That Don Guy

About two years ago, I told my boss that we needed to talk. He wasn’t a stupid man by any...

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:16:00 -0700

About two years ago, I told my boss that we needed to talk. He wasn’t a stupid man by any stretch of the imagination, so he knew something had been under my skin for a few weeks.

I don’t think he was expecting me to tell him that I was leaving my cushy, well-paid job with fantastic benefits, in order to start a software company with a close friend.

After I had finished training up my replacement and celebrated my last day, it hit me: I was unemployed, and partially responsible for the livelihood of another human being (my business partner).

In all honesty, I was scared shitless.

I had, provided that I didn’t go all-out on Porsches and cocaine, enough cash to last me for a year.

I had never founded a company. I didn’t know the difference between a corporation and an LLC, much less how to actually set one up.

I had never sold a damn thing in my life. The one time I tried, selling magazines to raise money for my school, I couldn’t even close a single order.

I had zero clue what marketing was. So I had no idea how to even get the message out to the potential customers to whom I had no idea how to sell.

In short, I had a year of runway, and couldn’t even start building my airplane until I figured out how to mine and refine aluminium.

I had never done anything even remotely as risky.

And, you know what? I crashed and burned.

But not before releasing a product.

Sure, it took my business partner and I a lot longer than we had planned. Neither of us had before taken, on our own, a product from ‘idea’ to ‘something customers can actually complain about’.

We had gone out, found people brave enough to risk our private beta, and convinced that we weren’t a complete gaggle of clowns. And while the product was rough as hell, our initial customer feedback was very positive. We were clearly moving in the right direction.

Unfortunately, we hit the end of our collective financial runway, and while Linode, our hosting company, is shockingly awesome, they don’t accept hopes and unicorns as a form of legal tender.

When it became clear that it was time to find a Real Job again, things were very, very different.

In a year, I had learned a mountain about sales, marketing, and business. I had built up a solid network while hunting around for customers and partnerships. I had gained the sort of experience that can only come from eating, breathing, and dreaming code for a solid year.

Two weeks later, I started as the CTO at a different startup, with my business partner stepping in as the tech lead.

It’s another story, but let’s just say this time, huge success.

If I had never quit my stable job, I’d still be there today. Because I took the first real risk in my adult life, my career has rocketed forward farther than I ever thought possible.

More importantly, I’ve had two amazing years. I’ve ridden in a Hummer through the middle of Tokyo, survived the fourth-largest earthquake in recorded history, and drank an Australian under the table.

Taking risks is scary. Stepping outside your comfort zone is hard… but that’s where the magic happens.

Burrito bowl, to go. Easy on the rice. Carnitas, pinto beans, pico de gallo, sour cream, cheese,...

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:10:00 -0700

Burrito bowl, to go. Easy on the rice. Carnitas, pinto beans, pico de gallo, sour cream, cheese, lettuce, guacamole, and yes, I know there’s an extra charge for the guac.

I’ll take some chips, too.

Chipotle is always my first stop whenever I’m back in California.

Dad’s seventy-third birthday was this month. He’s had a hard life, and he probably doesn’t have that many years left in him, so I’m making a solid effort to spend as much time with the old man as possible. So, I’ve come back to my native Sacramento to help Dad cut down some old, dead trees in the backyard.

Taking time off like this is hard.

It’s an incredible thrill to charge into the next project with a full head of thermonuclear steam, and when you take a break from charging ahead, the fear of losing that momentum is very, very real. It’s even more terrifying to know that every second you aren’t moving forward, you’re falling behind.

Taking time off like this is hard because it’s scary.

Vacations like this are definitely not a luxury. Building a startup takes vision, skill, a metric ton of tenacity, and more than a few buckets of crazy. Getting into the right mental state to marshall all of that together without driving yourself into a mental hospital takes a fair bit of time.

Spending some quality time with your family during this period also a good idea, as you’ll need to convince them that you’re still sane.

You just need to remind yourself that you’re taking the time off to refuel the awesome space-rocket that is your brain, and that if you blast off too soon, you’ll end up buried somewhere in a cornfield, and will never get a chance to build the rotating orbital space laser that you’ve got your mind set on.

It’s also a really great excuse to grab some Chipotle.

It’s been twenty-five days since the earthquake, and life has returned to normal in Tokyo....

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 04:14:29 -0700

It’s been twenty-five days since the earthquake, and life has returned to normal in Tokyo. It’s spooky, really, how quickly the status has once again become quo ante. If it wasn’t for the news, you would think that nothing happened at all a bit less than a month ago.

Being here, now, has really been an incredible experience; I’ve seen how amazing people can be when ‘shit’ and ‘fan’ intersect. Quite possibly the most surprising thing has been that I literally can’t volunteer to help — there have been so many volunteers, both foreign and domestic, that aid organizations are fully booked.

That’s a really good problem to have.

I want to personally thank the people that helped out by donating to my group on WePay. Your donations have been sent directly to the Red Cross, and will go to helping the people of northern Japan rebuild their shattered lives.

Radiation and You.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 21:27:00 -0800

I want to combat some of the misinformation flowing across the net about the unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, because there’s way too much panic, and not enough knowledge.

If you don’t want to read everything below, I’ll summarize: If you live outside of Fukushima, you’re safe.

Here’s ten important facts, in order of “you should know this first”:

1. There is NO danger of a nuclear explosion. The fuel used in nuclear reactors is literally engineered *not* to explode. In simple terms, it’s too stable, and in more complicated terms, the quantity of enriched uranium and plutonium present in a nuclear reactor is far, far short of the sort of critical mass you would see in a nuclear weapon.

2. The radiation in Fukushima would need to get 2000 times worse before hitting fatal levels. The current radiation level outside of the Fukushima plant is around 1000 µSv, or 0.001 Sv. Mild, usually non-lethal radiation sickness doesn’t set in until around 1-2 Sv, and you aren’t in the danger zone until you hit 6-8 Sv.

3. This is not to say that there is no danger. We’re just a very, very, very long way aways from people glowing green and growing extra arms.

4. Your DNA is really, really good at repairing itself, which is why we can take so much radiation before it becomes a problem.

5. The danger of exposure drops off very, very rapidly with distance.

6. The sort of radioactive material you are likely to be exposed to emits alpha-particles. These particles are quite literally stopped by your skin, and won’t cause problems unless they get inside you. The best defense is to keep exposed skin covered, wear a mask, keep your windows closed, and to avoid going outside.

7. The half-life of these particles is measured in days. The most dangerous stuff (that emits the most radiation) decays faster, which means it’s dangerous for a much shorter period of time.

8. “Radiation Pills” contain potassium iodide. They work because your thyroid really, really loves iodine, and so when you take the pill, they saturate your thyroid with happy, non-radioactive iodine-127. If you are then exposed to very radioactive iodine-131, your thyroid won’t absorb it, which is good, because you really don’t want your thyroid full of radioactive isotopes of iodine.

9. Potassium iodide offers no other protection against radiation. It won’t protect you from exposure to anything other than iodine-131, and has toxic side effects if you take a lot of it.

10. There is no such thing as a radiation suit; the suits you see people wearing are just to keep radioactive dust from entering their bodies, and actually offer no protection from the radiation itself. Any sort of plastic, waterproof garmet that covers the entire body will offer the same level of protection.

So, now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Disaster Mitigation Tips

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:41:06 -0800

There have been a lot of tweets over the past forty-eight hours about dealing with the aftermath of the quake, and a lot of it is actually the opposite of what you should do.

The most important three things you can do:

1. Don’t panic.

2. Secure your safety before you try to secure the safety of others. If you can’t help yourself, you’re useless to anybody else.

3. If there are emergency personnel, do what they tell you to, and stay the hell out their way otherwise. These guys train day-in and day-out to handle this, and you will just slow them down if you jump in and ‘help’ without them asking you to.

If you’re at home and safe, but in an area where transportation and supplies are limited:

1. Get enough food to keep yourself for a week. Focus on staple goods that won’t readily spoil, such as rice, as well as fruits like oranges and bananas.

2. DON’T buy everything in the store. You don’t need a year’s worth of supplies.

3. Get a flashlight if you can, as well as matches and candles. If you lose power, but not gas, you’ll need the matches to light the stove.

4. If you don’t have one, buy a fire extinguisher. The fire department is busy right now, and if you drop a match onto something flammable, you might need to handle it on your own.

5. Don’t spend a bunch of time on the phone chatting with people. Communication networks are overloaded as is, and your call is probably not the most important.

The day after, after.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:22:33 -0800

I set up this Tumblr last week to share my latest project, where I learn all about marketing new web technologies, since I’ve already got a decade of experience in building them.

But that seems a little trivial now, given that this past Friday was the worst natural disaster to occur in the history of Japan, where I just happen to be living.

For those of you who might have missed the news, the area roughly two hundred miles north of Tokyo got hammered by an M9 earthquake.

I live in Tokyo, which ‘only’ got hit by a M7.

To put these two numbers in perspective, the earthquake that devastated San Francisco in 1989 was about an M7. Thousands of people were injured and homeless, and it took years for the city to fully recover.

So, if you were Tokyo, getting hit by an M7 earthquake would be like being sucker-punched by Mike Tyson.

The quake that hit northern Japan was a hundred times more powerful than what we felt here.

A hundred times more powerful.

If you were Sendai, getting hit by an M9 quake would be like being sucker-punched by God. Twice, actually, since the first aftershock was an M8.8. Oh, and there have been a few M7-ish aftershocks too, so after our mythical super-being got bored, Mike Tyson stopped by and got a few shots in for good measure.

I’m not trying to make fun of the situation here, but to understand the destruction that the people of Sendai have suffered, you really need to move up into ‘comic book’ territory.

The destruction is quite literally simply too great to fit inside the human brain. I’ve been at home since Friday, watching the local news, and if I didn’t have any context, I’d think that the videos were from some new Hollywood disaster movie.

At the moment, I’m looking for volunteer opportunities — if you know of any, I speak decent Japanese (enough to pass the JLPT2), have a small amount of medical training (first aid, CPR), a strong back, and a strong desire to help.

If I find anybody looking for volunteers, I’ll let you know.