Szimano’s Blog

After almost 2 years of working at JBoss (a division of Red Hat ) i have few thoughts I’d like to share.

First of all having nice job, especially such nice as JBoss, is very important. And very nice. It’s both money and doing what I like. I wish everyone such a position in life

There is tho a little but. Those are 2 years of a hard work. Combined with studies, now with working on my MSc, it’s something that really makes you exhausted. And not having 3 months of vacations like I used to doesn’t help :).

The thing is… suddenly (yesterday) something hit me. I’m not so excited about Computer Science like I used to. I mean… I have SJCP, i went for JBoss Advanced training. I use Java every day. I get exceptions but almost always I know why. I solve same problems every day (mostly making Labs work with newer version of JBoss Portal ). It’s not the same feeling I had when i was in secondary school. Those times I would write completely unneeded stuff just for fun. And it was fun fun.

So what did i do ? I decided to write plugin for Beagle to index messages of Kadu. Beagle is indexing system (something like Google Desktop, but deaply integrated with Linux environment), Kadu is the best Linux Gadu-Gadu client (polish IM system). Believe me how was i surprised when i found out that Beagle is written in Mono (.NET for Linux). OH YEAH ! Finally i found mountain to climb. C# i hardly know, founding out history structure for Kadu (guessing to add three zeros for “Received” and “Sent” time). I felt great. Again The Feeling I forgot. Plugin still doesn’t work, but who cares !

So the conclusion is… in my opinion there is no chance to be a good computer scientist if you don’t have this passion. You have to forget about the labor you do every day. Make yourself a little vacation. Just one day. Write something for fun. Discover some silly computer language out there. Do it for yourself :). This wont make you good engineer as is, but without it there’s no chance.

And finally to stop the boredom. What is marriage ? I have to pictures:

Just after married:

Month later:

Stupid legislation. And i mean it. Totally ridiculous.

Here’s the link

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070301/tv_nm/newyork_word_dc_3

And short explanation: New York city council banned use of the N-word. They say it ain’t good to use it in songs, stand up comedies, write it on walls, in your scrapbooks, ask whats up nigga etc etc etc.

Two things:

1) USA claims itself to be the most freedom-of-speech country in the world.

2) What is even better they just banned it. Yes. That’s it. No more acts. No penalties. Nothing.

And that’s where we, polish, have something in common with them. We also like creating laws, that have no administrative acts (one of the many examples is Act of Profession of Psychologists - it just exists, but without anything that would drive it). I mean - guys - we are Tiger of Europe and stuff, but give me a break ;-).

So what is racism ? Is banning any using of anything going to help ? I don’t think so. People will just laugh. At least I will.

What does it mean ? That every country is just the same. Every bunch of idiots, that rule it, just create some irrational legislation. It doesn’t matter if you’re a continent-wide country as USA or small one like Poland :-). And that’s nice.

One told me once that his relationship is equal. He take turns with his wife about everything - me cook, you cook, me clean, you clean, me do the dishes, you do the dishes, me give you money to spend, you take my money and spend, me asks bank for bigger credit on VISA, you use this credit and so on and so on.

We, at that time, had an argue that relationship doesn’t have to be equal by dividing everything into two. I told him you can have your role assigned to number of things and your wife can have a role assigned to number of things. They don’t have to interfere… we didn’t get to any point. Magda was still oppressed. I ate that frog… then we have nice laugh with my wife about this… anyway. One of the things i do at home is cooking. This probably makes me look little bit gay (happy) but I’m not very macho-type (gosh… this even made me laugh now thinking about myself describing this way ).

I’d like to give you a nice recipe that i used last time we threw a dinner for our parents :). The dish is Beef Roulades Polish Way in Wholemeal Bread. It’s something *very* easy and quite impressive looking. That’s something you could call Polish Cuisine (which is not really clear. It’s not like Italian where you can name pasta right away…).

Beef Roulades Polish Way in Wholemeal Bread

Ingredients: 1/2 kg (~ 1 pound) of boneless beef, salt, pepper, 1 dry roll (bun), 1/2 glass of milk, 1 tablespoon of butter or margarine, 1 onion, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon of flour, 2 tablespoons of oil or margarine, 1 small glass of broth, 3 dried mushrooms, 1 medium size wholemeal bread (square or rectangular).

Wash the meat and dry it, remove skirts and cut to 4 slices. Every slice club(i have no idea if this is the right word - probably not) lightly, cover it with salt and pepper on each side. Drench the roll in milk, crush the milk and mop it up with butter or margarine. Peel the onion, carve it and add it to roll with butter. Wash and brew the egg for few seconds. Put the egg into roll with butter and onion, add salt an pepper to make it tasty. Cover every beef slice with prepared mass, roll it and clip it with toothpick or white cotton filament. Cover every roulade with flour and fry it on hot oil for few minutes on every side. Pour broth, add washed, drenched for 20 minutes and carved mushrooms. Stew the meet for about an hour until it gets soft. Cut wholemeal bread on 3/4 of it’s height, put out the crumb, making kind of baking tin with walls being around 1 1/2cm (0.6 inch )thick. Put roulades inside the bread and pour sauce. Cover it with bread lid and put into oven at 220*C (430*F) for 30 minutes. After baking put it on platter. Cut just before serving. Serve with season salad. Bon apetit !

Of course nobody did a picture of it so unfortunately no pics today. Maybe I’ll do one other day.

Side note: Writing this recipe showed me how my English vocabulary sux in kitchen. If you’re native and reading it - you’re probably laughing your ass off. Well… i guess kitchen is one of this place where languages hardly interfere ;-).