There is a new Nielsen study about TV, Internet and Mobile Usage Among Americans. There are two really points in this report to me. The first is a surprise in how little time people are watching time shifted programs. If 35% of people have I would expect more that 5% of viewership to be timeshifted. When I worked at TiVo we conducted studies saying that TiVo owners timeshifted a lot more of their programs than the people with a cable company DVR.
I am not surprised that people are watching so little television on the internet and on mobile devices. Even with big jumps, the numbers are small compared to how many people are watching TV. Every group watches more TV than internet video. Even under 35 is watching a lot of television. Even the age group 12-17 is watching almost 90 hours a week. This goes against conventional wisdom, but it is the truth. It is sexy to think that broadcast television is a dinosaur and will be gone soon. From these numbers I do not expect this to be true. Television is going to be around for a long time. I think it will be longer than ten years. I think content companies will not be willing to kill broadcast television while they can still make money with it.
I worked for TiVo for just short of 8 years. In that time I used and tested a lot of TiVo Remotes. It I counted up all the time I have had a TiVo remote in my hand, I think it would be more than a year. I think it is near prefect. It is the bets TV remote I have ever used. It really feels like part of me. Whenever I see a TiVo remote as a prop I point it out to whoever I am with.
Gizmodo interviewed Paul Newby for the story of the TiVo remote. The story is pretty good. Paul is a great person to work with. He was great at listening to feedback and making changes. He was never so in love with his design that he would not listen to someone else about it. It feel I had some impact on several versions of the remote.
I still have a lot of TiVo remotes. I have my own 5 year remote. It sits on my AV Center like a trophy. It has never been used. I prefer to use my ultra rare 4 address TiVo Remote. This was a custom hack that Paul made for some testers. It was a life saver when I used to work for TiVo.
I work at TiVo and I would not have TiVo wedding cakes. I cannot think of a company logo that I would have as a wedding cake. I cannot think of a company that I like that much. I guess it takes all types. I hope they had a fun wedding.
This week TiVo and Amazon announced an Unbox on TiVo. Yep, I have been working on this one. It is pretty cool. I cannot say much about it right now. I hope all my TiVo DRV using Friends check it out when it is launched.
I was going to write about Wal-mart getting into the video download business earlier in the week, but there has been too much stuff going on. Now I feel I cannot write about it because people will think I am only bad mouthing it because we are competing against it.
It would be nice if I lived in a world where I could blog anything I wanted without worrying that people might read it the wrong way and get me fired.
I look at this photo and it reminds me how messy my apartment is right now. I know that there is not much in this photo. It just captures how my apartment feels to me. The box that these remotes are sitting on is full of remotes. I used to keep TiVo remotes like trophies. That got old three years go. Now they are just one more thing I should get rid of but cannot bring myself to let go of.
Reading this story really got to me. It is hard for me to explain. I know that people die everyday, but this one is getting to me. I did not know James Kim and I never met him. I have only seen him on TV.
With all of that, I feel like I knew him. TiVo started to carry CNet video some months ago. I enjoyed his segments about MP3 players. He seemed genuine, like someone I would like. He always seemed to have a smile on his face.
There is something about the story of how he died that I cannot get out of my mind. I feel sorry for his family for the loss. Maybe it was the hope he was alive. Maybe I would not feel this way they were not looking for him alive.
Battlestar Galactica started season three this week. It lived up to the hype. I was interested on how they would pick up after that year's finally and I was pleased. I am not going to give anything away in case it is still waiting on your TiVo DVR to watch.
I just want to point out the Battlestar Galactica webisodes. If you have not watched them yet, go watch them. There is a nice story line that covers the time between season 2 and season 3. It answers some of the questions you might have when you watch the premiere.
Here is a list of shows that I am excitied about this season:
Battlestar Galatica Lost The Nine Grey's Anatomy Jericho The Wire Doctor Who
Other Shows I watch:
Cold Case CSI Law and Order: Criminal Intent Simpsons Family Guy Metalocalypse Venture Brothers
I have recently purchased an HDTV. I bought a Vizio LCD from Costco. After a few hours I could pick out my number one problem with my HDTV. Standard Definition television look like crap on it. Both the standard definition signal from my cable box and from my TiVo boxes. The picture quality is just poor. I know I did not buy a high end TV, but it was still a nice price. It was enough money that I am upset about how the regular television signal.
I keep on hearing that this year is the year HDTVs will break out. I keep on hearing how there is a pent up demand for HDTVs. Soon the prices will come down and people will be buying HDTVs like mad. I am not sure that any of these predictions are correct.
I only get about 12 channels in HD. Most of those channels are not HD all the time. Some of the are standard definition for most of the day. I think the pictures for the channels will have to be better before people start going crazy for HDTVs. I watch a lot of cable channels, but I get very few in HD. I would like TNT, Spike, USA, Cartoon Network, and Comedy Central in HD. I do not think my cable company is in a rush to get these channels to me in HD.
I like my HDTV. Baseball and Basketball both look great in HD. I am just not sure it is really worth the money. If I did not work for a consumer electronics company I am not sure I would have HD. I am not sure what this will mean for the future of HDTV and products like HD-DVD.
For a while I have taken pride in working for TiVo, a company that is the best in the world at what we do. It looks like someone agrees with my assessment.
Today I was thinking about the idea of making a doomsday clock. My idea was a little different then the idea of the Atomic Doomsday Clock. That clock is a set up that we can look back and see how close to the edge we were. We can see how close we were at any one point to having the world blown up under us.
I am looking for a clock that sets a date when we think the world is going to end. When I talk about the world ending, I am talking about the end of human existence on the earth. That date would be an average date for everything we see around us. That date would be pulled in when we there is nuclear tension and pushed out when we doing something good. I am not sure how anyone comes up with this date. that would be something interesting to think about.
Work Doomsday Clock
Thinking of the Atomic Doomsday Clock again, I wonder if anyone ever sets one of these up for their job. I would think right now Worldcom is at 2 minutes to Midnight and Enron is at 1 minute to midnight. I found no results when I searched for "Enron Doomsday Clock" on Google. I wonder where that puts TiVo. I would think we have to be at least at 10PM.
Today TiVo announced the next generation of hardware that we will be releasing. Because of some of the features of the new product I have decided to order DSL. There are some things that I will be able to take advantage of broadband access.
When I moved into my current apartment I subscribed to Digital Cable. I told people I did it because it would help me with my job. Some people laughed at me for that. I survived two rounds of layoffs they did not. I listened to my instincts then and I am going to listen to them again now. I just ordered DSL tonight.
For a long time I have resisted getting DSL. It seemed indulgent. I could not explain why I would be getting it. I have a reason why to get it, but I do not feel all that good about it. I feel that it is too expensive and can cause me to waste more time. I think it still important that I have it. I just wonder how long it will take before it is turned on.
This weekend I had a dream about buying a new car. In the dream I was working for Saturn. In my mind it makes sense that Saturn and TiVo are alike in my brain. Everyone who I work with now, was also working for Saturn. One of the marketing guys was driving around with me telling me I made a good choice. I told him that I was thinking about buying a VW Bug, but I chose a Saturn. This is strange because the last couple of times I dreamt about getting a new car, I bought an old Bug. I had to take the car into the shop to get something adjusted. All the people working in the shop where from TiVo’s Quality Engineering department.
I am planning on going to a college basketball game today. I am going to the Pete Newell Challenge. It is a tournament that Stanford competes in every year. My company is sponsoring the game. If you watch the game on Fox Sports Net you will see sponsored by TiVo. They were giving the tickets out for free on Thursday.
It has been a long time since I have seen a College Basketball game live. I think that it goes all the way back to when I was in College. The game is at the Arena In Oakland. It is one of the few buildings that have not sold its name to a company. People refer it as the ‘O-rena’ all the time.
I am looking forward to going to this game. If it were not for the game, I would just be sitting around my apartment all day. I did not have any plans or motivation to do anything. It is easy to go to something where I have free tickets.
I could not find anyone to go with me. Part of the problem is that no one is in town. The other problem is that everyone at TiVo already got tickets to go. There will be a lot of people from TiVo there. I am not worried about going to this thing alone. It is a good event for a Saturday Night.
I had lunch with my friend Stephen today. I have worked with Stephen for 27 months and we have never had lunch together before. For a long time I would tease Stephen how busy he is at work. He is the kind of person you find sitting on the floor typing around on his laptop. I have always respected how much he does and how well he does it. Those two years do not sound like a long time, but they seem like forever in Silicon Valley time.
I have know Stephen the whole time I have worked at TiVo. He has always been someone I have liked, but we have never been closer the meeting friends. (Rich Thomas work dictionary, Meeting Friends: People who you make jokes with before or after meetings. They are higher then 'hi, who are you friends' but not as high as 'cubical friends') We had lunch because Stephen made my old web log a few weeks ago. Stephen suggested that we have lunch.
I learned some things about Stephen. I learned that he is an frustrated writer much like I am. He is an old comic book fan like myself. He faces the same kind of issues in his life being taken over by work. We talked about all these things. I got a kick out of the my big lie idea. I am going to have to start writing a novel next year. He told me he needs to publish a novel before he turns 40.
It was a great lunch. We had the right combination of talking about personal stuff, work past, and work future. He gave me some good insights. I feel that I can trust him from a work level. He has nothing to gain by misleading me. There are a lot of things I know now that make me feel a little bit better.
I have to keep on having these lunches with Stephen. I think it is a friendship that has a lot of potential. It is good to know the way other people view the world I live in everyday.
At the end of October my company had a layoff. A lot of people where let go that day, but some stayed longer. Their projects needed some time to be rapped up. It is hard to know who is staying and how is going. It is not something that a lot of people like to talk about.
We are still getting good-bye messages from people whose time has come. Those messages usually come at the middle and end of the month. We will be getting these messages for at least another month.
Today I realize I have a routine when I get one of these message. I go into my Handspring and change the persons information. I take out there extension and input what ever personal contact information they included with the message. I chance the company list from TiVo to ex-TiVo. I change the category from Work to Business. If I was on a first name basis with the person I send them a message. If I was close with the person I tell them we should do lunch sometime. I end by putting the message in a folder named ex-tivo.
It seems strange to me that I have a routine every time I get one of these message. At work today other people told me they have routines also. One person told me they say a prayer every time they get one. I know that I am at a company that has had two rounds of layoffs. I wonder if this is a normal thing to do. There are most likely people doing this all over America.
Today my head was thick with work. I could not let my mind wonder like usual. I had to keep it tight on work. Here are a few of the tidbits from my day.
I talked to a woman I work with. We were talking about Pittsburgh, her home town. She told me that Michael Chabon's Pittsburgh was not her Pittsburgh.
I got my merchandise from the TiVo Story Employee sale. I bought two TiVo lunch boxes, a coffee cut, and a clear remote. It is are one chance to have a discount for anything at work. They do not sell the product from the TiVo Store.
I had Rob Bass It Takes Two stuck in my head all day.
A woman I once had a crush on came back to visit the office today. There was nothing more then pleasant chatting.
I got a call from a customer who will not listen when I say I do not take customer calls anymore.
I was so focused at work, I cannot focus on writing now.
People have said that there is a customer cult involved with the TiVo product. People who own it love it. They have been known to take it a little too seriously. Too understand this cult you might want to look at this web ring. You have to read the pages to understand it.
My friend Stephen, who I had a dream about a few weeks ago, showed me a web log he did from his first two weeks at TiVo. It is interesting to read. He talks mostly about how busy he is. He started to work a TiVo just weeks before the product was released. As long as I have known Stephen, he has worked 60 hour weeks. Those were the short weeks.
I wonder if anyone else I work with have web logs. This is a hard question to ask people. There seems to be a line between work lives and private lives. There are very few people who I have been able to step over that line with. You can find out things about people, but only in a work conversation way. I have no idea how to find this out about most of them. I tell a lot of people I have a web log, but most of the just look blankly at me.
Stephen comment was "I read a lot of your site. I always thought there was an awful lot going on in your head that you didn't share, and felt that you should have an outlet. Now I know that you do have an outlet, and it's good work. Reading about your perspective on the layoff was very interesting. You're right about a lot of things, particularly about how you're regarded.
The comment is interesting to me. The line about "awful lot going on in your head that you didn't share" really strikes me. This is a level of perception that I cannot gage. Most of the time I fell that I wear my life on my sleeve. I guess people can see me, but not see through me.
I found out last week that my job is secure. TiVo is not planning to cut my job in the upcoming months. They are actually going to adding people to my department. This makes me feel pretty good. I am not ready to leave TiVo yet. I do not think I will be ready leave right after the holidays either. I want to stick around for a while. I do not want to be unemployed in Silicon Valley until things start to rebound around here.
Having a certain future takes a huge monkey off my back. It gives me a chance to make better plans. If I leave TiVo, I would like it to be on my terms. I do not want to be asked to leave because I am being laid off. There is part of me that thinks that I want to be at TiVo until we either hit it big or close up shop. I do not want to be asked to leave before the big finish.
I have to try not to do anything too stupid with my money. I need to build up my funds so I do not find myself out in the cold if I do get laid off. There is still a chance that might happen to me. I cannot depend on nothing. My job still might go away. I feel that I will still have a job, but I spend money like I am going to be laid off.
I still feels good to not worry about my job. I should start thinking about other things now. I am not sure what those other things are. I know there are a lot of things that I am not paying enough attention to right now. It is bad to let too many things in my life go to seed.
I had lunch with my friend Don today. Don is also employed at TiVo. We have lunch about once a week. We have been trying to have lunch since the layoffs have come down. This is the first chance that we have had to get together because how crazy our worlds have been.
I told Don about my four ideas of what I might do if I get laid off. I told him about the merits of each of the choices. He told me to stop thinking about all of it. I am just going to waste a lot of mental energy for something that might not happen. There is a good chance that anything I do will not effect the way these decisions are made. I am just going to drive myself crazy thinking about these things.
He also told me that I should not worry about looking for another job now. I like working for TiVo. I like the company, even if I do not always like my job. There is a chance that I could still be with the company when we come out on the other side of the. The worst thing for me to do is pull the rip cord now. I should wait for them to lay me off. Then I can decide what I can do.
One thing is that I should stop spending my money like a drunken sailor. I should try to keep as much of my cash as I can. The more cash I have the more choices I have later. This is going to hard. I always seem to spend all the money I have. I have never been good about saving money. I like to spend more then I have. I will have to do what I can and tighten my belt for when that day might come. Until that day comes I am going to try to relax. I think I have better ideas about what I might do since I was close to that position already.
There is a chance that I will be looking for a new job in the first quarter next year. There is a chance that my position at TiVo will no longer be there. This is really scary to me. I cannot talk about too many of the details. What I do know is that I have the chance to survive the next round of layoffs. There is also a clear chance that my job will no longer exist.
This hangs over my head like the Sword of Damocles. At work I am trying to make sure I survive. When I am on the job I can focus on working. When I come home I start to think about my future. I start to think about what my life is going to be like if I get laid off. When I think about getting laid off, this is when I panic. I really do not want to be looking for another job right now.
I am in an odd position when I am looking for a job. My current position is Customer Service Engineer. If I tell people my title they do not understand it right away. I am the person that goes between the Engineering department and the Customer Support department. I am the person that makes the information flow both directions.
The problem with my job is that it is a hard job to find in another organization. Most of the time you cannot just walk into a job like mine in another organization. I do not want to go back to being a phone support rep again. I think I have burned myself out from doing that. I know that there are other things that I could do. I just have not figured those things out yet.
I am regarded well at my job. I know people and I feel that I have a good reputation. I do not want to lose any of these things. For once in my life I am at a company that is fun to work at. As long as it is fun to work at TiVo, I do not want anyone to show me the door. I am not sure how I am going to get around that. I know now is the time I have to work hard and make sure people want me kept around.
For weeks now, long before TiVo had layoffs, I have been thinking about reducing the amount of possessions that I own. I am starting to feel weighted down by the things that I own. I live in a studio apartment, but it will be increasingly hard for me to move from my apartment in the future. I feel that I am getting too attached to these things.
I know there are good and bad results from getting attached to possessions. I know that sometimes, attachment to possessions can help root you in a place. It can help focus you on the maintenance of that place. Those are currently two things that I do not have. I am not focused and I am not attached. I am not sure that my possessions will help me do this.
The down side of my possessions is that they tend to close me in. My possessions make me want to go and buy more possessions. They draw me to them and help me waste my time. I really do not need any more help to waste my time. I am good at wasting my time as it is right now. My possessions give me short-term enjoyment at the cost of long term accomplishment.
I am not sure when I am going to move from this apartment. It might be as soon as early next year. If I leave this apartment I will have to think about getting rid of some of my stuff. If I leave San Jose, I will think about getting rid of a great deal of my possessions. I want to think about this now while I can make a good choices. It makes me wish that I could live without owning anything. The only way I can do this is by becoming a priest. I still need to find simpler ways to live.
This has been one of the longest weeks that I have had in recent memory. On Monday I knew that something was going down at week. I thought there was a chance that I might lose my job. On Tuesday I found out that I was going to keep my job, but I was not sure what the fallout of the layoff would be. On Wednesday I found out that my department might be done away with after the holiday. On Thursday I spent the day trying to figure out where my jog would be going. On Friday I tried to pick it all up again.
I am happy this week is over. Last night I was physically and mentally exhausted. It had been such a hard week I had nothing left when I got home. I feel asleep right after I got back to my apartment. I must have slept for 9 hours. I was so beat it felt good to just sink into my bed. I took such an emotional beating this week, it felt good to just surrender to my bed last night.
I am looking forward to Monday. It will give me the chance to sort everything out at work. It will give me a fresh start. I am hoping I can focus next week. On Friday I really could not focus at all. I seemed distracted by everything going on at work. I did not feel like getting any other work done. I am hoping to get some momentum next week. It will be hard to work if I cannot get going. I do not want the next couple of months to be that hard.
I have now been through two rounds of layoffs. This round of layoffs has a really different feel to it then the last round did. In the last round I felt that I was being played as a sucker. For a little while I felt as if it would have been better if I was laid off. This round feels a lot different.
In the April round of layoffs they destroyed my department. They laid off my boss and half my department. After the layoff they tried to pull me closer to the call center. At first they wanted me to spend half my time taking customer support calls. I felt like I was getting demoted. It was not really the job I wanted to do. I found someway to fight through that.
This time it is very different. I felt that I was kept because of my skills. I feel that I was kept because they see something in my that will be important in the future. I am proud that I survived. I feel like I have done something right. I know that I have the chance to hang in at TiVo. I know that I have the ability to stick around a lot longer if I given the change.
I guess the big difference is that I have a clearer idea of what is going on around me. I think that I can see what is motivating the people around me and around the company. I do not think I am going to be screwed by someone else. I will have to see what happens from this point forward. I have a good outlook, but things can always turn on me. I will have to see what happens.
If you want a more objective view of the layoff you can check out Yahoo.
I talked to our Evangelist about the layoffs. He seemed to be taking it really hard. I asked him how he was taking it. He said it is hard whenever your family gets smaller. He takes the company very personally. I guess that is what happens when you are a corporate evangelist.
After I found out that I would not be laid off, I spent much of the afternoon thinking about two things. I thought about leaving San Jose and I thought about staying in San Jose. Both of these ideas have a lot of weight in my head. They seem to be a central idea behind my last few months here.
I do not consider San Jose to be my home. I live here, San Jose is the address on my drivers licence, everything I own is here. I still do not seen San Jose as my home. I feel that there is some kind of distance between me and the city. I lack a connection to the city most of the time. I feel connected to my apartment, my office, and my car. For rest of city could be any other place on earth.
With all those things city, San Jose has a small place in my heart. I want good things to happen to San Jose. I think people from the rest of Silicon Valley should show San Jose more respect. I think the construction going on around the city is a good thing. I worry that the economic downturn might effect the money for those projects.
There is part of me that wants to leave San Jose. I want a new city to explore. I want a new place to figure out. I want to live in a city that has better parks. I want to go somewhere that has a different character. I want new experiences. I feel that somewhere out there I could find a city that I would enjoy more then San Jose. I miss parts of Portland and Philadelphia. I wish some of those elements where here.
I think if I leave San Jose, I will never move back here. I know that the dot.com boom period is over. It is something I will not be able to cash in on. Right now Silicon Valley is paying for those excesses. The whole Valley is depressed right now. If I leave now, that is it for me. I am not going to make my way back here.
In my heart I feel that Silicon Valley will come back. I think there will be another explosion of technology that will fuel Valley again. I still want to be part of something like that. I think once we get to the other side of this down turn there will be a huge upturn. If I can get thought this period in the Valley, I will find a huge payoff. I want to be around for the next big thing.
If the forces of fate turn against me I see myself leaving San Jose. If I lose my job at TiVo, there is a good chance I will be moving onto my next city. I am not sure what city that is. If TiVo does not let me down, I see myself staying in San Jose for a while. I know that I change my mind every other day when it comes to this city. As of today, this is where I stand on San Jose. It might change any day.
I had two TiVo dreams. In the first dream TiVo was having a convention. TiVo had taken all of the employees to a resort hotel. TiVo had invited the families of all the employees to come along. My Parents came to the resort. The TiVo parties were going on throughout the hotel. My parents and I sat down in the only empty restaurant. We waited for other people from TiVo to join us. My sister Dot got there a little while later. I could not get my family and the people from TiVo into the same room. They just stayed in different rooms.
In my other dream a layoff was coming. I knew it, but I was not sure who else knew it. It got to the end of the day and they still did not have the meeting. Everyone in the company was loaded onto buses. We were told that we are going to an overnight meeting. The buses too us to a hotel. All of the employees where in a room together. JR was leading the meeting. We were doing things like, "Name ten things that remind you of band camp." It was like we were going to have one last fun time before we got laid off.
Every week at TiVo we have a company wide meeting. When I first started to work at TiVo the company wide meetings used to be big things. Everyone in the company used to cram into the open area. We would get updates from all over the company. We would hear about every effort to improve the company. The employees felt connected to everything the company was doing.
As the company has become larger these company meetings have become less important. Less then a third of the employees show up at the weekend meeting most of the time. The meeting are much more boring then they used to be. The information is not as thrilling as it used to be. I do not know if the information as change or if we are just used to it now. I should not be surprised that these things have changed. TiVo is Different, Silicon Valley is Different, and the whole world is different.
This week's company meeting was really strange. It was strange enough that I think I should write about it here. The TV Linux Alliance had sent TiVo a box full of Styrofoam Tux Penguins. Tux is the symbol/mascot for Linux. The box had about a hundred of these little dolls in it. At the end of the company meeting the people in the front of the lunch room started to throw these dolls into the crowd. After a few rounds the people in the front of the room just starting chucking the Tux Dolls at the crowd. The rest of the people started throwing the dolls back.
Somewhere this turned into a free for all. These little black penguins just started to fly everywhere. It felt almost like a food fight. For a good five minutes people where throwing these penguins at each other. I tried to only hit the executive staff. When else am I going to get the chance to throw something at a vice-president without getting fired. I laughed myself to tears when I saw that was of the development managers was sitting under the table hiding. This was one of those company wide moments of fun that TiVo has not had in a long time.
I will say that I have never been through something like the penguin fight before. I have never been at a company where a meeting has turned into something from summer camp. I am not saying this is a bad thing. I think we need this kind of fun more often. I know it will be increasingly hard to do as the company grows. I just think it is the kind of healthly fun that a company could always use more of.
TiVo has been awarded an Emmy. The academy give out lots of technical awards. Basically if you are a company that is working to improve television viewing, you are going to win an Emmy. There is something about the company I work for winning an Emmy that excites me. I think it is just the coolest thing in the world.
They showed us the Emmy statue at the company meeting this week. I wanted to get a picture of me holding it, but no one had a camera. I want to get an Emmy on my business card. I think it is cool that I work for a company that has won an Emmy. I want to tell all my friends about this. I know it is not the same as if I won the Emmy, but I can say I had something to do with it. It is just like I can say I have had something to do with the success of the company.
I know this entry makes me sound like a total geek. I think my obsession with the Emmy comes from going to school for broadcasting. The Emmy is the Oscar for unluckily people. I do not think TiVo will ever win an Oscar. This is as close as I am ever going to get.
We had a company picnic today. I am a big person for showing up at company parties. TiVo has thrown some pretty good parties in the past. I have been with the company long enough to say I have been to a good deal of the parties. The Parties now a days are not like the ones we threw two years ago. This party was a potluck. One of the guys in the band was the VP of IT.
Parties were a big part of the dot.com boom Silicon Valley. TiVo's IPO party was held in San Francisco. It was an expensive affair made to look like a Hollywood premiere. There were search lights, celebrity impersonators and a red carpet. The red carpet had people cheering for us and a guy trying to interview us as we went to the party. This was a tame IPO party by Silicon Valley standards.
Now Silicon Valley is a much different place. Most companies do not have the money to blow on big parties. I have not hear of any obnoxious in a while. Most companies are doing the best they can not to lay people off. I know that our last two parties have been funded by the employees.
Most of the people at the TiVo October-fest brought their children. We are a company full of young parents. Most of the people are around my age. There have been a lot of kids that were born in the past two years. This makes me realize that I cannot no longer talk about my childhood at work. Most of the people are talking about the childhoods of their kids. It is the difference between having kids and not having kids.
I had a good time at the party. I went by myself. I do not have anyone to take with me. I do not even have anyone I can take as a safety date. It is one thing I used to have back in Warminster. Only a couple of people came alone to party. I think that everyone that came alone were in the customer support department. They closed the call center early. I know that is a reason that a lot of the reps showed up.
I stayed to the end of the party. I was one of the last people to leave. I am usually one of the last people to leave a party. I felt sad when I left the party. I felt said because I was leaving alone. I did not have anyone to come to the party with and I did not have anyone to go home with. It has a lot to say about my life in Silicon Valley. There is not much going on in my life outside of work.
As I was driving home from the picnic I felt really lonely. It is a feeling that I have dealt with over and over again. I do not know how to get away from this loneliness. I do not know how to meet people. I am not sure if I want to be in a relationship. I do know that I want to get rid of this feeling.
I do not know if I will be able to get rid of the loneliness in San Jose. The problem is that I cannot leave here and still work for TiVo. How I feel about TiVo is a whole different entry that I am going to save for another time.
My fears about writing about work have been compounded. I read on the weblog of Mark Pilgrim that he was fired for comments that we wrote at his web log. The worst part is that it was not even comments he was making about his job. He was just writing about his life in general.
This makes me think about my weblog and my web site. I have been telling the people I work with about my web site. I have been trying to show off my Dreams about Bill Gates Site. I know that I have only told about a dozen people at work about the site, but that is going to spread. I am not saying that everyone at work is going to spend all their time reading my web page. I am just saying that someone might check in on it from time to time. I am not sure what they are going to say if they read some of the things I have written.
Part of my problem is that I have so many conflicting ideas about work. There is part of me that really wants to go and find a new city to live in. There is another part of me that want to stick it out at TiVo until the company either goes under or goes big time. I feel that I am working a job that is taking me nowhere, but I have a pride in the job I do. All of these conflicts make me think that I am going to stay at TiVo for a while. When I am faced by conflicts like this, inactivity usually wins out.
This adds to another part of my life I am going to hide from this web log. I already knew that there are a lot of little things that I will not put here. There are things about myself that I cannot tell my closest friends about. I know there are lots of little parts of my that I am not ready to put on the internet. I wonder if I will be able to give people a good idea of who I am without showing those parts of myself.
For the most part I am going to try to put this fear behind me. I am not going to worry too much about what I write here. I am probably kidding myself to think anyone is reading this web log at all. It would be nice to hear from anyone who is reading this.
Yesterday I talked to my friend Cathy about the dream in my last post. She asked me what did I think it means. I told here that I am never good at figuring out my own dreams. This is what I always tell people. I try a hard to remember my dream and write them down. I do not try to figure out what my dreams mean. The number of things a dream might mean is just too large for me to understand.
Cathy said that she thinks the dream has a pretty simple meaning. She thinks it means I am homesick, I hate my job, and that I need a date. Personally I do not think it is that easy. I think there is more to this dream. I think that I am homesick, but I do not want to leave my job behind me. I want to find someway to stay at TiVo and move back home.
I think she is write about the date part of dream. It has been a long time since I have had a date. Whenever I had a love dream, I am always a little depressed. The woman from that dream was not a real woman. When I dream about a fictional woman, I always wonder why I cannot find a woman like that. When I dream about a women I really know I am sad because I know she does not feel that way in the real world.
I had a dream about work last night. In the dream my company was taking to Pennsylvania. My parents had decided to throw a reception at a house they had just moved into. In the dream the house was just down the street from where my parents live in real life. I spent most of my time at the reception just looking around my parents' new house. It seemed very small. I noticed that it only had two bedrooms. That means that I could not move back into my parents house. My sister Kathy was living in that other bedroom.
TiVo had hired an event coordinator for the retreat. I was standing in my parents bedroom and she walked in. We were away from all the other people at the reception. The event was about five foot ten, round face, glasses. She has long light brown hair. There was a good vibe between us as we talked. I took the chance and kissed her on the lips. After the kiss she was flustered. She said something about it not being the right time or place for that. I told here that I just wanted to take a chance. Then she kissed me back. It was a long kiss. I looked at the doorway and there were a bunch of people looking at us. The people were the people of my same level from work. They started to make fun of me right away. I moved so the event coordinator would not see the people from TiVo.
I know that I cannot write everything that I want to write about work on this Web Log. I want people who I work with to be able to read it. I want to mention the name of the company that I work for, TiVo. I also want to mention my name. The problem is if I have these two things in this web log, who knows who will be able to find it. Some one might be able to search for it. I could cause some bad times for myself.
I never know how people are going to react in the world place. If someone fines my bitch about my job, it might be bad for me. I can see people say to me that if that is how I feel, I should look for another job. While I have problems with my job, I do not want to get fired because I am blowing off steam. That is something that I do not like.
A lot of the web logs I read people comment about their jobs. Most of my life revolves around my job. Am I going to be able to write anything interesting if I do not include my job in the mix. Will I feel there is a wall between my life and what I am writing? This is a tough question. For right now I will be careful about what I write about my job. Maybe I am kidding myself that anyone will read this.
