It's an Exciting World

Getting Advice from People Who Know What They Are Doing

Today I spend most of the day meeting with people who knew a lot more about developing and coding than myself. I in turn gave them advice about product and marketing. The talks with Fadi were really good. I learned a lot from him when I was at Chegg, including everything I know about SQL and a lot of what I know about Node.js. We chatted about where he is going with his products, and about where I am going with my game. I’d love to work with him should things not pan out with the game.

I also met with the backend developer for a China/USA game team and asked a lot about what he uses for his databases, servers, API handling, etc. It was really useful information and gives me a great direction to look into. He recommended going with Node.js. It is good for me since I have the most experience with JavaScript and some experience with Node.js.

July 19, 2013 0

Got Kitties!

I went to the Palo Alto Animal Services to get 2 adorable kittens. One is an orange tabby and the other is a Siamese mix. They are soooo adorable. The orange tabby is a boy I’ve named “Archer” and the Siamese is a girl I’ve named “Lana.” I spend the day cuddling with them and getting them used to me and my room. We tried to introduce Howard, but Lana did not get along with him. I’ll ease them into Howard over the next few days. They are soooooo cute.

July 18, 2013 1

Timelines and Avalon at Box

Last night I went to Box for board games night there. Nick, Peter, Brian, and myself played Timelines, a game of time travel to exploit markets. I got a pretty good handle of end game conditions from the get go, but with the way the game was played there was no way to know what you would be able to do next turn. Anyone could completely throw off your ability to do something, which would then make you waste more turns trying to get back to a state where you could do it, just to be foiled again. If people were only trying to do what was best for themselves then this wouldn’t be a big issue, but it was so easy to block someone that you couldn’t finish the game. It was especially true when there was one clear leader, which is the position I got into early on since I chose the specializing strategy, which paid off well in this game. I still ended up winning by a large margin.

BGG Link Timelines

We also played Avalon last night, which was a good bit of fun. We had up to 9 players in one game, and we also included many of the special characters. I got to be a special character most of the time, which was really nice. I won most of the games I was a part of, but in Avalon it is hard to make sure anything specific happens. I did lose when I was Merlin, which was disheartening. The guy playing Percival didn’t know what to do, so he didn’t back me up when I pointed out the bad guys I knew. A suspicious play by Candice also made me think that she was Mordred when it was actually Adam. All in all it is a well balanced game with a good bit of manipulation.

BGG Avalon

July 17, 2013 0

The Lean Startup

This is a book about how to focus on what matters in a Startup. It also changes the definition of startup to include groups inside of larger companies. The processes that it describes touch on several of the books I’ve read before, such as the Toyota Way. I think that the learning that I got at Zynga are very heavily along the lines of this book, with some important differences. The data driven approach is certainly a halmark of the Zynga approach. I hope to have tighter feedback loops, and that means getting things exposed to people that can give the feedback. I will try to keep myself focused on what will matter both long term and short term, and reconcile those as needed.

Audible Link

July 16, 2013 0

Monday Volleyball … ish

Yesterday after finishing work, I went to Stanford to play volleyball. Not many of the people that I wanted to play with were there. Nima was, but the other people playing volleyball were much better than him, and he is much better than me. I decided to not bother those guys too much, and let Nima play a game without me. I got a little bit more work done while he was playing and got to watch two pretty good games at the same time. We then went to Sliders in Palo Alto. We split a pitcher of Great White, which was a nice orange beer. The sweet potato fries were really tasty, and I got 2 sliders to complete the dinner. I went over to Steph’s after that and saw her finish off her Messenger bag for the Faith outfit. It was really nice.

July 16, 2013 0

Do More Faster

This is a good book about startups. It is good at pointing out a good number of things that I haven’t done yet and really need to do. I’ll get together with Robert tomorrow to talk about it. I also should make sure that we record more stuff about the things we are talking about. I’d say this book is worth reading for those doing their own startup.

Audible Link

July 15, 2013 0

A Relaxing Sunday Evening

We watched the Venture Brothers for much of the Afternoon and Evening. Nick was the person that was there the whole time, but a few others came and went. Riley and Rong came by for about 4 hours and hung out. Nick was nice enough to cook out and provide some dinner of hot dogs wrapped in bacon and burgers. I put orange sauce on everything and it was delicious. There were a few episodes of Venture Brothers that I hadn’t seen that were pretty interesting. I of course liked seeing the new one. The last few have had more plot than I had previously expected from the series. Adam came over and we talked about his time in Vegas, building planes, finding a place to live in the South Bay, and a little bit about companies and programming. I am going to try to learn everything I can from him. Even though he isn’t the person that I’d model my life after, he has a lot of experiences that I’d like to learn from without having to go through them myself.

July 15, 2013 0

Bike Ride with Nima

Nima and I went along the Steven’s Creek trail this morning, and then turned around to head out past Shoreline Lake. It was a nice 16 mile ride and I had a great time doing it. We talked about him biking to work, me getting cats, and many other things. I think I can convince Caryn to come over and possible work some from my place next week or the week after to play with the kitties and keep them company. I also showed Nima where the used bike shop in Mountain View is.

July 14, 2013 0

Cal Ave Farmer’s Market

I stopped by the Cal Ave farmer’s market this morning and got a Samosa, then stopped by the Bolani tent to get 8 of the pumpkin Bolani and one each of the basil pesto and sun-dried tomato pesto. I got so much since we aren’t going to be able to stop by and get some more next weekend. The guy didn’t quite recognize me by myself, but that is ok. He recognized me after I got 8 of the pumpkin. On the way out I decided to grab a Mango Lassi, and it was quite tasty.

July 14, 2013 0