Surf Roots, Software Thoughts

This is going to be fast because French keyboards are super weird:

• London was awesome; good to see Dan
• Slept on the streets in Amsterdam because our hostel fell through — awesome
• Ate waffles and drank beer in Brussels.  Mmmmm

More to come when I have a normal computer.

I’m hopping on a plane in less than 12 hours, and I’m all packed up and ready to go.

Vows I’m making to myself:

1. No feed reader
2. No internet browsing
3. Email only when necessary or during downtime
4. Blogging only during downtime
5. At least six hours spent at the Delirium Cafe in Brussels

Stuff I’ve packed:

1. 5 shirts
2. 5 boxers
3. 5 pairs of socks
4. 2 pairs of shorts
5. 1 pair of jeans
6. 1 raincoat
7. 1 beach towel
8. 1 sleep sack (sheet sewn into a sack)
9. 1 pillow case
10. Misc. electronics, gadgets, documents, etc

I’m insanely excited!  Stay tuned for some thoughts, city reviews, etc.

I’ve bought everything I need, booked a few hostels, booked my plane tickets, stocked up on Advil, and done just about everything I have to do in preparation for my Europe trip.  All that’s left is to squeeze everything into a backpack.

I’m surprisly calm given that I’ll be backpacking through most of Western Europe for seven weeks starting in two days.  Stay tuned for some notes on eats, destinations, hostels, etc :).

The earliest presentation I can recall giving was during my junior year of high school. I was in front of my U.S. History class, accompanied by two of my classmates. The three of us had prepared for our talk, and it was my turn to present. I recall the stagnant classroom with two doors in the back, begging me to run through them and escape the horror that was in front of me. I started talking and was immediately broadsided by an anxiety panic attack. I froze and didn’t know what to say, so I turned around to one of my classmates and quietly asked them to fill in for me. I was utterly embarrassed and confident that I would never give another presentation again.

At the end of my freshman year at the University of Washington, having just finished the second introductory programming class, CSE 143, Stuart Reges contacted me and asked me if I would like to be a teaching assistant (TA) starting fall of my sophomore year. The thought of presenting to 20-25 students twice a week for an entire quarter was horrifying, but I knew I had to take the opportunity — I knew that having a presentation phobia would limit me in my career. You might be thinking that my logic doesn’t make sense; why would I want to put myself in an uncomfortable situation? I did this because the only way to become comfortable with something is to challenge yourself, to put yourself in the uncomfortable situation over and over again until you’re finally comfortable with it.

If you fear public speaking, then the only way to overcome your fear is to practice public speaking. The way I overcame my fear was by becoming a TA and presenting to 20-25 students twice a week for two years. The first few sections I taught were horrifying; I lost my train of thought often and probably did a poor job of explaining the course material. With time my sections became better and my confidence stronger. But how did I cope with the first few sections? I learned about cognitive therapy from a wonderful book my mom recommended.

Cognitive therapy will help you pinpoint your discomfort and teach you how to cope with it. The trick to coping with discomfort is to learn exactly what makes you uncomfortable.  Are you scared of making a mistake?  Are you worried that you don’t look good?  Are you scared that you’ll lock up and look like an idiot?  You should ask yourself questions like these and try to pinpoint exactly what bothers you most about public speaking.  It’s not enough to say, “I just don’t like it.”  No.  You have to pinpoint your discomfort.  My discomfort was the fear of vomiting in front of people.  For whatever reason I had a primal fear that my audience would see me vomit or would be weirded out if I had to suddenly leave the room never to return.  I know it sounds stupid, but this is what genuinely worried me.  “What if I have to throw up?  I’ll just politely say that I’m not feeling well and that I have to end class.  What if I don’t have enough time to pack my stuff up and end up puking all over the classroom?  I can’t do this presentation.”  This is the thought process I used to go through, and once I realized what my fear was, it was just a matter of learning how to calm myself down and combat my fears.

Combating your fears takes preparation and practice. I would take notes of my thoughts immediately after a worry streak and reflect on them later.  It’s natural to forget your thought process during a worry streak, so writing your thoughts down is very important.  The next step is to examine your thought process and realize ways to combat your worries.  In my vomiting example, I would think about the amount of times I have thrown up in my life, which made me realize that throwing up is not a common thing.  After drinking slightly too much one night, I also realized that the urge to vomit doesn’t come out of nowhere.  If I really had to throw up, then I would feel nauseous, dizzy, etc, and these feelings would come gradually and with warning.  These two facts allowed me to fight my worries in a very rational way, but often my worries would exceed all attempts of being rational.  In cases like these, I would try my hardest to think rationally and explain to myself that my worries were unwarranted given the facts.  Eventually I was able to not let my emotional worries take control of me by immediately considering the logical implications of my worries.  It took time and practice, but eventually logic outweighed emotion.  It’s also important to realize that you can’t try to say to yourself that your worries are just worries and are therefor irrelevant.  This will dig you into a deeper hole, because you’ll realize that if your worries are irrelevant, then something must be wrong with you.  Nothing is wrong with you; lots of people worry.  Think of combating your worries as a personal challenge, one that once overcome will be gratifying to say the least.  Before a presentation, try to mentally put yourself into an uncomfortable situation and practice the ways that you will combat it.  You’ll start being able to combat your worries, and then, after lots of practice, you won’t get many worries at all.

I used to be horrified of public speaking, and now I love it.  Since my public speaking phobea discovery in high school, I’ve given lots of lectures to 20-25 students, 5 lectures to 50+ students, 3 lectures to 100+ students, and 1 lecture to 200+ students.  I was nervous for many of those lectures, but I knew how to combat my nervousness and give the talk regardless.  I put myself in a position where I had to practice my public speaking, and I armed myself with skills to combat worry and overwhelm my emotions with rationale (cognitive therapy isn’t the only solution!).  Becoming a TA might not be in the cards for everyone, but there are plenty of other ways to practice your public speaking.  You can sign up for a public speaking class at a community college, or you can join a local public speaking club.  Try to practice public speaking with subjects that you enjoy; it’s much easier to present something that you’re passionate about.  Plus, chances are good that you’ll be presenting something that you’re very familiar with whenever you’re required to speak publicly.  There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’ll take some determination and hard work to get there.  You can do it!

I just bought a Canon Rebel XTi for my travels.  Wow.  I’m no photographer, but I can totally appreciate the difference in quality between a point-and-shoot and the Rebel XTi.  I took some photos yesterday for fun, and I’m insanely impressed with the camera.  I spent a few minutes reading through the manual to learn about the camera’s settings, fiddled with things, and snapped off a few photos.  Prior to buying this camera I had a small understanding of photography principles such as exposure and ISO.  Some of the photos below were taken with a 28-105mm lens and others with a 75-300mm lens.  I can’t wait to get more usage out of this sucker.  Europe and China, prepare to get photographed!

I’m giving a guest lecture for Marty’s CSE 190M class tomorrow, Wednesday, June 4th in Guggenheim 220 at 3:30pm.  The talk will be about basic steps to creating and launching a website, with a focus on Cellarspot.  I’ll update this post later with the slides.

Update: download the slides here.

I remember my first Seattle autumn.  Having come from Los Angeles, the city with one season, the sight of brown leaves flowing in the wind reminded me of “the most beautiful thing in the world” according to Ricky Fitts in American Beauty.  I was so happy to see an autumn and be in a city that actually had seasons.  I’ve since revised my perception of Seattle’s seasons.

Having lived in Seattle for four years now I’m confident that I’ve seen what the city is capable of.  I’ve backpacked on the Olympic Peninsula, biked around San Juan Island, hiked up Mt. Rainier and snowboarded down, surfed at Westport, and lived in Seattle while attending the University of Washington.  After four years I’ve made a conclusion about Seattle: it is a city with one season and intermittent change.  Here’s the breakdown:

• June - August: warm rain with occasional gloom and sunshine
• September - November: rain and gloom with occasional falling leaves and potentially freezing temperatures, occasional sunshine
• December - April: cold rain, freezing temperatures, snow, very, very occasional sunshine
• May: rain with lots of gloom and occasional sunshine

Keep in mind that I’m exaggerating pretty heavily here.  I’m bitter that I gave my rear fender to Glenn forgot to bring my rear fender on my commute this morning, leaving me with a wet ass, back, and feet.  Perhaps this is my own fault and not Seattle’s, but I thought I would try and make a funny post out of it.  For the record I’ve had an awesome time in Seattle, and I don’t regret coming here.

Photo credit here.

The fellers over at AGoodReed were super generous and got me some travel gifts.  I got a sick surf backpack with the bare essentials — wetsuit bag, skate carrier, insulated cooler pack, laptop case, etc.  I also got a hip AGR (TM) shirt to rock at the hottest clubs in Europe.  Check it out:

That’s 5XL right there. Thanks, dudes :).

This past Friday was my last day at Redfin.  Sometimes I wonder why I’m leaving such a wonderful company, but I think I’ve made the right decision. I had a really hard time saying goodbye to all my awesome coworkers, and my insane happy-hour-turned-to-long-night-of-drinking made things even more difficult.

It’s going to be hard to find a company that is filled with such wonderful people and work. Goodbye, Redfin. I miss you already :(.

Sushi after a long day’s work.

McGarty Party.

Sign conversations. I’m good at drawing.

Loki, one of the many Redfin doggies.

UW CSE affiliates day.  Also Halloween.

Yay IT Party.

Me and Mose.

Bahn.  Look at the dude on the right!

Scientists.