Start Me Up

Day One It's Tuesday, March 2, and today I start a new job, at a startup with 80 people. I'm to be a program manager for operations (and no, you don't want me to explain what that means). The name of the company is TiVo; they make a consumer electronics device that digitally records TV shows, letting you pause and rewind live TV, or play back in slow motion. It also will automatically record your favorite shows each week for you (no messing around with tapes and VCR programming); it learns what you like and records random things it thinks you might enjoy watching. I'm really impressed by the product. But it's crunch time at TiVo, and no one seems quite prepared for my arrival. My cubicle is furnished with a tiny square desk, one locked file cabinet, three trash bins and nothing else. Hoping to trade one extra trash bin for a chair and another bin for a computer, I make the rounds... But I'm quickly involved in several heavy meetings, and I become busy working on the TiVo user's guide and several other projects. Lunch seems to be a problem -- a shortage of decent places to eat. TiVo provides lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but Tuesdays and Thursdays are self-service. I settle for a salad from Wendy's about 5 minutes away from the office. But my only choices seem to be Burger King, Wendy's or McDonalds. Maybe I'm going to have to start making my own lunches to bring in. One thing TiVo seems to have in common with other places I've worked is a heavy reliance on meetings. One meeting is held from 4:00 to 7:20. I had hoped to take it easy on the first day and cut out early so that I could finish up some business at SGI (my previous job). No such luck... I have to finish work on the manual. I borrow my friend Kyrie's computer, and get to work. Dinner is provided -- in this case, pizza from Tony and Alva's (the same place that we went to for my going away party on Monday). I don't make it out of TiVo's office until 11:30pm. But at least my section of the manual is done. My head is pounding and my eyes are bleary; I had worked until 2am the previous day trying to finish up at SGI -- tossing out old files, cleaning out my e-mail. It's all happening stunningly fast. I should have given myself time between jobs -- but at a startup, time seems to be a luxury. Hours worked: 8:45am to 11:30pm, minus half an hour for lunch -- 14.25

Day Two No meetings today until 9:45, so I try to get caught up on some sleep. My gas tank's near empty, but I cut it too close and I don't have time to stop for gas before my meeting. TiVo is in Sunnyvale, which is not much farther than SGI in Mountain View (where I live). But TiVo's office is off 101 and 237 which are freeways best avoided near rush hour. I try taking the Central expressway, but I'm still unfamiliar with Mountain View (I've only lived here eight months) and I can't quite find the way. I end up getting lost, I have to stop for gas after all, and so I don't make it in until after 10. An inauspicious start to my second day. But at least my cubicle is coming along. I have some new furniture -- a desk (stolen from the server room), a chair (stolen from someone else's cube), and by midday a computer. The network connection, phone, and e-mail account follow by the end of the afternoon. (But they've chosen "smack" for my e-mail address, which I don't much care for...) I even get a startup kit -- you know the kind, a box with stapler, scissors and other office doodads. We're rushing to prepare a draft of the manual for a six o'clock executive meeting. Lunch is pizza -- so that's pizza three days running. I'm now sick of pizza. We have trouble with the printer and the photocopier (only one of each -- time to get a purchase order). We barely make it by 6:15, but that's okay since the executives are all running late. Meetings seem to have casual start and end times; everyone uses electronic calendars but since we're all trying to juggle dozens of tasks it's hard to get things coordinated. The place has a nervous, jittery energy I really enjoy. Wires hang everywhere; conference rooms are piled high with new computers, demo units, and test equipment. I'm learning names and trying to find out where everything is kept. Such a strange contrast from SGI, where every procedure is pretty well established (you might even say rigid). Here at TiVo, everything must be designed from scratch. There's lots to do. I have a dinner date with Monika at 7:30, so I sneak out at 6:50. What's wrong with me that working only 8 hours makes me feel like I'm slacking? Even the contractors here work weekends. Everyone is feeling the pressure of the looming ship date. Hours worked: 10:10am to 6:50pm, minus half an hour for lunch -- 8.17

Day Three It seems as if I spent most of the day wrestling with Windows NT. People here use Netscape's Calendar program to synchronize their schedules; I had a lot of problems getting everything installed on my new computer. That's right, the computer I had yesterday is gone and today I received a new one. So I had to reinstall everything. But it's for the best since the new computer is much faster and has more memory. When I added the Network component to NT, I started receiving a strange error, that the server didn't have enough storage space to start the Server service. No more explanation than that. Finally after digging through Microsoft's support site I found that that meant I needed to reinstall Service Pack 3. NT is junk. I should have chosen Linux or Windows 98. I still can't print, but everything else seems to be working. I'm already too tired to record all of my impressions. Clearly it's all insane: There's too much to do, and even though it's only my third day, I feel like I'm already far behind what I need to do. Lunch was quick; I was smart and brought in the leftovers from last night's Indian food that Monika treated me to (I took her out last time). Monika seems even more overworked than I am; she apologized profusely for being a zombie and cut out for home as soon as she could. One of my coworkers, Kathy, drives the exact same car I do (95 Mustang convertible). Which reminds me, I have to get the hydraulics serviced; it busted last weekend when Ellen, John, and Doug and I went hiking in San Bruno. NT is junk. I've spent hours trying to get these printer drivers working. It doesn't help that after I print a test page that should have worked I have to jog across the building to see if it actually printed. Doing that several times really slows down the troubleshooting process. Well, at least I learned some things today. Part of me still wonders if I made the right decision; each day when things seem overwhelming I'm tempted to say, "Okay, that's it, I quit." But broken down, each task seems manageable. We'll see what tomorrow unearths. Hours worked: 10:00am to 11:30pm, minus ten minutes for lunch -- 13.33

Day Four What amazes me more than anything is the buzz of nervous energy that constantly surrounds everyone. We rush down the aisles between cubicles (there are NO offices) as if we were hurrying to catch imminently-embarking planes. Lunch was Thai food; I forgot to order ahead of time, so I was stuck with the generic Pad Thai, which wasn't too bad. My computer is almost set up in a useable way. At four, there's always a company meeting. Today we unveiled the advertising campaign that is underway. All I can say is that it's outrageous; should make a big splash. We sang happy birthday, had some drinks and had some cake. At this point at SGI, we'd be well into the swell of a beer bust, and the SGI folks would eventually head off to dinner; few go back to work. But here at TiVo, people are gobbling down the cake, then it's back to the grind. At 8:30 Kyrie comes to get me, inviting me to dinner with her and Bob. Bob's son Eric and baby Niko are also here. We have to drop off a TiVo box at Ken's place, and at Ken's place we get dragged into setup issues. It's not until 10:45 that I leave Ken and we eventually meet up at a late-night Chinese seafood joint on Castro in Mt. View (a few blocks from my place actually). Bob's wife Sabrina joins us, and orders in Chinese. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until the seafood chow fun was in front of me... The place was packed, even though it was almost midnight. More than a few little babies. Kyrie, Bob and I were the only gaijin in the joint. It felt like Hong Kong must feel. Hours worked: 10:15am to 10:30pm, minus half an hour for lunch -- 11.75

Front and Center Most everyone at TiVo is working this weekend. But I've already got a gig; I'm teaching a FrontPage class. Although I'm the first one into the office; I need to copy some papers and the TiVo office is where I've left my files. So I'm there at 7:30 a.m., wearing nice slacks, a crisp white shirt and a bright tie, photocopying the syllabus. I get some weird looks from the engineers who make it in at 8 -- they don't recognize me yet, and no doubt they think I'm some kind of bizarre marketing droid. I like teaching; I hardly ever get to wear a tie these days, and standing up in front of a group of 20 students I can be a ham, be the center of attention, tell stupid jokes, bash Microsoft, and feel like I'm making a direct positive effect on people. But it is exhausting standing up all day. I suppose flight attendants and schoolteachers get used to it because they do it all the time. For me it always exhausts me. I could join Heidi and friends at Sake tasting in Berkeley tonight, but I'm sleep-deprived and I don't feel like driving. So I treat myself to sushi (gampai!), work on setting up my TiVo, play around with my computer, and watch "The Wedding Singer" on cable. Hours worked (at SJSU): 9:00am to 4:00pm, minus an hour for lunch, plus setup time -- call it 7.00

Loose Ends My dreaded task today is to finish up all of the things I wasn't able to finish at SGI. So after sleeping in, getting some bagels and orange juice at Ken and Jane's house (where about a half-dozen families have gathered, kids everywhere), borrowing Ken's badge just in case, I head off to SGI to sneak in, and clean up my computer, send off some long-promised e-mails, tidy up, and send a goodbye note. Amazingly, my badge is still letting me in, so I didn't even need Ken's. I'm a nostalgic guy, so going through all of these old e-mails and papers, reading the internal newsgroups for the last time, picking out all the names of people I'd worked with -- it actually is getting me down. I hate goodbyes (who doesn't?). It's amazing how long it takes me. I want to be thorough, but still... I drag myself out of there at two in the morning, having completed just about everything, finally severing the last ties. The drive to Ken's place to return his badge seems to take forever. My eyelids are drooping -- but by the time I get home, I'm wide awake again, insomnia striking. I feel guilty I didn't make it in to TiVo and help with the testing crunch. So instead I test my own TiVo box at home for a while. The damn thing had frozen and didn't tape X-Files for me. That's the first time it's screwed up on me. Ah well, we'll fix it by ship time. Tomorrow's going to be a long day. It's tough to set aside time for these daily journal updates. I tend to do them in batches. The basic idea is that I've always wanted to do a journal; with the clear transition from one job to another, now seems like a good time to start. Let's see how long I can make this last. Hours worked (at SGI): 12:45pm to 2:30am, no lunch (just a bag of chips) -- 13.75

Day Five (Monday March 8) Not surprisingly it's hard to get myself out of bed. The day is flying by. One thing about meetings: they give you something to do to get through the day. But today I'm supposed to start leading meetings on my own, and I'm still too fresh at this company. I feel like I'm floundering. The whole rest of the day I'm working on some databases, wrestling with Access (which I have little nice to say about). Servers are having trouble right and left; lunch is some Italian (can't eat the meat sauce, so I'm nibbling on bread sticks and plain spaghetti with a little salad). Dinner they forget to ask me what sandwich I want from Togo's -- screw the new guy, sure -- but I scrounge a half-Turkey from someone who went home. Lots of people out ill today -- no doubt stress-induced. If you don't make time for yourself, your body will make you take time. Wonder when that will happen to me? Lots of nice mail from my ex-coworkers at SGI in response to my goodbye note. It's 2:00 a.m., Access is a joke, I'm going home. Have to be in at 7 to get this database live by 8. Joke. Hours worked: 10:45am to 2:00am, lunch during a meeting, dinner at my desk -- 15.25

Day Eight It's incredibly easy to fall into a mindless pattern of working all day, sleeping for a few hours, then starting the process over again the next day. Today's Thursday already; I didn't write a journal entry for Tuesday or Wednesday. But they were days exactly like today: I worked. From mid-morning to very late at night. I ate lunch and dinner with my co-workers. Conversations were had; meetings were held; documents and e-mail were written, exchanged, disected, discussed, rewritten, returned. Tuesday I worked from a little before 10 (not actually coming in at 7 since I just ended up staying later on Monday night to finish), to a little before midnight. Lunch was a very nice trip to a Japanese restaurant (where the tempura shrimp was delectable but the chicken teriyaki tasted like rubber) to celebrate my co-worker Kathy's birthday. Bob treated; Kyrie's sister Zoe and mom Nancy were also there. That night I actually just relaxed at work at one point in the evening, chatting with co-workers, and then I unwound by eating at Denney's and going home to watch TV. I'm watching a lot of TV. Using TiVo; we have to -- it's our homework assignment each night to test the product. I'm not watching too many shows all the way through, but it is somewhat relaxing. It's teaching me again the allure of sitting there emptily in front of this glowing box which flickers pleasingly. But at least with TiVo it's not so mindless, you can interact more. Yesterday, Wednesday, I worked from around 10:30 a.m. until 4:30 a.m. I wanted to watch Cal in the NIT, but oh well. Lunch was pizza, dinner was a very nice shrimp burrito, all thanks to TiVo. It's amazing to me how the brain can function without sleep. At one point in the night, I was literally unable to do simple algebra. I had to compute how much of a discount some number was from an original number, and I was dumbfounded. Unable to do it. I was just scratching my head. But a few minutes later I was programming custom controls in VBA. Today I got in at 11:30 (since I didn't get to sleep until 5:30 that morning), and it's now 11:35 pm as I write this. Got a couple more hours I think. Lunch was a chicken sandwich from the roach cart. Dinner was Italian; linguine with clam sauce. I think I'm putting on weight, since I haven't exercised since I started at TiVo -- I miss my Team Fitness class a great deal. It's database time. I'll talk to you later. Tuesday hours worked: 9:45am to 10:30pm, minus an hour for lunch -- 12.75 Wednesday hours worked: 10:30am to 4:30 am, minus half hour for lunch and half an hour for dinner -- 17 Thursday hours worked: 11:30am to at least 12:30am, minus half an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner -- 11.50

Overload: Day 9, Saturday, Sunday Gah. I'm more tired than words can say. My eyes are crusted over, red, painful. Friday I actually took things pretty easy, only worked from 11 to 7 or so (pizza again for lunch), and there was this long company meeting, with plenty of significant stuff that I can't share, and then Kyrie and I had Thai food on Castro, and joined up with Bob and his kids to go see Analyze This, which I enjoyed (and was amazed I could stay awake for) even though it's basically fluff. But amusing fluff. I was too keyed up to get to sleep early. So Saturday I taught day two of the FrontPage class, which went well enough but wasn't quite satisfying, and then I stopped in to TiVo and worked on setting up a Web server and Perl and creating diagrams in Visio (which should have been my main task). And I didn't leave until midnight. (Pizza again for lunch.) And today is Sunday; in the morning Kyrie had all of us over for bagels and breakfast, after which I stopped in to Fry's and bought some speakers and software I need at work (as well as a few CDs for the hell of it). I got to TiVo by 1 (pizza again for lunch), and set up FrontPage and the sound card Steve Lacy loaned me. Ah, so much better to be able to work and listen to music (Morcheeba's playing as I type this). So I wasn't really working hard. But then we had a meeting from 4 to 9:45 (with a quick dinner break for barbeque at Armadillo Willy's); and then I did some real work, and now I'm more tired than words can say, as I said. Gah. Friday hours worked: 11:00am to 7:00pm, minus half an hour for lunch -- 7.5 at TiVo Saturday hours worked: 9am to 4pm (SJSU), 5pm to 12am at TiVo, minus half an hour for lunch -- 6.5 at TiVo. Sunday hours worked: 1pm to 10pm, minus half an hour for lunch and dinner (each) -- 8 Total TiVo hours for March 8 to March 14: 15.5 + 12.75 + 17 + 11.5 + 7.5 + 6.5 + 8 = 78.75

Monday, March 15 I have little to say about this day, except that there was very nice Chinese food for lunch, the day was long and without events worthy of description, and there wasn't much in the way of dinner since most engineers went home early, have collapsed trying to make a 6am deadline. (Jeff Ma very nicely picked me up a chicken sandwich from Wendy's.) So I went home early and actually got some sleep. Hours worked: 10:30am to 9pm, minus half an hour for lunch -- 10

Tuesday, March 16 A frustrating day; not much was accomplished, but we certainly spent a long time talking about it. Kathy, who drives the same car I do, drove me to Wendy's and we compared strange noises that our black convertible Mustangs make. Many hours later, TiVo picked up burritos for all of us (I actually had a chicken quesadilla). I may be getting some highly-paid technical help with these databases I'm working on. I suppose you may wonder why I write down what I eat so often. (It jumps at one as the salient detail for each day from these pages.) I record these details because I personally can only remember each day once I remember what I ate during that day. Hours worked: 9:05am to 1:35am, minus half an hour for lunch and half an hour for dinner -- 15