Month: May 2024

Posted on

College Class Load

Family History
My parents didn’t go to college. I’m one of six siblings, and some of my older siblings went to college (some didn’t finish) and some others didn’t even go to college. My sister (four years older than me) got a nursing degree, and my next older brother got an engineering degree — which generally inspired me to do the same. My dad made OK money, but my parents didn’t have enough to fund my schooling — so I took out loans, graduated, got a job, and eventually paid my loans off.

School Choice
I studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I have a math head and a problem-solving engineering head — so I could have focused on math (probably wouldn’t have gotten me a good job) or mechanical engineering (my mind thought I already had enough mechanical engineering skills) — so I instead went with electrical engineering. University of Illinois was a public university in the state that my family just moved to — and so, was generally affordable (because it was public) — but I didn’t fully appreciate that it also had a good reputation for producing solid engineers.

Class Load Limitations
To ensure that engineering students took the right classes to feed their engineering degrees, the school was very specific about what classes those students should/shouldn’t take. The required classes were all science, engineering, math, software programming, etc — and there was no option to take classes for language, history, sports, etc UNLESS you took a larger class load, and squeezed these extra classes in. Doofus me did exactly that. 😐

How Dumb Was I?
If I were sensible, I would have taken the recommended class load, learned what was needed to become an engineer, and moved on — but apparently I’m not sensible. I took a large class load each semester, often needing approval from the dean to allow me to take that many classes. I probably took 40% more classes than I needed to — including language classes, random things (like bowling), high-level math classes, etc. I even took additional classes outside the college — like American Sign Language, and Esperanto. A good indication of how ‘dumb’ I really was, is — at the end of four years, I was missing one class needed to get my degree — so I had to attend one additional semester (which allowed me to take even more classes 🫤).

Graduation Timing
Because I finished mid-school-year, I didn’t benefit from the university process to help students land jobs at the end of the school year. (Granted, this process was a little bit thinner decades ago.) 

Job Applications
When I graduated, I went back to live with my parents, and my mom helped me submit written/paper applications to various companies. I still have a notebook listing 100+ companies that I applied to. 

One company I applied to was a location in Minnesota (same company my dad worked for in West Virginia and Illinois), and that same company reached out to me from a different location (San Jose, California). I did an on-site interview in San Jose, and got a job offer which I accepted. Seems crazy that I could have ended up in Minnesota and had a very different life.

GPA
One overlay is that my university used a five-point scale for GPA’s — which means straight A’s would get you a 5.0 GPA. I took too many classes in school and ended up with a GPA below (but close to) a B. (Most schools use 4.0 for A’s — so my B-ish GPA may have looked like an A-ish GPA.) I may be overthinking it, but I suspect that the company that hired me may have thought my GPA was better than it really was. I’m a tech-smart guy and a solid worker, so the company wasn’t disappointed with me when I worked for them.

Overall
In summary: I took way too many classes in college (plus extra external classes), didn’t graduate on time, had an impacted GPA — but ended up with a good initial job that fed my successful multi-decade tech career — and got me to California where I met and married an amazing woman who has made my life wonderful.

Posted on

Jerky Jerk

Minor edits, plus some recent overthinking/smart things Jackson has done

We have a cat named Jackson. He’s a very unique cat — quite smart, an explorer, but also a bit of a butthead.

Jerk
One characteristic of Jackson is that — he’s a bit of a jerk. I’m convinced that he thinks he’s the dominant member of the house. He’ll stalk your plate when you’re eating, and even try to grab stuff from it. We now try to keep him off the tables. 

He’s such a consistent jerk, that we often call him ‘Jerkles’ and ‘Jerky Jerk’  — and he responds to those names as if they are really his name. 

He’s affectionate, but only if it benefits him. We use the phrase ‘lick lick bite’ because he will be affectionate (lick lick) but then end it with a bite — quite often. (Maybe he thinks that bites are nice?) 

Sometimes when he is mean to you (scratch, bite) and you scold him, he will lie on his side and kick himself in the head. My belief is that this is his way of punishing himself for doing something he shouldn’t have done.

Smart
Jackson is a problem solver. He’s able to open cabinets, drawers, nightstands, etc. 

He will hang with me when I go to the bathroom, and will stand on his hind legs to watch the toilet flush — because he’s trying to understand what’s happening and where the water is going. He also stares at the exhaust fan in the ceiling trying to figure out what it is.

When the dog is around (we share the dog with our daughter), we put a gate up at the door to our other cat’s room to keep the dog from eating her food or harassing her. Jackson knows how to open the gate (and jump over it), but Olive (our other cat) doesn’t. 

Dogs understand human words better than cats, but Jackson isn’t far behind dogs. He does know maybe 20? 30? words. Recently, my wife said to him (when he was being crazy) ”Do you want to bite me?” He knew what ’bite’ meant, so he bit her arm and punctured her skin.

Some recent events that show Jackson’s smartness:

  • Litter Box – We recently removed the basic litter box (which Jackson preferred) — which made him use the powered one (which does a post-visit sweep to collect the deposit). The first time he used the powered one, he cried/whined aloud while using it — because he was afraid it would do the sweep while he was inside. In reality, it waits 5? 10? minutes after the cat leaves before doing the sweep. He has now subseqúntly become OK with using the powered box.
  • Speaker – I was playing music on a speaker, and one song must have sounded to Jackson like a speaking (familiar?) human voice. He stared at the speaker with big eyes, trying to understand where the voice was coming from. I then started singing along with the song, and he started looking back and forth (with big eyes) from the speaker to me — trying to understand what was happening.
  • Door – We have a shy indoorsy female cat that doesn’t get along with Jackson. My wife sometimes locks Jackson in a room with me to allow the other cat to wander around, and even go outside. She did this recently, and Jackson, knowing what was going on, decided he wanted to join the fun. To do this, he needed to open the door. He’s a big cat, so the first thing he tried was to stand on his back feet and mess with the doorknob — since this is how people open the door. It didn’t work for him (touching and smacking the knob) so, because he’s a problem solver, he figured out how to put his paw under the door (double door, not latched at the top) and pull it toward him to open it.
  • Razor – My wife was shaving my face on the bed with an electric razor.  (I can’t do this anymore because ALS has made my arms mostly unusable.) Jackson was right next to me on the bed, and he thought that she was hurting me. So he smacked the razor multiple times with his paw, and knocked it out of her hand. Very funny.

At some point, I’d like to find an online cat intelligence test — and see where Jackson lands.

Explorer
Jackson wanders the neighborhood (my neighbors all mention that they see him in their backyards, plus he spends time at the creek which is about 500 feet from our front door) — and even goes on walks with us. For a cat to be confident enough that he can take a long walk with his owners (sometimes we go a whole mile) he must believe that he can overcome most anything that he encounters. 

He has explored all aspects of our house: the inside and top of every shelf, cabinet, bookcase, etc. He does the same outside — he’s been in trees, climbed up the arbor, walks along fences, etc. He’s even been on the roof with me when I was putting up Christmas lights on the second floor gutter. 

One of his favorite outdoor things is to roll around on gravel (we have some in our yard). I think he likes a back scratch, and this is his way of giving himself one. It does make him dirty, so that we need to clean up his inside beds pretty often.

Rat-tastrophy
We had an interesting situation a few years ago, where the spare toilet paper rolls in the cabinet under our downstairs bathroom sink would get shredded. We would discover this every few weeks. 

The wall under the sink has some holes in it (from a relocation of the hot/cold water pipes), so we became convinced that mice? rats? were wandering in through the wall and tearing things up. So we put a motion-sensing camera in the cabinet to see what was going on. 

The cameras never caught any activity, and we instead realized that it was Jackson opening the cabinet doors, tearing things up, then closing the doors — when we were gone for a day or two, and he was sad/lonely.

Visitors
We have other cats that visit our house during the night (we see them on camera) — they are either his friends, or enemies. They might be wild cats from the creek (these exist) or they might be domestic cats whose owners allow night wandering. 

Injuries
We used to let Jackson stay outside the whole night, if he wanted to. We now work to get him inside. 

He’s had three instances where he has had serious injuries that required $500+ of medical treatment. Not sure whether these are from fights (with cats or other animals) or injuries from exploring (climbing under/over something sharp). 

Another characteristic of Jackson is — he has a handful of notches (missing pieces) on his ears. Similar to the bigger injuries he has had — I don’t know if these came from fights, or just dangerous explorations.

Hunter
One interesting thing about Jackson is his hunting skills. He spends half of his time outdoors and, though he’s sensible with his activities, he often catches, kills, and eats various animals. 

I have so many photos/videos of him bringing an animal in his mouth to the door. He’s often tossing animals around in the backyard grass — as he kills and eats them. Just in the last couple of weeks, I have a video of him eating a bird, plus I found a palm-sized patch of fur/skin on the grass — not sure what it’s from (mouse? rat?)

Today (as I’m writing this) he showed up at the back door with a bird, ate it, then came inside to be acknowledged for his success. I used to think that (maybe) he killed something once a month. I’ve come to realize that it’s more like once a week (another set of remnants at the back door today — a few days later).

He also steals my other cat’s food if he thinks she has more, or her food is tastier.

Genetics?
What’s interesting is that there is a cat at the other end of our neighborhood that looks like Jackson’s twin — and that cat is also a hunter. Maybe cats with the same genetics have similar personalities? What’s more interesting is: that cat’s name is Jameson — very similar name to Jackson.

Summary
In summary, we like Jackson a lot — despite his challenging personality and activities. He’s ten years old now, but still very active. It’s interesting that he has such a complex personality. We’ll be sad when he’s no longer with us.

Posted on

Retirement?

I recently retired (maybe…). It’s either an early retirement, or a few months off before I look for a new ‘couple year’ job. I’m not yet 65, but I walked away from my job because it was problematic — and I needed a break. Below are the factors that led me to quit.

COMPANY
I was working for Salesforce — a well-known ‘tech company’ that really was very different from typical tech companies. A typical tech company (Salesforce is the ninth tech company I’ve worked for) has a high percentage of tech workers (engineers, etc) and focuses on developing products. Neither of these are true of Salesforce. 

Tech Workers
Less than 10% of Salesforce employees are tech workers (engineering) — crazy. This means that most directional decisions for the company (and contributing groups) are made by non-tech employees. It could be that the existing Salesforce products are 100% complete/solid, and that the only existing effort needed today is selling/supporting these products. If this were really the case, then Salesforce has 10 times the number of employees it needs.

Process
The other weirdness about Salesforce is the focus on ‘how’ to do things. Every year, every employee has to produce a very detailed document on what they will do that year. This document is reviewed/approved by the employee’s manager, and made available to those that the employee works with.

Plus, the employees need to take a dozen online classes — essentially the same ones every year. Also requiring scores of hours of time. Classes like: how to talk about Salesforce, etc.

Further, there are recurring presentations (every other month ish) from each group, on the details of what they are planning to accomplish over the next handful of months, and their confidence on success.

Overall, I probably spent 20%? 25%? of my time on process, rather than just turning the crank and getting things done.

ROLE
I worked at Salesforce for a little more than 6 years — in 4 or 5 different roles. Some were great, some not. Without going into the contrast between all my roles, the one that inspired me to part ways with the company was my last role, which I’ll summarize below.

My job role for the past few decades across multiple tech companies has been project/program manager — which means that I own getting things done (e.g., producing products). I’ve been very successful in this role across many companies, including all of my previous roles at Salesforce.

To accomplish my job, I need to communicate and enforce the needed development processes. In my last role at Salesforce, the group managers that I was supporting wouldn’t follow the processes I needed from them. Some examples:

  • Coordination – To stay connected and aligned on what needs to get done, I normally run a weekly meeting with the group managers where we share progress and agree on what needs to happen over the next week. The managers of the org I was supporting told me that they didn’t want to meet weekly. Also, some managers ducked out of the infrequent coordination meeting midway through, or didn’t even attend — making it even more difficult to stay aligned.
  • Tracking – I created a list of active items, and updated progress status daily. Ideally, the group managers should frequently look at this list, add/remove items as needed, update status, etc. They rarely looked at the list — pretty much only at the infrequent coordination meetings.

I was working 50-60 hours a week trying to make things happen but, because the management I was supporting wasn’t doing needed actions — we weren’t necessarily focused on the right things, and weren’t accurately tracking progress.

This all came to a head when one of the VPs I was supporting complained to my management that I wasn’t doing a good job. Rather than connecting with me on the ‘real’ situation, my management believed the VP, and created a detailed list of ‘improvement’ items I needed to do. I started chipping away at the list, but it was unnecessary items that were taking even more of my time.

MY HEAD
The other overlay was — I was very stressed (and depressed — even though I didn’t know this at the time). I was working long hours, crabby to my wife, and still getting beaten up by the work groups I was supporting.

My wife and I were regularly chatting with a couples counselor — who suggested that I may be ‘on the spectrum’ (be autistic). I read about being ‘on the spectrum’ and honestly thought that this could be true of me. I was subsequently tested for autism and ADHD — and they concluded that neither of these were true of me (those with these conditions are not broadly functional, like I am) — BUT, they concluded that I was depressed, and would benefit from anti-depression medication. I’m now taking this medication, and feel a lot better.

DEPARTURE
My long hours and distress, plus other companies regularly reaching out to me to work for them, led me to quit my job at Salesforce. It wasn’t worth the unhappiness. (It’s interesting that the person in my same role with this same group quit the company a year ago — likely for the same reasons.) I did put together very structured guidance on what went wrong, and how to (potentially) make the right things happen — for the next person taking over my role.

I’ve now been away for two months, have gotten past much of my depression, and am generally in a better place. I still need a bit more recovery, but things are definitely better than they were when I was working.

Maybe I’ll stay retired. Maybe I’ll find a job in a few months with a more-sensible tech company.

I’ll figure it out.