Interviews are a curious thing. You see that there's an interview with a person you find interesting and you're thinking "I'm gonna read this". I feel the thought process there is a little lacking. Even if it is an interesting person, you're not going to be dazzled by the answer to the question What's your favorite color?, or What book is on your nightstand?. Unless it's with an expert in color theory or a literary critic, but those people never get interviewed.

One question from How to conduct an interview that appears on page 7 in bold face with a big red ellipsis around it is What do you do in your spare time? Every interviewer asks this question. It's the epitome of "I've run out of crap to ask about", it gives you a chance to bounce back from the favorite color and end the interview on a high note.

Almost everyone gives the same answer to this question. "Free time? I wish I had some of that." Yep, no one has any free time. It almost makes your heart sting. There's no time for free time in our crazy, hectic lives. But *we* have free time. Those of us reading these interviews. I mean don't tell me that reading an interview is part of some planned activity.

Except it's not true. It's a big lie. It's what we say to make our lives seem more meaningful. "Between my career, my health club, my night classes of Japanese, my political activity and Saturdays at the soup kitchen, I barely have any time left for my family, let alone free time." Well I got news for you. Your health club? That's free time. Your political activism? Free time. Photography club? Free time. Company softball team? Free time.

It's all free time. Most people work, so having a job is not really optional. Taking care of your kids isn't either. But everything else is. Whether it's curling or curing cancer. Just because you planned in advanced what you're gonna do in that time doesn't mean you can't cancel in an instant if you wanted to, it's *your* time, *you* decide.

When I was a kid I didn't have as much free time as most kids. I had after school Polish classes once a week and music lessons once a week. That was a real hassle too, the violin teacher lived across town so I would have to take the bus from downtown up there, wait an hour until it was my lesson, have my lesson, have orchestra, then it took me an hour to cross town and get home again. My whole afternoon gone, I would get home at 8pm. I also used to do [organized] sports, never anything for a long time, but I played football for a year and a half, ju-jitsu for 2 years, volleyball for a year and then basketball for a year. I never really fit into organized sports, so I actually played a lot more sports "disorganized". Anyway, violin was a hassle, my lesson was only once a week, but I had to practice an hour everyday, and I didn't like practicing. Finally I quit violin after 5 years. That really freed up my time. Suddenly I felt like I had a lot more free time. That doesn't mean I spent it productively, though. More free time to play computer games, that's where it went.

But in both cases it was *my* time, so if you don't have *any* free time, that's because you've decided you don't want any. If you plan 7 different after school/work activities per week, then you're not interested in free time. Free time is for pragmatics. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." It's not for obsessive planners. Because it's really a matter of definition. If I played football in a club, I would call that my free time. "Yeah, that's what I fill my free time with." Or developing software, yep that's free time. If you don't want to call it that, that's up to you, but it is what it is.

I have akregator and amarok in the systray. Both are minimized, and when restored one covers the other because they occupy the same area on the screen.

1. I'm looking at my desktop when I click on akregator, it appears.
2. I click on amarok, it appears on top.
3. I click on akregator, it appears on top.
4. I click on akregator, it gets minimized, amarok appears.
5. I click on amarok, it gets minimized, showing my desktop.

Akregator and amarok respond the same way to a single click, this makes them easy to use interchangeably, I can go from one to the other and both do the same thing. But not all applications behave like this, for instance some require double clicking to appear. If that's the case, I have to remember which one uses a click and which uses a double click.

Wouldn't it be nice if all applications had the same systray behavior? KDE and Gnome could set up the wiring and provide a default for this. Then an application could override this if it really needed to. :)

I was watching some clips on Youtube and I stumbled upon some good old Apple clips among others. It's amazing how Youtube sucks you in, you're only looking for one specific thing but then you end up watching tons of "related" and "recommended" stuff. Oh well.

Anyway, it made me reflect on some of the biggest personalities in the IT industry. Not necessarily the most influential, but certainly the cult figures if you will, the billboard faces.

First up, Bill Gates. Bill is a deceptive figure in many ways, in interviews and talks he comes across as such a normal person, so much like any engineer. There's also something about this normality that gives him charisma, I have to say I find him quite a personable figure for some reason. Of course he stands at the head of a company that has built up a portfolio of shall we say practice we file under various degrees of "unethical". But still, when he talks about his visions for technology, it comes across as something a technically minded person would think about. And beyond that, being a superbly successful businessman, he seems very unassuming, very humble. The kind of guy you could talk to, and disagree with on many things, but also find agreement on many points.

In contrast, Steve Jobs just freaks me out. I don't know if you've seen one of those keynotes, but the whole thing is not unlike some religious cult. Steve's there speaking, with this strange light in his eyes, as he regards his minions and feels the power of his persona. When he speaks, he gets an immediate response, of cheers or boos (rarely), it's like a Gospel church.

And along with himself, the company image is so conceited as well. "I think you always had to be a little different to buy an Apple Computer. You had to think different about computers. I think you had to think really differently when you bought a Mac. And I think the people who do buy them do think differently. And they are the creative spirits in this world. They are the people who are not just out to get a job done, they're out to change the world." Btw, talk about the least creative company name ever.

Then there's Steve Ballmer. This guy is the creepiest company chief I've ever seen. I mean they actually made the guy from this old commercial head of the biggest company in the world, how insane is that? Ballmer has this odd quality to him that just makes him seem totally and completely unpredictable. Like a ticking time bomb and you never know when he's going to go off. It's basically the nut running the nut house. The chair throwing incident (unfortunately couldn't find the video) is really famous, but it doesn't stop there, he's just stark raving mad.

Children are in a position of disadvantage, they are absolved of power. As a kid there aren't that many things in life you can really decide on, because your mandate keeps getting overruled by a higher office all the time. It would be nice to have some autonomy in this totalitarian regime, but in practice it takes a lot of negotiation and concessions. It's pretty fine diplomacy because of your great disadvantage, it's like Luxembourg negotiating with France. A kid would make a fine political adviser.

Of course, when you're a kid you deal with this everyday, all this is self evident. But people grow up and forget. When I was a kid, I vowed never to forget. Never to become one of those parents who don't understand kids and just pass arbitrary laws. Students are in this position too, they have no power. I always thought that if I ever became a teacher, I would remember what it was like to be a student.

Well, so far I haven't actually put those theories to the test, I'm neither a parent or a teacher. But sometimes I'm reminded of how my values have changed over the years. The other day I saw a couple of people standing in the street. One was holding a bike, the other was standing very close. Since they were far away and both wearing big coats, I couldn't make out what they were doing. "Is it a couple? Are they hugging?" The angle made it hard to see. "No, it's a father and a child sitting on the steering. But why are they just standing there? Oh of course, they're watching the crane!" There's some road work being done in my street these days, they've been digging and they even brought in a crane to help out.

It's hard to remember your values once they're no longer your values, you have to be reminded. One of my biggest moments in early life was operating a small digging machine in an amusement park. I have a picture of it, and it clearly shows how focused I was on what I was doing. When you see a kid, suddenly these things come back to you.

As if the MPAA's (Motion Picture Association of America) credibility wasn't eroding quickly enough, in a recent stunt reported on reddit, they were busted cold for taking free blogging software, deliberately removing all references to its origin, thereby violating its user license.