The postman is doing my head in. 

It started even before the pandemic — on the days when I was working from home, that person never even tried to ring the bell. They always go straight to my postbox with a notice. I have often wondered why I must pick up my letter or package from the post office. Something isn’t working here.

As an engineer, you get into a habit of trying to understand a given problem and coming up with a solution. 

And so, I suspect that this is a systemic failure. Maybe they have too many packages to deliver daily, and carrying them around is impossible. So they leave the parcels in the car and only hand out notices by default.

Either way, there's much to learn from the flawed processes and broken things. 

As children, many of us would crack broken electronics open to see what was inside. 

The same applies to the most remarkable scientific endeavours, like studying the human mind.

Things that stop working correctly are like cracks in otherwise impenetrable monoliths. They let us peek inside. The only thing to say in the beginning is, “Oh, that's interesting.” But if we keep digging and look beyond the obvious, we may learn something new.

Karl Deisseroth presents this idea in his book “Projections.” See this passage about genetic mutations:

Biologists speak of genetic mutations that are "loss of function" or "gain of function" – this means that a change has happened, a mutation that turns the function of the gene up or down. These mutations help reveal what the gene is for.

But let’s leave genetic mutations to biologists and return to undelivered mail.

I’ve analysed the figure of the postman, but there is also something about the notice itself that I found interesting:

Monday 12:00-20:00

Tuesday 12:00-20:00

Wednesday 12:00-20:00

Thursday 12:00-20:00

Friday 12:00-20:00

Saturday 00:00-00:00

Sunday 00:00-00:00

The weekend opening hours caught my attention immediately. Is the office open throughout the weekend? Or is it closed? Is it the same for both Saturday and Sunday?

In my daily work, I do a lot of data modelling; hence I went straight to guessing what technology was used to store the data and how it was modelled. Seeing something not working brings much more value if you know how it's made.

The first implementation in Kotlin that came to my mind looks like this:

The last two fields – start and end – are not nullable, meaning they need to have a value. To satisfy this condition, someone might have needed to put zeroes there.

But at the same time, it's the same exercise as looking at a puddle of water and guessing the shape of an ice cube that melted:

As developers, we have access to many tools to study the system. HTTP 500 error pages in the browser often include error messages easily deciphered by any of the system's authors. Even more informative are the stack traces:

They look ugly, but they're our favourite thing, showing almost all the necessary details.

Some ideas are not apparent mistakes until we try to implement them. You need to put everything to the test.

While talking to Lex, Rick Rubin, the legendary music producer, describes one of the rules that work well for him while working with bands. And he has quite an experience — he's worked with Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Adele, Kanye West, and many others. 

The rule says that no idea gets rejected until it's tested. You're not allowed to say no until you hear it. Only then can everyone see how it turns out and discuss it further to decide if it's worth pursuing.

I imagine that with music and the world's most accomplished musicians giving an idea a go is not very costly. 

Creating software and writing working code means crazy costs. But there are shortcuts to verification that we can take. We can visualise what we mean with ad hoc drawings, stickies even. Whatever it is, it needs to facilitate communication. Otherwise, if we describe an idea in our own words and someone confirms they understand, what makes us think they fully understood? Or rather that their understanding is anywhere close to ours?

Coming back to Karl Deisseroth's book “Projections,” there is another passage about people's personal stories revealing biological truths:

Just as when a fabric frays, its hidden structural threads can be revealed (or when a bit of DNA mutates, the original functions of the damaged gene can be inferred), the broken describe the unbroken – and so each story underscores how the hidden inner experiences of healthy human beings, and perhaps of a doctor as well, might be revealed by the even more cryptic and shadowed experiences of psychiatric patients.

That happens in almost every book and movie you've ever seen. You meet the protagonist under certain circumstances. Then the situation changes, and they need to adjust. In the end, we see a completely different person. 

Try to notice what the main character is like in the first scenes. Chances are that the journey ahead of them is all about changing the most striking character traits.

My favourite example of misalignment between a character and her new life situation is Ann Hathaway's Rebekah Neumann in “We Crashed.” Just like her husband, she doesn't change much throughout the mini-series. 

I enjoyed seeing her in action for different reasons. She's a self-proclaimed Student of life for life (SOLFL, pronounced soulful), taking inspiration from Eastern spiritual traditions. But is she? 

To me, the most comic moments are all the times her ego takes control. She weaves her power and brings misery onto anyone who questions her. The camera helps us see the rage in her eyes, a hint that there's yet another absurd harm coming someone's way. And she doesn't learn. She doesn't change one bit. You could say she remains true to herself! 

The story of WeWork's sudden rise and unavoidable crush shows that the naive adoption of thousands of years old Easter tradition into slogans like elevating the world's consciousness is not the way to go. Good thing someone else has tried, and now we know how it’s turned out.

I still don't know what to do about the postman. They told me I could file a complaint, but they outsource deliveries, so it's unlikely to have any effect. It must be one of the things we can't influence. I also have no idea what exactly should be changed. I can't let my ego get the better side of me, but accept it as a constraint. No negative reaction. 

Would I have to sell the apartment? Let it be.