Book Cover

My second book just came back from the proof! Above is the cover. Comment away. I'm trying to get the electronic version up by next Monday, and then start shipping paper copies by mid-December.
I'm very impressed by the job CreateSpace has done on the book. I'm very pleased with how it has turned out. The cost of a full color book, however, means that this will have to be priced at $39.95. I guess I'm going to make very small print runs!

Review: Born On A Blue Day

On last Sunday's hike, somebody asked me what the beauty mark in Silicon Valley was. I said that it's invisible, it's Asperger's Syndrome. I was only partly joking, because autism is on the rise in Silicon Valley.

Cynthia suggest that I read Born On A Blue Day to get a better understanding of Asperger's and how a high functioning Asperger's person works. This autobiography was a fascinating quick read.

The author, Daniel Tammet, was apparently featured in many TV shows and documentaries, and is a high functioning autistic. His opening chapters describes how he sees numbers, and how they combine and weave themselves when he performs computations, which is how he can do those computations so quickly: he's not so much performing computation as he is working images in his head and then reading off the resulting images as numbers. That's quite an amazing transform if you think about it.

Tammet does a great job of describing how he grew up, and the steps he took to overcome his disorder. The scene where he gives up his imaginary friend is moving, and worthy of a novel. The last few chapters of his book deals with his eventual success and fame. It seems as though he's succeeded beyond anybody's wildest dream, and his description of his memorization of Pi is gripping.

All in all, I enjoyed the book. I'm not that sure it gives me much insight as to how to deal with people with Asperger's (other than confirm for me that I don't have it), but it's a great story with many scenes that seem to come right out of a movie. Recommended.

Review: Canadian Icewine Tea

On my Canadian Rockies trip I got a chance to experience Canadian Icewine Tea. It was exquisite. When I got home, I resolved to buy some and see if it tasted just as good when I hadn't been hiking for many days straight and away from the fresh air of the Canadian Rockies.

The tea is very fragrant. You take it out of the box and you get just a whiff of it and its really great. Then you drop it into hot water, and it takes about 3 minutes to brew if you jiggle the bag a bit. It tastes exactly like Ceylon tea, but the fragrance really does take you away to the Canadian Rockies for a bit.

"Smells like wine, tastes like tea!" --- Phil Sung
"i love tea that smells like alcohol :p" --- Cynthia Wong

All in all, it sounds like the tea is a hit! Recommended. Note that it seems to be very high in Caffeine. Not recommended for an after-dinner tea if you want to sleep. I've also learned to not drink it the morning of a hard ride for that reason. Note that repeated brews from the same tea bag loses the fragrance, so each tea bag is effectively one use.

The Counter-offer Conundrum

People asked me yesterday if the Techcrunch $3.5M story was true. I said it was believable, because while I wasn't involved in negotiating that particular counter-offer, I had some role in assisting someone land a counter-offer within 20% of that number some time back.

It is important when negotiating these counter-offers to realize that the most important part of the negotiation isn't really about the money. The money is nice (and $3.5M is nothing to sniff at), but you must negotiate about what's important to you. In particular, if you were going to quit because grungy work wasn't getting respected, then you have to make sure you get moved to a more sexy project with a fast-track for promotion. That could mean switching groups, getting a new manager, or extracting executive protection and coverage so you can get fast tracked. (What does fast track mean? A promotion every year would be the fast track)

At the end of the negotiation phase, I am usually asked if I recommend taking the counter-offer. My answer is almost invariably no. Most of it is because the basic things that piss you off (the company promoting technically incompetent people over your head, or not respecting the difficult work you did because you're not a self-promoting loudmouth) won't change unless you suddenly get a new job title like "Senior VP of Engineering." (Even that's questionable!) What happens in the case of such a massive retention package is that you end up working for money. While that much money is a life-changing amount (though be realistic: $3.5M after tax is only about $1.75M. That'll generate about $60K/year in income using the 3% safe-withdrawal rate, which might not be enough for you if you have mouths to feed --- and since most of the compensation is in stock your return can be quite variable), I find that creative professionals like software engineers have an especially hard time working just for the money. I usually tell the person involved to get a bigger/better offer from the other company by using the counter, and in some cases encourage them to take the lower offer from the smaller company that has a better prospect of growth. In the long run, the ability to stay motivated and challenged in a new environment is better than the golden handcuffs.

The result for the retaining company is a triple whammy. Not only was the formerly creative/hardworking worker now gotten less motivated, you now have to pay him more. Then if the package leaks (and such large packages almost always leak), the rest of the team gets de-motivated as well.

One manager told me that even people who take such a package rarely stay longer than one year. One person who took the retention package confided to me a few months later that he did indeed feel less motivated. Seen in this light, the counter-offer conundrum isn't much of one: don't take it unless you're given the power and authority to change the things that pissed you off enough to start interviewing in the first place. Or make sure that the golden handcuffs are so golden that you really will never have to work a day for the rest of your life again after you are done vesting.
[Update: AllThingsD reports a $6M offer which I have not confirmed. I will note that $6M is enough to not have to work for the rest of your life, so I can understand taking that counter-offer]

Review: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji

Someone told me that 36 Views of Mount Fuji inspired her to want to visit Japan. I did tour Hokkaido last year, but that was a short trip, compared to Prof. Davidson's multiple long term visits as a professor of English at Kansai Women's University, amongst other roles.

Davidson's writing is gentle and easy going. It's easy to get swept up in the narrative, and to see Japan from her perspective, which is that of an exotic foreigner swept up in an adventure, albeit one given license through her unique role, gender, and position to explore parts of Japanese society that less foreign counter parts would be unable to see.

Written in 1993, this book was printed before Japan's lost decades, and deals with none of the fallout from that economic calamity. What we see instead mentioned in the book is Japan as an economic powerhouse, and one senses that Davidson's approach to her memoir of her Japanese stays is to actually focus on the humanity (and to some extent, the short falls) of Japan in order to help her readers understand Japan as something other than the juggernaut that could do no wrong. I enjoyed her exposition of Japanese women, for instance. Far from the subservient role in a marriage traditionally assigned to them by Western observers, Davidson sees that it is the Japanese housewives who make all the economic decisions in the family, from buying a house to handing out an allowance to her husband. Articles about the Japanese carry trade today echo Davidson's observations from 17 years before.

Another poignant moment comes from Davidson's description of a tragedy in her family when her in-laws are killed in a car crash. Her description of how their Japanese friends took care of them in their unique fashion is moving. One of the characters says, "...sometimes foreigners don't understand that we have rules for how to break the rules too."

One of the most amusing moments in the book comes when Davidson and her husband visit Paris. Being in a foreign country triggered her "foreign language" reflex, and instead of speaking French, she spoke in Japanese instead. I have first hand experience with this: after touring Hokkaido, I accidentally spoke Japanese my first few days on this year's Tour of the Alps. Most of that is because Japanese is probably my best "foreign language", and so all the other secondary languages I learned tend not to be able to out-compete it when I'm in the situation as a foreigner. Her experience reflects the time she was in, however. Today, I run into Chinese tourists in Europe as often as the Japanese, reflecting the Chinese diaspora's role as the new economic superpower.

One amusing part of the narrative had Davidson referring to her Canadian home of Mountain View. I was just in that Mountain View and it was very pretty. It was interesting to run into the very same tiny town in this book.

Obviously, not all aspects of Japanese society can be covered by one person. For instance, it's unlikely that Davidson could have observed Japanese society's approach to courtship and romance, so one could not find a contrasting view to the recent rise of the so-called herbivore in Japanese society. Certainly, unless you grew up in Asia, it's hard to have an understanding of how pervasive Japanese culture was throughout Asia. For instance, Davidson doesn't mention that the Japanese practice of kinen shashin has spread all over Asia, right down to the "V-for-victory" salute.

Nevertheless, Davidson does an excellent job covering all the parts of Japanese society that she did cover, and her unique experiences were certainly worth reading. Recommended.

Unusually Clear Weather

From Screen Captures

Reilly Capps, Eva Silverstein and I met at the Bicycle Outfitter at 8:45 this morning ostensibly for a ride up to Big Basin. I say ostensibly because the forecast was for high winds above 1,000 feet, and I wasn't sure I wanted to put up with that more than necessary, since the winds were supposed to get much stronger in the afternoon.

Reilly was on a mountain bike, so he broke off to visit Fremont Older Open Space Preserve, a park I recommended to him for a mountain bike visit since it had some single track and was quite pretty. Looking at how clear the sky was, I suggested to Eva that we choose to ride Skyline first, to maximize chances of seeing all the way to Big Sur. "I bet we'll get to see all the way to Monterey today." Phil Sung met us at the corner of Mt. Eden and Stevens Canyon, but announced that he wasn't feeling very well today.

Stevens Canyon was cold, and we had to push pretty hard to stay warm, but once we turned onto Redwood Gulch it was not bad at all as sunlight filtered down through the trees and the occasional 20% grades made us work hard enough to stay warm. At the top of Redwood Gulch Phil said he had had enough and rode down highway 9, leaving Eva and I to climb it. Highway 9 always feels easy after Redwood Gulch, but the amount of traffic today was annoying, though not as painful as it would be after Thanksgiving, when Christmas tree traffic would make the riding intolerable.

At the top of 9, we made a left and climbed up to the high point at Skyline Blvd near Castle Rock. We stopped at Castle Rock to use the restroom, and then rode on to the summit and took a pause right after that in the sun for an absolutely glorious view of Monterey Bay. We could see everything: water, the Big Basin redwoods, the Ventana mountains, and even the beach at Moss Landing, which was a first for me. In 18 years of cycling the area I had never seen the conditions come together so beautifully! I cursed myself for not bringing a real camera, as my camera phone did nothing but show me a glare filled screen. Given that I had anticipated the weather conditions correctly at the top of Skyline, I had no excuse other than sheer laziness.

The descent down to Bear Creek road was fast, but as forecasted, the wind picked up and I ended up making this the slowest descent I'd had for a while, since the wind blew gustily in no clear pattern. At the Bear Creek road intersection, I suggested to Eva that we changed our route, since Big Basin would be cold and we'd have to descend Highway 9 in even more gusty conditions. Not having ridden Summit Road and Old Santa Cruz Highway before, she was game for it, despite the warning that the return would be on the unpaved Los Gatos Creek trail.

Summit road was a beautiful climb and we once again got a good view of Big Sur's mountains, sans the view of Monterey Bay. We then descended to Old Santa Cruz highway, and worked our way around the East end of Lexington Dam, came down the Los Gatos Creek trail and had lunch in downtown Los Gatos, where we ran into the Western Wheelers D group, which had just returned from riding Hicks. Some complained about how warm Hicks was. The reason I don't always ride with the club (despite enjoying the company) is that the club has a tendency to plan out routes a month in advance without a good understanding of the prevailing weather conditions. When I lead a ride I like to optimize the route to fit the weather, and understandably that does not work with the club structure, so I find it easier just lead my own little rides with good friends.

Since it was windy and warm and we still had energy left over after lunch, Eva and I reversed part of Naomi Bloom's "7 Hills of Saratoga" route on the way back to Foothill Expressway. The final route was 62 miles and nearly 5200' of climbing, a little less than anticipated, but quite OK for the season and how I was feeling. I should have brought a real camera, but sometimes, you just have to be satisfied with NeuroChromes.

Review: Galen Rowell's Inner Game of Outdoor Photography

I've recently had to answer a few questions about photography. In all cases, when the prospective photographer was new to the art, I always tell them to read one book: John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide. Shaw was a high school biology teacher before he became a full time photographer. His ability to teach and explain is unsurpassed. If you think about what photographs tend to show up in biology textbooks, Shaw's emphasis on macro photography becomes understandable.

In truth, though, my own work is much more a legacy of Galen Rowell. I had the fortune to get into a workshop in 1998, a workshop that greatly improved and influenced all my photography since. While John Shaw rightfully emphasizes fanatical devotion to technical mastery, Rowell takes that to the next level, and his vision reflects that of an adventurer who has a camera and knows how to use it to capture his experience, rather than that of a photographer separated from his subjects. The style is distinctive, reflecting Rowell's willingness to ditch heavy gear in favor of light and fast travel.

Galen Rowell's Inner Game of Outdoor Photography is a collection of Rowell's columns originally written for the magazine Outdoor Photography. Many of these columns can be found and read online at the Mountain Light archive. However, the online archive has no photos and no references to the photos, while this book has many color plates and each article has a reference to the accompanying photograph.

Reading these articles in the order Rowell picked, I am reminded again over and over again why I can't usually recommend Rowell's books to beginners. I remember reading some of these columns years ago as a beginner, and they made no sense. For instance, in one column, Rowell claims that color is entirely a result of human perception, and does not exist in nature. That's why colors do funny things in exciting light, and why film (or today's digital sensors) does not render scenes the way you see them. In particular, some seemingly drab situations render beautifully on film, and you might have a hard time understanding why unless you've experienced the same situation before and know that even when the scene is seemingly drab, the colors that are there will look spectacular. A beginner reading those columns will be thoroughly confused. I know I was until I attended Rowell's workshop and saw for myself how a gray sky at sunset rendered by Fuji Velvia looked stunning when held in control by an ND grad filter:

From Miscalleaneous

If I had not had that experience, I would not have been able to produce the image of a Chief Mountain Sunset years later:

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

In many ways, this book is really for advanced photographers, for whom the technical mastery have been achieved, as well as the willingness to get up or stay out at ungodly hours for the sake of the craft. The opening articles on how to see like film, why images look very different from the scene at the time of capture, and how the cognitive system automatically eliminates distractions form the foundation of an advanced class for photography. Rowell provides references for the photographer to follow up if he or she was to be so inclined, and his own articles are eminently practical, but only if you've experienced the same epiphanies he's had. Reading these articles now, I find myself nodding in agreement and the subtle understanding that I missed 12 years ago.

The second part of the book covers techniques that were new at the time of writing, but are probably obsolete in the world of digital photography. The sections on pushing film, for instance, just tells me how advanced digital photography has become. In the days of film, ISO 200 film was considered fast, and processing color slides at high ISOs were costly and required a meticulous lab. The modern digital photographer would just twist a dial. Fill-flash, however, is still useful, and Rowell's enamored of them for eliminating shadows. I don't do enough fill-flash work myself.

The last half of the book covers the gamut of topics interesting to outdoor photography. There's a series of articles about explorations in the Arctic and Antarctic. There are articles about the ethics of outdoor photography, and how much digital manipulation is acceptable, and there are articles about censorship. Rowell had thought hard about many of these issues, and I feel like it is a shame that he did not live to see what today's modern digital SLRs can do. I think he would have loved them as much as I do, despite the steep learning curve of the digital transition.

My one major criticism of the book is about the photo reproduction. Most of the photographs were reproduced from duplicate slides rather than the original, so some of the photos look surprisingly grainy despite the relatively small enlargement. The glaring mis-step, I feel, is the choice to reduce production costs by having a few color plates spread out throughout the book, rather than making the book full color and embedding the color photos along with the article for easy reference. This makes it very painful to refer to the photos that "accompany" an article to see what Rowell was talking about, and I feel it detracts in a big way from the pedagogical purpose of the book.

Nevertheless, if you're a serious outdoor photographer (studio/wedding photographers need not apply: this is a book for people like me, not people who shoot portraits), this book does belong in your library. If you read this book and don't understand the first section, that's an indication that your photography education is incomplete. The only way to really rectify that is to find a Mountain Light Workshop that suits your schedule and show up for it. As you can imagine then, I highly recommend this book.

Michael Wolf story

It was Mike Wolf's birthday yesterday. Mike, Steven Grimm, Marc Kwiatkowski, and Larry Hastings and I all worked at Mpath Interactivewhen it was a startup. Mike was one of the calmest persons you would ever meet. No matter how tense or intense the situation was, he would calmly speak as though it was sunny and there was not a care in the world. Even if the situation was that we were 50 feet off the rocks and had just committed anchoring 101 error: wrapping the anchor line around the boat's rudder. He once told someone that he only got angry if the situation demanded that he appear to be angry.

People sometimes ask me if I ever dreamed about work, and I would tell them this story. One night, I dreamed that I was in the back-seat of Mike's car (a Nissan Maxima). Mike was driving, and his roommate at the time, Steven Grimm, was in the shotgun seat. We were driving down the street when sudden Mike took a sudden left turn and drove the car up some stairs! I exclaimed, "Mike! I had no idea you could drive a car up stairs!" Completely unperturbed, Mike turned to me and said, "Piaw, it's amazing what you learn when you actually read the manual." When I got to the office and told Mike this story, he said, "Hm... you know, I've never actually read the manual for my car. Maybe I should."

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Review: Zendegi

Zendegiis Greg Egan's latest novel about Iran, its society, the possibility of uploading humans into cyberspace, and virtual reality. I panned his last novel, but with this novel I think Egan has redeemed himself and entered a new phase of his development as a novelist.

The novel revolves around just one character, Martin Seymour, a reporter who is assigned to Iran to cover the elections. A revolution happens during his assignment, he covers it, falls for an Iranian woman, and settles in the country. Reading this segment of the book is a lot like reading real-time reportage. One feels as though he was there with Seymour, a laudable achievement. We see him develop friendships with the locals, and since Egan knows he can't write romance, he carefully scurries off the stage at that part of the story and cleverly advances the timeline. I did not realize that he had worked around his weakness until well after I finished the book.

The second half of the book deals with more traditional science fiction elements. We see the rise of virtual reality parlors as entertainment centers, and then get to observe the rise of human simulation as part of the games. We get to see first hand the motivations behind human upload technology (all funded by someone who sounds a lot like the wealthy multi-millionaires we've heard about), and what the potential pitfalls are.

What I like about this novel is how realistic it is. The technology doesn't magically work overnight just because the protagonist wants it to. Bad things happen to good people, without redemption and frequently without there being a reason for it. Egan is unflinching in his portrayal of what society will make of this, and what the realistic options are for someone who is put in Martin Seymour's predicament. Unlike previous novels, I actually cared about what happened to the protagonist, and I was left in a mild state of shock at the end of the book.

As a science fiction book, it does not break new ground, and covers only a few new concepts, far short of his most recent short story collection. Nevertheless as a novelist, Egan has succeeded in breaking past his previous issues with characterization. Recommended.

Facebook and Google

A few months ago, I wrote Tips for Nooglers. That post became far more widely read than I expected, and one of my friends at Facebook, Steven Grimm said that the next time I visited Facebook Michael Schroepfer would like to speak with me about some of the background behind that blog post. Since I'm terrible at off-the-cuff remarks, I prepared a presentation. I further modified the presentation tonight because the original presentation relied on me being around to elaborate on the details (think of it as "talking points"), while obviously, I'm not about to elaborate and answer questions on my blog interactively.

Since everything on the internet gets misunderstood, I will emphasize a few things (repeated from the slide because it should be):

• Google is an incredibly successful business and organization.
  
• Google was far more agile at 1500 people than most 200 person startups.
  
• At every point in its growth, Google was/is the best in its class as an employer for engineers.
  
• Many consider Google's #1 mistake to be having a tech ladder in the first place. I covered that topic in my post on Promotion Systems, so did not feel the need to belabor the point.
  

I will admit to thinking long and hard before putting up this presentation. Everything on the internet gets mis-represented, and I'm already dangerously close to being persona non grata on Google campus. On the other hand, with all the recent flap about high profile defections from Google to Facebook, I thought this would lend some much needed context. Before, during, and after my presentation, I spoke with various Facebook employees. I was very impressed by a few things:

• Facebook has deliberately throttled its growth in the engineering organization. While Facebook could afford to double every year, its deliberately maintained its growth at well below that rate because of acculturation problems otherwise. In 2004, a senior manager at Google begged the founders to reconsider doubling every year. Google probably would be very different if that manager had successfully won that political battle.
  
• Every manager I talked to spoke about the need to balance different contributions to Facebook's engineering efforts. In particular, many people echoed Yishan Wong's statements on Quora:
  

  There is a part of Facebook culture that is actually against the "we're only here to work on innovative, ground-breaking, glory-seeking projects" that grew out of a reaction against the perceived Google culture[1] of the time (approx. 2006 - 2008), as well as a recognition that long-term, sustainable success is built far more on hard, thankless grinding than brilliant innovation.
  
  As a result, Facebook actively respects people who do the "thankless, dirty work," like rewriting spaghetti code, making build systems, crushing annoying bugs, etc (obviously, it ends up being much less thankless in that case). High-profile projects at Facebook get respect from the press and the outside world, but "doing the dirty work" gets you respect from your peers and management. At least while I was there, we had a tendency to prefer engineers for advancement who had spent considerable time "grinding it out" and supporting their peers.
  
  Lastly, the occasional notable innovation or well-executed project is made possible because one's peers have put in the time to ensure that all the mundane groundwork is done well (i.e so that critical subsystems do not fail on you when you are trying to launch something new and risky). This is appreciated on a peer-to-peer basis and, while I was there, most everyone took their turn doing "the dirty work."

• Facebook's engineering organization is much smaller than Google's. Even better, people are mostly compensated with stock. This makes it easier to ignore "what's best for me" and do "what's best for the organization."
  
• Sanjeev Singh (who has a deep knowledge of both organizations) said to me, "Facebook has done a far better job of promoting from within than Google did at the same size."
  
• Facebook is much more engineering constrained than Google was. Part of this is deliberate, but the other part of it is that Facebook had a much tougher time recruiting than Google did.
  

Now, how much of this is true, and how much of this is true only because I'm given a rosy picture, I don't know. For instance, you could work around the "growth throttling" by hiring lots of contractors (Google certainly did that). In case you're wondering, I own a heck of a lot more Google stock than I do Facebook stock, so in at least one way, I wished that everything I'm saying here was not true. On the other hand, it's a good thing that big companies screw up. Otherwise, there would not be room for startups to succeed. And no, I was not paid for the presentation, unless you consider free food payment. The life of a struggling author continues.

A Perfect Pigeon Point Edition

From Screen Captures

From Screen Captures

Pigeon Point Halloween 2010

In the past few years, I've been using Pigeon Point hostel as a qualifier for my annual tours. This has gotten to the point where I had forgotten why I started doing these trips: to enjoy a wonderful location that's not very well known even amongst locals and just to get away from it all. I noted that this year, Halloween fell on a weekend, and guess that it was very likely that the place would be less busy than usual, making it possible to do just a fun (i.e., not a qualifier) trip. I sent e-mail to the usual suspects, but nobody bit except Phil. The forecast was for 30% chance of rain on Saturday, but it was supposed to clear up in the afternoon, so we decided to risk it and go anyway.

Phil met me at my place at 9:30am, and we headed towards Page Mill road. As we approached Altamont road, however, I felt a few sprinkles and saw that while the top of Page Mill road was shrouded with fog, there was blue sky to the north. Never being one to pick a fight with mother nature I suggested to Phil that we changed direction and head for Old La Honda road instead and he assented. Phil hadn't been riding for a while, so he went quite slowly.

From Pigeon Point Halloween 2010

The bottom of Old La Honda road was clear, but as I approached the top it became quite foggy, and I started seeing the trees alongside the rode through the fog in a misty beautiful light. I had seen this before on Mt. Tam but never on Old La Honda road and became quite enchanted. At the top, while waiting for Phil I stuck up a conversation with a woman cyclist named Eva. Eva wanted to tour the Pacific Coast with some friends next year, and knowing that Phil wanted the same, I introduced the two of them and gave Eva one of my cards.

We quickly descended West Old La Honda road and then 84. Unlike my previous visit to the area, no pickup trucks buzzed us this time. At Applejack's we made a left and turned into one of the minor roads I loved. Phil was quite hungry and I advised him that we would stop for a water and snack break at Sam MacDonald park. Phil wondered why he was feeling so hungry and after a little bit we realized that his recent vegetarian diet must have been the cause.

Once past Sam MacDonald park, the rest of Haskins hill was pretty. Surprisingly enough, the fog had lifted and I did not see any chance for it to return. We were even getting occasional bits of sunshine through the trees. The descent from the top of Haskins hill is gorgeous: I am constantly reminded why Pescadero road is easily one of my favorite roads anywhere. There are enough rollers to keep you on your toes and keep you from getting cold, but the descent is fast and manageable. The scenery is ever changing, and until you get near Pescadero proper, there's enough shelter from the wind that it's never bothersome.

We rolled into Pescadero downtown at 1:30pm and grabbed fresh artichoke/garlic bread piping hot out of the oven. After lunch, we bought food supplies and rolled backwards towards Cloverdale road, which would drop us onto Gazos Creek road. At Gazos Creek road, I started to feel sprinkles and we turned on the speed towards Pigeon Point, with a tail-wind pushing us along on highway 1. The sky was grey and I did not have much hope for a good sunset.

We arrived at the hostel at 3:30pm, the earliest I've ever made it there in recent years. What a difference not riding a tandem and having just a party of 2 makes! The hostel manager was named Sparrow, and unlike the man she replaced, Sparrow was bright and alert and chatty. We had a lot of fun chit-chatting with her while we checked in. I had cleverly looked up the sunset time before I left Sunnyvale and grabbed the sunset spot on the timetable for the hot tub. I had never seen the timetable so empty before, either! In fact, Sparrow gave us a room with 6 bunk beds but we effectively had the room all to ourselves.

We moved our stuff in, took showers, and started eating, as cyclists are wont to do. At 5:45, I visited Sparrow and got the key to the hot tub and Phil and I sat in it. The colors started out drab but by the time sunset came around at 6:12 it had become absolutely brilliant:

From Pigeon Point Halloween 2010

From Pigeon Point Halloween 2010

After our hot tub/photography session, we went back to our building and made dinner. Over dinner, we found out why the place was even more empty than past Halloween. Apparently there was a baseball game going on involving the Giants! Thank you SF Giants!

The next morning it was calm and beautiful when I woke up at 7:20am. I quickly made breakfast, then walked around a bit while Phil got himself revved up for the ride home. We rolled out again around 9:00am. Phil wanted to see the dead whale carcass at Bean Hollow State Beach. We quickly rode to the Bean Hollow road turnoff and there I spied the sign for the state beach. The whale carcass stunk, but it was huge and clearly it would take the birds at least another month to eat all of it.

From Pigeon Point Halloween 2010

I continued feeling frisky, so when we got onto Stage road I took off and rode both hills in good time. At San Gregorio Phil caught up to me and we kept going. Someone riding a Landshark rode by and I hopped onto his wheel, and we chatted a bit about Landshark. When we got to Tunitas Creek, I waited some time for Phil again. When he showed up, he said he had been taking photos of the cliffs, which are very pretty but also situated on a fast descent which I was not about to give up for the sake of a mid-day photo!

We proceeded up Tunitas Creek road, after a quick stop at the bike hut for some water. I don't think I have seen Tunitas Creek so pretty. Deep in the redwood forests, the road parallels a creek and winds around a canyon far away from the sun. In the quiet of the day when all you can hear is yourself breathing, the atmosphere takes on that of a church run by nature. It is all you can do to keep from whispering as you ride amongst the giant trees, with an occasional sunbeam penetrating through the trees, here lighting up a branch, there lighting up a trunk. I rode up at a steady pace reverently, as befits that of a Sunday worshiper in attendance.

Halfway up, an unloaded cyclist caught up to me, and that broke the spell. We took turns pulling each other, and I gladly matched him attack for attack. I was having fun on my brand new frame and even the load did not feel very much. "You're strong!" he gasped between breaths as I responded to yet another attack. It did not take too long before we got to the top and I waited for Phil again while eating from a bag of cashews we had bought. I was exactly halfway through the bag when he arrived and took over the eating. Phil finished the bag, then went on to finish a bag of Clif bloks, then some Clif bars. He ate and ate and ate. Clearly the sausages and beans I had done my best to pump into him yesterday was insufficient.

I was getting cold so I descended Kings Mountain Road so I could wait at the Tripp water stop. There, we decided to ride 84 to Sand Hill road and Foothill Express way. On Foothill, an unloaded cyclist pulled me along at 24mph, dropping Phil, but he was going almost all the way to Sunnyvale and I ended up getting home before 3:00pm. What a great ride.

Review: The Fuller Memorandum

The Fuller Memorandum is the latest in Charles Stross' Laundry Novels, the first two being The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. While having read the previous two books will catch you up with the characters in double quick time, it is not necessary to read either of those books to enjoy this one.

If The Atrocity Archives was about HP Lovecraft meets Charles Babbage, and Jennifer Morgue was James Bond meets Cthulhu, then this novel is Allan Quartermain meets Le Carre. Another novel with a similar theme is Tim Power's excellent Declare.

I fully expected to enjoy this novel as much as the others. Unfortunately, I think this novel was a case of over-reach by the author. Stross cannot do the cloak and dagger stuff well. So instead of methodical deduction, investigation, and a gradual unveiling of mysteries, we get treated to one dose and another of Raymond Chandler's prescription: When in doubt have a man walk in through the door with a gun. Even the villain's motivation is not fleshed out, and we never do get a good idea of what the plot really was.

Nevertheless, long time fans of the series will be treated to answers to a few questions that they might never have thought to ask. For instance, who is Angleton? And what is the nature of Mo's violin? Unfortunately, it seems as though Stross is also bored with the characters, so we never do get a sense of character development. In at least one case, even the foreshadowing fails.

Worse, the physical binding of the hardcover version of this book is terrible. After cracking the spine a few times so it would lay flat, the pages started falling apart! All in all, I would have bought this novel at $9.99 from the Kindle store, but the publisher set the price at $12, causing me to wait for the library to deliver it to me. After reading it, I'm glad I waited. It wouldn't even have been worth $9.99. Not recommended except to die hard fans of the series.

Review: The God Engines

The God Engines is John Scalzi's novella set in a fantasy world where gods are captured and used to drive starships.

Sounds whacky? Yes it is, but the premise is all backed up by an interesting theological background, and the ideas are fun, if not completely fleshed out. As with most short stories, there's one little twist at the end, but the novella stands on its own. As becomes obvious, there's no easy way for there to be a sequel to this book.

The story evolves around a starship Captain. At first we think this is going to be another Star-Trek type deal, as the character-focused plots revolves around his crew, his management of it, and the various people who aren't easy to deal with. As the scope of the plot expands, we gradually learn more and more about the milieu, and the stakes get higher and higher until we get to the explosive climax.

While not really his best work, the book is not a waste of time. I would not pay full price for it, however. Either buy the Kindle edition at $5, or get the DRM-free version over at Baen Books. I'm just happy I got it out of the library.

Review: Astro City: The Dark Age

The Astro City series is a series about the reconstruction of superheroes. In other words, we get to see them as they would be created today, but with all the styles of yesteryear. What I like about the series is that it usually tells the story from the man in the street, with the superhero stuff being used as background. In fact, you are expected to pick up the superhero plot points as matter of deduction.

The Dark Age: Book 1 is told from the story of two (non-superhero) brothers who had a traumatic event in their childhood turn them towards different paths. The plot is unfortunately predictable: Busiek telegraphs what's going to happen between them early on, and so you're not surprised when the twists happen. The superhero plot points however are highly obscured, picking up from threads earlier in the series as obscure as that of a tombstone on a character's grave but not mentioned otherwise.

Busiek clearly enjoyed plotting the storyline in the 1960s and 1970s. New characters clearly inspired by old silver-age models show up. We don't see a lot of action, however, so I feel this book is sub-par compared to the others. I hope the next book picks up the pace a bit. Perhaps Busiek is getting stale. In particular, the man in the street angle is starting to wear a bit thin. Not recommended unless you're a fan.

Review: More Money Than God

If I had to summarize More Money Than God in two words it would be "survivorship bias." Mallaby spends the first two thirds of the book describing the rise of hedge funds and their successes. This is interesting historically. While I had heard George Soros called "the man who broke the bank of England", I had no idea how it happened and what the story behind it was. Well, here it is in all its glory.

The last half of the book covers the recent financial crisis and the hedge fund responses to it. Mallaby might have spent a bit too much time wining and dining with hedge fund managers, since here he rises to their defense against regulation. His defense:

• Most hedge fund managers have their own skin in the game, investing much of their assets into the funds
  
• Many hedge funds have high water marks, where the partners don't get paid if the fund underperforms the benchmarks
  
• Most hedge funds are not too big to fail, and the hedge fund industry has managed to salvage most failures at investor's expense, not based on taxpayer bailouts
  

If you took most of the book at face value, you'd be rushing out to invest in hedge funds. The numbers returned are phenomenal. The problem is selection: how do you know a priory which funds are going to do really well? Mallaby is of no help here since he only covers the successful ones and don't provide data on the ones that fail. I remember David Swenson talking about Hedge Funds in his book Unconventional Success, and he basically thinks that they are not a good choice for individual investor because the individual investor has no negotiating leverage over the fund, while the Yale Endowment Portfolio, for instance, could (and did) negotiate favorable terms on an equal basis with them. All in all, if you're curious about Hedge funds, how they work, why they make their managers so much money, and how their trading strategies work, the book comes highly recommended. For myself I read the book and shake my head at how much human ingenuity goes into shuffling bits around on disk to no real productive effort. The folks who invented statistical machine translation (the basis for Google translate), for instance, abandoned their work in research to join a hedge fund. Maybe they would have revolutionalized another field if only research paid better than being a hedge fund lacky. Just ignore the last half of the book where Mallaby defends Hedge funds and repeats every line ever spoken by a hedge fund manager without critically thinking about it.

Old accounts haunt you...

Last night I had a police officer from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's office come by my house at 11:00pm. It led to an extremely long night. Some 12 years ago, I abandoned an e-mail address which made it impossible for me to use my old ebay account, since I had forgotten the user name and password. The officer showed up with printouts of auctions of some very expensive antiques being sold under my name on ebay, on that old account. It had been hacked! Surprisingly enough, the thief had not thought to change the password on the account, though he had changed the e-mail address to point to him.

I logged into the account by guessing my own password from 12 years ago and together with the officer we worked through what had been happening. The perpetrator would auction off imaginary goods by stealing pictures from other ebay auctions, and then tell the user that his paypal account was hacked, so he could only take payment by wire transfer. (Yes, we wrote down all the details behind the information he provided: the perpetrator did not go in and delete all the correspondence between him and the victims, so we had a full e-mail trail on the ebay account)

I then spent 3 hours with ebay's customer service deleting existing auctions and closing out the account. I hope this was enough to catch the bad guys. At the very least, those bank accounts that got wire transferred into will be frozen. Just goes to show, even if you've abandoned an old account, it can still come back and haunt you years later. I've gone and changed all my passwords now as a result of this, and while that's a pain, it's better than having a knock on your door around midnight by the police.

Strong Frame #2

Strong Frame Returns!

Carl has sent me a replacement frame, and I built it up today! The changes from the previous frames were:

• 72 degree seat tube angle (instead of 72.5)
  
• no more spoke holders (the last ones didn't work out)
  
• no 3rd water bottle cage (one of the cracks might have initiated from the holes drilled for it)
  
• 54mm brake reach. The last 57mm brake reach required us to file down brake slots. I'd like not to do it again.
  
• The cable stops got placed on the downtube instead of the head tube. That's because I asked for slotted cable stops so I can run both STI and bar-end shifters with a bar swap.
  
• Straight gauge Ti tubing. Carl no longer offers a lifetime warranty on double-butted tubing.
  

After riding the Fuji for two weeks, the new Carl Strong frame feels right in a way the Fuji didn't. It's amazing how I've gotten used to it! In any case, I hope this new frame lasts a lot more than 17,000 miles!

Review: The Social Network

Between Scott Adams' review of the movie and Steve Grimm telling me that teenagers were considering becoming computer scientists because of the movie, I had to see it in the theaters. Unlike other movies based on books, I did not read The Accidental Billionaires since the book had so many negative reviews.

Well, the movie should also be considered fiction, and most likely the real story wouldn't be as exciting to tell, but what the heck. I enjoyed the depiction of someone who could (and did) flout social convention and hacked his way into greatness. I certainly didn't think the movie was wholly negative about Facebook (if anything, I think Facebook will probably get more signups because of the movie), and the plot was at least interesting, if not quite "edge of your seat" gripping.

There is one section of the movie that does ring true though, which is to come to Silicon Valley if you're a geek and building a startup. Earlier this year someone asked me for advice, since he was contemplating a move to China. I told him in no uncertain terms that it would be a mistake for his career. Sure enough, by the time the summer approached, he had quadrupled his income, gotten a job he was much happier with, and things had dramatically improved. If you're a computer scientist/software engineer, being anywhere else is probably a mistake. The movie does a good job of depicting this as one of the Facebook co-founders chose to go to New York instead of moving out to Silicon Valley with everyone else.

Regardless, I thought the movie did do a good job of at least showing perl code. And seriously, I don't think it's any worse a portrayal of geeks/engineers than The Big Bang Theory. I would feel sorry for anyone who does become a computer scientist because of the parties as depicted in the movie though! I wouldn't call the movie a total waste of time, but I certainly wouldn't be as glowing about it as Scott Adams was. I'm glad I did not pay full price and saw it on a rainy day.

Berkeley Presentation

I was over at Cal on Friday to give a talk at the CSUA general meeting. Before that, I spent some time visiting with friends. Berkeley is always a special place, and I wish I had spent more time there, but as always I am surprised by how busy I am now compared to what my original vision of retirement would be.

We raffled off 3 copies of my startup book, and I gave a presentation that was specialized for students who would be graduating over the next year or so. The amount of activity around startups at Berkeley is quite amazing, since I don't remember that being a big part of undergraduate life 18 years ago.

I've provided most of the presentation below. Sharp-eyed CSUAers will notice some modifications and a couple of slides missing. That's because I provide real names and numbers in the presentation, and I would rather not have that out on the open internet. Think of it as an extra bonus for those of you who did show up on a Friday night to hear a boring old fogey talk.

Review: Psych Yourself Rich

(Disclaimer: I got my Kindle copy of the book for free)
In September, someone asked me for basic financial advice: should she contribute to an after-tax Roth IRA, or should she give the money to her foundation which would be matched by her generous employer? I gave what I thought was a cogent answer at that time, but afterwards realized that I had made a fundamental error. I neglected to ask if the person had a 6 month cushion of savings and living expenses, and if not should have recommend that course of action. Fortunately, I was dealing with an intelligent and responsible person so I think that the assumption was valid.

Nevertheless, that's the kind of thing that someone like me tends to overlook. I regularly work with and talk to people who have no debt (other than a mortgage), have financial dilemmas such as the one described above, and who have no problem functioning day to day, that I forget that there's a whole discipline of financial planning that deals with getting motivated to even get to that basic level of financial discipline! Psych Yourself Rich: Get the Mindset and Discipline You Need to Build Your Financial Life belongs to this class of books. You will most likely find it uninteresting if you have no problems dealing with cash flow and don't have any credit card debt. If that's your case, the books on asset allocation, etc., will be far more interesting to you.

A great section of the book is aimed at persuading the reader to behave like an adult with regards to finances. The author was the host of Bank of Mom and Dad, a reality TV show about the debt ridden, which explains why her case studies are so pathetic. Most of my friends who ask me for financial advice would never be interesting case studies on her show. Some of these people would get bills in the mill and promptly file it away rather than actually pay it.

I do have her issues with some of her advice. For instance, studies show that looking at your portfolio more often actually reduces your portfolio performance (because you're usually tempted to do something foolish with your money). Examining it more than once a year is proabably overkill for the kind of people who needs Torabi's advice. Then there's the section advocating that you start working a second job part time. I think it's far more important to be really good at your day job than to work a second job part time, unless your day job is a completely uninteresting profession to you, in which case your biggest goal should be to get a day job that's interesting to you and that rewards being good at it. One of her alternative income plans for instance is to become a travel blogger. I have a relatively high page rank web site, and I blog about my travels, but I can assure you that the kind of money that generates is in the pennies per day. The big money posts are the ones about technology, and my guess is someone who can be a credible blogger about technology is definitely someone who really would get a better pay off from being better at his day job than at blogging. She also encourages some risky get-rich-quick schemes like Private Equity or listening to Jim Cramer (whom she used to work for).

All in all, I think the book could be a much needed read for some people. Unfortunately, my guess is the kind of people who need the advice in this book won't read it (just as the people who need the most help in classes are the least likely to actually show up for them). If you're anyone else, this book is not useful, and some of the advice is actually harmful. I therefore cannot recommend this book.

Canadian Rockies: Epilogue and Conclusions

The flight home was uneventful, though as some of you know, the aftermath of the return was anything but.

I feel that I'm bragging when I declare the trip to be a success. I had several goals for the trip:

1. To see how much skill loss I had suffered from 8 years of neglecting my photography hobby.
   
2. To do a solo trip, something I had not done for 10 years, since the second half of the New England bike trip.
   
3. To get used to shooting in digital format, and learn what differences in my work style and work flow I had to make in order to best take advantage of the digital medium.
   

The answer to #1 was that I did not suffer any apparent skill loss. This really surprised me. My brother, who's normally very critical of my work said, "This is the best shoot you've done since you acquired the 5D2." While I've had other serious shoots (for instance in Australia), none of them came close to producing this much good work. I did get rusty in a few areas: I was slow at first with the tripod and I'm still ham-fisted when it comes to my filter rings. One of my filters has a small chip in an unimportant area as a result. But that improved dramatically during the trip. At one point one of the hikers I met said, "Did you notice how fast he set that up and tore that down?" The other part of it is that during the past 8 years, I've made myself a better outdoors person. I'm more comfortable now hiking in the dark. I'm more able to anticipate where the light will be, and have better hunches about the weather. That's happened so slowly that I never even noticed or paid attention to it, but it shows up in the photos I make.

Traveling solo turned out to be great for me. There was no one to second guess me or whine about yet another 6:00am start. OK, I whined to myself a little bit. That contributed to better photos as well, since not being screamed at for an early start makes me more willing to start early. I met so many people, and made so many new friends. Janice and I were discussing this and we agreed that the trick is to be open to new experiences and new people. If she had not waited for me and smiled, we wouldn't have had company for the day, and it would have been our loss. Women in particular have to be more careful when solo, but when I asked Eungshin why she accepted my invite to chat, she said, "You were obviously shooting with expensive equipment and you knew how to use it. I decided then that you couldn't be dangerous!" So being a photographer does help in your social life (it's usually a hindrance as girlfriends and wives get impatient with you), just not in any way I would have imagined. In any case, I rediscovered that meeting and talking to strangers was something I wasn't shy about, and that was a big confidence builder. Every time I proposed a trip, someone would ask me, "Would you really have gone alone if no one wanted to go with you?" And now I can truly say the answer is "Yes. I've done so recently, and thoroughly enjoyed it!" In fact, I suspect that for nature photography I really have no choice but to do solo trips or trips with other photographers. There is no easy way to get quality time otherwise.

An intriguing idea that occurred to me would be to travel with another photographer, go for morning and evening shoots, and swap memory cards for post-processing/culling and selection. That's a great way to eliminate the photo-shooter's bias, which is to include shots that had a lot of work put into them even if they aren't as good. Plus, I always like seeing what other photographers do to pictures, and seeing how someone else crops or manipulates your image has got to be educational no matter what. For this, of course, you couldn't leave your laptop at home like I did!

I've written about the digital transition before in two articles: about "cheap film" and no need for 81b filters, and how some things stay the same. There are some dramatic improvements. For instance, there was a dust speck in one of my lenses, and Photoshop cleaned that right up. Thank you context-aware fill! With slide film I would have been stuck with one ruined slide after another. The flip side of that is that with slide film I was putting a new "sensor" behind every exposure. Pengtoh looked at one of my photos and told me that my sensor needs cleaning (despite the self-cleaning nature of the sensor)! Obviously, I need to send my camera in for a cleaning before the next major trip. Nature photography is naturally hard on equipment. Wind and rain and switching lenses in less than totally clean conditions is something that every nature photographer has to do, and very few portrait/wedding photographers have to face on a regular basis.

One unexpected delight: with my ultra-fast PC post-processing, selection, and culling is extra-ordinarily fast. Lightroom 3 with 2 24-inch monitors really takes the cake. It felt like having an infinitely large light-table, and while I think the program could use a speedup, it's quite clear that the latest version is significantly faster. In the film days, the turnaround time for slides was at least 1 week! Then the culling would have taken another, just because the physical process of loading slides into a slide page and then laying it down on a slide table was tougher. Cropping, color correction, dust removal, and even post-editing with ND grad. filters is fast and produces amazing results. Not to mention to shoot as much film as I did, I would have had to carry 100 rolls, which was $1,000 in film. That's an extra-ordinary amount of money for a 2 week shoot, and I would have curtailed my shooting rather than carry 100 rolls. My old standard was 30 rolls for a 2 week trip. Making as many exposures as a National Geographic photographer makes in the field cannot help but improve your photography.

It was clear to me that the choice to stay with full frame cameras was the right thing for me. I liked using my wide angles like wide angles, and I think my desire for longer than 200mm lens can be satisfied with tele-converters in the future. I wish I had brought my laptop with me, because then I would have spotted dust on the lens, etc. The display on the 5D2 is good, but not so good that I can spot little dust specs. All in all, this trip has re-kindled my love of photography, and re-injected confidence that yes, I am capable of using the $2500 piece of gear I bought to the maximum extent. The Canon 5D Mk 2 is certainly the most expensive piece of equipment I've bought, but it easily justifies every penny of the price. And obviously if I shoot enough with it the savings in film alone would make it eventually the cheapest camera I've ever bought.

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2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors Trip

2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

When my family and I started exploring the Canadian Rockies in 1994, 1995, and 1996, I wasn't much of a photographer, so we spent a lot of our time hiking, backpacking, and enjoying the back-country. I became a somewhat decent photographer by the 2000, but for one reason or another, never did visit the Canadian Rockies since.

Since my retirement from Google in April, I've decided that I should take a trip dedicated to photography. A photography trip is very different from any other kind of trip: you effectively spend most of your time looking for sunrises and sunsets, and non-photographers get annoyed by the amount of time spent shooting. None of my other photographer friends could join me, however, so I had to do the trip alone. That made this my first solo trip in 10 years or so as well! Note that while Glacier National Park is in the U.S., from a geological point of view it's part of the Canadian Rockies.

In the past, I've had issues with putting together photo albums: there's a fundamental conflict between including only the good shots and good trip reporting. This time, I'm trying a different tack: the good shots are in the album above, and I'll create a different photo album for photojournalism entries. During the trip, I shot about 3399 exposures, and selected 71 photos to be included in the above "best of" album. That's an abysmal hit rate: for the Grand Tetons trip, I exposed about 900 frames and got about 80 usable slides out of it. Nevertheless, many of those 80 slides were photojournalism shots, and looking at the album I have up, I don't think the number of strong photos have gone down.

Over the next few days, a full trip report will follow, and then I really do have to get back to my next book.

Trip Report

• Day 1: Kalispell to Apgar Creek
  
• Day 2: Apgar Creek to St. Mary's
  
• Day 3: St. Mary's to Many Glacier
  
• Day 4: Many Glacier to Waterton Lakes National Park
  
• Day 5: Waterton Lakes National Park
  
• Day 6: Waterton Lakes National Park to Banff
  
• Day 7: Banff to Lake Louise
  
• Day 8: Lake Louise to Egypt Lake hut
  
• Day 9: Egypt Lake Hut
  
• Day 10: Egypt Lake Hut to Jasper
  
• Day 11: Jasper to Wilcox Pass Trailhead Campground
  
• Day 12: Wilcox Pass Trailhead Campground to Banff
  
• Day 13: Banff to Many Glacier
  
• Day 14: Many Glacier to Kalispell
  
• Epilogue and Conclusions
  

Review: Chasing Stars

I've always maintained that performance is extremely contextual: treating performance as an individual issue, not as a team effort is misleading, because we don't know how important the kind of support other people on the team goes into making a star valuable. Chasing Stars is the first book that examines performance in context, and therefore I consider it a very important book, and very much worth your time if you work in a highly intellectual profession.

The context in question is that of star stock analysts. Groysberg picks this field because stock analyst performance (as rated by customers) is widely publicized in an industry standard fashion. As a highly intellectual profession, such ranked analysts are easily compared with each other, and analysts consider themselves as having highly portable skills. It is also tempting for analyst departments in various corporations to raid each other for talented employees, since having a top analyst would presumably be valuable in attracting customers.

Groysberg analyzes a 15 year period of such poaching, and approaches the data in all the directions you would think of. He looks at ranking before and after a move. He looks at ranking if an entire team moves (known as a "liftout") versus an individual moving. He segments analysts by gender. He even takes into account investor sentiment (i.e., what happens to the acquiring company's stock price after the star analyst acquisition was announced). His thoroughness lends a lot of credibility to the conclusions he draws.

The first distinction he makes is the difference between corporations that spend a lot of time training and acculturating new hires and coaching existing employees and corporations that focus on generic job training. It turns out, for instance, that the corporations that do invest in training and the acculturation process do get something for their efforts: not only are they better at creating new star analysts, they also pay a reduced cost of retention: they pay about 5% less than market for the talent that they do hang on to. Furthermore, it is harder to hire star analysts from such departments, and even when they do move, they frequently discover that their skills are not as portable as they thought: performance (as measured by analyst rankings) deteriorates for a year or two after such a move. This is quite a result.

Secondly, Groysberg also distinguishes between corporations with a lot of resources to devote to the analysts in the form of IT support, staffing help, and other networking help and corporations that don't have such resources. It turns out that analyst performance improves (as expected) when moving to corporations with a richer set of resources, but not by as much as you would expect, because the overhead of building relationships to gain access to such resources takes time.

Entire team moves seem to be extremely favorable: performance hardly ever drops, and all the employees in the team already can work together. Groysberg does note that there's also a big difference between a team brought in to exploit an existing market that the corporation always works in, and to explore a new market opportunity. The latter induces much worse performance than the former, probably because of the interaction with the sales team to educate them as well as the learning curve involved in exploring a new market.

Finally, Groysberg covers women. As in engineering, women analysts were rare on Wall Street, and had a hard time breaking into the cozy old-boy's network. Because of this effect, women analysts learned to build relationships and access resources outside of the corporation they worked in, which allows them to have the most portable skill sets --- women who switched companies did the best amongst the switchers. It also turned out that women were more likely to consider whether the culture of the new company they were joining was conducive to high performance, rather than just jumping ship for higher pay.

The big question mark here is whether any of Groysberg's findings apply to software. I certainly think that the current big company trend of buying small startups in one fell swoop and integrating the engineering team is reflective of the understanding that keeping a winning team together is important. (Though just how important is still frequently under-recognized: some companies are bought only to have their team members split apart) The "nurture" versus "nature" debate as far as engineering culture is concerned appears to also have been lost amongst many firms: many companies devote relatively little time to training and acculturation, and pay the price with reduced performance of its engineers.

All in all, this is an excellent book, and very much worth your time and money. Highly recommended, and definitely one of the few books that will be short-listed for the book of the year.

Day 14: Many Glacier to Kalispell

I woke up in the morning to the sound of rain drops on the roof of my van and groaned. This did not bode well at all. And in fact, as I drove out to the hotel things were drab drab drab. Hoping for better light outside the park, I drove out and found everything gray as well. This was not a good day for photography.

I visited the St. Mary's Park HQ and got talking to Sarah, one of the park rangers who was very experienced with the back-country. She recommended that I come back in the summer for a backpacking trip, including one which would lead all the way across to Waterton Lakes from Glacier National Park's customs border, take the ferry across into Canada, and then a shuttle back to the U.S. border where we could walk back to pick up the car. That sounded fantastic. She pointed me at several other backpacks as well, and said that there was always something held in reserve for walk-ins, so advanced booking was not necessary if I didn't want to spend the $50 reservation fee.

The rangers were so nice to me (on a rainy day they did not get much visitor) they bucked the schedule and put on a movie just for me while I was there. It was a good visit for a rainy day. The drive back to Kalispell was un-eventful. I had gotten a response to my couch-surfing request (my very first couch surf), and discovered that not only were Alan and Sarah friendly and putting me up, their roommate Joan was also making dinner that night! I was pretty sick of my own cooking and so was happy to help gather produce from their garden for the meal.

I repacked my car so that the next day I could simply put all my bags in it and drive to the airport. Dinner with Sarah, Alan, and Joan was fun and the conversation was entertaining. We then took a walk after dinner and visited one of their neighbors: Gina and Greg Nelson. They were affiliated with Stanford and spent part of the evening quizzing me about Silicon Valley matters. I guess if I wanted a transition back to Silicon Valley this was definitely a smooth one!

We had to find our way back in the dark and I set my alarm clock for 4:15am so I could make my 6:00am flight. My photography vacation, the first one since my 2002 Grand Tetons and Yellowstone trip was over.

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Day 13: Banff to Many Glacier

I woke up in the morning and made breakfast in the kitchen. I heard two women talking about driving to Glacier National Park en route to Minnesota. I asked if they knew that Logan Pass was closed. "No!" "Well, yes it is. On the East side you can drive all the way to Logan Pass but you won't be allowed to go over. On the West side you get to Avalanche Creek and then it's game over." "Well, that settles it. We're going to go to the East side then." They were on a road trip from their summer jobs in Alaska, and highly recommended that I visit Alaska one of these days, preferably during the summer. I knew what I wanted to do next summer, but maybe the summer after that I'll visit Alaska.

It was drizzling as I pulled out of the parking lot for my morning shoot. I wanted to see if Two Jacks would be better and that maybe I would see a rainbow, but no luck at all this morning. With a sigh, I pulled out and started driving towards Kananaski Provincial Park. In the cloudy morning like Kananaski Provincial Park was gorgeous. With clouds blowing in and out of the road I felt like in the dream world.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Journalism

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

The kicker, though was the amount of wildlife seen on the road! Because the road was so isolated and deserted, wildlife was frequently seen on the road. In fact, the first time I saw a pair of Moose on the road side I thought they must have been plastic reproductions, since they were so big and did not move even though I was approaching. When I saw they were real I stopped and put on the 200mm lens. The lesson I've been learning on the entire trip is that when I'm driving I just need to run the longest lens I've got in case I spot wildlife.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

He was quite an animal, and I was very impressed. Less than a mile later I ran across a group of goats who were happy to have me shoot them while they went all over the road. These animals were not at all afraid of humans and cars, and I could even drive up next to them if I wanted to. It was an amazing sight.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

Driving out of the park, the GPS unit navigated me onto a dirt road. I thought about turning back but I've never denied myself the chance to ride an obscure dirt road on a bicycle, so why stop just because I had a mini-van? One of my favorite song quotes was from the Cowboy Junkie's Anniversary Song:

Have you ever satisfied a gut feeling
to follow a dry dirt road that's beckoning you
to the heart of a shimmering summer's day?

So I indulged myself and followed the road. At first it drove through foreboding country: obviously the land here had been logged and/or burned, with big patches of empty hill side and long stretches of blackened tree stumps. But in a little bit I was rewarded by the sight of a cowboy, his partner, and two dogs at work herding some cattle into a field. I shot pictures from the car and tried not to disturb their work or the cattle.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

It was with no little relief, however, when I drove back onto pavement near Waterton Lakes National Park, and saw the fall colors still present in neat little clumbs near farmland.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Journalism

I had intended to detour into Waterton Lakes for a quick look on the way to the US border, but a signboard informed me that the Chief Mountain customs office was closed for the season. I reprogrammed the GPS to point me towards Cardston, which was the other customs location nearby. On the way there I saw a farm that looked pretty to my eyes and pulled in for a quickie shoot.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

I stopped by Cardston's tourist information center to ask about the weather and use the rest room. The lady there was familiar with the Cobblestone Manor and told me it had changed management recently. That made me feel a bit better about missing them twice. They were still closed today because it was a Monday. Maybe some day when I return for a summer backpacking trip I can still visit.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Journalism

The drive across the border happened in the rain, but that meant there was so little traffic that the U.S. customs official felt obliged to justify his pay by looking into my van to make sure I didn't have any undeclared merchandise. I drove into Babb and gassed up my car (cheap American gasoline!), and then drove into Many Glacier to find a picnic table to make an early dinner so I could shoot the sunset. I met another camper and we agreed to share a campground. That turned out to be only $5 each, which was a good deal since I did not want to use that gravel parking lot in St. Mary's after the bad memories.

Driving out of Many Glacier, I spotted in my rear view mirror a gorgeous sight --- Lake Sherburn had clouds that looked beautiful, and lent the place a ghostly light.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

I shot several shots and worked the angles a bit and then moved on, hoping against hope that I was not too late. It turned out that over the past two weeks the sunset time had shifted until I was pretty much too late. The cloud cover had also caused the sunset to be early, and as I drove back and forth the Chief Mountain International Highway I cursed myself for not being attentive enough to the weather conditions and missing what was a great shoot. I salvaged the situation in time by returning to an old familiar spot and getting two final glorious shots of the Montana Sky in action.

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

From 2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

I did not know it then, but it was to be my last good shoot of the trip.

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