Palatable Patterns

The Assumption of Multi-Tasking

It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve finally come to accept that age is not just affecting my physical self, but also my intellectual one. I got into certain habits at the age of 26 which, a decade later, I have to break for pure practicality’s sake, because they are simply not possible, anymore. Things such as working past 9:00 p.m., getting a full night’s rest sleeping on a red eye flight, keeping details in my head and NEVER writing anything down, being patient when people repeat themselves, and rapid-fire context-switching and multi-tasking.

That last one is the most dangerous because, in the tech field, the basic assumption is that everyone multi-tasks. This assumption is so prevalent that if someone walks into a meeting without a laptop, smart phone or iPad, they get strange looks. People who walk around with a pad and paper are the subject of jokes and teasing. It is simply expected that, during a meeting, you are doing other things.

There is a knock-on affect to this which particularly bothers me: because the assumption is that everyone is multi-tasking, there is a very rude and sloppy habit of inviting everyone and their brother to a meeting. The result is that people’s time is wasted carelessly, because there is no consideration put into who is truly needed for a meeting and who merely needs to be informed of the results after the meeting is over.

After all, if everyone spends every moment of their day doing multiple things at once, then why do we need to respect people’s time by being selective and deliberate about who we include in meetings?

Since there is nothing in the universe that bothers me more than having my time wasted (except possibly having my team’s time wasted), this is something that has been particularly frustrating to me lately. People carelessly and impolitely sucking up working hours by dragging me to meetings which I have no real reason to attend means that my real work — the work that requires thought, concentration, problem-solving and in-depth analysis — gets pushed to off-work hours.

And, because I’ve turned into a dismal old hag who can’t stay awake past 9:30 p.m. to save my life anymore, this means getting up at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. to get work done. But since people schedule meetings for me until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., my days just get longer and longer, I get more and more tired, and things that used to never phase me start bothering me more and more.

(And, for the purposes of this rant, we’ll skip the massive impact this has on my physical health, husband, friends, family and social life.)

Of course, the other way in which my multi-tasking problem continues to manifest itself is emotional: once I start getting upset at people wasting my time, I find that I struggle more and more to shake it off, get my head back in the game and push through what I am capable of getting done.

Yet one more example of why my next career is probably going to have to involve working with dogs. They never even try to multi-task. It’s one of their most endearing qualities.

A Tour of Kiev

We spent Sunday touring Kiev. What started out as a five hour tour, turned into a day-long event, once we had a late lunch, and then moved on to shopping.

Kiev was beautiful, and though the wind was a bit chilly at times, it was a sunny day that was great for walking around outside.




I really liked the sculptures around the WWII Museum, even though we didn’t have time to go inside. (Well, Matt went in, but the rest of us walked the grounds instead.)







And see? I don’t dislike all cats. This one is supposed to bring good luck if you pet it’s head and tail at the same time.


I think my favorite thing, though, was the whimsical nature of the sculptures and playground near yet one more church. (I’ve crossed my threshold on churches for a while.)





After we concluded the tour, we went to a great old retro place (with lots of Communist-era decor) for Vereniki… though I ended up getting two of my all-time favorite treats: pelmeni and vinaigrette salad (the only way I like beets!). Once we wrapped up with lunch, we went walking through downtown to do some shopping.

Heather and I marveled at how on earth all the skinny women managed to walk on the cobble stone in 5 inch spiked heels without killing themselves.

Quote of the day:

Alora: “After seeing all these skinny ass women, I can’t eat an ice cream cone.”
Heather: “But they’re all eating them! They must put something in it to make them so skinny. I think we should give it a go.”

And while I applaud my British colleague’s well-applied sense of justification, my diet starts now. Downtown Kiev was like being in Los Angeles. One of my legs weighs more than most of those women. Yikes.

Go-Karting in Jena

Our big cross-team event for our week in Jena was go-karting. But really it was ping pong, pool and foozball while waiting to go-kart. And, because it was Germany, we got to do it all with beer. Ha.


Sasha was ready for a nap before we even got started.


Artem finally gave up the idea that I would stop taking pictures of him just because he refused to look at me when I had the camera out. Happily, he did finally start smiling, though, even when he was looking away.



As always, Sasha B. is a riot — even if he was all sweaty from a highly physical set of back-to-back ping pong matches.


The foozball games were endlessly entertaining as well.




Nastya and I teamed up in a game of pool against Matt and Sasha. Nastya’s attempt to demoralize by trash-talking the guys didn’t have as big of an impact as my sinking a ball for them at the end. We lost, but only barely.


Me and Sasha, waiting for our turn to hit the track. We were on the same team, and he rather enjoyed running circles around me.


Nastya and Sasha B. watching another team race.


I’ll upload the video later, but Sasha B. was a maniac at the pool table. And quite the sweaty boy once he was done playing.




The caps they gave us to go under our helmets were endless fodder for terrorist/airport security jokes.


Me and Matt, enjoying hanging out with the team.


Ilya and Marat preparing for another round on the track.


Yet one more game of pool with Marat, Eugene, Artem and Nastya.


Sasha B., Ilya and Nastya chilling out for a moment between games.


This is what Sasha looks like when he gets bugs assigned to him. We told him this should be his new Skype picture.


Our team shot at the end of the evening.

And then after we got back to the hotel, most of us piled in Sasha’s room to do a vodka tasting: Sasha’s Ukrainian vodka and Matt’s California vodka. The Slavic purists objected to the Californian… but the Californians liked it. Maybe a little too much. But there is no photographic evidence of that part of the evening. Thank goodness.

Team Dinner in Germany

With work being so busy, we didn’t get much chance to go out — and definitely didn’t get much chance to hang out with just our team. But on Wednesday night, we went out to dinner and enjoyed a night out, with just us.

Unfortunately, German restaurants tend to have trouble handling large groups. So a table for nine is hard to come by. Eventually we found a place that pushed together two bar tables, that could (sort of) accommodate nine people.

In addition to food and drinks, Ilya decided to teach Matt how to play a Russian card game called “Fool.” Good thing, too, since it took nearly two hours to get everyone’s food out to them. BMW’s much-trumpeted boasting of “German efficiency” does not appear to apply to German restaurants.

Arrival in Germany - March 2011

I’ll write more about the ups and downs of the trip later, but since work is so crazy and time is short, I’ll start with some quick pictures, and circle back around to the rest later.

Sunday, March 27, 2011


My arrival in Frankfurt. I’ve gotten so used to flying domestically, that I forgot what it was like to get on a really big plane.


(Artem, Sasha S. and Sasha B.)

After catching up with my guys from Kiev at the airport, we decided to head to downtown Frankfurt to walk around a bit, before picking up Matt and Ilya from the airport that evening. (It turns out, we were really on a quest for sausages and beer.)


Frankfurt has a lovely river walk through downtown. And, though it wasn’t quite as warm as I like, it was still a very pleasant day to be outside.



Sasha reminded me that I needed to get an actual picture of myself in Frankfurt, instead of just taking pictures of other things. I always forget that part.




All in all, the trip itself was long but uneventful, and the few hours we got to spend in Frankfurt before leaving for Jena was nice.

The final photographed event for the night:
The joke for the night was: “How many Ukrainians does it take to load an American van in Germany?”

Of course, it wasn’t until we loaded up, with me in the back buried under suitcases, that Ilya realized the van was a stick shift… which he doesn’t know how to drive. Fortunately, Sasha was happy to take the wheel on the 3 hour trek to Jena.

I have no opinion

Of course, anyone who knows me knows that is rarely true. However, I have discovered that the older I get, the more like my Dad I become. And one of the habits that both my Dad and I have developed over age is an aversion to debating opinions.

Once upon a time I used to love trying to change people’s minds. I am not sure why, but at this point in my life, I have no appetite for it. And it’s not even so much that I respect other people’s right to their own opinion too much (after all, just because I have no interest in changing their minds doesn’t mean I don’t think they are wrong), it’s really just that I don’t find it worth the effort.

Ironically, this habit is the most problematic when it comes to my husband. Because he is so rational, he is actually one of the most reasonable people in the world when it comes to re-evaluating his opinion in the face of new information. It’s one of his best qualities. Because his goal is the best possible solution for something (anything), he is almost universally open to any feedback that can help him improve. He is the most non-defensive person I’ve ever met in that regard.

So on the rare occasion when I do push back in an effort to change his perspective on something, he will often surprise me by stopping, considering and then changing his position. That always blows me away.

I’m sure part of the reason that it shocks me is because I am waaaaaaaaaay too ego-driven to do that very gracefully. It takes me sitting with something for a while before I can admit to anyone that they persuaded me to change my mind. That’s really, really hard for me.

At work, though, this most commonly manifests itself during user experience debates. And the truth is, for no matter how much of my life I have spent doing this, I actually have no interest in UX whatsoever. I got online in 1993, before there were web browsers. For me, my principle concern is functionality. I care very little for UX under most circumstances.

And I have realized that — at least at work — the reason I absolutely hate UX debates is because it’s really just a bunch of people citing third-party sources to justify their opinion. And no matter how many outside experts we cite, in the end, it’s simply to justify our own opinion. And unless or until we do A/B testing, it is ONLY opinion.

And I am not in the market to change anyone’s opinion. And I’m not particularly interested in having anyone change mine. So these conversations just cause me to mentally check out, until I can come up with an excuse to physically duck out of the room.

Of course, the arguing still gives me a flippin’ headache.

I left my heart in… not San Francisco, it seems

I had really been looking forward to my planned trips home in January and February. I was slated to be in SF the second and fourth weeks of the month; and then ten days in the middle of February.

Of course, work is now sending me to Philadelphia during the second week of January instead. This bums me out because — despite being ridiculously cold in that part of the country this time of the year (and precisely why we moved to Texas in the first place) — my trip was supposed to start on January 9th, which is just close enough to Russian Christmas (January 7th) that it would almost be like going home for Christmas to see my Dad.

Naturally, I’m still planning to be there at the end of the month. Unfortunately, that trip (coincidentally) is at the anniversary of my mother’s death… which hampers some of the fun a bit.

Here’s hoping that my next two trips home remain intact, in spite of crazy work commitments back east. (Is there an emoticon for crossing one’s fingers?)