“The knack” - Dilbert

Posted on previous blog at 05/06/08

Funny video!

My relief is to think that there are a lot of other worst jokes for lawyers, doctors, etc.

The Art of The Start - Guy Kawasaki - Speech/Video

Posted on previous blog at 04/14/08

Following the series of videos I’ve been posting here, the one now is a really good one from Guy Kawasaki, regarding entrepreneurship!

In his own words, from his blog:
“An honest speaker will tell you that she has “on” days and “off” days. The result of a truly “on” day is a standing ovation. I had a very “on” day at TiECon on May 13, 2006. This is the annual meeting of The Indus Entrepreneur organization.
I’ve provided postings of audio and video of my speeches that covered the topics of innovation and evangelism, but this is the first one of “The Art of the Start“. It’s the first one, frankly, because I’ve been waiting until I did it very—standing ovation—well.“

To be in context, “The Art of the Start“ is a best-seller book which, again by the author, can be defined as:
“When you get pregnant, you read What to Expect When you’re Expecting. When you get laid off, you read What Color is Your Parachute?. When you get entrepreneurial, you read The Art of the Start.
This book is a weapon of mass construction. My goal was to provide the definitive guide for anyone starting anything. It builds upon my experience as an evangelist, entrepreneur, and most recently, as a venture capitalist who found, fixed, and funded startups.
The book is as relevant for two guys in a garage starting the next Google as social activists trying to save the world. GIST: cuts through the theoretical crap, theories and gets down to the real-world tactics of pitching, positioning, branding, recruiting, bootstrapping, and rainmaking.”

The speech is really really funny and full of smart sights about marketing, entrepreneurship and life!

In some sense, this video changed my life … it brought me new ideas which I’m applying right now!
Hope you enjoy it as I did. :D

PS: If you cannot see the video, on his blog’s link - up on the beginning of the post - you can download the video in .mp4 format.

Steve Jobs Speech - Stanford Commencement 2005

Posted on previous blog at 04/12/08

By the way … taking advantage of the previous post, here goes a 15 min speech of Steve Jobs, on Stanford Commencement, on 2005.
The full text of the speech can be read here!

In this speech, he talks primarly about his life and career, going through three histories:
1) Connecting the dots - How the things he did by following his heart made sense just lots of years later, and how this contributed for the personal’s computer history.

2) Love and loss - How he got fired from the company he founded (Apple), how he succeeded through this (founding Next and Pixar, getting married), and how this was important in his life.

3) Death - How he faced a pancrea’s cancer, and lived with a soon death’s diagnosis for one day - also talks about how people face death.

I cannot decide which one I do prefer (Gates' or Job's one), both are really worthwhile!

Enjoy it!

Bill Gates Speech - Harvard Commencement 2007

Posted on previous blog at 04/12/08

I saw this video about a month ago and really enjoyed it! In the link you can also read all the speech!

It’s a 25min speech of Bill Gates on the 356th Harvard Commencement, on June 7, 2007.

In this occasion, Mr.Gates was receiving an honor’s diploma (or something like that…I don’t know exactly how it was called) regarding the 30 years of graduation he would had if he had graduated in his class (class of ‘77).

Mr. Gates started the speech with really funny lines, including, but not exclusively, talking about the relevance of this diploma on his career, referring himself as a bad influence, and talking about his personal life experience regarding women:

“I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”

“I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year… and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume. “

“I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class… I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today. “

“Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.”

After that, the speech gets serious talking about social inequalities, and warning people, specially the graduate students, to care about the world’s despairs:

“Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty… the prevalence of world hunger… the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school… the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions—you will answer with your policies. “

It sounded like a really good speech, full of emotion and hope in the young people.

If you’re also interested on other speeches from the last year’s Harvard Commencement, you can take a look at Harvard Commencement 2007. There you can find other interesting speeches, as from Bill Clinton.

A little p.s. here: It was kind of funny, because I actually have a good friend (Gustavo Lima) from Brazil (my co-worker here at Microsoft) that graduated from Harvard last year, and (obviously) he was there live on the speech and “sharing” graduation with Bill Gates.

How did I learn SQL!

Posted on previous blog at 04/12/08

Here a funny SQL code snippet (also called a WTF - What The Fuck!!!).
Try to answer the multiple choice question at the end!
Enjoy it!!! :D

PS: Looking at the comments of the article is also worthwhile!

Service Oriented x Object Oriented Programming

Posted on previous blog at 04/10/08

Though I don’t know exactly how to define service oriented programming and its differences with OO programming, today I understood that they’re definitely different! And I did it in the worst way: stuck in a bug for a really long time.

I was trying to overload a method in my service contract while developing a WCF service, what’s “not possible” (at least in the usual way).

You can look into this link the whole concern about this and how to solve the problem! It’s a really helpfull article!

Wait for an article about service oriented programming…this problem will address me to learn more about this (More natural impossible, since I’m working using it about 2 months and just realized that I even don’t know basic definitions - Yes, I feel shame for that… but I didn’t need to understand it all to make things work - this is all about get things done and learning later!).

See you!

Tech Bubble

Posted on previous blog at 04/07/08

Really funny movie!!! :D
If you’re interested on knowing a little bit more about the tech bubble history, a good start point would be: Dot-com bubble - Wikipedia

California

Posted on previous blog at 04/06/08

Hi People!
Some days have been passed since my last update here in the blog…

As you can imagine, lot of things happened … and one of them is pretty amazing: I succeeded on Google’s internship interviews! In just few days I’m going to ride down to Mountain View, California to have a Summer Internship at Google.

Actually, the formal offer just happened this last week and I’m quite happy about this!

This successful result came in time, since I couldn’t count anymore how many nights I couldn’t sleep worried about the interviews, or eager for the results.

I’ve ever dreamed about these moments (succeeding at MS and Google Interviews) and it’s been really interesting how reaching these dreams can lead me to other perspective of life and show me a whole new world full of brand new dreams.

Right now, I’m actually confused … and my head is full of doubts … in some way it can be summarized in a really time consuming question: How can I take advantage of all these in the best way?

Phantom Planet - California
We’ve been on the run
Driving in the sun
Looking out for #1
California here we come
Right back where we started from

Hustlers grab your guns
Your shadow weighs a ton
Driving down the 101
California here we come
Right back where we started from

California!
Here we come!
On the stereo
Listen as we go
Nothing’s gonna stop me now
California here we come
Right back where we started from
Pedal to the floor
Thinkin’ of the roar
Gotta get us to the show
California here we come
Right back where we started from

California!
Here we come!

Web 2.0 - The Machine is Us/ing Us

Posted on previous blog at 03/15/08

Really great video about web 2.0 … I got goosebumps the first time I saw that! Must see!

Ok, ok…today is a good day to start!!! (Is it???)

Posted on previous blog at 03/15/08

Hi everybody! Finally I’m here to right down things I wanna say to you! Yes, I have a lot of things to say, everyday!

Actually, I decided to start today because I really got a break from all stuff I had to do since I came to US and also because happened something that really worth to put in a post of a blog! (to be sure it won’t be forgotten!)

To be sure everybody knows the context of my current stories: I’m from Brazil, I’m an undergraduate student of Computer Engineering at “Aeronautics Institute of Technology“, Sao Jose dos Campos-SP, and I’m right now (since January 27th) living in Redmond-WA, US, to enroll in an internship at Microsoft.

Nice…my first story is going to be about an intern’s event that happened today! It was supposed to be called “Snow Tubing on Snoqualmie” but actually now we can call that “Hanging out on the bus with the interns”.

Snoqualmie is a mountain close to Redmond (about an hour driving) where we were supposed to enroll on some activity called snow tubing (I still don’t know exactly what is that). I was really really excited on going there since everybody was telling me that I would have a lot of fun on snow tubing!

On my lunch time, I ran to “Sport Authority“ to buy some gym shoes (since I didn’t brought any shoes that fit on snowing activities). I also got some waterproof gloves and a warm protection for my ears… I was sure everything was o.k and I would have an awesome afternoon at the mountains!

I got on Building 19 on time and join the interns at the bus that would drive us there. A lot of food and drink on the bus…people were definitely happy!

An hour later, driving towards the mountains, a voice came: “One mile left to get there!!!Iupi!!” (Actually I don’t remember the “Iupi” stuff…but it makes things more dramatic!!). Just few moments later… the bus stuck there. A lot of smoke coming from the bus engine couldn’t deny our situation.

We were on the highway, just a mile away from plenty of fun…and couldn’t even get there by walking (well…we agreed that would be too dangerous going by walking through the highway…hehe)

The schedule said we would get back at 6pm…well…we got back at 9pm…spending all whole afternoon on the bus…enjoying the company of each other, the snacks and the gummy bears that we got there!

At least, we could know better each other after 6 hours of talking inside the bus!

Below go some pictures of the day! ;)


1) Me and Ando still believing that we would see the mountains…


2) Brave Interns, still believing


3) Not for too long…


4) …and it was the closest I got from the mountain!


5) Anyway…trying to get fun!


6) Almost going home…tired!