Phil’s blog

I’ve been meaning to post about a report on happiness that someone sent out to a mailing list within Google. The report, done by DRKW, has a lot of common-sense advice such as get enough sleep, exercise, and reflect on the good things, but also presents some interesting claims (all from other studies). They say that 50% of happiness is due to genes (inheriting a tendency to have some level of happiness), 10% due to circumstances, and 40% to intentional activity. Circumstances such as wealth count for so little due to hedonic adaptation, the tendency to get used to new conditions (bad or good) and revert to one’s baseline happiness. Intentional activities such as socializing and working on personal goals aren’t subject to hedonic adaptation due to their episodic nature. In my case, this all confirmed what I already believed, but it’s a quick and interesting read, so check it out if you’re curious.

Went to a show at Bottom of the Hill in SF last night with Jamie (from work), his friend Jonathan (from Apple), and Jonathan’s friends JT (also from Apple) and Lydia (a student). We stayed for two of the four bands, Dirty on Purpose, which rocked out, and Say Hi to Your Mom, which were pretty good too. DoP did an amazing cover of Send Me an Angel by Real World - wish I could download it somewhere. We went to a club called Pink afterwards, which kind of sucked; lousy music, lousy staff. Good to finally get out and do something though. Also had dinner earlier at Shabuway on Castro St. in Mtn. View with Kevin, another friend from work. They serve shabbu shabbu on a budget: $11 for small, $15 for large. Quite a deal compared to the $40 meals we would have had to pay for in Japan, but probably not nearly as good. It was decent but I wish they had more dipping sauces. We drove there in Kevin’s new Civic Si - very sweet. Definitely experiencing car envy, but I think I’ll hold out for another year at least. TSX redesign coming next year..

Just sent out my revised thesis a full day ahead of the mental deadline I set for myself. Soon we’ll see what my committee says.

Here’s an update for the past week.

• Ditched my Cingular plan and joined Sprint. I found out about this employee referral plan through fatwallet.com. Apparently you don’t even really have to know an employee (though two of my friends’ moms happen to work for Sprint/Nextel), and they’ll hook you up just to gain business. Pretty good deal, and I’m liking my new Samsung A900. It works extremely well with my bluetooth headset, making extended late-night conversations much more convenient.
• Last Saturday I bought a desk and a mattress and moved into my new place in Mountain View. It’s pretty nice, though for the most part I stay holed up in my room working on my thesis revisions, talking on the phone, or unpacking/getting organized. I still need to get a bed because they didn’t have the one I wanted the last time I went to Ikea, but for now the mattress will suffice. I’m also thinking of getting a giant beanbag and a bigger monitor that I can use as a TV.
• Have been lifting twice a week, noticing a little difference. Am probably still under 150 pounds.
• Got a USB flash drive which I’m using with KeePass to store my passwords. I currently have only 3 passwords which I use for everything, but I’m gradually changing them to unique 16-character generated passwords now that I have KeePass. It’s a little inconvenient to have to pop in my USB drive and run a program to access passwords for the sites that always require password entry, but it’s much safer this way. Probably overkill actually. Perhaps I’ll get tired of it after a while. I also played around with a program called TrueCrypt which lets you create and mount encrypted and hidden volumes. It’s pretty clever: an encrypted volume can be either a partition or a file. The optional hidden volume is kept in the “free space” of the outer encrypted one via steganography, and can’t be distinguised from random bits. When you try to access the volume, one password will expose the outer shell and a different one will expose the inner. If an “adversary” forces you to unlock the volume, you can use the outer password where presumably you’d keep dummy personal data, while your adversary has no way of knowing that the hidden volume exists. Sweet.
• Went to the dentist last Thursday for the first time in years. They have a trailer that comes to the company parking lot every Thursday. This time I just got a cleaning and x-rays, but I made an appointment for next Thurday to have a couple of my front teeth built up with porcelain to look more uniform. I’ll also get a referral for a surgeon who can perform an implant to replace my missing tooth, but I’m not in any hurry to spend $2k (not covered by dental plan at all), and it doesn’t really bother me to have a gap there.
• Went to a wellness coaching session last night. When I got my free massage a couple of weeks ago (all nooglers get a free coupon for 1 hour), I mentioned to the massage therapist that I’m often tense, and she asked if I’d be interested in these one-on-one sessions with her to help reduce stress and generally be happier. This first session was 90 minutes and the focus was basically what I wanted to improve, and where I wanted to be in 3 months. There weren’t any profound revelations, but I think the point is more to ask you questions that you don’t usually ask yourself but probably should, forcing you to assess your current state and how to get to your ideal. The two major conclusions we came to are that I should be more observant of how things affect my sleep and energy levels, and that I should spend more time planning (this was my own conclusion, echoed from David Allen’s Getting Things Done) instead of being constantly caught up in execution. She was really pleasant to talk to and we ended up going off on a tangent about qi gong. I told her I was curious but skeptical, and she said she might be able to arrange a meeting with a friend who practices medical qi gong and could perhaps show me that it’s real by circulating qi through my body or something. Awesome.
• Am determined to finish my thesis revisions this weekend no matter what. It’s ridiculous to have this in the back of my mind all the time, and it’s keeping me from having much fun outside of work. I’ll be much happier when this is over.

Today marks the end of my third week in the working world. It’s tiring. I get home after 8 most nights and do more work (via VPN) before going to bed. This weekend I have things pretty well tied off, so I won’t even think about work for the next two days.. actually I’ll probably end up checking email. I did do one fun thing this week though: I went up to the city to see Big D and the Kids Table with a friend from work, but they were sold out when we got there so we walked around near Golden Gate Park and got dinner. It was getting dark as we headed back to the car, which is apparently when all the drug dealers come out as we witnessed on several occasions. I had lunch with the product manager for Picasa on Thursday. Really cool guy. I may work on some Picasa or web albums features with my 20% time. That’s about all of the eventful things since last post. Actually one more thing: I’m moving to Mountain View tomorrow. Found a room for rent through craigslist with a lady and her nephew. The house is nicely decorated and has a good feel. Plus it’s like 5 min from work - sweet. That’s it for now. Time to rest.

Brief update:

• Went to my mentor’s housewarming party on Friday. Contrary to expectations, most of the people I met weren’t from the company. As I was leaving my manager showed up, which was lucky because I was supposed to meet with her earlier that day but she had too much stuff going on. Ended up staying for another half hour or so talking with her.
• Did tons of errands on Saturday.
• Bummed around doing random tasks on Sunday. Took the motorcycle for a spin.
• Went to work on Monday despite it being a holiday for us. Spent most of the time boning up on Search and Ads, but also worked out, spent some time in a massage chair, and napped on a giant beanbag.
• Checked out an apartment for rent in Mountain View today. Two bedrooms for $1k sounded like a sweet deal until I got to the place. It was clean and reasonably sized, but I asked the manager if I could see the parking area and he said that having just moved there, he didn’t know which parking spaces went with which apartments. He added that spaces weren’t marked with the apartment numbers “in case you have enemies, so they won’t know which apartment you live in.” Wow. Thanks for the tour - I’ll think about it.

Happy 4th!