lifebsideben

Today was the first day in my son’s 10+month life that he really got directly exposed to the word “no”. Seems kind of sad, but it was truly necessary, even if it’s probably my own fault.

A few days ago we were feeding Alex and the cat, as he usually does, came around to see what was going on, and beg for food, what have you. Since we were actually feeding Alex some small bits of chicken, and I was in a generous mood, I gave the cat some. The cat then wanted some more, and it was easier to grab a piece off of Alex’s tray and drop it to the floor for the cat, than get more from the bag. Here the trouble began. Alex apparently saw this, and decided the next day that he’d try and feed the cat too. So while he was eating some veggie puff things, the cat came around, and –plop– Alex dropped on one the floor near the cat. Of course, these being vegetable-and-starch-based items, the cat would have none of it, but it didn’t stop Alex. Another one was dropped. We switched to his main course (something from a bottle) and he stopped, I presume because he liked it too much to try and share with the cat. Seemed to be the last of the cat-feeding behavior…

Until today, of course. Val calls to say “well, I have a lot to thank you for today, including now that Alex won’t eat anything, he only wants to drop things on the floor for the cat!” I thought she was exxagerating, but when I got home and fed him dinner, sure enough, the cat came around, and Alex meticulously picked up the items (more veggie puffs, unfortunately for the cat) and dropped them carefully over the side of the tray. Neither I, nor the cat, was impressed. He seemed very happy with himself doing this, as well. So I looked at him plainly, and as he moved his arm over the edge to drop one, said firmly “No”, and moved his arm back. This just elicted smiles of joy and repeated behavior. I tried not to mirror this, and instead encouraged him when one actually made it into his mouth. But I don’t think this is going to be resolved quite that quickly, unfortunately.

I was sad that I had to say ‘no’, probably 10 times, to him today. But he knew was he was doing, and he needed to know it wasn’t acceptable. But until now, he’s pretty much never done anything “wrong”, intentionally, as far as I could tell. It’s sort of sad, but I guess it’s gotta start sometime. I’m sure, if there is any karma or justice in this world, I’m going to have a bit of a bad little kid to make up for my behavior as a child

Tags: parenting, pets

So recently my team built this tool which essentially enables ‘experts’ to blog for Yahoo (unlike 360, there’s editorial workflow, fine-grained access control, etc.). The first folks to launch with it were Health. One of the most popular blogs for them is named “Real and Revealing” (or as I simply call it, “the sex blog”). Recently there was an entry about Female Orgasms. (Insert your own joke about there’s-no-such-thing-as-female-orgasms here.) Anyhow, the best part was one of the comments:

its very hard for me to have an orgasm. the sex would just feel sweet and it makes me want more and sometime dont want to stop. i have never expierence an oral some say it feel damn great to be honest i would like to explore that part of sex but not to return favour. sometime i really think my boyfriend realy suck at making love and he is not very romantic.
Posted by whilybo_2 on Tue, Jun 28, 2005, 10:30 am PDT

Nothing like complaining about your sex life, your boyfriend, and highlighting your lack of willingness to reciprocate all at once… what are you, Republican?

Tony Tam posted about Loving Y!. Tony works on the News team, and has been impressed with Yahoo since 1997. I was even more impressed with Y! after interviewing here, because I realized just how few engineers were behind some of the properties, like News. I was amazed. Now that I’ve been at Y for just over a year, I still think it’s a great place to work, but I definitely realize it’s not all type-A strivers cranking useful apps day in, day out.

I’m not a complete subscriber to the “controlled chaos” of Yahoo lore, but I wouldn’t mind if everyone did worry a little more about their reputation as an engineer (notice I didn’t say “coder” or “hacker”), as Tony mentions happened in the old days. There’s the whole gamut from pretty poor, to amazing here, which is doubtless going to be the case when there’s just SO MANY technical folks. I just find myself wishing everyone felt the pain of struggling a little more. I have a young kid, and so true, I don’t want to work 80 hours/week, but I want to work a smart, effective week. I want to really feel I’m producing at least 2X my salary in incremental revenue to Yahoo from when I started. I want to know everyone else shares that desire, too. Funnily enough, it might be just a per-individual trait. Some folks who have been here a long time and certainly don’t need the money, still burn with a passion to make things great, and achieve beyond what is expected. Others think it’s just a job and act accordingly.

I’m going to make it part of my personal challenge to inspire my (new) team to raise the bar… my biggest concern right now though is that there isn’t enough of my team to do anything but deal with the fires burning…

Tags: engineering, Yahoo