Tag: dailyprompt

The shortcut to fix Sofia

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How would you improve your community?

Here’s my simple, direct, and plausible fix for my city that could be wrong. Remove most cars. I’m sure there will be people who can’t do it without cars but most people can. Fewer cars can improve the air quality and the average health of the population. The health benefits of walking are significant. Cycling and walking will become safer with fewer cars. There will be fewer car accidents. More space for coffee shops, playgrounds, and small businesses. Kids may discover that there’s a world outside of their phones.

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

I wouldn’t mind a great-grandchild named after me. My name is cool and means happy, or happyin. Not sure where the in came from but it appeared at least a century ago.

Apart from that, perhaps I would name after myself the rule to not deploy important software changes last thing on Friday. Some things are better done at the beginning of the day.

The probability of introducing a problem is greater at the end of the day, and greater at the end of the week when you’re tired. The probability of a problem being discovered when fewer people are around is lower. Weekends also make resolving issues more difficult – critical people might be out of reach or might be surprisingly upset that you reached them.

Saying “No”

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

Over the last decade, my goal has been to not shoot an immediate “No” to things. “No” used to be my default. The things can be opportunities, they deserve to be evaluated. “No” is easy. Nothing changes, it’s conservative. “Yes”, however, is the sun breaking through the clouds. It can be hard. So, instead of saying “No”, I think about it, evaluate it, and try to make it work and to see its purpose. More often than not, it turns out that it makes sense.

Of course, this is a generalization that applies to my life. In case the thing is, “Let’s jump over the North Pole with a parachute”, still an immediate “No”. Okay, actually, can we make it work somehow? How are we getting there? How much does it cost? How do we travel to the North Pole and back? What about polar bears? Yolo.

My most influential teacher

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

I feel privileged to have encountered many exceptional and inspiring teachers throughout my life. Perhaps most influential were the early-day childhood teachers, whose guidance potentially changed the course of my life.

Kaka Ani was the computer class teacher in 4th-5th grade. We had a classroom full of Pravetz 8, Bulgarian-made Apple II clones. These had 5.25″ floppy drives and the teacher had 10-15 floppy disk games. So Kaka Ani’s strategy to control us and make us learn something was that she would give an assignment in Basic with either enough hints or something close to a solution on the blackboard, and then whoever does it first, gets to choose a game from the pile of floppies. Some of the games were good and others were miserable. I liked Moon Patrol, Karateka, and Lode Runner. If I was too slow, I’d play some artillery game, my memories of which did not yield any Google search results. I hated that game. So I learned Basic and some university-level math to play games. Thanks, Kaka Ani, I hope you’re doing well.

This computer class didn’t happen in isolation. The environment was good for kids who were willing to put in some work. I don’t remember the names of my 1st-grade teacher or the math teachers from 4th-7th grade but they were good and somehow managed to help me develop my thinking without the obscene amount of homework my kids bring home these days.

Then I studied at the High School of Finance and Business (now NFSG). I don’t remember a teacher who wasn’t great there. The math teacher, Mrs. Chipchakova, had a pace that matched me very well and got me confident to pursue math-based universities later in life. The computer science teacher there let me play with Turbo Pascal while the others studied Word and Excel for DOS after proving to her that I knew the entire books by heart. The Bulgarian language teacher scared the hell out of me and this helped me learn to write. We studied touch typing with 50-year-old typewriters and metronome, the Stats teacher covered the discipline better than my university-level Stats and , and the Accounting one was also a magician.

I studied Information Systems at FMI a bit later in life. I once again found a place where you could learn a lot even from the silliest-sounding disciplines, thanks to the effort put in by teachers and management who care.

I’m very thankful to all of them – those I mentioned, and those I didn’t. I hope my kids have the chance to meet similarly inspiring teachers.

How does failure lead to success

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

I saw this writing prompt days ago and wanted to share a clever story about how I failed miserably at something, and then it turned out to be okay. However, I couldn’t come up with a good enough story, or even any story. No matter how I twisted it, it sounds like the things that lead to anything remotely positive after a failure were related to:

  • My response to it
  • Having a contingency plan that worked

Regarding the planning part, I pretty much try to make sure that I know the revert command and when I need to run it (or the real-life alternative of revert if it exists). It’s not impossible to fail and not know you did, especially in engineering. A user may report a critical bug weeks after the introduction of it. Bug reports are like cockroaches. By the time you see one, you may already have an infestation.

Regarding the response, I’ve had more chances to develop a strategy. Respond with dignity, take ownership of the failure, and deal with the consequences. Don’t blame others. Try to be objective even if that means putting yourself in a very bad light. When the failure was caused by someone else but it is me under the spotlight, I try to not blame the person but depersonalize the mistake. We can blame a commit for a critical bug, for example, rather than the person who deployed it.

And a couple of sayings:

  • Fall down seven times, get up eight.
  • This, too, shall pass.