Year of the Startup

Yeah (?) new project on a new process:  the 450 page design manual is not well-organized, and doesn’t contain all the information I need.  Some of that information can be found in two other similar sized tomes.  How can anyone succeed on this process?  I’m sure they must simply guess at how to lay-out the devices and then let verification find the errors.  I may do the same.  In theory, we have about three to four weeks to finish this chip, and easily eight weeks of layout to do.  It should be fun.

Band tonight is a total “thrasher” set (it’s “youth” week at church), and I’m on electric.  I’m REALLY looking forward to this – I’m a metal-head at heart, even when praising Jesus!  It’s too bad we don’t have more youth playing the instruments; about half of our youth band has gone to college.  I guess we’ll need to train up a few more.

Today was a HIGHLY productive day at the home office.  Basically, I turned on the tunes and verified 11 chip projects (~1 hour per chip).  It’s too bad that I did the same work not too long ago on the same chips, but countless important improvements to most of the chips caused this re-verification.  I am now very confident that these guys will work, and now I can move on to the next very important project.

In the evening, I exercised while talking to my folks.  I should definitely use my exercise time to call people.  The time goes fast, and the elliptical has a spot tailor-made for my iPhone to fit in.  So far with the daily elliptical routine, calling and talking has worked better than: watching football, reading, playing “angry birds,” listening to music or none of the above.  I was thinking that I might try audio books as well.  The corner where the machine is located is dark, so difficult to read books/kindle, plus those annoying arms keep hitting the book.

A day later, I’m still enamored with Walk of the earth’s single “Somebody that I used to know” and now I’m just as big a fan of the original version by Gotye & Kimbra.  Who knew, but it turns out that the original version was the #1 song in Australia last year, and it won several “Australian Grammies” recently as well.  Both videos are unique and “artsy” in their own way.  I see them both as groundbreaking.

One of my band buddies sent me a youtube link today and it was simply amazing.  An entire band was playing a single guitar, and they were playing it well.  I then found out that the two main singers were brothers, and that each member of the band played a ton of instruments.  As a person who also plays a lot of instruments, this really appealed to me.  I found it inspirational and motivational.  I would like to be that good, and I can be… if I practice.

What these guys have that I don’t have is a musical genius.  I’m not jealous; everybody has their gifts and mine are in a different area.  As a musician though, I can certainly appreciate their gifts, perhaps more than a non-musician would.  While the average person might state that the song “sounds good,” I can appreciate the level of musicianship, complexity, harmony, video technique, production, mixing, hours of practice, even their ensemble because I have an ear for music (more than most), and an eye for detail (more than most).  Those are my gifts.

I will certainly be following this band!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9NF2edxy-M

The weekend was not idle.  On Saturday, I had four major tasks to do, and any one of them could have easily consumed my entire day.  I started with the most important one, and strove for efficiency.  I finished that task by 11:45 – that took too long!  Now I was a little stressed.  Skipping lunch, I started task #2, which I finished at 3:20.  Not bad, but I still two tasks to do.  About an hour into task #3, my wife suggested that I cancel the last item on my list (prep for a meeting tomorrow), and move the meeting to next week.  She’d even make the phone call to the appropriate people.  That worked out really well; it turned out that one of the meeting participants wasn’t even in the State this weekend.  Next weekend would be much better.  I got as far on #3 as I could; by 6:30, I needed food.  I found a good place to stop.  After eating, I hit the elliptical while speeding through two NFL conference games.  I pretty much rested for the evening after that.

Sunday was, of course, church followed by a “brief” voter’s meeting.  The meeting wasn’t brief, but it was good.  Since I no longer had my all afternoon meeting to run, some of our friends suggested that we go to a late lunch.  What a great idea!  I had a Greek salad and Gyros at Omega’s (the restaurant I go to every Wednesday morning for Bible Study and “guy talk.”).  Once home, I put in some more time in task #3 and still didn’t finish it!  As I did yesterday, I hit the elliptical and watched the end of the second game that day, which turned out to be great fun to watch – it ended one play into overtime with the rookie Tebow throwing a touchdown.  What a way to end a game!  Way to crush those Steelers!

I really hope that the upcoming Superbowl is as exciting as that game.

Today was a whole lot of working, yet not accomplishing much – typical for a Monday.  Tomorrow will be better.  Tomorrow will also be dress-up day because we have a potential investor coming in.  We want to make a good impression!

After one week of dieting and exercise, I have lost five pounds – something I couldn’t accomplish the entire last month.  Five pounds is a good start; I hope I can lose 10 by the end of the month.  We’ll see.

On this day, nothing happened.

Man, with this new medicine, I’m hungry all the time!  I’ll tell you though, I got the best sleep I’ve had in a while – I even slept through my alarm!

Long work day today: I spent all day verifying 10 chip projects, getting them ready for tapeout.  It takes approximately an hour per chip to do… if I’m moving at top speed, which I was today.

For day one of my new routine, I ate a hearty breakfast as I always do on Wednesdays (most of the food on that plate is now a no-no), but lunch was exercise and “healthy” food.  The two meals should balance out more or less, leaving me free to enjoy a well-proportioned dinner and a 10pm snack (I’m SO hungry right now!).  Today was also the first day taking my new medicine.  As the doctor predicted, I went to the bathroom a whole lot more and I was thirsty a lot.  From what I understand, this will happen for about three months and then my body will get used to the medicine and my water intake/output will go back to normal.  This is also why the doctor highly recommended that I take the medicine in the morning rather than at night.  Now I can see why!

Tonight, our church staff and leadership will discuss possible candidates for the next call committee – the people who will look for our church’s next pastor.  I pray that it will be a positive and encouraging meeting.  There certainly are a lot of great names on the list.  Our job tonight is to find the right mix of team members, and perhaps who should lead this new group.

One year ago today, I lost my job.  A year later, as I think on this, I am still mad, even though I knew my job was ending from far off.  I guess I just hate change, and I always believed that my current job would be my last (strike 2 for me, my former, former company closed its doors — a casualty of the crash of 2002).  At least here in Silicon Valley, it seems that gone are the days of a single career at a single workplace.  I guess it was inevitable; with people living longer and working longer, it makes sense that people would have at least two jobs in their life, if not two careers.  I’ve already had two careers, and I’m certainly primed for a third or forth, should I want to get out of Semiconductors.  God doesn’t seem to want me out of Semiconductors at the moment, so here I stay.

In other news: over the weekend, we spent a day preparing for a party, then spent the entire next day cleaning up after that party.  It was great to have friends over, but the work involved was so taxing that I didn’t feel a great need to “exercise”… I already had!  Would I host another party?  You bet!

The next “work party” will be to take down Christmas.  Bah Humbug!

Hey, after a year of not working a regular job… or getting paid, I’m only down a small amount, thanks to my wife’s steady job and periodic contract work for me.  God is good!  I hope I can do the same amount of contract work in 2012, and I sure hope my wife stays employed!  I don’t see my current company making money within the next couple of months, though we had better start by mid year or the whole thing is a bust.  I believe we’ll succeed.

After a moderately successful day at work, I cooked pork chops and worked out on the elliptical for a while.  This weekend will be all about analyzing stocks, doing my annual financial report (both personal and business), and preparing for a New Year’s party.  The party can’t last too long because New Year’s Day is on a Sunday and everyone at our party will also be at church by 10AM.  It sort of limits the festivities, but what a way to begin the New Year!  It will also be my wife’s birthday.

Last night, one of my buddies invited me to a Sharks (Hockey) game.  He had four tickets, so another friend and my son were also able to come along as well.  We all had a great time… even though the Sharks lost in overtime to the Canucks.

Traffic remains light this week.  Even so, I’m going to work at home tomorrow (theoretically on my day off) to save gas.  All of my chips are done so now I get to package them up and prepare to send them out to our tooling and wafer vendor in China.