Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The success of many endeavors should lead to dissolving the endeavor. It is unfortunate, however, that the result is often bureaucracy.

I have seen it many times.

Let’s start an association:

to improve the performance of X,

to increase the awareness of Y,

to teach the practice of Z, or

some such noble task.

People form the association, they perform the work, they accomplish the goal, i.e., they succeed. Now what?

One next step is to dissolve the association. It is no longer needed as the reason for its existence is gone.

Another next step is to continue the association and grow it. Collect dues; establish rules of membership; lobby the legislature, and go big time. In other words, create a bureaucracy. The bureaucracy appeals to the ego. I mean, I could be the founder and president of a 10,000-member association that I started with three friends at my kitchen table. Wow! Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to have said at my funeral?

Of course the bureaucracy could be bloated, wasteful, corrupt, and generally be a big waste of time.

Choices, choices, choices.

by Dwayne Phillips

To gain approval for an endeavor, you must “sell” it to those who decide such things. Then, as work progresses, you must continue to engage those who decide and keep the project “sold.”

I hate this topic. That is because one of my worst experiences in my career was due to my ignorance of it. I had this naive belief that once the powers that be decided to do something, that was that. Get to work and do it. Let me attempt to express this as a sort of conversation.

High Manager: We have decided to do Project X. Dwayne, you execute the project. You have the resources, get to it.

Dwayne: Yes all-knowing,  grand-exalted High Manager. I will put my head down and work, work, work.

…some time later

Low-Ranking Person: I hate Project X. I think it is stupid. I think I’ll kill it.

Dwayne: But the High Manger(s) decided to do it and allocated the resources for it. They are High Managers, you are a Low-Ranking Person, this doesn’t make sense to naive engineers like myself.

Low-Ranking Person: Some High Managers decided to do project X. Some of them have moved on to other grand, high-exalted positions. We have a few new High Managers who are my friends. I’ll visit them in the evening for some informal chats.

Dwayne: Huh?

…some time later

Low-Ranking Person: Did you know that Dwayne is running wild on Project X, and that Project X is stupid.

New High Manager: Is that so? I’ll have to keep an eye on Dwayne and that stupid Project X.

Low-Ranking Person: We should cancel Project X and do away with that dastardly Dwayne.

New High Manager: Sounds like a sensible idea.

…some time later

New High Manager: Dwayne, Project X is cancelled and you are fired.

Dwayne: Huh?

…

My failure was that I did not pay attention to the comings and goings of High Managers. I also did not continue to speak with the High Managers about the wise decision the prior High Managers made, i.e., I did not work to keep the project sold.

The Low Ranking Person worked to sell a new idea to new High Managers. I felt what they did was unethical, but then again, I was a naive, put-your-head-down-and-work engineer.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some of today’s more efficient technologies are efficient because we are lazy.

FORTRAN is an efficient programming language. The executable files are small. The programs execute quickly. There is a simple reasons why FORTRAN is an efficient programming language: the compilers were created at a time when computing resources were much less than they are today.

We should update the compilers to take advantage of today’s more abundant computing resources. We, however, don’t update them. We have more important things to do with our time. Well, maybe it’s just because we have things to do that we like more than updating old compilers.

This is also known as being lazy.

That is a bit more blunt than, “we have limited personnel expertise and have based allocation of resources on return on investment analysis,” but is also a bit more closer to the truth.

by Dwayne Phillips

The application of augment reality glasses remains the same as it always has been. The trouble is that application isn’t fashionable or cool.

Google Glass is up and down these days. I can’t follow the story, so I don’t know if it is dead or reborn or something.

The application of augmented reality glasses remains as it always has been:

Augmented reality glasses are useful in situations when a person is using both hands for a critical task.

Consider a car mechanic who has both hands grasping tools in the middle of an engine and needs to understand what that little part in front of him is and is supposed to do and how it is supposed to appear and so on. The mechanic can’t stop and find answers in a manual or online. The mechanic needs the augmented reality glasses to recognize the part and display pertinent information.

Now consider a surgeon who has both hands holding tools inside your chest on the operating table. Hmm, that’s a bit more important than an oil change on your car.

Now consider a parent holding a baby still with both hands while trying to determine how to remove that object that is preventing the baby from breathing. Again, a bit more important than an oil change.

These examples are much more important that pointing Google Glass towards a city block full of restaurants while trying to learn which has the best, latest reviews for Chinese food.

It is a matter of perspective.

by Dwayne Phillips

Every now and then we remember that we can allow a person to help another person and that we have the technology to enable that.

Be My Eyes is a combined application and service that helps sight-impaired people see things clearly. The impaired person points their smartphone at a thing and is connected to a fully sighted person. The fully sighted person helps the sight-impaired person understand the thing. Our software technology doesn’t understand the thing as well as a person.

This isn’t the only app in the world that employs a person to help software help another person. A key to these apps is the communications infrastructure we have and the smartphone that has a camera and a gateway to the communications infrastructure.

I think this is the near-term future of person-helping software. Of course near-term is subjective and may mean anything from one week to one century.

I believe that person-helping software is the only kind that has any value.

Video games are nice, but pale when compared to helping a blind person take medicine that will heal instead of medicine that will kill.

by Dwayne Phillips

When a performer doesn’t perform as predicted, the predictor is in the wrong. Too bad that we usually fail to recognize that.

I write this the week after all the big tech companies posted their quarterly financial reports. Some companies didn’t perform as expected, i.e., as predicted. The result was that the stock price, i.e., the value of the company fell the next day. The company was punished for not performing as predicted.

I find that odd. What I see is that the predictors were wrong. They predicted one future, while the future was something else. They need to adjust their predictions so that they are closer to reality the next time.

I work with several non-profit organizations that depend on volunteers. Sometimes the volunteers don’t volunteer as many resources as someone predicts. The result is that the volunteers are harangued with pep talks that hope to encourage them to meet the predictions of the predictors. Again, I see the fault in the predictors. They need to learn something and improve their predictions.

I don’t understand why the performs—the companies and the volunteers in these examples—are the ones “punished.” Why aren’t the predictors taken to task? My guess at the answer is that the predictors are the ones who have the power to punish, and we know that we don’t punish ourselves when there is someone else handy.

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s be practical, but let’s still try to attain what we wish. When told that something is “for someone else,” question to motives of the person telling you that.

I first encountered this practice when I was in high school. I attended a small, rural high school in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana (Loranger High School). These places are so small and obscure that all the spelling checkers are telling me that these words are not in the dictionaries.

The guidance counselor constantly told the kids, yes, we were kids, that they should attend some type of vocational-technical training. Attending college was for other people, someone else. The kids believed her. That was too bad.

I have found this many times since. Writing a book, earning PhD, marrying a good person, etc.—these were things for someone else. You should settle for far less.

I do not advocate people blindly quitting their jobs and going for the billion-dollar bonanza. I have see too many people fall into bankruptcy doing that. I am practical, but I am for people trying to attain something they wish to attain.

When someone tells you that your wish is for someone else, not for you, stop and consider the advice. Also consider the source of the advice. Is the adviser trying to keep you out of their own little exclusive and exclusionary club?

by Dwayne Phillips

Don’t look to the provider’s user manual; look to the rest of us.

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to write about this topic. Almost everyone already knows this, but for the record…

I ran into this situation again this week. I was learning how to use a large, complex piece of software (or as everyone calls them these days, “an app.”). The person showing me the app reminded me of a simple technique,

For help, Google the topic.

Of course. If you are using any app that has more than a thousand users, go to Google (or Bing or Yahoo or your favorite search engine).

We could go to the provider’s online help, but relatively few people at the provider actually use the app, so they have limited knowledge of how real users use the app and the questions we have.

We have the answers. We put the answers on the Internet. When in doubt, go to us.

by Dwayne Phillips

It may come as a surprise to many, but laws against libel and slander still exist.

I write this five days before the 2015 Super Bowl. The big topic of conversation in the football world is about under-inflated footballs (yes, western civilization has come to this).

What surprises me (at least a little) are the comments from the commentators on television, radio, and in writing on the Internet.

Bill Belichick is lying. Bill Belichick is a liar.

Tom Brady is lying. Tom Brady is a liar.

These come from former players employed to comment from their experience. These also come from “experienced journalists.”

This blog post is not about Belichick and Brady. This blog post is not about football. This blog post is about libel and slander.

libel: a published false statement that is damaging to a person’s reputation; a written defamation. (Google)

slander: the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation. (Google)

Libel and slander are still crimes. The laws against them did not go away at the turn of the 21st century. It seems that some persons at the media outlets would remind everyone else of this.

by Dwayne Phillips

Yet another reason for brevity: the more the words, the more the mistakes.

There must be some statistic somewhere that shows the number of mistakes per 1,000 words that writers make (is it a mistake to end a sentence with the word “make?” Did I put my punctuation marks in the right place there?).

Given x mistakes/1,000 words, it seems obvious that to reduce the number of mistakes, all writers and speakers will reduce the number of words we spout.

Somehow, for some reason, few of us heed that advice. We run on and on with page after page and minute after minute of explanation and wordy words.

And so I will end this blog post here. I could add more words, but that would only increase the chances that I write something stupid.