Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the better solutions to a difficult problem is simply to trying harder.

I was 17. I was a high school senior. It was baseball practice. I was the senior, the guy who knew stuff. The underclassmen were looking at me. I was supposed to teach them how to turn a double play.

My only thought was, “You need to move your hands faster. Concentrate on moving your hands faster. Focus on that. Do that.”

In other words, “Try harder.”

The advice worked on some of them. Some others rolled their eyes.

If you want to complete a task at work in less time, one of the better things to do is focus on completing the task in less time. Forget process improvement and management seminars and all the rest. Try harder on that one area. It might be what works. In my experience, I see it working often.

If you want to complete at task at work with higher quality, one of the better things to do is focus on completing the task with higher quality. Try harder on that one area.

I could go on with examples from my past and different tasks at work. Often, I simply had to try harder. Simple. Not always easy. Harder is the opposite of easier. I find it unfortunate at times, but this works.

Careful how this advice is given. It is easy to hear the big, mean, old boss saying, “You are lazy. You aren’t trying hard enough!”

Instead, try, “I am not managing this work well. We are failing in speed or quality or something. I want to focus on speed or quality or something. Let’s try again.”

We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Attempts to put unstructured information into a structure had their day. Goodbye to them.

Much of the information that people use is unstructured. Consider a novel you like. Consider a text that is the foundation of a field of study. Not much structure that is easy to ingest into a computer.

Until now.

Since 2008, I have kept records of job searches, interviews, and the like. I typed those records in a Google Docs file. If I were to print it, and I am not printing it, it consumes 600 pages. It is unstructured. It is readable by humans only.

Until now.

I drug a copy of the text file into several of these chattering bots. When did I apply to a job with ACME Inc? What job was it? What was the outcome? Bang. Boom. Pow. Out pops the answer. The chattering bots understand the unstructured structure.

For years, I contemplated making a JSON or XML or something file with this information. That would allow me to query the structured information using a Structured Query Language or something. That would be the only way for me to find information.

Until now.

New tools. Some old problems solved. Waiting had its benefits. YAGNI (you aren’t gonna’ need it) came true in this case.

Goodbye JSON, XML, and the like. You worked in your era. Times change.

by Dwayne Phillips

College professors and other educators continue to struggle needlessly with writing assignments and AI-regurgitated text.

Here we have yet another story of a teacher with the best of intentions trying to have students write papers in the era of the current slate of AI systems that pump out text at the push of a button. Alas, some of these teachers with good intentions just don’t get it.

The writing assignment is a waste of time. It is needless. Admit that and omit it.

Assignment: research the writing of the Declaration of Independence or the use of robotic technology in delicate surgery or some other topic. Write a ten-page report on the topic.

Good grief. That is a mechanical exercise. And some folks are surprised that we have built machines that can do the mechanical exercise. Why don’t you just have the students look up the times tables and report on them? Needless. Machines can spew the answers.

Counter: learners should be able to write. I agree. Let’s have them write. AI slop? Come on. Think.

Assignment: watch this movie. Tell me what you think of it. Tell me something that only you know down deep inside you. What person in your life comes to mind while watching this movie? What did that person do to you? No one else has the answer you have. Write it.

That is not a mechanical exercise. We can’t build a machine that knows the deep core of beliefs of an individual.

Tell me something that only you know.

Another counter: that is okay for the fine arts. What about technology?

Assignment: perform an experiment that only you have performed—no one else has done this. Only you know what you did. Only you know the results. Write about that.

Tell me something that only you know.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, you have to work hard to untangle what someone is trying to convey. Then again, if their words are tangled, maybe they don’t have anything to convey.

I spend much of my days untangling the words of others. Long documents; long talks, and the like. What is that person trying to convey? Print the document with a wide margin. Note key words and phrases. Draw pencil lines connecting similar thoughts. Key on the active words. Find the message!

Sometimes if the other person, the person who tangled everything, tangled all the words, they didn’t have a cogent thought to express. Perhaps all that tangling indicates confusion.

Untangling can reveal the key thought. Untangling can also reveal confusion. Which is which? I wish I knew ahead of time. Still, that’s the task at hand. Give it a good effort and either learn the idea or learn that the person could use some advising and assistance.

by Dwayne Phillips

A long time ago, a substitute teacher in one of my classes was so interesting that teenagers cut their regular classes to sneak into his class and learn.

I think it was 1972 or 1973 in Southern California. We were hippies or thought we were or wanted to be. And teenage hippies did not attend their regular classes. Instead, the crept into a class taught by a suit-wearing, short-haired, military veteran.

Crazy? Yes. And it happened.

This was 8th grade. It was American history. For some reason, our teacher was out for two weeks. In walked this older man wearing a dark suit (white shirt and thin tie and all) with a short, short haircut. After ten minutes of talking about the US Constitution, he switched to telling stories about the US military. This was at the height of the anti-military period in Southern California—the pinnacle of anti-military feeling.

We were enthralled. He was a former Navy scuba diver. He had worked with dolphins. He had worked as a military advisor in Hollywood. He had done all sorts of things including earning a degree in History.

We were enthralled.

Word spread quickly. Our friends cut, ditched, skipped (whatever you call it now) their regular classes and came into our class room. They sat on the floor behind the back row to avoid notice. No one said a word.

We were enthralled.

We learned more US history in those two weeks than in the rest of the school year. We were yearning for learning.

The two weeks ended. The regular teacher returned. The same old same old continued. I never forgot those two weeks.

Kids, even American teenagers, yearn to learn. Let us not forget that.

by Dwayne Phillips

Writing is a skill (and an art). How do you improve a skill? Do it again tomorrow.

Here is some old advice to improving as a writer: write everyday.

I don’t have all the quotes to repeat here. I wish I did. I wish I could give credit to those who have written this advice much better than I write this advice.

One writer advised to write something about my past, growing up, etc. everyday for 30 days in a row. At the end of 30 days, I would be writing better. And I would remember my past better and would be able to write a much better memoir.

One writer advised to write a short story every week. No one, the advice continued, could write 52 bad short stories in a row.

One writer advised writing four or five hours a day. Writing three novels a year was mildly prolific as five or six novels a year would be appropriate. Again, how can you write six bad novels in a row?

I wrote a novel in one month. Remember NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month. Too bad it is gone.

And the advice from well-known writers continues. I think Stephen King wrote that all a writer needs is a room with a door that will shut. He wrote something like that. Good advice.

Write again tomorrow.

by Dwayne Phillips

Big tech advise$ educator$ to drop the coding and teach the AI.

Every few years, rich people advise educators on what to educate. This advice often comes as, “Here is money for an after-school program,” and “here is money for in-school programs,” and “here is money, do what we say or else.”

When my kids were in school, it appeared as if the math books were written by a company that made calculators. The textbooks were full of color photographs of that company’s calculators with instructions on how to use them. Amazing stuff. Great advice.

A few years ago, the rich tech companies were doing “the hour of code” and such. They lobbied state$ to include computer science as required course$ for high $chool graduation. Great stuff! And, by the way, the more people who knew programming, the more choices employers had, and the lower the salaries they had to pay to hire programmers. Well, that was a convenient side result.

Now, the rich tech companies want schools to have “the hour of AI” and such. AI skills should be taught in school.

I learned matrix multiplication when I was in school back in the time of scratching on cave walls with rocks. Surely they still teach these math operations that are the basis of AI? Oh wait, that’s not the type of AI the tech companies want to teach. They want to teach the kids to turn to this chattering bot instead of that one because we make this one and we want you to pay for our chattering bot not the other fellas’ chattering bot. Oh, that type of education.

Sigh. I guess I am too simple minded to understand the education industry. Teach kids to read. Teach kids math. Teach kids to ask questions, seek answers, and learn. And let kids be kids. They are the ones who invent the new stuff.

Ye$, I replaced many of the “s” in this blog post with “$.” No, not a coincidence. I find it unfortunate that much of what is taught in $chools is there because someone went around the block and paid someone else. Perhap$ some good will come of it.

by Dwayne Phillips

We tend to ban the latest tools in school so that students won’t “cheat.” Today’s kids laugh at what prior generations banned.

My granddaughter is in high school (I have to take a moment to comprehend how that happened so fast). We had a short discussion last night on tools for learning. I asked if any students used Claude, ChatGPT et al. in school.

“No,” she quickly answered. “Those are not allowed.”

“When your dad was in high school, they would not allow them to use Wikipedia,” I said.

She almost fell on the floor in disbelief. She protested that Wikipedia was a good source of information and required you to find things and quote things and, and, and how could that be banned.?

Wikipedia was banned in high school a generation ago. She couldn’t imagine that.

And then I went back to my generation. Calculators were banned in college exams. My granddaughter had no response for that one. When her father and mother were in middle school, the math books had pages and pages teaching how to use calculators from Texas. The math books still do.

Those who run the schools ban a tool for one generation. Those who run the schools teach how to use that same tool to the next generation. Ban it this week; teach it next week. I guess we call this progress? I don’t know.

Still, sometimes it is funny to relate to the current generation how the old folks did silly things back in the day.

by Dwayne Phillips

Now and then, something surfaces that is BIG and IMPORTANT. What was believed to be important in the past isn’t. Move on. Who, however, moves on?

Person A: Look what I found. This is important.

Person B: What now?

Person A: No look. This is really important. This is the way we should go. This will change everything.

Person B: Okay, I see the merit. And …

Person A: Great. You see that this is far more important than what you wanted earlier. So you’ll drop that, right?

Person B: Uh, now what a moment.

Person A: Come on. You agree that this surpasses your old ideas.

Person B: Yes, it does. It also surpasses your old ideas, right>

Person A: Well, yes. It does. But

Person B: So how about you drop your old ideas, I keep my old ideas, and we combine my old ideas with this new idea that surpasses everything?

Person A: Well, I just assumed we would combine my old ideas with this new idea and …

Person B: Why not the other way around? We agree that this new idea surpasses both our old ideas. You won’t mind dropping your ideas.

At this point in the conversation, a third and wiser person enters the room and shows the loss of rational thought in Person A and Person B. It is a shame, however, that the third and wiser person rarely exists and walks into the room at just the right moment. It is left to Person A and Person B to resolve this. We can do this. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

We have invented a new job: it is the chatic (pronounced like “static”) or the chattering bot technician.

I often work as a chattering bot technician. Substitute the name of your favorite system (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Coilot, Mistral, Qwen, Grok, etc.) for chattering bot and you have it. We employ “ChatGPT technicians” and “Claude technicuans.”

I use one of these chattering bot at least half the day to manipulate information. Information in, information out in a different format that people want. Is it programming? Is it engineering? I don’t know. It is somewhat technical and reduced from art to a science of sorts.

I think that makes me a technician: a worker who has special skills and training in a practical, technical, or scientific field. Their main job is to install, test, fix, or run machines and equipment. (from Wikipedia)

I run the chattering bot.

Okay, “chattering bot technician” takes too long to say and type. Let’s shorten it to “chat tech.” That is two words and two syllables. Well, you know how we like to mumble and slur things together. After five minutes and five utterances, we have one word of two syllables or “chattech.” Well, let’s slur that together to make it even faster to mumble.

Before you know it, we are spewing out “chatic” in the same rhythm and emphasis that we say the word “static.”

Now the boss says, “Meet Dwayne. He’s one of our chatics. He’s been doing chatic for a year.”

New job. New profession. New title. Let’s see if it catches on. Probably not, but it’s worth a try.