Chan's Personal Blog

Well, May has been an exceptionally challenging month, and I am thoroughly glad that it is over. I think for young adults, problems fall into three main buckets: work, money, and relationships. May was the perfect storm as all three of these buckets decided to collide and erupt all at the same time. Life got knocked out of balance for a bit there.

In either case, through this mess, I came across a great song from P.O.D. entitled, "It Can't Rain Everyday" from their latest album, "When Angels and Serpents Dance."


This was a quite uplifting song that helped and I'm making this my theme song for May. In either case, the worse is over, and life is regaining a new equilibrium.

Very happy it's June.

When I first arrived in Silicon Valley, I observed a curious behaviour at work. Every so often, my coworkers would receive unsolicited phone calls from head hunters (recruiters). The head hunters promised them riches and shiny jobs in obscure start-ups. I starred in awe and amazement as coworkers cursed at the head hunters for the unsolicited calls; I sat there thinking, wow, my coworkers must be rock star programmers because people are actively trying to recruit them, I wish I could be famous like that. Looks like that wish has come true.

On Tuesday, I came into work and noticed I had a voice mail on my work phone. This was very odd because I never use the phone, and no one ever calls me. I playback the voice message, and it's a head hunter. He was looking for engineers that worked in Search for positions in New York, and he wanted to network with me. While this was all happening, I thought to myself, oh wow, I'm not as cool as my coworkers, I'm on the map, people know about me! Then, I promptly deleted the message as I was totally not interested.

Apparently the head hunter had gotten my phone number through my mom? (Mom and Dad, PLEASE don't give people my work phone number.) This was very odd because I don't use my Canadian phone number for anything. I'm really curious to know how recruiters were able to get my contact information, and how they knew I worked in Search. I haven't passed out my resume or anything on any job boards or anything.

In either case, the head hunters now know I exist. I feel special, but I'm sure that feeling is going to go away, and turn into blind hatred to them.

One of my coworkers has an awesome blog post about a really creepy recruiter who called him. Make sure to listen to the actual phone message that the recruiter left (it's at the end of his blog article). It's awesome!

I'm starting to catch up in my backlog of photos. Here's a photo set from the first NHL Hockey game that I've been to. The match was the Vancouver Canucks VS the San Jose Sharks. This was a nice way to start Adam & Sarah's California trip in January. What's nice about hockey down here is, the tickets are very affordable when compared to Vancouver hockey tickets. It would have been a crime not to go see the Canucks down here in San Jose.


Enjoy.

Currently crazy busy, so I'm writing a short piece. I have experienced the first Californian heat wave of the season, and boy was it a sizzler. I first learned of this when I was sitting at my computer, and I saw a weather icon I had never seen before. It was a sizzling thermometer. I thought... hmmm.... that can't be good.


Unfortunately, the weather forecast wasn't quite right, it was much worse. This is what the week looked like: Wednesday 37C, Thursday 41C, Friday 41C, Saturday 37C. When I stepped outside on Thursday, there was this rushing hot wind everywhere, and this strange haze because I guess water was evaporating very rapidly that day. In either case, very glad my office has air conditioning. Even though the temperatures were fairly high, it wasn't as bad as a hot day in Victoria, simply because Silicon Valley has a dry heat. Victoria has a humid heat.

Thankfully my apartment is fairly well insulated, so it wasn't too bad inside.

Just when you thought the Yahoo/Microsoft merger was over, a new menace has emerged. Activist/Corproate Raider Carl Icahn has thrown his hat into the ring, and is declaring war on the Yahoo board of directors. For those unfamiliar with Icahn, he's a billionaire investor who buys up shares of struggling companies, and install directors to do his bidding. Recently he installed a puppet regime in BEA Systems (who didn't want to merge with Oracle), and steered the company towards the merger.

Here's an article from TheStreet.com entitled, "Icahn Targets Yahoo! Board of Directors."


Basically how this works is, he'll propose his directors, and if shareholders hold his view, they'll elect his directors onto the board. The more of them he has on the Yahoo! board of directors, the bigger the pain in the butt he can be. Some of the things he can do can include forcing Yahoo! to reopen talks to Microsoft, or even get the CEO/Founder fired.

More coverage at Silicon Alley Insider.

Saw this awesome comic over at Time Magazine that perfectly captures why dating is so hard for me:

I came across this really neat flash game called Ayiti: The Cost of Life. It's a game where you take control of a rural family of five living in Haiti. The object of the game is to acquire education, health, money, and happiness.

It's kind of an eye opener of how difficult life is for the poor, as every move you make is a huge tradeoff. For example, sending kids to school is quite the trade-off. They could have helped work to bring in cash, but instead they're off to school. Sure, they'll get a better career in the future and bring in more money; however, that's a long-term investment, and very tough to do if you don't have a lot of money. So, maybe we could send the whole family to work. Well, with not a lot of education, that means working at risky jobs where people can get hurt. An injury or sickness means a trip to the hospital which can be quite expensive.

The game's also kind of neat, in that you can buy different things for your house to improve the quality of life of your family. Running water is quite the luxury that I haven't managed to get yet.

Nature also plays a very expensive role. Every year, there's hurricane season, and if you don't spend money preparing for the hurricane, nature can destroy your house and throw you into huge debt.

Life kind of sucks eh?

In either case, my high score has been, all 5 members of the family surviving, with 5 diplomas, and a chicken on the farm. I'm not exactly sure how anyone can afford a computer in the game.

Anyway, very educational game, and pretty fun. I've wasted 1.5 hours on this game so far. Maybe next time I should try sacrificing the kids... they cost too much money to maintain j/k.