Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips
Staying in other people’s houses shows what I miss from my own.
I am in Louisiana for a week visiting with family. There are items that I have in my house in Reston that are not in the houses I am staying. I understand that these are personal preferences, and that everyone has their [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
We don’t accept every new gadget that comes from the mind of an engineer. New uses need to be demonstrated for new technologies to take hold. Either that or new generations come along with different values.
New technology comes every day. We immediately accept it into our lives without a thought of its long-term [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
I perform better when I feel better. I can decide to feel better thereby improve my performance.
Have you ever had the opportunity to (safely) crash someone else’s car? To spin the tires? To do a 180-degree spin? I had the good fortune to do that about 30 years ago. It was great fun [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Written rules and regulations restrict us. They also allow us to forget about some hazards and concentrate freely on the problem at hand. Restrictions can permit freedom. The trick is to learn where the areas of freedom exist and how to use them.
A colleague was contrasting the type of people who are sticklers [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Most computer programmers and builders of systems see ourselves as being helpful to the people who use the things we build. Beware, as most users of the things we build see us as interfering in their lives. This situation applies to must people in the world who see themselves as helpful (consider, as [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
To provide a system for users, we need to know the users. How can we know the users without being a user and forgetting about the providers?
I once worked a couple of years in an American Embassy in Africa. A constant concern at the U.S. Department of State was that its employees would [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Situations change and people adapt to those changes. Has adapting to chance taken away your  ability to adapt?
Change is constant
Okay, that is neither original nor brilliant. It does, however, describe my experiences.
Groups of people adapt
Another observation that is neither original nor brilliant.
What many people fail to observe is how to have groups of [...]

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