Bake bread. Watch Star Trek. Enjoy 😉

As I get older, I see time to recuperate after serious work “stunt” takes longer. This means I have to be very careful and pick and choose what I stand for, what I am willing to work long hours for.

This makes me think what people could actually achieve, if they really focused, when they are younger, when they work in different startups, where the energy dissipates into … pivots, acquisitions, exits.

I don’t know.

The current verdict is no.

Why? Google has been changing its mind about their mobile hardware strategy several times in the last few years. Each and every time, it got it wrong.

For example – it started with nice flagships – they were aimed at development people, low price, crappy camera, crappy finishing touches. Then, the Nexus line came – more of the same, but now the phones were made well, had some restrictions (no SD card and crappy camera). They were still aimed at developers, so the price was low – at least until N6. This beast was the first really expensive one. This trend was followed with N6p.

And then, all of a sudden, Pixel. No more Nexus line. Out of the bloody blue.

And my experience? I had N7 2012 (problem with the storage controller, making it unusable after 6 months), Nexus 6 (major problems with camera, major problems with storage, making it unusable after approx. 8 months), Nexus 5 (battery swollen, died after 1 year), Nexus 4 (battery died after 1 year).

Some of them were, for no good reason, cut from updates.

So, Pixel? Expensive beast, with possibly no future? Thanks, but no thanks.

What the title says. I have nothing to add.

The music used for deep focus, deep work is something that puts you in the zone. That specific zone that specific day. Sometimes, I can actually “assign” some type of music to focusing on specific type of task – that offers a short cut to the zone.

Choosing work or running on a beautiful winter Sunday, used to be a problem. Now, I know only maximum functioning me, can work the hours, can shake off the stress. Work is something that invigorates. Running is something, that makes you, on the lowest levels, alive.

There is one “it logically follows” hidden in there.

We all know practically everything but food is made in China. We’ve grown accustomed to the “Made in China” moniker, where only “Designed in California” can vouch for uncompromising attention to detail, longevity, quality.

But in real-life, things are radically different. I am sick and tired of having a brand-name, fully blown and EXPENSIVE hardware, with a bunch of problem, with a bunch of limitations.

To rephrase: premium buck must bring premium experience.

At least in the world of technology, this no longer holds. We now know, that premium buck, usually brings premium experience. If you are lucky. This brings me to my premise:

Buy Chinese. No brands. No warranty. On the cheap.

Why? You will have problems. Limitations. Lower build quality. But – you will have a system, that usually works. If it doesn’t, format it, throw it against the nearest wall.

To be fair, I am aware this is wrong – we should thing long-term, think about our impact on the environment, etc. But to be honest, big brands do the same. The only thing they do differently is they charge you more, they offer you some warranty and you usually end things a bit pissed off.

So, buy Chinese. They are the heart of world’s production, they know what they are doing (most of the time) and it is usually cheap.

Finally, some snow. Wheeeee!!!

Maybe not.

I will say this: Snow is good, because it comforts the land and makes it nice, clean, magical.

Snow is bad, because people always react to it as it was something extraordinary, something that requires extreme sense of emergency. All news outlets will report on the state of the land, how much snow is falling, how many idiotic drivers screwed up, and so on.

There.

I am a subscriber to Office365. I shamelessly admit, the main goal was to buy offline standardised office toolset for the whole family. This was based on my previous experience with the Microsoft tools, which have, somewhere, along the way, started offering something called SkyDrive (weird) and then OneDrive (less weird). I was happily typing away, formatting the documents in the required formats, making required PowerPoint presentations (after exporting them from Google Drive :P), never exploring the actual “OneDrive”.

When I finally did get to check what OneDrive actually is, I was pleasantly surprised. It offers a complete cloud-based suite of office tools – starting with disk (1TB), all the web-based Office tools, Skype, Sway, etc. Of course, there are some issues (e.g., I cannot sync Google Calendar), but overall, it looks very good. I believe it is not equal to Google Drive (and G-Suite) in terms of sharing and collaboration on the same document, but that still has to be explored.

One killer feature to finish this biased and short entry: editing something in web version of Word, clicking on button “Edit in Word”, opens the actual full version of Word with that specific document. You edit it, save it et voila, it is shown in the web version of Word. Sweet!*

* Yes, the same functionality can be obtained with InSync and Google Drive. However, it is not as integrated as this one.

Client approached me and asked for consultation. I told him such activities take certain amount of time and that we are already late. He should decide if we’re about to go forward.

Time passed (as in Electric Monk sense of Time Passing)

Even closer to the deadline, the client confirmed the go-ahead and decided to put all available resources on the task. We then proceeded with the consult and the work to be done. I won’t reveal the actual outcome, but the job got done.

Reflecting on this particular experience (and many many others), I think this behaviour is hero-like. When it matters, we can do it, we can go all-hands-battle-stations, we can pull it off against all odds.

To be honest, setting and delivering against impossible deadlines is sometimes really exhilarating experience, but the keyword here is sometimes. I followed up with this particular client and saw this pattern many times. The whole company was drama and hero worshipping oriented.

When I calculated the average hours the people in the company worked, I saw they were slightly above average (some overtime). When I evaluated productivity, it was only average.

Conclusion: in times of “normal operation”, people were tired, not really engaged, tried to get some rest before the next “damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead” event.

Stupid.