the moments I had with Amira in the computer science lab, hacking away at programming assignments, logic problems, the late nights studying in the library (with coffee we quietly snuck past the pesky librarians), cramming for a test and stressing out over math and physics homework assignments. To date, I still have the book with me. Recently, I read the book mentioned somewhere and decided that well, I will at least devote enough time to read the summary of the book — which is when I looked up it’s Wikipedia entry and got that quote.

So anyway, following this trail led me to another interesting discovery. (Be warned, this is going to be a long blog post)

I googled for that exact quote and the first result was this blog post, by someone from Kerala, India. Here’s the story behind that quote, it’s worth the read I promise.

A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for 40 days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived.

Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention.

The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours.

“Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something”, said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. “As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill”.

The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was.

“Well”, asked the wise man, “Did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?”

The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him.

“Then go back and observe the marvels of my world”, said the wise man. “You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house”.

Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen.

“But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?” asked the wise man. Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone.

“Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you”, said the wisest of wise men. “The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon”.

This makes sense to me. I know and realize that I sometimes am like that boy. I focus all my energy on the day-to-day important stuff, but I miss the long term important stuff. This is a great example of the phrase “penny wise, pound foolish”. I sweat the stuff that is urgently needed within the next 24 hours and strive the hardest to hit my mark, which I do — but I miss my mark in meeting my long term, broader 5 year goal. I attribute this to not aligning my daily goals to my 5 year goals — something I MUST remedy soon.

A perfect example of this is my not taking a vacation off ever since I began working right after college. Today, I’m what you corporate folks diagnose as “bleeding vacation time”, that is, my vacation time accrues, but is capped off at a certain amount. Short term: there’s _always_ something important and/or urgent at work, such that I just cannot afford to not go to work. Long term: I lose my sanity and burn out from working so hard. I’m only human after all.

Before the end of this year, I will go for a vacation. I have nothing solid planned, but I know I must take a vacation if I am to become a better employee. It’s really better for my company anyway. I never thought I’d say that, but I am now. By the end of this year, if I still haven’t taken a vacation, I will be truly SORRY and DISAPPOINTED with myself. My ex-girlfriend actually predicted that I’m the “bleeding vacation time” type of person. And she predicted that when I was still in college. Multiple part time jobs while getting a degree, why would she ever say something like that? :/ I remember thinking to myself, “that’s because you Europeans take it too damn easy”. Which in my defense, is true. American workers put in more hours than their European counterparts, last I remember from reading a world labor stats report. Thus, I shrugged off her comments as irrelevant and inherently biased, based upon unreasonable metrics.

My fear is that I’m driving on the road in high gear, in pitch black darkness with my headlights shining no farther than 30 feet. I can easily avoid small objects lying on the road and remain on the path, but I may not see the brick wall standing 31 feet in front of me. Or stop in time before it’s too late.

I have since lost touch with Amira since she moved back to Bosnia and Herzegovina after graduation (little over 3 years now at time of writing). Nevertheless, in the age of the wonderful internets, with search engines, e-mail, instant messengers, social-networks, and the good old telephone, there really is no excuse for not staying in touch. I hope she will drop me an e-mail if she reads this. I know (and she knows), and now you know, what a heartless prick I can be sometimes (see “what the hell were you thinking?” above). I’m sorry :(

The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

Jul

29

Learning through a journey of actions

Filed Under quotes, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

There is only one way to learn, it’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey
– The Alchemist

Jul

23

When 1 + 1 = < 2

Filed Under ice hockey, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

When people say 1 + 1 = 3 (or greater), they talk about synergy.

synergy (noun): the working together of two things (muscles or drugs for example) to produce an effect greater than the sum of their individual effects

Today, I learned that the reverse is also true. It’s possible for 1 + 1 to result in less than the expected 2. In a best 2 out of 3 shootout with team Flesh Wound, my team (Storm) lost the first two games. In the first game (we lost 0-5), we were the most shorthanded we have ever been, with something like 7 or 8 players only, and missing some of our best players too. Before today’s game (the second game), I was all excited and was confident we could take them. Why? Because we had our best players show up, and we had almost twice as many players. So I figured, if we lost 0-5 the first time, we’re going to win this time, or tie the game at the very least.

How wrong I was. We lost 1-10. So just to analyze the situation from a purely statistical point of view, my explanation to this is — in the first game, despite having less players and less skilled players, we worked together like a well oiled-machine. In our second game however, with the increased strength in numbers and more skilled players, we failed to work together like a tightly-knit group. The increased headcount required increased effort in working together — which we did not. Not only did we fail to capitalize on our advantage, we created a vulnerability in the way we played.

I won’t lie that I’m totally bummed out. Yes, I was emotionally invested, and I set myself up for the disappointment. But if you play like you’re going to lose, you’re probably going to lose anyway. So I played like we were going to win, even if that means setting myself up for a disappointment. It’s important to acknowledge my disappointment, so that I can now let it dissipate.

Just to extrapolate the lesson learned to building a team at work, it’s kind of like having super-star employees on your team. If they don’t play well with each other and each do their own thing, not only will that zero-out any possibility of synergy (meaning, 1 + 1 = >3), but that may even cause negative synergy (1 + 1 = >2).

Does anyone know the antonym for synergy? Negative synergy?

Jul

20

SMS spam, how did you know I was looking to shop?

Filed Under retards | 12 Comments

SMS-spam

Update 21 July 07 - Welcome, spam-haters redirected from Google! I started realizing that people were finding this post through search engines when they got hit by the same piece of spam-laden text-message/SMS on their phones. Do share your stories and any solutions you have found in the comments below. Or if you just want to vent your hate for mobile spam scourges in general ;) I’ll be monitoring the comment section of this post for, well.. spammers.

Allen@aerofire.c0m was spot on. He knew I was looking to buy W.indows V.ista and all software Adobe. When I got this text message, I visited the advertised site immediately. Checked out the prices, read their customer testimonials. Impressive business. I wasted no time and had ThreatSeeker label this site under “Potentially Unwanted Software”.

Take that, you spammer.

The aerofire.com address was obviously spoofed — aerofire.com looked like some sprinkler business, completely unrelated. And the WHOIS record for the sws00.com domain showed this very convincing record:

soft wen
        xiaowen
        No.2 chang'an road
        beijing Beijing 100001
        China
        tel: 86 010 2493049
        fax: 86 010 3240904
        234@34.com

I’m sure that the recent news about China now being the number 1 country for malware distribution has nothing to do with this. Probably just pure coincidence.

Jul

19

Password protect zip files

Filed Under google, uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I don’t know why I never thought of doing this before, but a great way to get around GMail rejecting your file attachments is to password protect your zip file. GMail is actually smart enough to peek into your zip files and check its contents — provided you don’t password protect it, which most people don’t. Now don’t get me wrong, but that’s a great thing for most people. However, it’s just downright annoying to me when it rejects a file that I know is safe.

I discovered this by accident. I was browsing through some malicious code samples for research, and needed to get the sample from one machine to the other. So I just emailed the sample to my GMail account. It’s not uncommon for security researchers to share malcode samples among each other by means of zipping up the code and then password protecting it.

So imagine my delight when I saw this:

Why yes, dear GMail, I’m glad you cannot scan the file for viruses. Because it _is_ a virus :)

Maybe Google will roll out a security-researcher’s edition of GMail? Nah. Probably not.

Jul

19

Cool robot

Filed Under uncategorized | 1 Comment

Cool robot. Real Transformers not too far away?

Thanks Digg.

Jul

15

The Probability that a Matrix of Integers is Diagonalizable

Filed Under geeky, math, technology | 1 Comment

Phew, what a long ride it has been! My undergrad math research paper that I co-authored with Dr. Andrew J. Hetzel and Dr. Kent E. Morrison is finally published in MAA (Math. Assoc. of America)’s June/July 2007 Monthly.

In this article, we exhibit the results of an undergraduate research project where we asked the question: How frequently is an n x n matrix with integer entries diagonalizable over the complex numbers, the real numbers, and the rational numbers, respectively? Such a frequency is couched in terms of a variant on the number theoretic notion of “natural density.” Complete information is given for the frequency of diagonalizability over the complex numbers, and results are provided for the frequency of diagonalizability over the real numbers and the rational numbers if n = 2. At the end of the article, we provide three open questions based upon this work that may be suitable for other undergraduate research projects.

Here’s a preview (options to view in other formats are available, even in voice), courtesy of scribd:

I presented the research on this with April Jeffcoat at the AMS and MAA 2004 Joint Math Meeting in Phoenix, AZ. Here’s a picture of what appears to be perhaps one of the nerdiest time in my life. (you can drool over the sexy graphs charts behind me)

April "May June" and Jay "Kay ELL"

Jul

11

Psychology Today on Procrastination

Filed Under career, execution, regular reads, self improvement | Leave a Comment

Psychology Today has this great top 10 on procrastination — a favorite topic of mine, because I hate procrastination, and I know I suffer from a little of it.

These are my favorite points:

3. Procrastination is not a problem of time management or of planning. Procrastinators are not different in their ability to estimate time, although they are more optimistic than others. “Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up,” insists Dr. Ferrari.

Procrastination is actually a serious problem, we as society just don’t view it like it’s that bad. To me, procrastination deserves the attention drugs, alcohol, and all the likes deserve. Ok so I went overboard a little, but you get the point. We only have a finite amount of time, all the money in the world can’t buy you more time — wasting time is an irreversible process.

4. Procrastinators are made not born. Procrastination is learned in the family milieu, but not directly. It is one response to an authoritarian parenting style. Having a harsh, controlling father keeps children from developing the ability to regulate themselves, from internalizing their own intentions and then learning to act on them. Procrastination can even be a form of rebellion, one of the few forms available under such circumstances. What’s more, under those household conditions, procrastinators turn more to friends than to parents for support, and their friends may reinforce procrastination because they tend to be tolerant of their excuses.

I’m not a parent, but I think that’s why too much parenting is bad.

7. Procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don’t take a lot of commitment on their part. Checking e-mail is almost perfect for this purpose. They distract themselves as a way of regulating their emotions such as fear of failure.

This one, I particular hate — because I suffer from a minor form of it. Yes, I admit. Which is why recently I just cut myself off completely from e-mail. Literally. I won’t have my e-mail client running in background while I’m doing something, with that corner alert popup when a new message arrives. It’s just too damn distracting. I open my e-mail client once every few hours or so. If it’s so urgent, then someone can just call me. That’s what phones are for. In fact, I block off a few hours to focus on work and refrain from e-mail, and reserve checking email as a reward for my working a few hours. It’s a great method.

I think most corporate workers waste time on checking e-mail. Checking email and replying fast gives you that sense that you’re accomplishing something, it’s a form of instant-gratification like for impulse shoppers. If you reply enough emails fast enough all day, it feels like you’ve done work all day. I know I’ve felt like that, but it’s a lie. All day looking busy, but actual net work done = zero. It reminds me of people who like to “look” busy and work hard to be “busy” .. but are honestly just not productive — whether they realize it or not. I rather be productive and be calm and in control of things. Sure that may look like I am not busy, but I actually did real work.

8. There’s more than one flavor of procrastination. People procrastinate for different reasons. Dr. Ferrari identifies three basic types of procrastinators:

* arousal types, or thrill-seekers, who wait to the last minute for the euphoric rush.

* avoiders, who may be avoiding fear of failure or even fear of success, but in either case are very concerned with what others think of them; they would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.

* decisional procrastinators, who cannot make a decision. Not making a decision absolves procrastinators of responsibility for the outcome of events.

I used to suffer from the second category of avoiding fear of failure/success. I was a bit of a perfectionist, but I am no longer one. Perfection is sometimes overrated. More often than not, my striving for perfection instead leads to my inaction — which is against my value of being a person of action. I rather fail from action, than fail from inaction. As for worrying about what others think of you, I think going overboard there is also unhealthy. At the end of the day, I will be the judge of whether or not I have done myself justice.

Jul

11

Chair + helium balloons = cheapest flight ever

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This has got to be the coolest story I’ve read today — a guy flying with basically a lawn chair and lots of helium balloons. What’s even funnier — he got a ticket for violating the airspace laws.

Maybe someday, I’ll do just that. :D

Jul

10

Meeting resistance is a good thing

Filed Under passion, quotes, self improvement, startup, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

As you go along your own road in life, you will, if you aim high enough, also meet resistance, for as Robert Kennedy once said, “if there’s nobody in your way, it’s because you’re not going anywhere.” But no matter how tough the opposition may seem, have courage still–and persevere.
– Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, at a commencement address

This quote is similar to the saying, “If you say you have no competitors, that means nobody is stupid enough to want to do what it is you’re trying to do”. If you’re doing something of value, you _will_ meet competitors.

Jul

6

wherethehellismatt.com

Filed Under travel | Leave a Comment

This video is so cool! I thought to myself, there’s no way I am not gonna immediately post this on my blog! (note the double negation)

I’ve always wanted to travel the world, and this guy is definitely living my dream.

Whoa. I am jealous. Seriously.

Update — If you like the clip above, here are the outtakes (so cool too!)

Update 2 — This reminded me of a website I bookmarked. It lets me travel and see the world, all from my desktop. A poor man’s vivid dream tool, it’s pretty cool. So cool, it was acquired by Google. Do check it out! http://www.panoramio.com/

Jul

6

How long can you ride the wave of a single good idea?

Filed Under business, innovation, people i like, regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Ever since Shai Agassi left SAP AG (where he was in the running to be co-CEO), he has started a blog describing the many interesting things he is doing, to change the world. His posts are well thought out, requires research, due-diligence, careful observation, and just plain good-old business acumen. Shai is a technical guy (has a BS in computer science from Technion, a reputable educational institution in Israel), so he understands inherent intricacies of technical systems, yet he also has the ability to see the “big picture”, and knows what it takes to run a sustainable big tech company. Those two skills of his that I admire and hope to achieve.

Today, I just read a blog post of his, in his discussion of growth through innovation. He says,

[On Singapore’s leadership success, that comes from treating the island state as a large company] To a certain (much larger) degree, China applied the same model to create modern China over the last few years. Where most countries need one good idea every 5-10 years and can ride the wave of that idea for a generation, China needs to create one of those big ideas pretty much every 5-10 months at their scale. So what is the next big idea – because if you are a small country, like Israel or Singapore, you just can’t wait for the wave to hit the shore, you have to start paddling before the wave comes.

I’m musing over the similarities of running a big country vs. small country with running a big corporation vs. a small startup. If a startup can be built around a single good idea (and then ride that wave for say 5 years), it’s not too far fetched to say that a corporation 10X the size of the startup would have trouble competing in the marketplace if it was also churning out only 1 good idea every 5 years. I guess that’s why huge corporations churn out patents at the rate of a few per day? I remember Carly Fiorina using the number of patents filed by HP as one of the metrics to measure HP’s rate of innovation.

At any rate, reading this post by Shai just reminds me the importance of not falling into complacency. One good idea will only last so long, and in order to sustain a business, you better start thinking of your next good idea before the wave of the current good idea dies out. If you’re a big company, you will probably need a pipeline of good ideas. The process of building this pipeline should be formalized, with each idea vetted and tested out for soundness. In a startup, you can afford to be more ad-hoc and probably just yell over to the guy on the other side of your wall to bounce ideas, but in a big company, your “next-door” co-worker may be in Israel, Beijing, Dublin, or Paris (mine are) — I tried yelling really hard but apparently not hard enough. You can try but I wouldn’t recommend it.

So a question I would pose to my readers is, regardless of what type of business you are in, what is that next idea that you will come up with that will be the basis of that next wave, that your company can ride on for the next 5-10 years?

Shai is a good problem solver. He works by looking at the larger problem, and then breaking them up into smaller pieces, and solving those first. Then summing up those solutions to solve the bigger problem. That sounds a lot like the divide-and-conquer algorithm CS geeks learn.

Shai’s original blog post on this is here.

Jul

2

Cell phones for multiple factor authentication

Filed Under hacks, ideas, technology, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

So I was thinking about this today, you know how people carry around those key chains with a seemingly random number generator that’s used as a password? I have one issued by my company, and the way it works is, to access this thing (this resource, whatever, I’m trying to be generic about it), I type in the number showing up on my key chain at that very second, PLUS my password. You can read up more about two-factor authentications here.

Basically, the upside of using this RSA SecurID key chain I have, is that even if someone were to find out what my password is, without knowing the number showing up on the key chain (which changes every 60 seconds), my password is useless. So they would require physical possession of my RSA SecurID token. This is great, because if my password got leaked to say, some random guy in Russia, and I’m here in the US — he is going to have to come a long way to get my token, that is, if he can get it out of my kung fu grip. Likewise, the possession of my SecurID token without knowing my password is equally useless. I could show you the number on the token, but without my password you can’t gain access to anything.

I realize that some banks actually issue these hardware random number generator “tokens” to customers. Now that’s a great security practice, but these tokens are not cheap. I think they cost about $20-40 per unit. I’d imagine how costs would stack up once the number of customers start growing. Anyway, so my idea is this — we know that most people today have cell phones, and most people have a cell phone service where they have caller-ID (the ability to see the number that is calling them). Let’s say a big bank here in the US were to buy up 1,000 phone numbers. Then, whenever their customer wants to login to their website online — one of these 1,000 phone numbers would call the customer’s cell phone. This number would be then used in conjunction with their password to access the site.

Basically, we’re turning your cell phone into a RSA SecurID token. If some bad guy knew your password, UNLESS they also have possession of your phone, they won’t know the right number to punch in. They could guess, but first of all, they would need to know the 1,000 numbers the bank first possesses. That’s hard to figure out. The bank could do better than 1,000, perhaps 10,000. And, they could rotate the numbers. Meaning, buy 1,000 phone numbers, use these for 2 weeks, sell off these phone lines for another new 1,000 numbers.

The other requirement would be that after one of these 1,000 numbers call you, if you do not login to the website within say, 3 minutes, it will be invalid. So if you take longer than 3 minutes (perhaps you got interrupted, picked up a phone call, whatever), then the bank will just have to call you from another number.

So let’s recap how difficult it is to break this system. An online bank robber would have to know your password, and steal your phone. What if they have your password but dont have the guts to steal your phone? Can they do without the phone? Let’s see what they would have to guess without your phone.

  1. US phone numbers have 10 digits. Each digit goes from 0 through 9. So anything from 000-000-0000 to 999-999-9999 is possible. That’s 10 billion numbers
  2. Of these 10 billion numbers, you have to figure out how many of these actually belongs to the bank. Let’s take a conservative approach and say the bank has 1,000. So your odds are 1,000 divided by 10 Bil or a chance of 0.0000001. That’s a pretty darn small number. As a virtual bank robber, you wouldn’t know this exact number anyway. Unless you have an insider working for you who knows. This should be a highly guarded secret
  3. Now let’s say, these 1,000 numbers change on a bi-weekly basis. The numbers were hard to guess to begin with, and now they are constantly changing. So if you knew that a bank had 123-456-7890 as one of it’s numbers today, that may no longer be true tomorrow.

The added security benefit is this: If you were at the beach and you saw one of these numbers call you, you would know instantly that someone is trying to login to your bank account online.

There are many variations of this, such as, you could have a bank call up your cell phone from the same number over and over, but instead of looking at the number that just dialed you via caller ID, you pick up the phone, and a machine’s voice reads out loud at 10 digit number to you (great for customers with no caller-id). Or, the bank sends you a SMS text message with some number (also great for people with no caller ID). Whatever. The point is, your cell phone could be used by the bank as a second authentication mechanism.

For customers who don’t have cell phones, they probably don’t have electric in their homes. So they probably won’t need a bank account anyway. Or if they did, they wouldn’t have computers, so there would be no need for this anyway :D And this business model “scales” very well. The bank pays the initial cost of having such a service in place, and then for every new customer, there’s virtually no additional cost. With the RSA SecurID token, they’re paying $20-40 for EVERY single customer they sign up.

Perhaps now that I’ve said this, I’ll hear of a startup doing exactly this, and then selling it to banks.

Update 7/5/2007 - http://www.pcbanker.com/ has some of the best interest rates for CHECKING (not savings) account, and they provide their customers with the RSA SecurID tokens. Thanks Nigel.

Jul

1

I will always do the right thing (core value of mine)

Filed Under business, career, self improvement, things to remind myself, uncategorized, values | Leave a Comment

Recently, a good friend of mine commented to me about how someone (let’s call him Mr. X) that I used to work with and I disliked, isn’t so bad of a person as long as one did not work with him. My friend said that because I had a bad experience with Mr. X, I’m not his friend today, but for those who have never been a colleague of Mr. X, they would be his friends. The point my friend was trying to make was that this guy was not a jerk outside of work, only at work, and that I would be Mr. X’s friend if I had never known him at work.

My reply to that was that, assuming that I never worked with Mr. X before, and became his friend, if I at a later date found out what a jerk he was at work, I would be lesser of a friend. Eventually becoming a non-friend. I rarely part ways like that with friends, but it has happened before. Relationships are two way streets. Last year I parted ways with a friend (in a less than desirable term), because I was giving up too much, and the relationship was just too lop-sided. That was someone else, not Mr. X.

Back to Mr. X. Why would I not be his friend, if he was only a bad person at work, and he wasn’t doing anything bad to me?

The answer was simple, and I didn’t even have to think hard. The values Mr. X stand for, and the actions that he exhibit, are against my personal core values.

I have a set of core values, and core values to me, are a standard that I will hold myself to, NO MATTER WHAT. My core values are carefully selected, and I will continue to practice my core values, even if the world shuns them. That’s an important test. When you build your set of core values, remember that they must pass the “popularity test”. If something you do suddenly becomes unpopular, and you decide to no longer do it, then that’s not a good core value. A core value is immutable, so carefully pick them.

One of my core values is: Doing The Right Thing

If that sounds vague to you, then what about Google’s core value of “Do No Evil”? Anyway, this value of mine basically means that, given a particular situation that I am in that requires my action, I will act according to what I think is the right thing to do. And this is something I will do, even if means that I have to make an unpopular choice. This is my standard that I have set for myself, feel free to bookmark this blog post and hold me accountable to what I have just said, should I future forget, and make a decision that’s not right.

Back to Mr. X. In my opinion, he does a lot of things at work to other people, that are not the right thing to do. But it’s not exactly blatantly wrong either, so he continues with his behavior. But deep down inside of me, it’s not right by my books, and I’m glad I don’t work with Mr. X. anymore.

The great thing about bad experiences, is that you learn from them. Granted, I haven’t learned what to do from Mr. X, but I have learned what NOT to do. Lots of it. I’ll describe my thoughts of an ideal person that I strive to be, and the things that I don’t want to be (and strive NOT to do).

Authenticity, transparency, and consistency

I like people who are authentic. The reason why I rank backstabbers worse than serial killers, child rapists, etc. is because backstabbers do it behind your back, while pretending to be your friend. To me, this is kind of like the Sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway. Those poor victims never stood a chance. The Sarin liquid is colorless, tasteless and has no odor. If those bad guys had the balls, they should have used guns or something. If someone is to kill me, do it to my face. Don’t do it behind my back. You declare war on a country before attacking. You don’t attack before declaring war.

Anyway, Mr. X was not exactly a backstabber, but he was a two-face bastard (in my book, a two-face bastard is not a full-fledged backstabber, but is on the right track to becoming one). Mr. X’s relationship modus operandi at work could be summed up as: If you were higher ranking than him at work, or if he thinks that you could help him, or indirectly do something to help him, he would be nice to you. Maybe even kiss your ass. However, if you are lower ranking than him, or if he knows there’s no way you could help him, or indirectly help him, he treats you like a second-class citizen. He’s not outright rude or anything, but a tad dishonest, sometimes even doing something to prevent you from advancing faster than him.

If you’re going to be a dick, by all means be a dick to everyone. Be a dick to people who you know can’t ever help you, and also the people who you know can help you. If you’re going to be a nice person, then be nice to everyone. Be nice and kiss your boss’s ass if you must, but also be nice to those who you know cannot help you. In short, don’t be a two-face bastard. Be consistent.

Mr. X would sell you something he himself wouldn’t buy. I simply can’t trust Mr. X, even when gives me advice, because sometimes the advice he gives me, is really in his own interest, not so much for me. Sometimes the so-called advice for me, really has nothing in it for me. It’s kind of like when someone says to you, “Hey, would you like to wash my car? It’s a great work out, and you look like you need a tan.” But phrase that in such a way that it looks like it benefits the person washing the car, not the owner of the car. “Hey, seriously, if you don’t do as I advice you to do, it’s really just bad for you. You should do it for your own good.”

Please. I wasn’t born yesterday. How about you do it first, and I’ll do it after I see you do it?

Authenticity helps build trust. When we trust each other, we can move forward and get real work done. We don’t spend time second guessing each other for a hidden agenda. I was constantly second guessing Mr. X. I can’t describe what a pain it is, living such a life of having to constantly second guess the people around you. Just to contrast, my current VP of Security Research Dan Hubbard is an awesome guy — I don’t second guess what he says. He tells it like it is, no beating around the bush, no having to look for double meanings. The team moves forward faster, without distrust. How do you unify a team to tackle a challenge with each member not trusting each other, and looking out for themselves only? YOU CAN’T.

Helping others succeed

Mr. X played the corporate big company political game of “playing your cards close to the vest”. Matter of fact, he regularly stole my best cards to be played as his, and amazed everyone with his winning streak. He hoarded valuable information and disseminated them based on the importance of the recipient to him, arguably an unfair but effective method of gaining control. The only problem is, he couldn’t find any valuable information on his own, so the valuable information he disseminated to others, were basically cut-paste jobs from my emails I sent him. Oh, the cut-paste email job conveniently strips out all indications that it he got the information from someone else.

In my opinion, that era of information hording to be powerful in the corporate work place is over. Look at the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Everyone is sharing information. The person who shares the most to benefit society, is considered the more powerful. They help others succeed. The person perceived to be full of valuable information but could possibly be a phony, IS NOT AS VALUABLE as the person who can actually deliver some value to you. If I knew you need something to be successful, and if I could not personally deliver it to you for your success, but if I knew of someone who can, I would introduce you both. I will admit I can’t help you with my own two hands, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t help you by connecting you to someone I know who can.

Given the choice of being perceived as someone true but not, and actually being someone true, but not necessarily perceived as such — I would pick the latter. If you’re a fake, eventually people will find out.

Also, I rather help others by giving them the ability to help themselves, rather than to force them come to me every single time. This is the “teach a man how to fish” philosophy. I rather teach you how to fish, than you give you a fish. I’ll give you a fish if you want, but that’s only a short term immediate benefit, and not sustainable in the long run for either of us. To contrast this with Mr. X, he would give you a fish for today, because he knows you will have to come back to him tomorrow. And he will do his best to actively prevent you from learning how to fish on your own.

They say that the people around you rub off on you. If you surround yourself with successful people, you too, would be successful. If that is so, then if I make the people around me successful, I too would be successful. Mr. X saw it as a zero sum game (if you win, I lose; so if I see you moving faster than me, I will slow you down). I disagree with that.

I observed that it’s mostly the little people who try to display their rank and power. The people with rank and power already know they have it, and don’t waste time proving it to their rank-and-files. Mr. X was slightly above rank-and-file, but he definitely made it known to others about whatever little power he had. I guess he forgot to check his ego at home before coming to work today. Again. Mr. X would be much more successful if we were back in the WWII era.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
– Mark Twain

To sum up, I knew about Mr. X’s two-face bastard attitude, my core values were mutually exclusive of his (some even conflicted), I could NOT operate autonomously, and our unfair lop-sided relationship resulted in my constant uncertainty and fear. He was impossible to read, was full of hidden agendas, and I had to constantly second guess him. That sealed the deal, my deal to resign, that is — and I left.

Hopefully I have not painted the picture that I am a saint — for I am not. I did have my naive moments, which I have since learned from. One of the great things about working with assholes, is that it builds character. I know that might sound cliche, but I speak for myself.

One of the reasons why I first started blogging, was to improve myself. I quickly found out that blogging provides transparency, as in, the internets will know what I’m about, and they can decide for themselves what they think of me (which I totally respect, good or bad). That reinforces that I need to be good, or else people would know that I’m actually bad, pretending to be good.

The other aspect I like about writing my blog, is that anybody reading my blog, can hold me accountable for what I say. Granted, I might sometimes write something when I’m half asleep, so that might not make much sense — but if you do the right thing, and judge me only by the well thought out articles that I really poured my full honest judgement into, .. then feel free to hold me accountable to what I say.