Crisis of faith

Currently going through some soul searching. Haven't felt like writing
in my blog. I think I really need to get to Spain. I'm totally out of focus.

A few random thoughts.

Watch Wong Kar Wai's BMW Film Follow just to hear the
rendition of Unicornio he uses on the soundtrack. Lovely. Not sure
if you can buy that version, but the original is pretty good.

William Klein's photos of New York are great.

Supreme Court ruled that Casey Martin could ride a golf cart
on the PGA Tour. The sad thing isn't that he won the decision.
The sad thing is that the Supreme Court had to rule on that
on the first place. The PGA Tour should've given Casey Martin
an exemption long ago. Then it wouldn't have gone to court,
and the PGA wouldn't look so inhumane. I play golf. Letting
a guy with a handicap like Martin use a cart is not a big
deal. If a pro golfer can't walk the course when he doesn't even
have to carry his own bag and still compete with Martin, who
can barely practice b/c of his handicap, under those types
of conditions, shame on him.

I've been thinking...
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:23 PM | link

Thanks

Wait, I really didn't complete my last weblog. I have to get a few more
things out.

I have to thank all the people who helped launch my project. Meg,
my program manager. She's great. Always cheerful. Optimistic,
patient. High energy. She was my right hand. Robert was my
left hand. He had one of the toughest jobs, because he had to
request things from other people, and handle lots of intense
personalities. He'll claim to not be tough, but don't believe it. He
can grind with the best of them. Audrey and Erin, my clever web
devs. Just cranking through bugs like machines. I hadn't worked
with Erin before. She's sharp as a tack. Poor Audrey had a
problem with her eye at the end. It was all red and highly sensitive
to light and pressure. We finally just had to kick her out and
send her home.

Jim, our search guy. A true professional. Sam, my tech lead.
Very level-headed. Mark, our editor. A gamer. Put up with all
our last minute edits. Pete, our primary designer. Again, able
to put up with crazy people like me, keep us laughing, and
crank out designs at all hours. Again, able to keep his cool
even under high stress situations. Rob, my catalog ops guy.
Always smiling. Always. Has never never complained about
any job in all the years I've worked with him. Never! What does
that guy eat for breakfast?!? AlexG, Boris. Two newer web
devs, thrown into the fire. Barb and AlexP, who stepped up to
help me deliver and send one of the more ambitious, complex
e-mails in the history of the Internet. Again, cool under pressure.

Ryan, who used to be on my team, now on the marketing team,
helping us get our e-mails right. Chandra. Murray. Jason.
David. Of course, Bean, who we had to call back in yesterday
night at 2 in the morning to fix another bug. I see Bean more
at work now than I do outside work, which is kind of sad. One
of these days I have to take her to a movie and get some
mashed up ice cream and brownies and strawberries. It's
like To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, an unfulfilled
mission between us. Actually, I've been a pretty lousy friend
to almost everyone these past six weeks.

I think the one thing in common about almost everyone
on the team was that they were level-headed and cool under
pressure. Focused on fixing problems, able to set aside the
frustrations of a tight timeline. They just all kept their cool
even though the demands were so extreme. Oh, we had the
occasional fit, but then it was done and we were back at it.
I'm so proud of all of them.

I wish my mom could see the site today. She probably
wouldn't really understand what it was all about, but she'd
still be excited. Every mother's day I fall into this melancholy.
Nostalgia laced with guilt. I remember when my mom had
cancer, I bought her a copy of Still Me by Christopher Reeve.
I bought it from Amazon. I thought his story might give her
some encouragement and hope in her own fight. I asked
her one day if she had read much of it yet. I knew she had
picked it up once or twice and tried to give it a go.

By then she was too tired to say too much. She just said, "There
are too many words in it." She was joking, of course, but also
half serious. She never did make it any farther into the book.
But I remember many moments like that, when between her
pain and her suffering, her old sense of humor managed to
poke through. Those are the stories that always choke me up.
Damn, I miss her a lot.

posted by Eugene Wei at 10:52 PM | link

Weddings, launches, remembrances of things past

It's been a long time since I posted. My project neared its launch
date, and that was the end of my free time. And you know what?
It launched. Last night. Late. I got home at 4AM this morning.
Check it out.

I would talk about it some more, but I'm too drained to think about
it right now. Plus, it's work. Can't talk shop outside the office.
Emily in PR would have my head on a platter. But let me
know if you have any thoughts about the site, about the e-mail.
I'm a little too close to it all right now.

The last 6 weeks have been a blur because of this project. Let's
see, I attended a wedding last week. John and Irene. Because
they're both from Stanford, I saw a ton of old classmates there.
Some folks I haven't seen for ages. Tina. Shanon. Rob. Elaine.
Su. Jeff. Grace. Cindy. Jon. Actually, I never see any of those guys, so it
was strange even running into Howie and Sharon and Alan and
Mark. No one seems to have changed, though. I guess 5 years
out of school, most people don't morph remarkably. Gosh, I'd
hate to think I'm down evolving.

The wedding took place at a beautiful setting, but being from
Seattle, I brought the cursed rain with me. The wedding was
held outside at the Ritz Carlton at Mission Viejo (sp?) south
of Los Angeles. We were on a cliff by the ocean, and on the
beach below 50 to 60 people were out there surfing.

John wrote his own vows, and for a tough guy, I was pretty
impressed. It takes a lot of courage to declare your feelings
for the woman you love in front of a big crowd. He even got a
little choked up, which for John is somewhat of a surprise.

For the most part, everyone looks great. Phew. I'm glad I
haven't packed on too many pounds since graduation.

Lots of former couples at the wedding. For the most part, we
were all pretty civil and good about it, but at times it was a
bit odd.

My step-brother-in-law Jeff is a babe magnet. There's no getting
around it. I wish I had his height and his angular face. He
really should just take up modeling full time. Sigh.

Howie gave me his first demo CD! It's pretty impressive. I don't
know too many people who take up DJ'ing late in life. It's good
to see him indulging his hobbies. Since he doesn't watch
movies, sometimes I worry he'll get bored.

Joannie and Karen both graduated that weekend. I couldn't
make it all the way home because I had to get back to Seattle
for work on Sunday. The whole time at the wedding, I kept
logging into the site to do more alpha testing. I'm pretty
proud of both of them. Joannie for finishing law school as part
of law review and nailing that clerkship. Someday soon she'll
be making a lot more money than I will. And she'll be married,
too! Karen, for finishing that Computer Science degree. When
I suggested it to her, I was half serious. I never thought she'd
really choose to do that. I admire programmers. And she
nailed an extremely high paying job with Raytheon, too.
They're all growing up.

My website is #1 in Google if you search for Eugene Wei
now. As Steve Martin said in The Jerk: "The new phone book's
here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need! My
name in print! That really makes somebody! Things are
going to start happening to me now."

I've been at Amazon over 3.75 years now. I didn't even realize
it when it happened. I actually missed the day. That's a long
long time. With folks like Jen taking leaves, everyday I feel
more and more like a fifth year senior at Amazon. I see fewer
and fewer of the old-timers around, and the people I work with
seem to get younger and younger.

I know, I sound like a broken record. I do feel the passage of
time like a strong current around me. I guess it's better than
hanging around too long, though. Like The X-files, which is
coming back for one more season without Mulder. They should
have just ended it this year. I love the show, and it's still better
than most of the stuff out there, but really, it's past its prime.
I hate seeing the things I love lose their luster. That's part of
why I hope Jordan doesn't try and come back. He'd be good,
but I like to remember him great.

Haven't ridden my bike in two weeks. Ugh. I'm not loving myself
right now.

I'm rambling. I'm tired. I'm going to sleep. Remind me to discuss
why I'm so impressed with Microsoft tomorrow.

posted by Eugene Wei at 10:23 PM | link

Polly called me today. She's engaged to Ed! Wow, that's a lot of engagements in the past half year. And here I can barely plan my next vacation.

Observations from looking at my website's logs:

• Google dominates the search engine market right now. It's not even close. Some 75% of searches that end up on my site are from Google. Having Yahoo as a customer certainly helps, but two other things they have going for them. The simplest interface of all, and a smart way of sorting results to surface the most relevant results high up on the page. It will be interesting to see if they can hold their lead or if another search engine will come along and take that next quantum leap in search relevance.


• Lots of people looking for paper ideas on my site. Lots of searches for "paper topics on remains of the day" or "paper ideas for Tobias Wolff" or stuff like that.


• Still lots of perverts out there. Wonder how Scott would feel about all the hits to his Big Sexy page if he knew people were getting there through searches for "Naked frat boys" or something like that. C'mon people.

Work is very busy right now. Near the end of projects, tension levels tend to rise. People get stressed out, and I can sense different folks on my team walking on the edge. I'm trying to keep my cool, keep everyone focused but even-keeled. I find generally that too much emotion at the workplace can be a negative, though a surplus of enthusiasm is generally a plus. Over time, the pros separate themselves by their ability to stay unemotional while continually pushing towards a solution. Some people are just gamers, true professionals. It's fun working with those types of folks.

Read this brief article in Sunday's NYT about this backlash against workaholics. I have to agree with the writer. This revolt has gone a little too far, to the point where we're idolizing folks who always work a normal 8 to 5 workday. Work/Personal life balance is great, but I haven't run into too many great things in life that weren't attained through some level of obsession and workaholism. I even read this article about how people admired Bush b/c he works much shorter hours than Clinton. That's fine if he does, but calling that a good thing is going too far, in my opinion. He's the president of the largest democracy in the world. If he doesn't have enough to think about every day for the next four years, something's wrong.

I got this letter in the mail the other day. It contained a single piece of paper, with an article written across both sides. It looked like a page from a magazine. On it was stuck a post-it with a hand-written message to me:
"Eugene, try this. It works!"

That's it. Some article about leadership or productivity, or something like that. I can't remember. Another scam to try and get me to read junk mail. I hope it isn't cost effective to hire someone to sit and write all these post-it notes. I really hope people are smart enough not to fall for scams like this. If I could reduce the number of random catalogs I receive but never signed up for and the number of credit card applications I'm sent each day, my mail would be reduced by 50% to 75%, and I'd have about forty fewer pounds of paper to recycle each month.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:18 PM | link

Where have all the cowboys gone?

Today, someone I've known for a long time decided to take a leave of absence from work. Someone I respect a great deal. It saddened me. Thinking back now to the early early days, many of the people I started with now are gone, and many of the people I work with today are younger, from a different generation. I always joke that I feel old around them, but today, I really do feel old. Like a student who stays around in college to do a Masters, and then a PhD, who sees all his or her classmates graduate and leave. Hard to keep fighting when you feel like the last of a dying breed of gunfighter.

Maybe this is just how folks feel before they leave companies they joined when they were startups and have now become goliaths. It feels very lonely at work many days.

Maybe this project I'm on now is just wearing me down. I got home tonight and I didn't feel like eating, or going out, or anything. Just somewhat empty.

I also think it has to do with being a manager. I read something Colin Powell said about leadership, and it rang true. Being a leader can be a lonely job. You have to make decisions for the good of some greater group, and you will anger people, and you must accept that you will never get everyone to agree with you. It's just a little harder to do when many of your friends are the people you work with on a daily basis.

On a separate note, software is frustrating me to death. Especially my browsers. I keep trying to watch Quicktime trailers and they continually crash IE. So I use Netscape, but for some reason in Netscape my weblog software menu is missing a lot of buttons which makes it difficult to post entries. Sheesh, would someone just build some reliable, bug-free web browsers.

I have to decide if I can get away to attend John's wedding next weekend. I'd like to, but my project is keeping me swamped. If I do attend, I will run into a ghost from the past, someone I share much history with. Whether I'm ready or not, I have this feeling I am skating towards a sudden collision with the past.

The other day I dreamed I was at work, running around checking on my team, all stressed out. And I went into someone's office, I can't remember whose now. Maybe Bean's, or Robert's...anyway it was of course not the real office we work in but some random dream office. And the person there, I think it was Bean, was watching a movie on a small black and white television sitting on a desktop. In this movie, a man who believed himself to be an angel had strapped on some man-made wings and then launched himself down a runway and off a ramp in an attempt to fly. He attempted this over and over again, and continued to crash into the ground. It was like those old black and white videos of man's early prototypes for airplanes, getting a few feet off the ground before shattering on the ground.

And in my dream, I forgot why I had walked into Bean's office, and I stood there watching this movie, this man who thought he was an angel, and it moved me.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:34 PM | link