April 1st, 2018

A rant.

At a meeting got a comment from a peer. The comment showed me that he is already thinking of himself as a manager. Possibly my manager. :)

He asked me if I need a help from one of the guys in his team. I have asked why as the topic was completely unrelated to them.
So, the answer was: "I heard that they have helped you with a similar problem"

This alerted me because this is a perfect example trying to "connect the dots on a higher level".
Something that some people thing is a crucial part of being a manager. After all, the more people you manage, the less details you get into, right?

The only problem was that this was the exact opposite of what happened. I have helped somebody from his team with a completely unrelated problem.
In his mind, his team is the best, thus they should do the helping part and without going into details, the problem seemed similar. Both were somewhat related to performance.

So, instead of connecting the dots at a higher level, he tried to set me on a completely incorrect path. If he were my manager, I would be obliged to follow it for some time, just to be able to report that I have tried it. Instead of helping, this connection would block me.

This is the small thing that makes huge difference. You should connect the dots on a higher level as a manager, but you should dive into details and connect the correct dots. Otherwise, you will lead yourself to nowhere.

March 18, 2018

Working on concentration and consistency.
I have a 1.5 hour to work on my PhD. All of the sudden every email is important and there are plenty of things to do at home that just can't wait.
It is a constant struggle to focus on the thesis. The fact that this is a middle of the night is not helping either. I have told my girls to set a timer for 25 minutes (pomodoro technique) and do only one thing in this interval.
Probably a time I do what I preach...

Consistency is also a struggle. Every day I try to write a couple of sentences here. Every evening I try to use Trello to plan my day. Some days it work. More days I fail. I hope that I am improving.

March 14, 2018

When you get a question from a customer support people, there is only one correct answer: "Let me check and I will get back to you".

Otherwise, you get into a position like me today.
I fix one program in a PowerShell script and the script fails on the next problem. Not my fault but I do not look professional here.

"Let me get back to you on this one" - and then you have time to test and verify,.
Answer right away and you will make another mistake.

Feb 25, 2018

Worked hard during the weekend. And then worked hard during the nights of the weekend.

February 11, 2018 - the hunt for a reference counting leak

The entire day at work, sans the meetings, I have been looking for a leaked reference counting bug.
For now, the bug has won the first round, but I am pretty confident that I will win the match.

The problem with the leak in a ref count is how to catch it.
I have tried the following strategies:

1. Go over the code and try to find the leak. At first no results, but then found something at the end of the day. Sadly I had to catch the train.
2. Try to find the exact leak scenario by testing various inputs. Failed as there appears to be no clear dependency on the input.
3. Check the reference count at the various functions and try to find the leaky function. Didn't really worked as the functions are running in parallel, so the count is not always can be compared.
4. Comment out code chunks. Didn't work well yet. The changes are distributed across the code and thus, are relatively hard to cherry-comment-out. 

Tomorrow will see the late found issue and maybe will ask for a code review some coworker. 

February 5, 2018

Lecture day at IBM. Gave a lecture about File Systems, where we have come from and where we are going.
I wonder if it wasn't technical enough for them. I will never know.

February 4, 2018

Almost there.
Trying to release OS X version and trying to finish a feature for Windows version. In both of them, almost there.

Tomorrow is a talk day in IBM: File Systems design