Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We can’t have both facts and adjectives. Can we?

Facts are facts. It is 27° F outside.

Adjectives are, well sort of fuzzy. It is cold outside. (Cold to whom? Cold compared to what?)

“The fact is, they were aggressive.” Oops. “Aggressive” is an adjective.

“The fact is, he is tall.” Well, “tall” is an adjective, but 98.6% of the world considers someone who is seven feet tall to be, well, you know “tall.”

Engineering specifications should be facts that are measurable and testable. Engineers should express the goals of a system with adjectives like, “happy users” and “easy to use.”

Good grief; this is confusing. “Confusing” is an adjective. Good grief. I think “good grief” is all adjectives as well.

This gives me a headache. Oops. Can’t measure a headache. Is a headache a fact or an adjective?

Why can’t this be simpler? (yet another adjective) This requires work and effort and caring to find facts and use adjectives when they are appropriate. This is our task. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Is it alright to declare that we behave erratically and that others just need to watch out for us and be cautious?

Recently, while driving on the Interstate, I saw a sign posted on a car:

• CAUTION
• Sudden lane changes
• Frequent stops

Oh, just declare that we drive erratically, so just watch out for us. Silly, of course. How could someone declare to the world, “I don’t obey the rules. If you are near me, be cautious because you just don’t know what I will do?” And do this on the public roads? Watch out! I swerve in and out of traffic and drive fast and slow and all kinds of crazy things. It’s okay for me to drive like that because I put a sign on my car. Huh?

Consider this: CAUTION, this is an R&D project. We don’t know if we can build the system we want. We only have a 50% chance of succeeding. Senior management knows all this and approved funding for it. Here we go. Let’s see what happens.

Oh, well, that’s okay, I guess. I sure wish senior management would let me work like that. If I goof and don’t deliver, that’s okay. Right?

Sigh. I don’t know. Wise groups of people can declare CAUTION, THIS MAY NOT WORK on a few projects. How many is a “few?” Wise persons need to decide. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

A different take on the technology roadmap.

This story goes back some 25 years (yes, I am that old), but it still applies. There were guys trying to do a technology roadmap that was nice and linear and just right. You know, this year we are using this technology, we will move to that technology next year, and so on until in five years we will be using the other technology.

Nice, straight timeline you could draw with a ruler.

Someone suggested take a view was that of a fishing rod. The part next to your hand is stiff while the far end is thin and flexible. You would wiggle your and and that part of the rod moved just a little. The far end would bend and flex a lot.

Liken this to a cone that is horizontal. The vertex or point is lying to the left on a time axis. The base or wide part is lying to the right on a time axis.

The tech experiments to the left (near time) are fixed. We perform those few experiments. The results could point in a few directions. As time progresses the possibilities of experiments expands. On a cone, this looks linear, but is really non-linear as the cone is a three-dimensional object.

What happens three years from now? We don’t know. There are many experiments to be performed between now and then with many different outcomes leading to many different experiments.

There are many paths between now and three, five, ten, twenty years from now.

Think back folks. The iPhone changed the world and it isn’t twenty years old. Who would have thought that we would carry supercomputers and the best cameras in the world in our pocket?

The cone expresses that well. A technology roadmap that fits in a rectangle does not.
Imagine the fishing rod. Forget the ruler. Yikes. This can be scary, but it can also be enlightening.

by Dwayne Phillips

Should we have a meeting? Here is one test to help answer that question.

Should we have a meeting once a week with everyone attending?

Probably not. We can use a bulletin board to tell everyone this week’s news. We’ll put the news on the computer network of course because we have computer networks and why use a plain old real-life proven-to-work bulletin board when we can waste computer resources?

One reason for a real-life meeting: there is a bit of news that everyone should here from one person in one place and at one time.

For example,

• The organization is laying off 10% of the workforce.
• The head of the organization is being replaced.
• The organization is being re-organized and everyone will move to a different desk today.

The list can go on and on.

Otherwise, the bulletin board or email or such works just fine. Everyone receives the same information but at different times. The different times to receive doesn’t matter.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes the better thing to do is accept whatever the situation and move to the next step.

Person A: It’s not my fault.

Person B: It’s not my fault, either.

Person A: Whose fault is it?

Person B: Let’s accept that it isn’t either one of our faults and move to the next step.

Sometimes, that is the better thing to do. None of us (whoever “us” might be) did anything to cause this situation. Not much use in thinking about cause, fault, and those types of things. The better thing to do is accept whatever the situation and move to the next step.

Person A and Person B: Any ideas on what to do next?

by Dwayne Phillips

There are times when a good thing to do is put one or both hands in my pockets before doing something else.

In the late 1970s (yes, I am that old), a college professor was working with us know-nothing students in an electrical engineering lab. The experiment of the week involved a little higher-than-normal voltage. As usual, we students didn’t know what we were doing, so the professor intervened. We noted that he first put one hand deep into a pants pocket before reaching out with the other hand.

We later learned that one-hand-in-the-pocket was a safety measure. If one hand became hung up in an electrical circuit, the other hand would be safe and useful in calming the emergency.

We later learned that sometimes you put both hands deeply in your pockets before entering a situation. There are times when I shouldn’t touch anything. Such as with high-voltage rooms, guns, and other possibly life-threatening items. Both hands deeply in your pockets. There, no possibility of touching something that I shouldn’t touch. Both hands deeply in your pockets also prevents touching something of great temptation that I shouldn’t touch (someone else’s super cute baby is one such situation).

The hand or hands in the pockets rule has saved me many times. I recall one was Christmas Day of 1982 when a technician was showing me an electrical fault that was deadly. The technician neglected to warn me ahead of time. Having both hands in my pockets prevented me from touching a piece of equipment that was “hot,” i.e., would have knocked me out on the floor had I put my hand on it.

Remember the one or both hands in the pocket idea. Use it more often than you think you should. It could save you.

by Dwayne Phillips

We have emotions. That is fine. Feel fill-in-the-blank fully and deeply for ten minutes. Get over it and move on.

About ten years ago I was writing proposals for a company. The day before I had finished a couple of pages for a proposal. New orders came down. “We decided to change our approach. Revise those pages to a new approach.”

I sat in a person’s office when we heard the news. Well, what to do? I told the other person “I will be mad for ten minutes and then rewrite the pages. I should be done in a couple of hours.”

I wish I could claim the origin of this idea, but once again someone else taught me what I am passing along in this little blog post.

We have emotions. Many of us engineers and others of the same ilk deny such, but it is true. It is okay to admit and have emotions. Do it. Do it full force. Do it for ten minutes and move on.

Angry? Be as angry as you can without destroying things or others for ten minutes. Move on.

Disappointed? Be as disappointed as you can without destroying things or others for ten minutes. Move on.

Add to the list as appropriate.

Feel fill-in-the-blank as hard as you can for ten minutes. Move on.

We can do this.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are many ways to show respect. One is simply to be one time for interviews and other meetings.

I hope to be employed by an employers by the time this post is posted. I have interviewed with many people these last six months. Some folks are courteous and respectful. Some, well, not so much.

One way to show respect is the be punctual, i.e., simply show up on time.

Sometimes that isn’t possible. Sometimes the previous engagement spills overtime into this one. Sometimes there are some times when stuff happens and all that. Then there are the rest of the times. Be on time the rest of the times.

People all have the same amount of time. Some meetings, like job interviews for unemployed persons, are important and filled with anxiety and expectation. If you don’t show up on time, you crush hopes. That is a bad thing to do to other persons.

Show some respect. Be on time. Please. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

It is Christmas again. Let’s make the most of it.

This is to be posted two days before Christmas. I write it a month earlier than that. I have looked back at a few Christmas blog posts and repeat some of the words from some of the prior ones. Funny how they still are true.

Fifty-one percent of the country is happy about the recent election. Fifty percent of the country isn’t so happy. What to do?

It is a holiday.

• Celebrate as much as you can.
• Help others as much as you can.
• If you can’t be with someone, call them and tell them you wish you could see them and hug them.
• Wish well for others.
• Show kindness.

And on the day after Christmas…do the same. And the day after that…do the same. Repeat daily.

Give it a try.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes the good ideas are lurking in the wrong places.

Looking for good ideas? Look at bad sources.

Read a crummy book. In it I will find, “Now that sentence there is a good idea for a book or something. Why didn’t this person write the book about that instead of the junk they wrote about?”

Crummy magazine article, same thing, “That is an interesting point. The rest of this is junk.”

Look at:

• Any movie
• Any TV show episode
• Any speech
• Any sermon
• and so on

Buried in a crummy source is a good idea. That is one reason the crummy source is so crummy. The creator went the wrong way with the wrong idea. The right way and the good idea are lurking in all that crummy material. Use the good idea.