Unexpected experience

When your boarding pass gers with-holded at the gate - it doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing - you might get upgraded to business class too and enjoy all its perks. It’s especially good when you have an overnight flight - extra left space hasn’t hurted anyone yet.

Two kinds of challenges

There are two types of challenges. One that  requires to make a decision in a split of a second, another - requires you not to act upon impulse and keep continuing whatever you are doing. Jumping with a parachute or bungee jumping are of the first kind, running (especially long distance) - is from the second kind. While the second kind of challenges usually require some physical preparation, the challenge itself in both cases is mental - to suppress your inner voice of fear, pain, weakness and any excuses. While the first kind gives you more adrenaline rush and excitement, completing the second kind is as fulfilling as completing the first ones. I believe there are a lot more challenges in our life than we choose to acknowledge that - any kind of long activity can be seen as a challenge - anything we do long term is challenging to keep doing it until we see the meaning and reap the fruits of that activity - like learning a language or new hobby, maintaining the friendship or relationship. Especially when we are faced with difficulties - it's so much easier to quit than to continue. But that inner voice telling us to do so might not always be right - it just wants to do easy and fun things without planning too much for the future. But if you already started doing something, it means you already invested your precious time in it - if you quit, you are discarding that time you invested.

21k - check!

It's been raining today. Not all the time, not heavily, but the sky has been grey and uncolorful for the most part of the day. I looked at my running shoes and thought - this kind of weather doesn't add add motivation to run, but you know that you have - a pity rain and clouds are not the reasons to skip the training. And I skipped a lot this spring, always found other activities or excuses. 11 kilometers have crossed my mind - no, it was not scary, I could run 10 easily(not very fast), but it wasn't the most attractive activity either. But you know - sometimes you have to do the things you don't really want or do not enjoy, later to do the things you like more.
I got my feet wet in the first few hundred meters, but with the weather like that it's unavoidable. Running more than 10 kilometers meant that my route can go through old town and even further - at least some sightseeing involved. But the first kilometers are not eye-catching at all - it's not green yet, just the tiny leaves on the trees and bushes. And the leaves were engulfed with water drops. I didn't choose the monster pace, so I could observe everything around me and not break my leg. Yes, the nature was waking up, but very slowly - it's May in two days, and it still sometimes seems like a winter without snow.
At my fifth kilometers I thought, this might be hard, but maybe I can do fifteen today - if I want to run half-marathon this year, I have to start running longer distances. I knew I could stop anytime(but doing that meant walking back home), so, I let this thought into my mind - I recalculated my turning point so it would be 15 kilometers not far from my home. Well, body probably wasn't very happy with my decision, but it hadn't shown any signs of objection either.
At my twelfth kilometer I was thinking- this goal of half-marathon has been intimidating me for a while, if I do fifteen today, I might  do twenty one too - the difference is not that big and if I don't like it I can quit running after that or I can satisfy myself with running just 10k. I recalculated my route in my mind and started following it. I knew I could quit it any time. I didn't stop, but I wasn't fast either - there was a long uphill at the eighteenth kilometer - I thought, it's not easier to climb that mountain with a bicycle either.
I survived and didn't feel any strange or frightening feelings in my body. I couldn't sprint the last half of kilometer - there was nobody to compete with - only myself. I was only thinking whether later I will feel sorry for my decision to do the whole half-marathon thing today without running fifteen first. I didn't have any water with me, but there was plenty of water around me - in the air, on the ground, the only downside - that it was undrinkable.
Not every story has to have a moral, but this one has. If you have a goal - set a timeline to it or give up on it. Don't stretch it over the time for too long. If you have a goal and you are 75% through it, don't stop, at the next attempt you'll have to overcome those 75% again. And it feels damn good to complete it, even if you feel like sh*t at that moment. But if you have a goal - be wise and take care of your health.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Lithuania! My country, today you are 99 years old and these years haven't been easy to you. On this day on 1918 you managed to gather twenty  the most brightest and bravest men that dared to declare the Independence.

Christmas tree wars

A month before Christmas  in Lithuania is a "real" battlefield. Luckily not a really real one - the field of competition is full of Christmas trees. So, it's fair to say that's a fir wood of competition! Christmas toys, garlands and lights are our cannon balls and bullets. Yes, the war is fictional, otherwise even with Christmas toys, garlands and toys much damage can be done. But it is very real in the newspapers and online portals, filled with titles "which Christmas tree is the best this year?" and alike.
It's true that we Lithuanians like to compare ourselves to the neighbors - the closer the better. And the rivals in this competition are our cities and towns. Thanks to this every-year competition, the centers of towns turn into little commercial markets selling expensive stuff and alluring with their smells of waffles, cookies and mulled wine. So, yes - our hearts of towns had turned into something you can find in every western Europe city during Christmas period. Nothing original, but not entirely true. The competition between two main cities is so tough, that they start preparing for next Christmas at the beginning of the year. Yes, brainstorming ideas, evaluating the budget and doing the hard work. Could you imagine a work, where your main duty was to decorate a Christmas tree? No, I don't think it's a fully and well paid position, rather they run on a good will and great ideas than on a good salary, but in any case - the task is exciting. And yes, our nice looking Christmas trees are not made from a single fir tree. It's rather dozens of smaller fir branches put on a carcass, but it still can be made to look like a real tree. Well, in one of Lithuanian cities in the past Christmas trees were being made from other stuff, like plastic cups and bags and bottles and the things alike, that combined together still had a shape of Christmas tree. In the past years it uses more and more fir trees(unfortunately) and is more natural(and looks more like a Christmas tree in Western Europe capitals), but still has some interesting elements. Some toys can be activated through internet and change lightning color or start rotating. This year there is a merry-go-round below the tree carcass - it was made specially for this occasion. This tree is located in the old town square of Kaunas. (To get a visual understanding of what I'm talking about, you can check out the trees from the other years at this page: https://kaunoeglute.lt/)
It's main rival is located in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. It has always been more traditional-western-Europe-commercial type of Christmas tree(because of a bigger budget). But still with a typical look it managed to achieve something beautiful this year as well. Well, maybe the right word would be - inspiring - the light bulb lines from the tree are going into all directions and forming like a roof - but the light garlands are very evenly distributed and it makes a feeling of being in some magical places. Well, symmetry always works great on people! The best way to experience Vilnius's Christmas tree is to get under this roof and at a time when it is less crowded.
And I hear that other towns are becoming more inventive and brave every year, so, hopefully this Christmas tree competition will have more than two strong competitors this year.

Continuing about BuildStuff

When you make a mistake, what you try to make? To admit it or to cover it up?
So, I've been wrong about one thing. In my previous post, I said - there wasn't a darts board on the BuildStuff conference, but I was wrong. There was one, but I couldn't see. So, I guess it's not so bad - even without Foosball or ping pong. But who needs those games when there is a possibility to build your own AI that competes against AIs of other players in hexagonal world, right?! Once you try it - it's hard to stop and you keep improving and improving your strategy... maybe missing a session or two... going late to sleep because researching the algorithms... And here you actually have a chance of winning, nothing like buying a lottery ticket. So, I've been wrong twice. The second wrong thing I told was that two bank companies were taking part in this conference. There was actually three of them! And the AI hexagon world challenge was presented by the third one - no wonder I missed it.
All three days passed in an eye-blink giving sessions better one after other. Companies took out their big guns and drums to entertain the attenders. The evening party featured two bands(one of them with Undefined name(so, geeky!)), everyone was having fun - making it harder to get up and feel concentrated the next day.
The birthday cake was huge decorated like a CPU(probably) and drowned in a sea of cupcakes. To make it easier to choose one, they were decorated with programming languages and framework names.
But the real firework of the conference was a closing keynote given by a musician Jurgis Didžiulis about motivation and stimulus of life, revealed few of his trade secrets and tried to make programmers dance and sing. He admitted that it wasn't that easy after all. And one thing he didn't fail - he made us laugh quite a lot.

BuildStuffLT again...

So... today is a first day of BuildStufLT 2016 conference for developers that actually build stuff. For me it's a third time in a row. Don't get too jealous,  because last year I went on my own expense.
Whenever I get asked for how many days I'm staying there and give an answer of "3 days" I get the high eyebrows... It's true that the best experience seems to be when you go there for first time, but it doesn't mean that other times are worse - the conference is changing every year and everyone becomes more picky once they have a baseline for comparison. No, first time is not the best. Everyone just tends to idealize it like a first love.
So, what's different this year?
Believe it or not, none of the companies having their lounge space-mini headquarters dasn't brought a single fuss-ball table!!! There are no table tennis,  no darts (probably there never were ones ever). The space itself is themed as a DOS operating system. And there is an old gaming console space containing really old stuff... After opening speech (which had Vilnius mayor as a guest) we got showered in a rain of balloons. This year  everyone can ask questions through sli.do application, and the questions are visible on smaller of screens, one can vote/like them and the questions get answered at the end of the session. There are even two coffee desks this year(there was one last year), at least two bank companies presenting themselves (a big improvement after the last year's one). One can play treasure hunt by scanning QR codes of certain company employee cards'. It's just the day one, and I believe that many tricks will be revealed tomorrow.
But it's not the tricks and games that everyone is coming there for. The speakers, the networking matter much more. But with 5 simultaneous tracks it's impossible to attend them all(good news is that later the recordings of the sessions will be available online) and to choose the best ones based on a short description. So, I will mention only those that stood out the most and the ones I attended.
The opening keynote speech was given by Greg Young himself about long sad story of micro-services which according to him always have been there but only under a different name. So, we are reinventing the wheel every time.
Paul Stack talked about centralized logging without the blood, sweat and tears and bragged about his architectural solution which helped reduce the expenses on infrastructure from $25.000 to ~$140 per month. And he achieved all this by using AWS Lambda, Kinesis and Elasticsearch.
I was impressed by Hadi Hariri's capability to explain the main features(and how to use it for DSLs) of Kotlin(a new statically typed language) in a clear and concise manner. I even got inspired to try it out myself. That's no surprise at all, because I like trying out new things, but some presentations can make you refrain from trying the stuff out...
Next followed Alberto Brandolini's session on a serious issue of learning. A serious issue targeted with funny jokes and pink goggles. According to him, our brain is wired so, that we end up learning anyway - so, if the work we do is boring, we end up learning other stuff. And according to him, nobody should feel bad about that. He cited many quotes of Dan North and I thought "I should look him up online later".
What I should have done instead is looked at the session schedule more carefully - as the closing keynote of the day was given by the Dan North himself. What he did talk about was the important topic of decision making. Of course, the scope of decisions was narrowed down to IT dilemmas(a big disappointment that expected some insights of complicated human's life): automated vs. manual build, automated vs. manual tests, test-driven vs. test-after vs. test-first, spike vs. stabilize, monoliths vs. components, objects vs. functions, synchronous vs. asynchronous, threads vs. event loop vs. actors vs. CSP(yes, these all are concurrency models), dry vs. decoupled and many others existential questions in developer's life. And to no surprise, the answer which one of those to choose according to Dan North is "it depends". However according to him one shouldn't default to this answer when tackling such situations: Scala vs. Java or spaces vs. tabs. But in general, every decision is a trade off. And when you know what you are trading off, you can make an informed decision.

No, the conference is not worse this year. It's a different one indeed, but what matter the most to me is whether I hear my problems addressed from the stage and get inspired by those speakers. It's a fifth anniversary of a conference this year. In the opening keynote Greg Young challenged us to try imagining a birthday cake for 800 people... So, Greg, how big it will be?