Author Archives: dasunwang

Programming, Thoughts

Startup Girlfriend Threesome Balance

And this one comes up a lot.. How do you balance your girlfriend with your 60-70 hr / week job affair?? Short answer - you don't without some sacrifice. Choosing your job before girlfriend creates a rift in communication and questions about priority. Choosing your girlfriend before your job results in unnecessary stress, poor work, and unwarranted work-review meetings with your boss.

What do you do? And how do you achieve this balance when it seems impossible? I'll start by saying that it's not an easy task, but if you want results, you must be attentive and willing to put in the effort with sacrifices.

  1. Communication is key. Don't fret the hours and be confident on what your needs are. Make sure you and your girlfriend are aware of the commitment necessary for both people to be happy.. You get to work while she curls up next to you in bed.
  2. Keep your priorities straight. Don't let the love of your life become an afterthought. Your girlfriend loves and cares about you -- something that your job can't offer. Emotional support is the name of the game. Make sure she knows that you're not purposefully ignoring her for your work.
  3. Reassure her about your free time availability. This is a big one. You must be able to set boundaries on when you're working and when you're playing. There's no in between ground, so make sure you have your entire day's schedule straight. The best is when you both can find free time to work together.
  4. Create a list of goals each day, and achieve them. This one may seem unnecessary, but it's important. These don't have to be work related at all! Even small goals like 'Take girlfriend out to dinner' or 'Spoon her for at least 20 minutes' should be on this list.
  5. Compromise. This is a given in any relationship, but especially important in the startup / girlfriend threesome. Your weekends are limited while hers are empty. Go out and have fun, but let her know that you'll need to be up early the next morning to get your shit done.
  6. Have fun. Don't let the work clog your mind. I am for one, an emotional robot whenever I'm working. It's either coding or girlfriend.. They both deserve your full attention. When you're out having fun, have fun and don't worry about work until you boot up your laptop again. Trust me, there will be plenty of time to do that.

These are the most important things off the top of my head. Any less and I wouldn't be the best working / loving man I could be. Life moves on in mysterious ways, but you can't get what you want or deserve without setting some boundaries with communication. I suck at it, but I'm working towards a more mutually beneficial threesome here.. Coding, love, happiness. That's all.

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Programming, Thoughts

First Software Job

It's been awhile since I last blogged, but I just wanted to say how pleased I am with life at this moment. Since taking a 5 month hiatus from any strenuous work/code, I've decided to get back on the horse of life.

Trust me, taking 5 months off was one of the best decisions in my life. I FINALLY disintegrated my dependence from stimulants, and I evolved socially in ways I could have never imagined.

Coming out of college, I wanted to find the highest paying salary job possible -- $100,000 sounds just superb. But I realized there's more to it than just money. Sure, I could afford better cars, better booze, better food, but would I really be happy? Probably not.

I interviewed with over 20 companies for senior-level development roles. In retrospect, I was a little too ambitious. Senior-level software roles need their employees to deploy code from day one. I remember being asked to code a 20 questions AI on the spot, and just miserably failing. Not saying that all college grads should go for easier roles, but senior engineers need the experience to deploy quickly -- something that us juniors could accomplish, but in a much larger time frame.

Even though you would make a dick-load of money, ask yourself if doing your job is all that's important in your life. For me, the spare time away from work and the ability to hang out with my girlfriend all days of the week easily trumps any job which requires you to work 60+ hours a week.

Nerds need time away from the computer.. Ya know?

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Programming, Thoughts

Heartbleed Bug & Conspiracy Theory

So for those of you who don't know, the heartbleed bug was recently exposed as a direct vulnerability in the OpenSSL library. SSL is the handshake technology which allows all websites to 'secure' their transfer of information via HTTPS. Ever see that green lock at the top of your URL bar?? Yeah, that means it's a secure connection.

Well the shitty part is that SSL connections are used in every single private technologies in our everyday life. This includes (but not limited to): email (Gmail), instant messaging services (Facebook), credit cards (Amazon/PayPal).. basically the entire web. What we thought was 'secure', really was vulnerable all along. (Here's a list of the top 10000 websites which are still vulnerable)

"The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users."

Sounds like a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo, but in essence, the Heartbleed bug allows any attacker/anywhere to access all the information from these 'secure' servers without anyone ever knowing anything was touched/accessed/tainted. Your passwords -- vulnerable; your emails -- vulnerable; your messages -- vulnerable; your ENTIRE IDENTITY -- vulnerable. Want to see how easy it is? Look here

You want to know what's the absolutely scariest part of this bug? Here's a short excerpt from BBC:

Google Security and Codenomicon - a Finnish security company - revealed on Monday that a flaw had existed in OpenSSL for more than two years that could be used to expose the secret keys that identify service providers employing the code.

Did you guys read that correctly? Read it again.. This vulnerability has been out for MORE THAN TWO FUCKING YEARS. Can anyone say conspiracy theory????

(More technical portion here) Essentially, the way SSL works is through certificate authorities (CA's) which are Queen Certificates -- these queens determine which sites/certificates are deemed secure (HTTPS). Why does this suck? Because the whole security of the systems and web is based off these Queens. Let's take a look (taken from here):

Queens

  • Symantec (Verisign, Thawte, Geotrust) - 38.1%
  • Comodo - 29.1%
  • GoDaddy - 13.4%
  • GlobalSign - 10%
  • Others - 9.4%

This is absolutely fucking retarded because 4 companies control 90% of the internet's secrets. Who the hell trusts 4 companies with 90% of all of your secrets???!!!!

Which brings me back to the conspiracy theory here. For 2+ years, the NSA/Government could have known about this bug within OpenSSL and easily exploited it to retrieve not one, but ALL OF YOUR INFORMATION without any of the consent of the larger corporations Google/Facebook/Amazon just to name a few. Remember that PRISM scheme in which every single large company released very similar statements to plug their butts from leaking??

Well guess what. There's been a fucking IV inserted directly in their heart, in which not only the USA, but any human being in the world can peek at your DNA. Heartbleed & NSA. You win.

PRISM: Please Remember I'm a Slave Mind.

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Thoughts

Moving Forward

One of the hardest things I go through in life is moving forward. Leaving friends, leaving home, leaving school -- abandonment. This isn't a cry for help, but more of the deevolution of my brain. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I've definitely become less social and more content with my surroundings and my experiences.. A sort of zen-esque experience, if you will.

When I first came to California, I wanted to meet everyone around me and try new things all the time, but now that my life is at the cornerstone of moving forward again, it seems that these things are all the things I don't want to do. Maybe, I'm lacking the proper motivation to get me out of my towel lifestyle. Maybe, I still feel like I'm in school. Or maybe, I just don't give a damn about getting ahead anymore.

The people that I'm surrounded by; the life that I live; my nonexistent job.. This is my safe haven.. my royal throne.. my loves.. my legacy.. I can't grow up, even if I have all the tools to do so. When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was grow up and do whatever my little heart desired (my AIM screen name was dasuntheman26, lol). But now that I'm a fledgling adult, all I wish for is being a kid again -- dasunthekid26.

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Programming

Why you should use Angel List vs. LinkedIn

I'm a budding software developer. I have the most experience with full stack web development. Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, PHP -- that's my game. After filling out my profiles to the best of my ability, I've noticed something very significant. This is a comparison for startup and job opportunities for 2 places to market yourself (Note: I'm not a LinkedIn Premium member):

LinkedIn profile creation date: 03/02/13
LinkedIn connections: 518
Emails from companies/recruiters: 6

Angel List talent profile creation date: 02/09/14
Angel List followers: 30
Emails from startups/recruiters: 15

Bottom line: USE ANGEL LIST. Startups desperately need engineering talent like YOU. The best part: you get to see the salaries (and equity %) all upfront.

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Programming

Job Interviews

Well I just absolutely bombed my Google interview, but this has been a great lesson for me in terms of finding full-time employment.

  1. Learning the material is half the battle. Coding is the other half.
  2. It's all about the pseudocode.
  3. Get a good night's rest beforehand.. Not just 4 hours of nap time.
  4. Don't be afraid to ask questions, and always ask for coding examples.
  5. Practice, practice, practice, and then practice some more.
  6. Recursion is always the key.
  7. Don't just pray for success based on your resume. Get your shit together and become an expert.
  8. Anyone can code, but not everyone can become a computer scientist.
  9. Use your education to your advantage! It's important that you retain what you learned (drinking isn't the solution for everything).

Just some food for thought. Glad that's over with though.. Now I have a full syllabus of all potential interview topics for all potential employers!! Thanks, Google!

In the end, I'm only concerned with the opportunities I'm capable of. Next stop, start-up interviews! Fingers crossed (emoji).

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Thoughts

Less Money, a Shit-ton of Problems

"Mo money, mo problems" -- Pretty much everyone who is affluent has this as their life motto. It's almost as if they've achieved happiness through being broke as hell. If this is you, I really really do congratulate you. I'm still trying to find happiness in my life, but do whatever makes you happy. At the end of day, you're the only person who can make yourself happy.

But back to the point, I've got about a month's rent left in California, and I'm a recent UC Berkeley EECS graduate.. It should be easy to find a job.. right?? Having no money sucks, I can't do whatever I want, but on top of that, the world takes no mercy. The recent fender bender I got into -- if the victims file a claim against me, I could be filing bankruptcy real soon.. at the promising age of 21..

Classic me: one step forward, three steps back. The world shows no mercy, but life moves on. Only I can change what I want to, and being poor is one of the few things I can control.

"Stop bitching, and fucking adapt." - Richard Sherman. Time to grow up.

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Programming, Thoughts

Procrastination

For as long as I can remember, I've always done things at the last moment.. Homework, tests, chores, jobs, applications, work -- anything that had any remote importance in my life always took a backseat burner until I decided to stop being a lazy asshole about it.

I'm not entirely sure where my procrastination originates from, but I know many of you have the exact same problem I do. Fortunately, I've so far been able to scrape by by doing the bare minimum. But I want to change.. I want to work hard, play hard, and not just on the weekends. Procrastination is one of my biggest weaknesses, and I don't want it to consume my life any further.

I need to approach each day as part of a longer journey, not just an ephemeral work bender. In the long run, small amounts of work each day ensures better quality of work, as well as a less stressful life. Slow and steady wins the race, and I am the fattest, laziest turtle out there. Patience and discipline my friends -- that is what I need.

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Thoughts

Wolf of Silicon Valley

If you haven't seen Wolf of Wall Street, then you should stop reading and go see that movie right now. Admittedly, it glorifies the rockstar lifestyle: money, drugs, sex. However, Jordan Belfort portrays a self-destructive entrepreneur who has a thrilling life story.

After watching Belfort's motivational interview (post incarceration), I am inspired. There are 4 pillars of success:

  1. Vision - This is not just a goal. This is what you see the future world to be like. You must see it, smell it, even drool over it.. That is vision.
  2. Empowering Beliefs - Self belief. Self confidence. The past is irrelevant; you are who you are, and you possess the skills you have in the present.
  3. Managing your State - Certainty, Clarity, Courage. Match your mental and physical state with the situation at hand. Know your audience and raise your standards when necessary.
  4. Strategy - "Every battle is won before it even begins." Sun Tzu. Having a strategy is vital for success. You need to have a complete understanding of the job, game, whatever it may be.

You need all 4 pillars to succeed -- missing one of these will not suffice, since all of these beliefs are interconnected with straight desire. These don't even have to be applied to business; these are pillars for success in any area of life. Let's get started.

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