My new real estate plan

I'm so late in the game on this.. so many mistakes in the past but alas just move forward.

I am looking at buying a house in SLC Utah.  Why Utah... ?  Is it because I rediscovered the lord ?  No its more because I like the idea of being 30 min away from 3 major ski resorts, and 1hr from even more top ones.

Its not cheap but not over priced relative to the rest of the world...

Lets see.  I am thinking to try AirBnB resort properties.  The problem is you need a few properties to get enough critical mass to have enough influence to cut the property manager rates, and experience economies of scale.

Anyone interested in investing?

Back in LA for 2 nights

I did a variant of my quick LA trip which is usually 3 or 4 nights, and this time just did 2 nights!   Flew in Fri eve (landed Fri 6pm) and flew out Sun eve (Sunday 24:50 / Monday AM) and land Tues 5am.  

The ugly:
- pretty tired and jetlagged in LA the whole 2 days
- feels bit short, I think 3 days is better
- cost per day is very high

The good:
- only have to use 1 vacation day!
- get some quick shopping in and see mom for 48hrs which is a good healthy dose (not overdose!)
- not enough time to adjust to jetlag, so in theory I'll be ok when I land in TK in 9hrs

One takeaway from my LA visits...
- people are way too fat here.. no offense to fat readers.  I was at cheesecake factory and this old lady next to me must have literally been 350lbs.. i couldn't distinguish her torso from her thighs it was a big blob.  to top it off, while perusing desserts and asking the waitress for advice, she balked at some dessert due to the high calories.  omg lady... its too late, just forget it..
- for tech, even with the diminishing # of bookstores (barnes & nobles my favorite), its still great to have them to go and browse.  my generation is a borders/barnes generation (I think or its just me) and being able to go to the bookstore and browse is hard to replace online.   Also i skimmed like 5 books on:
    - react.js (i hear is the hot stuff for web)
    - node.js (old stuff but refresh)
    - swift (seems nobody would design a language in this era w/o closures)
    - big data (no clue)
    - apache spark (hadoop stuff)
   and picked up a book on Go programming.   I think its way easier to keep up w/ whats going on in the industry when you have a bookstore to go to when bored and just pick up stuff in the isle and flip thru each book for 15min.  somehow the attention span is there at the bookstore knowing you have limited time and dont want to buy stuff -- as opposed to mobile phone/pc where i may open an article but rarely finish it.  maybe its just me?

anyways i need to get back on top of a few things...  i have this new 5yr plan..

Back to my post-winter depression cycle

So back to April and I ponder what to do career-wise and etc again.

This is a vicious cycle..  enjoy ski season, enjoy pre-ski, then post-ski depression (PSD - technically snowboarding but I consider it same thing, snow sports).

So.. lets see how this summer goes.
Will try to learn some of this new random stuff
 - JS frameworks like React
 - Other IaaS or BaaS stuff for hosting
 - Not sure if I should bother w/ Iphone or Android
 - Python hmmm dunno maybe

Seems my bread and butter Java is dead?  Or is it...  maybe I should just get legacy Java jobs as people forget how to program in it ?

Management Theory

I had this thought about work satisfaction while sipping a beer at Pronto in Hibiya while cutting a few hours out of work to enjoy the unsual Feb warm day and sunshine..

Then I was thinking about a silly movie I just saw, "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" -- an old chick flick with Matt McConahaugh (sic) and Goldie Hawn's daughter whats her face.

The scene I was thinking about is how Matt is some kind of advertising hotshot and he has these 2 lackies who he works with who treat him like a god...   the question really is, do people feel that way about many managers (i doubt people feel that way about me!).

Then I thought.. the key is to be truly hands on indispensable and the wizard, problem solver, innovator, creative genius, etc in a small team -- then you can truly the man like Matt McC ?   Well some truth to it.. the most fulfilling is probably when you are that 3-5 person team manager/lead, where you are really the man, and everyone looks to you for answers.  I imagine that is how it was for John Carmack, or any small dev team or creative group.  The lackies are relatively happy until they grow/improve/learn to the point of being able to take over the boss's job.

The problem in my job and why at times I feel like I have a lame job is that some of my teams are self-running and I dont really contribute much to them, and some of my leads probably don't need me that much day to day!   (Not really self-conscious or low confidence so much as knowing I'm highly replaceable).

But I suppose when you are at a Sr Management level, the ability to directly influence, coach, direct, lead is very different.  One could say Steve Jobs was the only guy who could have turned Apple around -- but lets say he's the 0.001% exception to typical leadership.

I have to think about this more!