some asian kid whose aging a bit

"Life never stops rolling..."

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Black Violin - Inspiration

Only question I have is... how are these lyrics not online? All the while I thought that that we had something special. Although we had our ups and down, you still had a place inside my heart. What’s it gonna take for you to realize, when those were my life. (I think I got this wrong) Girl, I’m sure to die… sure to die. I feel so empty inside.

[Repeats] Nothing can express the way I feel about you giirrll. Ya may not be there to me, that’s why I need you in my world. No, no… you’re my inspiration…. to do the things I do. Although there might be complication, my heart is for you, baby. there’s nothing you’ll ever need.

[deeteecee2-blog1]

Attack on Titans

For English Readers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAGdv7jTDlI I could place reiner braun’s quote with how I feel about the software interview process and my personal struggles despite having a few years of work experience.  「そうか。。。きっとここに長くいいすぎてしまった。ばかなやつらにかこまれて三年も暮らしたせいだ。俺たちはガキで何一つ知らなかったんだよ。こんなやつらがいるなんて知らずにいればおれはこんな半端なクソやろにならずすだのに。もう俺には何が正しい事かわからん。ただ、俺のすべきことは自分のした行いや洗濯に対し、戦士として最後まで果たす事だ。」 これはライナブラウンの引用というより、俺のソフト面接に対する宣言なのだが。。なんつって、でも本当に嫌な感じだ。

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Alumni and Donations

Let me make this clear because I continue to still get occasional calls from the UCLA office (with the wrong type of staff mind you) trying to force donations out of previous students. Yeah, for some reason, I’m upset because I had to say “no” more than three times to get this person off the phone. (I was rather surprised that “no, sorry I apologize, I’m having financial issues” wasn’t a good enough response)   I refuse to donate to the school for two reasons: 1. School system is broken and colleges are sucking up all the money for the wrong reasons.  2. I was a computer science & engineering major (terrible choice for a major, I might add) and I’m not a fan of the education I received.  Regarding #2, why is the failure rate for computer science so high? It’s not because programming is such a difficult subject. I learned lots out of an internship from a very average position and it made it clear to me that you need a stronger base of applicable programming before you throw in the theory. Start with fixing that problem first, throw out the CS&E major, and then we can start talking about the POTENTIAL of donations. Ironically, you can’t just suck the money out of alumni because we’re skilled and educated enough to realize “hey, we don’t have to throw our money at you.”  

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Rewatching Full Metal Alchemist

Out of anime to watch so I rewatched FMA brotherhood. It’s always interesting to go back and watch anime and realize the subtleties of Japanese culture, especially when you’ve been living in their swamp for so long. Sorry, I apologize, it’s just the work culture that I consider a swamp. 

In a few scenes with Colonel Mustang trying to rise to the top, one of his subordinates begins with the statement “I’m going to take a vacation.” Well, that’s weird. They don’t take vacations just out of the blue like that. You’re right, they don’t. That’s because the vacation was just a secret code word for their secret mission to do something for the sake for the job. The second time it happens (with the character Jean Havoc. the first is with the sergeant Riza Hawkeye), this idea hits me in the head that Japanese people are so entrenched and demanded in their work culture that you’ll see these elements in manga and entertainment anywhere. I was like...wow...work is their life and its no joke. When Jean Havoc lies in the bed with paralyzed legs, there is a very emotional wildfire scene with him shouting at the Colonel directly that the Colonel should leave him behind but at the same time, he admits how frustrated he is that he can no longer work anymore. But wait, in our creative viewer minds, we know he just doesn’t want to leave his Colonel behind and help him. But if you were to see that in any other culture, they’d convey that specific statement in some way. We know Japanese culture hides these obvious statements and because of that, it leaves room for the “work is life” belief. 

And people say Japanese people don’t understand sarcasm, haha. 

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Got fired for performance-related reasons? Don’t feel too bad about it

It’s been 2 months since I got fired and I’m still rummaging for reasons and explanations even though I already know the answer: there is no answer. The manager made a bad decision based on bullshit reasoning and I’ll improve whatever led to those mistakes that I never considered worth firing. 

Reading this has led me to some simple insight and ease of comfort at least: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/42dy7n/has_anyone_ever_been_fired_from_their_software/

Fight on.

[deeteecee2-blog1]

The best comeback for anti-immigrants who tell you to get out your country

Are you an immigrant in America and have been told by another individual to “get out of our country?” You should tell him he should be the one to get out because he doesn’t understand the founding principles of America, that our country is a melting pot of all people, and that he is probably an ignorant little child of the age of six.

Well, okay maybe ignore the last one. But stating the first two, true Americans will stand by you.

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Grr, amazon phone interview

Here is the question:

Implement an iterator over a binary search tree (BST). Your iterator will be initialized with the root node of a BST.

Calling next() will return the next smallest number in the BST.

Note: next() and hasNext() should run in average O(1) time and uses O(h) memory, where h is the height of the tree.

The problem is, I didn’t understand the functionality of the iterator. At first, I didn’t understand it was a trick question telling me to figure this out without using “the right child” of the BFS. The interviewer wants me to use another data structure like an array or stack and once I get the bigger numbers, grab the smaller numbers with next(). 

But my issue was I had initially asked, “Do I only have access to next() or do I have access to the children as well? Otherwise, I can’t grab the bigger values.” He said “you can have access to the other children.” The problem with telling me this is it contradicts the goal of the problem itself, which leads me to asking again ... “why do i have next() and hasNext()” and there is no way he would be able to answer that at least not within 20 minutes.

Bad interview question in my opinion. We never progressed and I just ended up asking questions over and over. He should’ve just stated from the beginning “this is a trick question in which you cannot use the right children. Figure it out.” When you give out trick questions like this, don’t modify the conditions of the trick question because you’re gonna confuse the interviewee even more.   Metaphoric Version

Dude hands you a spoon, knife, and a cake. Normally, you cut the cake with a knife. Dude tells me you have the spoon to use for the cake. I ask, “Can I use the knife too?” Dude says, “Yeah, you can use the knife.” Then I ask, “so why do I have the spoon.” Dude proceeds to describe the qualities of the spoon and how it works but does not answer the actual question; in his mind, he is thinking it’s something I have to figure out for the purpose of the technical question and thus, making it even more confusing for me.

Sigh... In the end, all we got was both sides were probably uncomfortable and they think I have the logic of a 10 year-old. #hugewasteoftime 

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Random Bad Recruiter Experiences

Failed to call me. Fair enough, I e-mail and we decide to talk later. Nothing wrong so far. Calls me and goes to voice mail directly for some reason. I try to call her and it goes to voice mail directly. Somehow we finally connect and I hear her dull, bored voice ready to dazzle me to sleep. 

Things are already not looking good. 

She asks me about my job context and I tell her straight up that I was let go, unfortunately, even though I enjoyed working at my last company. I get asked about the severance package and I ask, “sorry but what is the reason for that information?” She says it’s to understand the motivation that I had for...... GETTING FIRED? wtf is this bitch smoking. bet you weren’t ready for that huh lol. anyways, instead of that awfully rude response, I stated instead “well, I told you I was fired. that’s not something out of personal motivation or decision-making.” just totally sounded like she was dodging my question at that point. 

I also asked her “it looks like you guys are looking for 5+ years experience. I definitely don’t fall under that but are you still open to discussion?” Her response: “Yes, that’s actually why I called.” 

15-20 minutes later. 

Her: “Oh, I would say your language and framework depth is not enough for us at the time. Please try again 6 months later.” 

Bitch, are you serious? My resume shows with clarity each job, the duration, and the tools involved and you take that long to make that response? You didn’t even have to call me.

#thesekindofrecruiters #gtfo

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Yelp, Reviews, and the “slight” Rift

So people have been complaining about yelp being an extortionist bully and with all the sources out there and not a single legal case going through, I have to still disagree with them. I’m sure false reviews exist but let’s stay away from that topic. In my opinion, yelp, whether righteous or not, still holds a rift and it has the same rift as any online, crowdsourcing review even if its done by professional chefs. 

Everybody has their own tastes. Everybody. You can utilize reviews to a certain extent but I don’t think a 5-star system does it justice. There’s various factors and one of the biggest, I would have to say, is the demographics and how one grew up eating because that is mainly what molds your taste and forms the type of reviews you give. 

What do I mean by that?

I’m a Taiwanese American who grew up in Taiwan and moved over when I was very little and yet, every year or so, I’ve gone back to Taiwan as well as eating my mother’s native preferred cooking. I not only enjoy Taiwanese food but I also enjoy American food to a great extent, though I’m still always leaning towards Taiwanese food is better. So I would take these two factors into consideration:

enjoys Taiwanese food, is Taiwanese, & leans more towards Taiwanese food with an enjoyment of American taste. 

Why is that so important? Think about the difference between taste preference. After speaking to so many people (demographics non-Asian and Asian included), hearing people’s opinions, and just tasting the food itself as well as hearing my parents’ responses, Taiwanese people as well as Japanese people tend to favor lighter, less salty, less strong flavors. Americans are quite the opposite and go heavier in flavor.. THAN taiwanese people. How do I come up with this assumption? I go to Taiwanese restaurants in America and my parents always come up with the same complaint of “this is too salty.” Not only them but relatives tend to make the same statement whereas the younger generation that grew up in America just take it for what it is and say... “oh yeah, it’s a bit salty but not too bad.” 

There is no solution but demographics would improve the reviews/ratings

But even then, I’m not only Taiwanese but I’m American which results in a more unique result which has no clear explanation for what leads to my favoring in taste. 

But there are crowdsourced reviews from professional chefs. What about those?

Useless in my opinion. I’m not saying food-tasters have bad taste or that chefs can’t rate food, professional or not. In the end, you are what you eat and if you’re used to eating lower quality food or whatever, your standards are much different from professionals. It’s what you eat that makes your taste and preferences and because of that, everyone’s own tastes, even professionals are scattered everywhere. There just is no clear answer. Taste preferences may be one of the biggest questions in the universe, beyond that of even understanding how the human mind works but that opens up for another topic.

I called this a “slight” rift

I criticized crowdsourced reviews but in the end, they still give me some way to weed out some of the terrible restaurants (which is why I mentioned maybe we should do an alternative to 1-5 stars) There are have been the few cases where I’ve been to a 2/3-star restaurant that were undeservingly so. An example of this is the way the restaurants are rated. For most of what I wrote, I mentioned the issue of demographics and background but there’s also “let me rate this by service or atmosphere and so forth.” I honestly believe those should all be separate from “quality of food” and yet, you won’t really see that in Yelp as you only go there for 5 seconds to see what you want that day and check the star rating, maybe while taking a glimpse of a gloriously humorous comment. 

[deeteecee2-blog1]

The Throwaway

It was a pretty okay day but I knew I had some tasks to get done that day. One was one I had found solutions for but it was probably better to consult with the master of the tools in disguise (ansible) at the time of that day. It took a while before he came into the office because it was a remote-work-available day and luckily, he still decided to come into the office. 

Yessss... easier communication.

Was grateful for that because just talking about some of the stuff you have to handle over slack or even video could be a bit frustrating, especially if its infrastructure. At the same time, I had to bother him for another task to prepare to help work with one of my team members. I thought it was a good idea to pair up with him/her because of the amount of frustrating work you have to do to go through to understand the full infrastructure we had setup. 

1-2 hours pass and we’re not going so well because the co-worker I had consulted had discovered problems and I know my manager had before been promoting hard discussion and collaboration so I put my man-hat on and asked him to hold off on the newer problems and go back to the task I wanted to prepare for my other team member, the one I was helping. 

Already was asking that co-worker for a lot but fu** it, this is our culture and it doesn’t hurt to share the time in this moment. (nothing production crazy going on)

Then a normal message comes in slack but I don’t hear it so my manager says in the near table “hey did you get my message, check it out please.” Woops, was rather occupied and I rarely miss these things but it happens. It’s a rescheduling of our weekly 1-1 to a day earlier but I think nothing of it and in fact, see it as a positive to give my co-worker some more time to try to investigate what he wants before taking his time to help me. 

These are all the right decisions, I believe.

Before the meeting begins, I check on team member to check his/her status and everything seems normal, so I head into the meeting just slightly exhausted but with the 1-1 thoughts in mind (self criticism, questions about business and engineering, constructive info). 

The CFO happens to be sitting in the meeting room and I wonder if he’s going to leave...

My manager closes the door and in 5 seconds..."We’re sorry to say we have to let you go.” A big black void was left in my mind and heart in an instant and I was discussed the details but didn’t really hear too clearly. 

50% mental noise & 50% comprehending what he was saying about the details of signing the contract before I leave for the day and never come back.

I recover and ask logical questions like “Can I review this sheet first before I sign it?” While reading through it, I was stuck in my void and being sucked up into it, not focusing on the reading and what was going on and in the end, I signed and accepted it and just left the office. 

CFO compliments me, shakes my hand, and I walk out with my manager then shake his hand and hopefully do a regular, not awkward smile. I leave the exit.

WTF? I have no idea why I was let go still even though i asked the questions. 2-3 weeks in advance, I had been told by the manager that I had failed to meet some of his expectations but at the same time, it was the first I had ever heard of those expectations. We discussed solutions and I only heard positives afterwards. And then immediately, the throwaway.

What a world we live in. Fight on.  

[deeteecee2-blog1]

Hipchat vs Slack

Short Intro

Long-waited post for me. So hipchat was something I used a several years back before slack ever came out and that was my transition from IRC chatrooms. I was like, wow this is cool, the idea of chatting efficiently online with notifications. Years later, come slack, and I like it and its special integrations with tools + webhooks. I never managed slack but I think I can totally dig its greatness. 

Finally come 2016, I join a new company and they use hipchat. I thought I had no problems with it despite having used slack previously but... damn, I dislike hipchat and not just hipchat but Atlassian products overall with a vengeance. It’s not like they’re terrible but they’re definitely not the most popular products in any way. Atlassian products are just very...subpar in standards in my opinion. They’re working many products and don’t seem to produce what is more important. Oh well, I don’t work there so I don’t know what their aim actually is, so I can’t judge em too hard. 

Let’s get started with the list of how slack beats hipchat.

UI

Hipchat’s list of small UI hindrances drives me crazy because they’re so simple to fix and yet, they make no sense and slow you down. On top of that, they’ve been adding new features that make it worse to work and that no one asked for. 

- when i fail to upload on hipchat, an ugly block prevents me from clicking the upload button again on my regular mac screen size. 

- hipchat decides to only have your profiles show by avatar and throw away the name unless you cursor over them. with no option to switch back. talk about shoddy. 

- special added hacks with emojis while other important UI issues aren’t fixed

- gif profiles.. really hipchat? you can’t fix the other problems (the ones i described earlier) you have and you decide to add this? and when you “disable gifs,” gif profiles are annoying as fuck. and slack is KNOWN for being disruptive but they understand there’s no need to add this. 

Usability, and Overall Quality

- hipchat’s /code vs slack’s backtick wrappers for code (such a disturbance because i can’t mix in the code along with the comments and they always lead to mistakes) because i mentioned the backslash, i can only imagine that things like quoting and private messaging are done a lot better in slack

- hipchat has gone down almost every week for a few hours. imagine if our whole team was remote the entire time...hours thrown out the door. haven’t had that happen in slack cuz they seem to handle these issues very well

- 404 error happened a few times when search failed, probably related to their status problem.

Security

- amazon s3 vs ... well i actually forgot what slack does. granted, i have no way to hack into these special s3 url addresses...yet...but regardless, a product’s job is to not scare its consumers in any way.

Customer Support

- obviously very little to none. if you’ve ever tried to make a post on one of their products... i only tried posting on Bamboo so it may not be related but wait... it’s an atlassian product so ill just comment anyways. Your post not only fails but it says something about an error occurring after you submit. (feels very unprofessional there)

____________________________________________________

Conclusion

So this was actually a really small list thought up and written in about 10 minutes. If I can concoct this kind of post in 10 minutes, you know you got problems with your product. you’ll see that i wrote very little about slack. the only thing i can say about it is that it’s known to be more disruptive and fairly so because they offer those opportunities to be more disruptive and leave it up to the owner to provide the proper env. alright then, peace out.

[deeteecee2-blog1]

How I Fixed My Basketball Shot

I’m not a pro-basketball player or a powerful athlete of any kind.

I just exercise, practice regularly, and think methodically.

I write this hoping it can help people, whether it be a general player or a pro player. (professional failure to shoot free throws especially makes me smh)

The Problem Many problems exist(ed) to be honest. I’ve switched my basketball shot at least 12 times. No joke. One would wonder why anyone has that kind of patience, especially if they’re not an NBA player. My thought was just the fact that I wanted to shoot, otherwise it wasn’t enjoyable plus it just simply cut down my options, especially in random games where people in general are just giving away wide open jump shots. A good friend of mine has the belief that if it goes in, it’s a good shot but I disagree. If you shoot plenty of times, one of them will go in or some people have hot streaks. Who cares, learn to shoot properly and you don’t have to worry about streaks.

The GOAL I don’t think there’s a true solution but as long as you can release the ball so that it has a nice arc, has a good rotation (rotates a lot), and the fact that you are able to shoot it like that consistently without too much exertion in your body parts, then you have good shot mechanics.

My Experiences To get to the goal, you have to start from the beginning meaning close to the basket and work your way towards the 3-point shot. I still cannot shoot a 3-point shot consistently but I’m getting close, very. I now have a consistent shot style that I no longer want to change after the 12 times. Here is a list of shot issues: 1.crooked, side-spinning shot. sometimes, straight arc but inconsistent 2. lack of rotation and also inconsistent 3. arc ridiculously high but inconsistent 4. poor leg positioning

#4 was a problem I wouldn’t be able to fix until someone told me suggestions to follow. I don’t think it’s the most important thing but it can help. In general, follow the general advice (e.g: L-shaped elbow, nearly all fingers deep into the palm with a little gap, etc.)

So with so many problems, where to start? (I only listed 4 but honestly, each of the 4 are a combination of many) Well, I broke it down into reasonable things to think about. The crooked side-spinning would be a problem because my shot would not only be short, it would sometimes be on the wrong side of the basket. I found out my crooked shot was because I had my hand all the way above my head and also my elbow was bent. So again, follow the general advice of form and positioning first. At that point, just naturally try to shoot close shots starting with possibly bank shots and then close non-bank shots. With the right form, things will slowly work in the right direction but again, keep the **GOAL** written earlier in mind. It honestly took me about 8-10 changes before I got to fix most of my form. It would kind of go in the following order: Issue -> Fix 1. crooked shots -> straighten elbow 2a no arc -> pretty much flatten my fingers on the ball. I didn’t realize until the later 8-10 changes that my fingers thought they had to grip the ball rather than flatten. You need to flatten them to a certain point and some youtube, visual sources can help you on that.  2b. no arc -> still no arc with the flattened fingers. you need to follow tips like “hand in the cookie jar” or “forcing two fingers into the basket” on the follow through. also keep in my mind that the ball is spinned downwards, not upwards. i have to admit, i am an idiot for not realizing that. but regardless, understanding the proper physics of what is going on only helps towards your success because you can imagine what to do to go towards the right direction. 3. i have spin and straight shot but it keeps spinning out. this means ball is going forward too much, even though it is spinning. even if you have high arc, if it is moving forward, it won’t go in. (when i see dwight howard, i think of this problem) -> improve on the arc but start closer to the basket. 

for #3, if you can’t shoot close to the basket, then you obviously can’t shoot farther range at all. the form stays the same. and here’s the tricky issue with shooting closer and farther: as you get farther, you might naturally move your hand forward rather than going up and dipping downward. but of course, you’re thinking “wait, i need some slight forward movement but how much do i do it?” the key is pretty much none, very little to be honest. most of your shot will depend on your arc, spin, and you will adjust naturally, especially with leg strength. i believe, though, you will still have trouble with shooting closer. make sure, you imagine the L and your hand moving more up than forward the entire time. In fact, if you’re around 5′11 height like me and you are right in front of the basket from the sides, your right hand/arm lifted will pretty much interfere with the vision of the net (but more on this in #5).   4. increasing the range -> i believe this problem mainly occurs past the free throw range. or maybe, even at the free throw range, you will be exerting a lot of power. when you bend your knees and start lifting, make sure your release is lifting together with your legs moving up. This will put the momentum together and improve your release strength by multitudes just based on leg strength.    5. wait... too much thinking. each solution is nice but requires a lot of thinking. -> change it into something that requires only focus on the form rather complete detail

For example, to fix #3, I realized that my shot was moving forward. Telling myself to keep the L-shape and release up straight after I made the L-shape helped me here. I was thinking so much that though I made the L-shape, it would change afterwards. So I kept telling myself L-shape and dip (my wrist), L-shape and dip.  Afterword

I have been such a failure at shooting for so long that I feel like I can help people. Again, this isn’t the solution but it could possibly help. It’s for helping people guide themselves, not giving them pure solutions. Advice from others is great but in the end, you’re the one trying to fix the shot so you have to understand your problems. Good luck to anyone out there.

[deeteecee2-blog1]

The new “acting”

All this stuff about actors taking their “acting” the new distance by going farther has got me making the real question... is that really acting? Christian Bale getting skinny as hell on the Machinist and certain appearance changes are understandable to me. 

But things like Shia LaBeouf not showering or Leonardo DiCaprio actually eating raw bison liver for me is well.. interesting but it definitely gives a new definition to the idea of “acting.” After all, are you “acting” or are you “doing” it. And because you’re doing it, can you actually act it without “cheating” and immersing yourself in the role, because I thought acting was about acting like you’re in that role without immersing yourself in it. 

Would you say Billy Bob Thornton is a great actor? Apparently, his real life personality of being a total prick fits nicely for the movie scenes.

This “acting” makes for great movies, though, so I have no issues with this. Just something I had in mind.  

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Inner rage against Japan’s cultural brokenness

This is... in fact... another rage post but it’s a rather reasonable one. Japan just follows its rules or conduct way too much. If they had a rule for murdering people if they made simple mistakes, the rule protectors themselves would question it mentally but would still unquestioningly carry out the murder. 

I went to my nearby convenience store and wondered if they had “garbage-processing” tickets that I could buy. They did and they handed me it and I just paid for them. Problem is, after I paid, I realized these were not ones for the same ward I lived in. So I went back, the cash register clerk sees and realizes fully understands the situation but thinks he can’t handle it and cowers to the manager. The manager in turn says that he can’t return it, that I have to talk to the ward about what happened, the ward which I accidentally bought. Wow really? You’re gonna put me through all that when we are 100% sure that less than 30 seconds ago, I came in and bought the wrong tickets.  

Put simply, it’s obvious the mistake is still on my side but in any reasonable, logic-existing world, the return would’ve been no problem. It’s not about the money, it’s the principle. Japan is gonna make me explode... It’s just good that I’m leaving. 

[deeteecee2-blog1]

Asians, another thought

I’m not that asian who is going to bore you with another discussion about racial indiscrimination and how my well-achieved comrades are not getting what they deserve, which they probably might not be. All I want is top bring a simple question. 

The idea is that asians are mostly all smart and high-achievers due to hard ambition and studying endeavors that is forged into our culture, but is it really that reason? It might as well be but I still can’t accept the statistics out there. How well has it considered the fact that many foreign families that have flown over have also been brought up in a nice household and with decent wage. Without such achievements, how else are they supposed to think they can fly and sustain in a new environoment of culture AND language change. 

Of course, it’s ridiculous for me to bring this question up when I myself know nothing about it. Time for me to stop typing and go do my own research.    

[deeteecee2-blog1]

Dat LinkedIn Connection

You’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn? You don’t say!

Well, I’d like to connect with you through my sausage link. 

“with all honesty though, i put a reasonable message informing people not to add me unless they post a message or have met me through some other means but they have totally ignored the magnificent casing for my sausage link and just want to go straight for it, it seems”

[deeteecee2-blog1]

Just watched Gone Girl

And it reminded me...this girl I was doing language exchange with and don’t want to do anymore could very much be that girl. I felt the same slight, rigid pain in my heart and couldn’t relax during our last few sessions and though I didn’t think this girl would stab me in the throat, I definitely felt unwanted.