It has been a long time since I last wrote an entry. There are 2 major forces at work here:

1. I don't have enough time anymore to write entries
2. I twitter stuff that makes good blog entries, because it takes far less time

So I plan on making it up to all my readers, and give you a brain dump of where I am, what I am doing and what I am thinking.

Management

Management is posing to be an exciting, interesting and challenging—erm—challenge. I am slowly starting to get a handle of the job, the responsibilities, etc. The other seniors on the team have been a big help with this. I just keep plugging along and try to learn as much as I can from the people around me.

As part of being I have received a lappy by the evil masters, which is as good, if not better than both my desktop at work and at home. This is hella cool. This of course necessitates the re installation of the "software server stack of doom", code editor, utilities, productivity tools, etc. etc. etc. This is a perfect opportunity for me to make a jump that I have been fighting for a LONG time...

Emacs

I started working with emacs last year, mostly to edit and work with scheme code. What this meant was that I would goto work, edit code in jEdit and then come home, and edit code in emacs. I am a relatively proficient editor-of-code with jEdit, but emacs has always felt really uncomfortable. But since I have to re-install everything anyway, I thought that this would be the perfect time to take the plunge and start using emacs for everything, work and personal projects. I found a relatively decent window distribution, so it is time to make a go of it. I've since found some cool tools, including a Javascript REPL for emacs, as well as instructions to connect Oracle to emacs. The crux here is that I am going to take a bit of a performance hit at work while I get ramped up on working with emacs, but this will also mean I have a good 4-12 hours (depending on my day) to spend on emacs. Basically its time to approach emacs by jumping right into it. Kind of like the best way to learn a whole new language...

Japanese

Learning Japanese has been going well. I have a small selection of manga that I am slowly going through and reading. There is a lot that I miss, but there is a lot to pick up on as well, due to context. I am up into 500 kanji now, with only a 1-4% failure rate. It is really interesting to see a chunk of Japanese text and actually understand a little about what is trying to be communicated on. I still maintain that Japanese is going to be a long-term learning adventure of 10 years. Thank god for my PDA and flashcard software (twinkle), without it there would be no way I could even think about trying to learn this crazy wonderful language. Twinkle lets me define my own flashcards, and practice all of my Japanese wherever and whenever. Very handy for the commute to and from work.

Okay. First of, let me say that writing a blog entry about managing people is a bit of a head trip. As I eluded to in my previous entry about this new promotion, I have a lot of assumptions and attitudes about what it means to be a manager.

I have no illusions. I am not a good manager yet. I have learned 2 very fundamental pieces of the puzzle here: learning to let go (i.e. delegation) and learning to slow-the-fuck-down. The thing is, everything I am doing, and learning about management is like looking an an elephant in a dark room with a flashlight. I can see bits and pieces everywhere, but what I am looking for is two things:

1. the overall big picture, and
2. the linchpin that holds it all together.

The thing of it is, I cannot really talk about these things without turning into one of those fluffy "personal power" Tony Robbins worshipers that squick me out.

Essentially I am battling two problems, the first is one of ignorance. I know I am ignorant, but I don't even know enough to ask the right kind of questions to erase my ignorance. The second is the stereotypes, prejudices, and attitudes I have about management. So not only do I have a problem with not really being able to ask the right questions, but I also have a problem understanding, and even accepting the answers that I get. I think that the biggest resistance comes from the fact that I want to keep looking at the people I work with as the people I work with, not the people "under" me. I especially want to avoid the kind of attitude where they are not people anymore, but just means for the overlords to get more profit.

What I need is the management equivalent of "Getting Things Done". GTD basically gave geeks the tools they needed to be really geeky about their productivity. I need to find a similar process to get really geeky for managing people.