We arrived to Guu at around 4:45, just in time for the restaurant to open. I clearly forgot to pay but my friend reminded me that it’s easier to pay a few bucks than to pay a fine (oh, she was so wrong.. haha). When we gave this meter 3 dollars, the machine gave it back displaying a message “Excessive funds; cancel or pay for maximum time”, something like that. So, our next step – to read the instructions on the parking machine of course. We read “$1.50 an hour. 9am to 5pm Two hour maximum”. So, what did we assume?

the photo of the meter was taking from http://www.flickr.com/photos/melsky/528072086/

Oh yes, since it’s nearly 5 and the meter wouldn’t take more of our money, then it must be that we only have to pay for the 15 minutes between now and 5pm. Seems logical, doesn’t it? Well, apparently not!

Apparently, and this is what I deduced from the parking ticket that was later stuck to the windshield, 5pm and onwards is not free parking on that street, or no, it’s Permit Only!

Hold on a second! Where does it tell us that it’s permit only parking? Oohhh… that’s right below on the meter, isn’t it? There it says that in fact It’s permit only between 5pm and 7am.

Screw you Toronto Parking authority and the morons who designed these meters! You are violating the very basic principles of human-factors. You essentially designed a system that says:

Step 1: To complete the transaction, push the red button and go enjoy your day.

Step 2: if you pushed the red button, you just launched a nuclear missile. [oh wait... you already walked away. sorry! don't say we didn't tell you!]

Above is the screen shot of Google Maps Street View from the area. Exactly the same thing – one sign tells me that between 8AM and 5PM I have to pay for parking … and then another one below tells me that after 5pm I am not allowed to park there. Make one freaking sign and put all the information on it!

The guys at the City Hall probably figured out that if they have an option to make a ton of rules, they’ll make them and post’em all over the city. Not only it’s ugly, it’s unusable! Sure, maybe the folks who drive in Toronto often enough know about these tricks, but I don’t and I dont’ feel great about learning “in process”.

Am I done ranting now? Not quite.

The rant must go on because given that I am from out of province, I pretty much have no other option but to pay the fine! There is an option to schedule a court date, but that has to be done in person. Sure I am not going to drive down to TO to do it. Some nice and entrepreneurial guy from http://parkingtickets.to offers that he would be the one to schedule a court date for me, but unfortunately his services is only available for cars with ON licence plates.

To be honest, this feels pretty crappy because we really had every intention to pay for parking, but because these signs are designed by 5 year olds with crayons, I still ended up getting a ticket which I can’t even dispute. I feel like the City of Toronto has devised a nice way to scam “outsiders” and it’s working out quite well for them.

What could be done to fix this?

Actually, it’s not that complicated. The first thing to do would be to put
“5PM to 8AM – permit parking only” first among these instructions. Then, to place all the instructions on a single sign clearly stating that it’s referring to parking. That would solve most of (my) problems. Lastly, if you look at the meter, you’d see that Sat/Sun instructions technically overlap with the “no parking” instructions, which also needs to get fixed.

When I started running back in 10th grade of high-school, 100 meters was a tremendously hard distance for me, but then only 16 month later I was on the varsity team and one of the co-captains. However much it took on my part to get there, much was because Chino knew how to keep me going. At some point I’ll write another post on that, but let me quickly tell you about it today.

Today, as I was trying to run a timed mile on my old high school track in the insane heat of 35 degrees Celsius (95F), I bumped into cross-country coach Chino and another guy Carmel who used to coach track, on occasion. As they were updating each other on all the wonderful running news, I mentioned that I am trying to get in shape real quick as I will be racing this coming Saturday as a part of a triathlon team in Guelph.

Carmel sighed and looked at me as if I were either insane or dropped on the floor as a baby (one of those is at least partially true). Chino on the other hand just smiled. Now, I know that I just started seriously training one week ago, and that I am at least 10lbs heavier than I should be in order to be able to run well, and that my mile pace is a minute slower than it should be, but all those are merely details, and that’s what makes Chino such a great coach. He’s always been setting goals that were impossible to the naked eye, and yet he knew they were achievable by the people that were going to finish those goals. Much like that, he knows that if I said that I’d be running in that race, I’d be running like there was no tomorrow.

At some point I watched a TED talk about great leaders, and I think Chino got that to the T. What is really important to achieve goals is the meaning behind those goals, the “why something is worth working for”, while the “how to get there” and the “what tasks to do” are merely the products of the goal itself. In short, once there is a reason worth working for, it is much easier to be working and other things start falling into place.

Here is something ironic. My father is a lot more educated, had much different positions than a track coach, and yet sometimes completely fails to understand the very basics of motivation. For example, he wants to set me up with a VP at one company so that I could pitch my business (http://bllure.com). That’s great, right? Well, almost. He wont set a meeting until I have a Power Point deck ready, outlining exactly how I am going to make their business better. Okay, so he’s my father and the guy won’t trust me until I have hard data ready, wtf! I just happen to be a person that can’t do thing until I actually have to get them done. Set me up with a meeting tomorrow, and I’ll spend all night making the best PP you’ve ever seen, but ask me to do something in order to get access, and I loose all motivation. In my view, if I could make up a decent conference speech for 200 people, 10 minutes before I was due to give one, then I can pretty easily figure out a powerpoint presentation overnight. This goes back to motivation – “how” and “what” are irrelevant until “why should I bother?” question is fully answered.

Funny enough, since I am his son, sometimes I probably fail to motivate others, but I can promise you that I try and try again. Remind me if I fail tho, I’ll try harder!

The moral of the story, whatever you are doing, if you need to motivate people to be successful, be open minded. Don’t get too bugged down by details of how you or your team is going to reach the final goal, just keep trying and make sure that you have a good idea of why you really want to reach that goal. Keep working hard and things will fall in place. It has happened before, there is no reason why it won’t again.

The problem here is this – I goof around a lot, but NOT enough to be very productive. What do I mean, it’s crazy talk right? Well, no. When I don’t feel like working, I tend to take random breaks: reading news, talking to friends, coding random website nonsense, listening to music, watching YouTube, making my Vimeo videos, running, sleeping …. and so forth. Some of these procrastinatory tasks are quite good for me, but others not so much.

At the end of the day, because I take so many breaks from doing something ‘important’, I end up doing a lot of other things of secondary-importance, but while I procrastinate a ton, not many of these secondary tasks get completed. I do a lot of things, but enough of each to make it count!

For instance, what I’ve really wanted for the last 5-10 years was to learn how to play guitar. However, I am awful at it. I mean, I suck! I was told that playing guitar is not as important as for example getting a job, so therefore I should really spend time searching for a job, not playing a guitar. Now, that’s absurd, but I am now convinced that once I lear to play this beautifully looking instrument, all my life problems will go away. Okay, not all, but once I can actually play the damn thing, it would be a lot easier for me to relax by playing an instrument, rather than chatting with friends for no apparent reason.

The point to all this madness is that right now when I need to relax I jump from one activity to another, to another, to another … and at the end of it all I don’t get significantly better at any. Instead, I should really focus on what my true life pleasures are, and get good at them because then and only then I would be truly getting relaxed while doing those things. Consecutively, once I can get better at relaxing, I would naturally be better at focusing. I am pretty sure this should work. Thoughts? How do you relax, and how do you focus?

Send & Archive is a wonderful feature that lets you remove clutter from your inbox and automatically archive an email once sent. The beauty, emails pop back into the inbox whenever somebody responds!

Undo Send allows you to do exactly what it says. If you sent a message and haven’t quit the browser, you get about 10 seconds to click undo and fix the problems. I find this useful at least once a week!

To enable the features, go to your Gmail, click Settings, Labs, then enable these two add-ons and click Save on the bottom.

Done! Enjoy.
If you found this useful, then click “Like” below and share with your friends so they could use the awesome features too.

I already did the statistical approach to applications once, when I applied to 18 different universities and ended up in the one that I applied to last. Not because I didn’t get into another ones, but because the last one was always the first choice among 16/18 schools on the list.

Now, 3 months is an ‘average’ statistic, which means some people out there spend 16 month, and some people spend 16 days waiting to get a job. So why the f_ck should I play safe and apply to all the jobs posted, left, right and centre? Sure I could waste my energy sending resumes to a bagillion of companies simply because I can, or I could approach this efficiently and only apply to places where I see myself being employed. Kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you? I wouldn’t unless there was a flaming truck speeding my way and about to run me over. Just like that, why should I do the ‘average’ amount of useless work, just to get the ‘average’ outcome. Gosh I hate it when people don’t make any sense!

If you look at the tea pot a little closer though, you will find that every inch of it is laced with cracks. The pot would’ve fallen apart already if it wasn’t for the glaze that firmly holds the pieces together. Add a little hot water, touch it a little too rough, and the pot will shatter in tiny little pieces, but be careful, handle it gently, and the pot will hold its shape for moths to come. (I am trying to be optimistic)

Do you see the similarity? Just like this pot, sometimes you can’t tell that a heart had been shattered, that somebody’s emotions are ready to spill. All you see is a tea pot and all it takes to break it is a little careless touch.

Back then, I knew it made no sense to me, and I knew I didn’t want to read or memorize all this stuff, however, the education system didn’t allow me to do otherwise and therefore my grades on literature-related items weren’t that great. Now thought, I read one of the poems and I remembered it. Why ? Because now it has relevance and meaning – I don’t have to try hard to remember it.

Think about it this way, if you have a choice to turn left or to turn right while driving, but the object of your interest is to the right, chances are you don’t need to convince yourself that going that way is the right choice. Exactly the same it is with my mind – I now like this poem and I don’t have to think too hard in order to recall the word. The crude English translation of the poem I read is below.

I loved you: love is, perhaps,
In my soul is not extinguished;
But let it not bother you anymore;
I do not want to cause you any sorrow.
I loved you silently, hopelessly,
Modesty and jealousy was stressed;
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
As I wish God give you another love.

~Alexandr Pushkin

(russian version of the poem)

Anyways, my messed up mind is not the core of my thinking here. What amuses me even more is that however illogical and unproductive memorizing Pushkin was, nobody did anything about it! Some parents somewhere needed to get up and ask “why!”, some teacher needed to say “why not something else…”, but nobody did. I mean, I could understand the persistence if all the graduates of that school came out the smartest people on Earth, but that’s not nearly the case. Then why is that nobody ever questioned whether there was a better? What is it about people that stops us from asking “Why?” and taking an approach that’s not the same as others think it should be?

p.s. In all fairness, there are people out there who take innovative approaches to learning and living, but they are dime a dozen.

The other day I was walking back from a train station, going uphill for 20+ minutes, in a pouring rain. As I was walking, car after car drove by and disappeared and not a single person pulled over to see if I needed a ride. Why? The neighbourhood is very safe, I looked quite decent (but drenched), and there are really not that many houses around so the distance they would’ve driven me was marginally not much different from the original trip.

Some books I’ve read before alluded to the fact that altruism doesn’t exist, but here is yet another example. I actually like this quote by a German scientist: “If the attention I pay to others is valued in proportion to the amount of attention earned by me, then an accounting system is set in motion which quotes something like the social share prices of individual attention.”

What this means is that when people donate money, they get a little bumper sticker that acknowledges their contribution, when they donate time by volunteering, the community sees that contribution and presumably acknowledges the effort. When, however, one stops to give somebody a ride, there is nobody to witness the kind gesture and therefore there is no price of attention associated with it.

Giving somebody a ride is by far a lot easier than saving a kitten from the fire or rebuilding a village wiped by a tsunami, but it doesn’t come with nearly as many “cool points”.

This round rack, hooked up to a subway went is a great way to utilize previously wasted space, while keeping the homeless off, while also looking quite slick and all at a low cost of some welded steel.

I was looking at this tool and I realized that people who can see problems and are interested in solving those problem will find work anywhere, anytime. Think about it? It’s not likely that the city of NY requested a new set of bike racks, and then some awfully flamboyant designer with an Apple computer and square glasses set off to design the next most exciting rack. Most likely somebody wanted to bike to work, but the nearest place to park was either inside his/her crummy office space, or a few subway rides away. Sitting at the office one day, while doodling thumbs and waiting for a fresh Dilbert cartoon to pop up, this lucky someone shouted “Eureka!” and set off to design a new parking space.

Do you thinking living in NYC helps, or should it be possible to create something useful anywhere, as long as there is a stimulus to get it out on the market?

Original file from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirillzubovsky/4672108145/sizes/l/