I went to the carnival fair, not sure what the English word is, but the one with the Ferris wheel, throwing balls at cans and such. I love going there, ever since I was a child, and I realised something today. The environment of a carnival is naturally against you. If you would go there to win at the games it would be a horrible experience, as you would need to invest so much money to even get the grand prize it is crazy.

I hardly win at the games, as is the intention of the game, whether it is Skee-ball or tin can toss. I am pretty okay at the shooting gallery, but even there you calculate the amount of points you need for any of the prizes and it quickly escalates how much money you would need to spend for a particular prize. If you wanted to, you could probably buy it cheaper at an online store with shipping included, but again I feel that is not the point.

The point of the carnival is to have a fun experience. You just enjoy throwing those balls and shooting and playing the crane/claw game because it is an experience you only get to have at the carnival. I love the bright lights, music and atmosphere there. Even though I am not a big fan of crowds it feels somehow quite cozy as everyone there is to be there in order to share this experience with all the strangers there. It is not uncommon to see everyone cheer if someone wins because it is just cool to see someone winning and knowing they will get to go home with a nice big stuffed animal that will remind them of this glorious day.

Today I got to see children enjoying the carousel (merry-go-round) and other teens going crazy over the gigantic cotton candy they were able to acquire. I saw people just having fun and some boasting on how well they survived a thrilling ride.

New job

I recently started a new job with a new team. The mindset of that team is quite different to what I have been used to, or cultivated, over the last few years. I was responsible for making things work to perfection across all situations and operating systems. It needed to work on Windows, MacOS X (both Intel and ARM) and of course any number of Linux distributions. So all my code was über cross platform capable and checked for so many things so developers across many teams could hardly do it “wrong”.

Currently I work in a small team and all of us run the same environments. So chances are 97% that if I write it once for me, it will work for them as well. It takes a change for me to get used to for sure. Right now every PR seems to be fraught with small changes that pertain to this which caused a bit of friction within me.

Once I realised this change (due to the carnival and talking to people about it), I now can try to actively switch over and see if it improves it all.