An Expensive Toy

One of the main uses that my iPad found is that it is an amazing toy for my 3-year-old. And the great thing about it is that it is not one toy, but many toys. She can use it for playing jigsaw puzzles, pattern matching, learning her ABCs, learning to read, write, count, as a sketch pad, for finger painting and the list goes on. Whatever you can think of, there is an app for that, often times many more than one. Moreover she has learned to navigate the iPad all by herself. The interface is so intuitive that it doesn’t need any teaching – a simple demonstration suffices. Now she can start whichever app she wants, and if she gets bored with that one, then move to another one. Most of the apps are just a few bucks to purchase, cheaper than traditional toys and moreover they save a ton of paper.

Book reader

While the iPad is no Kindle, it serves as a great book reader. There are a number of places where you could buy ebooks from such as the iBookStore or Amazon.com. While I haven’t actually purchased any books from these stores, I have a number of kids books that are available through the appstore. There are quite a few of great books available for purchase and sometimes even free downloads – such as interactive Dr. Seuss books which are cheaper than their print versions. While it seems to be great for kids books, I am doubtful how effective it is for reading adult books. You can’t really use the iPad to read in bed – it is actually quite heavy to hold in one hand for longer than a few minutes.

Movie player

iPad + Netflix has the potential to get rid of our DVD player. While Netflix is available on many platforms, it is very easy to connect the iPad to your TV and watch movies sitting on the couch. The only drawback being there is no remote. You can also use the iPad as a portable movie player, say in an airplane or car, if you buy movies from iTunes. This can be handy when trying to entertain your kid while going on a vacation.

Portable Internet Device

While the iPad is no substitute for a laptop, its form factor makes it a handy device if you just want to browse the web, check email or read documents or pdfs. Being larger than a smart phone, many of these tasks are actually much easier. Of course the lack of a real keyboard makes certain things such as writing long emails or blog posts much harder, but you can always use your laptop for those tasks. Now one may wonder, that why is there a need for a device other than your laptop – can’t you just open a laptop and do all the things that I just mentioned. While that statement maybe true, there is definitely something to be said about sitting on the couch and using a multi-touch device for these tasks. It is something that needs to be experienced to believe that it is actually better than using a laptop.

A GPS Unit

An iPad + 3G is a great device for having in your car. You can use it as GPS unit to get directions, find the closest restaurants or other services, or get any information that you need from the web while on the move. The device comes with a free Google Maps app that you can use for directions or buy more sophisticated ones from the appstore. It was definitely indispensable on our recent trip down to the bay area. The only drawback is that the data plans with AT&T are limited data plans. It is very easy to run out of the limit on the cheapest plan. So you need to keep making sure that you are using wi-fi when it is available. The good thing about these plans is that they are contract free. So you can just sign up when you know you are travelling and terminate the plan after you are done.

Gaming

While the iPad is not a dedicated gaming device, it is definitely handy for casual games. The interface is not as conducive to gaming as say my Nintendo DS, but there are certain types of games that work well on the iPad due to the larger screen. Notably puzzle games and point and click games. In fact, the interface is ideal for point and click (now touchscreen) adventure games. The adventure game genre has been largely ignored in the past decade, but seeing that Sam & Max and The Secret of Monkey Island are some of bestselling games on the iPad, hopefully we’ll see a lot more adventure games for the iPad and maybe some more of the Lucas Arts or Sierra goodness.

Other Uses

As I mentioned that the iPad is a multipurpose device – new apps are constantly available through the appstore. So what wasn’t a use case today, could be a great use case tomorrow. A few things that I have found the iPad useful for other than what was already mentioned are things like note-taking (both handwritten & typed), or managing recipes (though I haven’t found a good app for that yet).

Accessories

The one issue with the iPad is that it requires a bunch of accessories to make it work. The most important one is a case or a stand. The iPad is heavy and slippery and a bit fragile – so it is best to put in a case to protect your investment. Another important accessory is a stylus. Yes Steve Jobs hates them, but if you want to do any sketching, drawing or writing on the iPad you’ll need one. The styluses for the iPad aren’t as good as what I have on the DS, but you can get a decent one for $10. You may also need additional cables if you want to connect it to a TV and of course you’ll need a headphone. The good thing is that the battery life for the iPad is remarkably long and mine goes on for days without needing a recharge.

Then came Amazon! Now, I earned enough to afford them. But eating watermelons at Amazon.com was verboten. Maybe they thought that eating them might improve employee morale to an unacceptably high level. Or maybe they were afraid that the watermelon rinds would increase their garbage bills or they might have to pay the janitors $1/hr more to cleanup. Whatever the reason was, everyone just accepted it, and ate no watermelons. Except for the ones that came from watermelon rich jobs, but they didn’t last very long.

Then there was Blist (now Socrata). This was just like any normal place – you could buy watermelons and eat them too. For most people this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but coming from Amazon, this was huge! Finally I got to taste these wonderfully refreshing fruits at work. And then life kept getting better. First came Ning. Now, I didn’t have to buy watermelons anymore. They bought it for me – I still had to cut them, but still a definite improvement. And now I am at RichRelevance – here they buy the watermelons and cut them too. All ready for me to gobble down!

So given this trend, and the simple mathematical technique of extrapolation, at my next job I expect a better watermelon experience. But I can’t seem to predict how exactly it might improve.  I guess, we’ll just have to wait and see.

In case you were concerned about your kid hitting other kids, here is a great way of teaching him that he is not alone:

My mother and your mother
were hanging out the clothes;
My mother hit your mother on the nose
What color blood came out?
R E D spells RED.

And this is the one to teach your daughters – a very important lesson in life:

I should worry, I should care
I should marry a millionaire,
Should he die, I would cry –
Then I’d marry a richer guy

This is their version of Peter the Pumpkin Eater. It is a great one to read to your wife, especially when you need something such as a smart phone

Eeper weeper chimney sweeper
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
Had another, didn’t love her
Up the chimney he did shove her

So I expected not to be surprised when I encounter such themes while reading my daughter her new Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes book. Since the book contained a lot of rhymes, I was just choosing a few at random to read to her. And then I spied a rhyme that I had liked as a kid. The lyrics of the rhyme as I remember from when I was young went as follows:

Miss Lucy had a baby. His name was Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim.

He drank up all the water. He ate up all the soap.
He tried to eat the bathtub but it couldn’t go down his throat.

Miss Lucy called the doctor. Miss Lucy called the nurse.
Miss Lucy called the lady with the alligator purse.

Measles said the doctor. Mumps said the nurse.
Chicken pox said the lady with the alligator purse.

Bye said the doctor. Bye said the nurse.
Bye bye said the lady with the alligator purse.

As I started reading the poem, I saw the last line of the verse and then immediately stopped – there was no way I could read that to my 3 year old. Here is how the variation in the book went:

I had a baby brother. His name was Tiny Tim
I put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim.

He drank up all the water. He ate up all the soap.
He died the next morning with a soap bubble in his throat.

That ending just completely shocked me. And I would venture to say, forget about kids, this variation of the verse should be disturbing for adults. Just the thought of drowning your own sibling and then writing a rhyme about it (to a catchy tune, mind you) seems a bit too morbid.

In my opinion, timeouts and bribery are a completely inappropriate method for disciplining kids. When I was young, as far as I can remember, I was never subject to timeouts or other forms of punishment, or even bribery. And I have done fine – at least no drugs, no homicide, no running away from home – and have been reasonable successful in life. If I could have been raised without having been subject to timeouts or spanking, why can’t my daughter?

The reason I believe that punishment and rewards don’t work as discipline is that they are externally imposed. It implies the existence of an authority figure who the kids are supposed to obey to. The problem is what happens in the absence of such a figure, when the kids are alone – or at school – or with friends? If there is no one to reprimand them or reward them will they behave the way you expect them to or will they just do what they’ve always felt like? My belief is that unless they have an intrinsic value system which will help them choose between good and bad they will no doubt misbehave. That is where, externally imposed discipline fails – in building an internal value system.

The other problem with an authoritarian approach is that it creates a distance between the child and a parent and instead of the parent child relationship then based on mutual respect and love it becomes a relationship based on fear and conflict. At some point when the kids will grow they are bound to rebel. And at that time timeouts or rewards will not work.

So if there are no timeouts how do you teach a kid good behavior? I am still looking for a good solution. In order to explore this subject further I decided to read through the following three books on the subject:

• Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child – John Gottman
• Kids Are Worth It! : Giving Your Child The Gift Of Inner Discipline – Barbara Coloroso.
• Raising Your Spirited Child Rev Ed – Mary Kurcinka

Another book that I didn’t buy but is recommended is – How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. As I finish reading these books, I’ll add more in depth reviews for each book and what is the plan they outline and if their advice is something reasonable that can be followed.

One thing that I was really glad with is that our daughter’s new school does not use timeouts. In fact, all of the schools we talked with claimed that they do not use timeouts to discipline the kid. That at least tells me that there are people who will inculcate good behavior in kids without resorting to punishments.

My affair with Macs started when I joined Blist and they gave me an option of a Mac/Windows/Linux machine. I ended up choosing a Mac just because it wasn’t something I had tried before. It did take a while to transition – the philosophy is quite different from Windows – and there are still some things that I don’t like, such as missing Home/End keys, Cmd-Tab not showing all open windows etc. But now, I am addicted!  I had withdrawal symptoms for the two weeks I had to spend without one after my last job. I wished that they had let me keep my laptop instead of the 30in monitor that I got instead.

Nowadays, I see a lot more Macs on the bus or in flights, and there is always someone or the other claiming they bought a Mac on Facebook. So the measly 5% market share that Macs have does not do justice to the popularity of Macs.  Macs have always been popular with artists, writers, journalists and the kind, but recently they have started to gain popularity amongst geeks.  This is the third company that I am working at where all developers have a Mac. And for good reason, Macs give you the best of both the Windows and Linux world. Instead of carrying around a Windows laptop for checking mail and Linux desktop for writing code, you can have a Mac on which you can do both – check mail and write code – now that’s what I call genius!

I believe OS X has been primary driver behind getting these tech companies to use Macs. OS X did what the Linux community had been trying for years and hadn’t really succeeded at – building a GUI that your grandma can use on a Unix based platform.  Now, I can have all my favorite tools – vi, zsh, grep, awk, perl etc and still get a great UI. Heck, this blogpost is written in vi (well Vim actually, but whatever). Moreover everything is pre-installed – anyone who has tried to use terminal utilities in Windows through Cygwin or otherwise knows what a nightmare they can be.

The one big drawback I see for Macs, and the reason I think they are not mainstream, is the lack of business productivity tools. There is no Outlook on the Mac! Microsoft Entourage is just a poor man’s substitute. In fact Apple Mail has much better integration with Exchange than Microsoft’s own client. And Office for the Mac is nowhere close to that on Windows. Of course, there are multiple other alternatives, such as iWork or OpenOffice, but none of those are as mature as the products for the Windows platform.

But, hey I am not a banker or a sales & marketing guy – so a Mac works great for me. I only wish they were a bit cheaper.

During the session, if I tried repeating the names of any of the rhymes that I had asked her before she would immediately interject “I already singed it“. And if at any time I got stuck figuring out which one to ask her to sing next, she would proffer up a suggestion such as “Maybe I sing Little Miss Muffet?“. By the end of the session I had exhausted the list of rhymes that I knew top of the head, and had to say “Sorry, baby, but I don’t know any more rhymes”. I don’t know how she learned these songs all of a sudden, or maybe she learned them over time but never sang them at home. But now, I officially declare Esha to know more nursery rhymes than Smita. Ever since, I have been trying to get encore for Smita to hear, but she has steadfastly refused. I guess they just need to be in the right mood.

It’s funny how fast they grow. Just a couple of months ago she was struggling to learn the lines for her first rhyme – Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. One fine moment you just go from “How many times should I tell you – this is green not red.” to “Wow! I didn’t know you could do this. That was amazing!“

First there is the recommendation letter. Yes – apparently you can write recommendations for two year olds. Maybe they want to know if she can read War and Peace! We got two – one from her day care and one from her pre-pre-school. The one from her daycare was easy, they just said “she is a good baby” and ticked off all the positive adjectives in the form. The one from her pre-pre-school was confidential and sent directly to the school so we don’t know what it said. (Of course, we have a general idea, but the fact that there is a sealed recommendation letter for preschool just seems quite absurd.)

Then there was this whole form that we had to fill out which asked us nerve-racking questions like “Please describe your child” and “What are the strengths of your child” and of course a detailed explanation of why we are so interested in the school that we are applying to. Unfortunately, the two applications didn’t share questions so we had to spend hours on each. Fortunately for me, my wife did most of the making things up. (Yeah, she writes performance reviews now.) Now all we have to do is wait for a letter of acceptance! Maybe they aren’t as selective as Harvard and we might get through. Oh and did I mention the interview? Our baby has an interview scheduled later this month – we better start learning those pesky A,B,Cs now!

On a more serious note and for those who were curious after my last post about Montessori schools, neither of the schools we chose are Montessori. The only Montessori that we liked – Sammamish Montessori – was a bit out of our way for pick up and drop off. And the reason we liked it is that it offered a choice of unstructured non-Montessori curriculum (they call it enrichment classes) in addition to half a day of Montessori. The two schools that we picked are somewhere in between traditional desk based classrooms and individual activities like in a Montessori. Even though they may lie somewhere along the continuum their philosophies and style are a world apart. One of them, Cedar Crest Academy is a highly rigorous academic program based on group activities while the other, The Little School, is a lot more individual-focused, play-based school a lot like her current pre-pre-school.

We don’t know which we’ll pick yet. On the positive side, we received a good recommendation for The Little School from her current teacher, and she applauded our decision to not put her in a Montessori. So at least we got some validation that we are not completely off our rockers. But then our biggest constraint is food. CCA offers fresh organic lunch and snacks to all kids while the other is bring your own. Based on our past experiments, providing her with a daily dabba is going be a harrowing experience for us – we’d rather have the school provide lunch. There are a few other subtle but significant differences – the teachers at the Little School are much more experienced (upwards of 10 years) while the ones at CCA are fresh from college. The curriculum in CCA is classroom based for the entire group while that for the little school is individualized. On the other hand The Little School is extremely expensive when compared with the other schools – it’s like the Bright Horizon’s of daycares.

Our most preferred option is that she goes to the Little School and then someone picks her up and drops her at daycare at lunch time. But that is contingent on us finding a reliable baby transporter. So, let’s see how things work out, but at least we’ve narrowed the field considerably over the last month!

In a previous post, I said that we were looking for a pre-school for our daughter and wanted it to be a Montessori-like school. Well, guess what! We visited 4 of them this week and frankly I wasn’t impressed. All of them were highly recommended by the parents at Microsoft and are schools with a very good reputation. One thing I have to point out is that not all the Montessori schools were the same. In fact, I felt that each subsequent school that we visited was better than the previous one.

No it’s not the schools that were bad per say. It’s the Montessori method that I didn’t like. Montessori is the in-thing these days, and parents rave about the method. Criticism is hard to find. And not without valid reasons – Montessori has a great sounding philosophy around individual freedom and seems to be a great method to build a child’s academic expertise. But I found the curriculum far too structured, rigid and dry. As a three year old, I want my daughter to play, sing, dance, paint, pretend, share and not count beads, or pour water from one cup to the other.

There was one piece of feedback that really sums up my thoughts and I am quoting it here:

I did not put my sons in Montessori preschools. I found the Montessori approach too structured for my children. Yes, every child moves at his/her own rate, but he/she moves through a particular set of exercises. Those exercises are a set of manipulatives that the child must learn to use in one particular way. The method was devised for children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds in the early 1900′s and focused on common daily tasks. My children’s house has brooms and dishes and pitchers, and they don’t need specific instruction in preschool about them.

For my son, I wanted more free-form art projects, fantasy play, group play, and no academics. I found that in the non-Montessori schools. The preschool program was very “hands on” and there were no desks.

The other criticism I have is that the Montessori curriculum is too individual based. While it is important to build an independent, self-sufficient individual, there is a reduced emphasis on working together, sharing or group play. In fact the Montessori method encourages children to work on their own projects individually and the teacher tries to dissuade other children from collaborating. When we were observing a Montessori classroom, all children with sitting quietly on their own working on their own little project. While that skill is important in life, that’s not a structure I want to impose on my daughter this early on. One point to confess though is that this approach is not common to all schools. As we progressed through visiting schools, the later schools were more open to group activities than the former ones. However, in spite of some schools encouraging group work, the Montessori curriculum is always designed around an individual. Secondly, I found the dryness of the material and the instruction a bit unsettling. My daughter was perfectly happy trying to make coffee with the bottles that she was given to unscrew the lids of. That kind of imaginative and creative play seems very lacking in the Montessori materials.

And I don’t believe that a particular kind of pre-school has any kind of impact on future performance. While Montessori children might know their squares and cubes before they enter first grade and that may be quite impressive, I think other pre-school kids do just as well as long as they acquire the basic foundation needed for school. So right now my focus would be to look at non-Montessori schools where the activities are more free-flowing and where imagination and creativity are more important than learning academic skills. I may still be convinced to send her to a Montessori as long as it is for no more than half day (and in fact the last school that we visited actually offered a mix of both Montessori and free-form classrooms which was far more appealing to me).

There were lots of things that I loved about working in a startup environment – high productivity and very few distractions to prevent you from getting work done, no meetings to sleep during, being able to get things done and make progress really fast without any upper management bureaucracy, interesting colleagues and a small team dynamic, everyone has to hunker down an produce and there isn’t any place to hide, a very cooperative rather than competitive work environment. And there are numerous things from Amazon that I’ll gladly do without – on call rotation, stress and burn out during Nov – Dec, spending a great deal of time on support & operations rather than building software, the dismal employee benefits, a huge difficulty in getting things done that require cooperation across multiple teams, 3 hour team lead meetings every Wed where you couldn’t open your laptops and had to pore through pages and pages of high severity issues from the week. But there are definitely things that I still miss – the larger tech community, interesting and challenging problems and how every problem becomes difficult when you operate at the Amazon scale, knowledge from experienced engineers and principals, amongst others.

Hopefully Ning will fall somewhere in between the two ends of the spectrum. It is still a startup and has a similar environment, but it has been successful enough to start having many of the challenges that running a large scale system has. Plus, it is larger than my previous company allowing for a substantially larger pool of engineers to interact with. It seems like a number of ex-Amazonians have flocked to Ning, and it definitely should be an interesting place to work for a few years. Whether it will be my dream job or not remains to be seen.

With these thoughts, I quit my job on the 31st and have been relaxing at home for almost 2 weeks (Yeah, I know my blog needs an update and I am working on it). Starting Tue the 19th (yes MLK day is an holiday – get that you Amazonians) I’ll be in Palo Alto for a couple of weeks before returning to the new office in Seattle. Anyone who is in the Bay Area and wants to get in touch (and has read this far) give me a hoot.