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Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Entries from March 2020

You Need Some Basic Vocabulary to Start

March 30th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips People can learn. A little basic vocabulary plus the desire to work hard means they are qualified to move into something new. Years ago, a young woman told me about how she wanted to move into a Spanish linguist job. She had an English-Spanish dictionary and some books written in Spanish. She […]

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Tags: Commitment · Competence · Learning · Vocabulary

The Memorandum for the Record

March 26th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips A few thoughts on an item that has been forgotten in the workplace and society in general, the Memorandum for the Record.   Question: Can you believe what just happened? We should tell somebody. Somebody needs to know this. What do we do?  Answer: Write a Memorandum for the Record or MFR.  Follow-up […]

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Tags: Accountability · Communication · History · Journal · Record · Writing

Abuse and Abusers and Other Parts of the English Language

March 23rd, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Some of life’s more complicated moral issues are fairly simple when we use words per their meanings. Want to stop abuse at fill-in-the-blank? Don’t bring in abusive persons, i.e., abusers. Want to stop lying? Don’t bring in lying persons, i.e., liars. Funny how the English language works and answers our own questions.

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Tags: Ethics · Language · Word

Software “Stacks”: A Bad Idea

March 19th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I don’t like the metaphor of the software “stack,” never have. Here is one explanation why. I wrote some software on a recent Saturday afternoon. I used Google’s Colaboratory, Jupyter Notebooks, Python, String libraries, Regular Expressions, HTML, and a few other things. I think folks call that a “software stack” these days. […]

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Tags: Concepts · Software · Technology

Getting There from Here

March 16th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We are here, we want to be there. The words we use to describe these places has much to do with the journey. We have a massive project. I have to write just ten lines of Python code. It’s the same. We start at one point and want to reach another point. […]

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Tags: Communication · General Systems Thinking · Word

The Logical Conclusion … Need Not Reach Its Conclusion

March 12th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We can think to the logical conclusion of a concept. We, however, can choose not to go to that conclusions. We rarely do. The logical conclusion of free enterprise is slavery. The logical conclusion of free speech is hate. The logical conclusion of survival of the fittest is murder. Many more examples […]

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Tags: Adults · Alternatives · Analysis · Choose · Decide · Differences · Ethics

Did We Really Need those Conferences Anyway?

March 9th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The conferences are cancelled this year. Will we miss them? Really? I suppose that 2020 will be remembered as the year of the coronavirus. Right or wrong, and we may never know if we were right or wrong in all this, people stayed home. We hid from mass gatherings—I didn’t know that […]

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Tags: Conference · Economics · Meetings · People

Fake News is News. Are We Listening?

March 5th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Consider some rules of the English language. Afterwards, let’s start listening to what is said. Allow me to digress a few moments into English language and usage. Fake news is news. Notice the noun “news” is there in the phrase “fake news.” The word “fake” is merely an adjective attached to the […]

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Tags: Adults · Fairy Tales · Fun · Information · Listening · Meta

Misinformation, Disinformation, Entertainment, and Questions

March 2nd, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We seem to have confused ourselves once again. Perhaps simply asking a few questions would quell all the hyperventilating. Is it misinformation or disinformation? I confuse the two. Is either a real word or something a word inventor invented last week because he couldn’t find his dictionary and an appropriate word among […]

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Tags: Adults · Information · Questions · Thinking