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Virtual Insanity

Working for big company, corporation as TomTom is, marvellous, can you tell? But everything depends on people you’re working with, how you can communicate with all of them. Finally everything depends on you…

Let’s start with my boss, the closest, most direct one (because in corporation you can have several bosses, direct one, higher one, even more higher … and finally the top one). He’s not too virtual, I’ve met him few times on several occasions, but still he’s far away from me every day. Still, his everyday attitude is the same as if you met him face to face. Nice, cheerful guy, asking what I want to do instead of telling me that I have to do something. Suddenly I realised that he made a change in me, now my everyday attitude is asking ‘how I can help?’ instead of waiting for ‘you have to do something’. He’s got great talent and here I’d like to thank him. FM, you’re the man!

Second of all, you mostly need to work with people. It’s really good to meet them in person, when you have occasion to see someone’s smile, to find out what kind of jokes he/she likes, to just find out what kind of work activities he/she likes, what he/she focuses on. I’ve met FF in person once, we were sitting few meters from each other for few days. I was lucky enough to help him several times and lately he had occasion to help me with several tasks. This was great 2 days, helpful nature, great skills and quick reasoning, thanks man! Here I should mention JB, you was very helpful in the past.

Finally, people you meet every day, it doesn’t matter if you have work in common, but it really matters if you have anything to talk about. It may be political view, sense of humour, common interests. It seems it’s not too hard to find such people in corporation of one profession… But no, it’s not so obvious. So AN, MG (both of you),LP, JJ, ESS, AS, AG and more. Thanks!

Lot of other people I haven’t mention, or I’m not kind enough to remember you in such moments, please don’t get angry. NC, I believe you made some kind of commotion in my favour. Apart from that… well, the rest is virtual, I don’t know you guys, our relations were too virtual. It doesn’t matter I don’t appreciate your cooperation… in most cases

But I’m babbling with thanksgiving and stuff. What’s the point? First of all, if you work for corporation you mostly work with virtual people. It’s really nice to find the ones you can work with, not for, stick with them, it works. Second of all, when most of your co-workers are virtual it’s good to find people you can work with, not next to, cubical may be tight, but think out of the cubical .

The last, but not the least… Music for today: Jamiroquai – Virtual Insanity

Give Up!

December… Again I’ve run into the same, old schema. Just a moment after Halloween every single shop is decorated as it was Christmas already. I’m not amused, something that should remind us of family values and good things in life, becomes yet another opportunity for corporations to sell more stuff, because of gifts… blah blah blah…

It’s not that I don’t like Christmas, but I’m really fed up with the way people take it. Every November we can expect yet another incarnation of marvellous big-red-CocaCola-truck commercial. Few more days and we’ll find out which TV station will repeat Home Alone once again… I just can’t freakin’ wait for Christmas sales in every single shop (it doesn’t matter if they sell pine trees or windsurfing boards, it’s Christmas sale!). I can meet Santa several times on my way from work! I can tell him what I want to get for Christmas! And obviously take few flyers with address and phone number of his sponsor shop, with great discount!

So I just give up. I won’t join this commotion. I won’t be part of this huge marketing event.

But I’ll do my best to make it my way for the people I care about. I’ll do what I think is best. I’ll smile to people. I’ll smile back whenever I can. I’ll be good. I’ll do my best to make my family and friends happy.

That’s why I give up, I cannot overthrow whole world. You’re with me? Stop the hatred. Stop fighting. Give up the war against the system. For this short time, just give up fighting…

And a bit of irony… Phineas and Ferb cartoon – Give Up

One Winged Angel

Long time ago in a ga… ahhh, no, let’s start in some other way. 3 years ago I’ve started my adventure with professional software engineering. My first employer, Teleca Poland, was really good for start, they have trained me and let me work with the biggest and well known companies on mobile electronics market. It was like blessing, touch of angel. But why is this angel one-winged? Certainly not because of Teleca, but…

Nokia – my one winged angel – is the most relevant part of this story. In the beginning my boss at Teleca told me that I should learn how to code for Symbian so I can freely work for Nokia, our important customer. Nevertheless I was stubborn enough not to take Accredited Symbian Developer exam, I’m just a little bit trained in this direction. From the very beginning I was clearly telling that Linux is my field of expertise. It was worth my energy, because soon I was assigned to my first important and really interesting project, where I’ve learned a lot.

MIN Test Framework – it’s not a secret that Nokia developed such thing, mostly because it’s open source. I hope nobody will complain if I say that raw and simple website was my design . After starting in this project I found out about all of commotion around open source and Linux-based phones. It was like dreams coming true, my personal Linux, in my pocket and it can make phone calls… whoa! Unfortunately I was reassigned after 6 months but I was still waiting for Nokia N900, phone with Maemo 5 Linux on board. Finally when it was released to market 2 years ago I bought it. I fell in love with this piece of technology so much I was quite active blogger for nokia-n900.com blog, trying to plant that fire in more hearts. My angel was there…

But some day Nokia decided that Maemo, started one in small line of portable devices, will be replaced by something bigger, MeeGo. I was not amused, since Maemo, waiting for someone to notice it, developed lot of nice stuff, it was ready to be relevant part of mobile market. But no, Nokia decided that it will be replaced. I still feel a bit pissed off because of that.

My wings were cut a bit, until I finally became part of MeeGo Touch Framework development team, it was new, it was still Linux, it was still Nokia and it was mostly based on Maemo from before. I gave it a try, for over a year I was fixing bugs, adding features, improving and making the product ready for market. In the mean time the higher ups in Nokia were switched, Stephen Elop became CEO and I remember telling that one day Microsoft (Elop’s previous employer) will lay its hands on Nokia. I was trying to enjoy development for MeeGo for long time until they finally announced that MeeGo will be dropped after Nokia N9 will be released, because Windows Phone 7 is the future for Nokia. My wings were cut for second time, and the last for Nokia.

This finally made my beliefs fall. My angel, open Linux-based phone finally fell because it only has one wing now. I resigned from Teleca and moved to TomTom. At first I thought it was just because of fall of beliefs but in time I’ve found myself really nice place in TomTom. My direct supervisor is great guy and he knows how to motivate. I like the job and it leaves me free time to look after my angels time to time. I’m still involved in N900 underground a bit. I’m still thinking of writing my own app for N900. But maybe it will come in time, when I’ll recover after this fall.

For patient ones, try this one: Final Fantasy VII Soundtrack – One Winged Angel

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