Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Kids today can find any fact in the world in a minute, but they don’t. Is it that they don’t appreciate this gift or is it that old folks are putting yet another impossible-to-achieve standard on them?

We live in a world where any fact in the world is available in one minute:

• How to spell unnecessarily
• What the stars in the PRC flag mean
• How to say “blue” in German
• What are the dimensions of a .45 ACP cartridge
• What is a flying buttress
• What is the integral of sin and what does that mean
• and so on

Kids today, let’s limit that to those age 20 through 30, have this wonderful gift. Yet, in my experience, they don’t realize they have this gift. Why, in my day (here it comes), we had to dig through big dictionaries and encyclopedias and libraries for hours with a hope of perhaps finding answers to these and all other factual questions. Kids today, don’t use the tools they have to find answers.

What is wrong with them?

• One answer is that they do not realize they have these tools.
• Another answer is that they do not appreciate the value of these tools

Here is another answer:

There is nothing wrong with Kids today. It is us old folks who are putting an impossible-to-achieve expectation on Kids today. We feel that these kids should have all the facts correct all the time and do wonderful things with them.

Perhaps us old folks need to relax a bit. Kids today will do wonderful things just as we amazed old folks a generation or two ago by doing wonderful things.

by Dwayne Phillips

I try DRAFT – an online writing tool.

Years ago I tried a web site called writely.com. It allowed a person to use a simple word processor online. That writer could then “share” what was written with other people who also had writely.com accounts. One day, as the stories go, Google bought writely.com and the online word processor became Google Docs as we know it today.

Several weeks ago, I bumped into a similar online word processor intended for writers – DRAFT. It is similar to what writely.com was, and it is much simpler than Google Docs. DRAFT provides a blank screen for writing – no frills and no distractions. The editing screen is basic with no distractions. (some) Writers find that (most) word processors have (too many) options and features cluttering the screen (some of the time). DRAFT skips all that.

DRAFT has several features that are almost required for a writer. These include:

• Share the writing online with other people for collaboration
• Export (Word, Google Docs, PDF, HTML, Text, Markdown, Kindle, and Epub)
• Viewing revisions (see the image for the display of several revisions)

That is about it; no more and no less. Write distraction free from anywhere that you have an Internet connection. Colloborate with other writers, download the result, and check revisions.

Now all you have to do is put your seat in a chair, your hands on a keyboard, and write.

by Dwayne Phillips

I write an oft-repeated tale of factory with two occupants and one control mechanism.

There are these urban myths. People tell a story over and over. It sounds pretty good, plausible, it could happen. Then I hear someone else in a completely different time and place tell the same story about a slighty different situation. And that is the urban myth.

Here is one:

There is this factory, a big, super-efficient humming along all day 24/7 365 factory. There are two occupants in the factory: a man and a dog. There is one control mechanism in the factory: a big red button. If you press the big red button, the factory stops humming along. It will take days to restart the factory. The man has one purpose: feed the dog. The dog has one purpose: prevent the man from pressing the big red button.

I never said the story was cute or funny, so if you didn’t grin or anything that is okay.

As with most urban myths, there are a few things we can learn from this one. Here are a few:

It is simple to stop a group of people that is working well. Just one well-meaning person arrives and does something, like pressing a big red button, and the group plunges into chaos.

It is simple to prevent someone from disrupting a group of people that is working well.

We usually don’t like to put a protection person between a group of people that is working well and anyone who might arrive and disrupt them.

I could continue with lessons, but three is enough for one day.

by Dwayne Phillips

How we describe the impossible helps us answer the second question. And the second question is about or imperfections.

Question: Can we land persons on the moon and have them live there for a year before January 1st, 2015?
Think about the answer a moment.  Time is up.

• One answer: That is impossible.
• Another answer: I don’t know how.

I prefer the second answer. Here are some examples:

• Build a car that runs solely on solar power and has a range of 500 miles in 24 hours.
• Build a nuclear fusion reactor.
• Build a lighter-than-air ship that can stay aloft for 1,000 days while supporting the lives of ten people.

One answer to these challenges is, “that’s impossible.” Another answer is, “I don’t know how to do that (yet).”

Most people respond with, “that’s impossible.” That answer absolves me of personal responsibility. If I respond with, “I don’t know how (yet),” a second question can come. Here are a few second questions:

• Why don’t you know how? (Are you stupid?)
• When will you know how? (How slow to you learn?)
• Why am I talking to you? (You obviously aren’t worth my while.)

I hate those second questions. Most people I know also hate those questions.

by Dwayne Phillips

Younger adults are moving back into the cities. Is this some great trend or just the normal reaction to childhood?

There is a big trend today: younger adults are moving from the suburbs back into the big cities. In Washington, D.C. it’s called gentrification, or is it re-gentrification, I get confused sometimes. There are big stories out of San Francisco about the young tech stars moving from gosh Silicon Valley into the hallowed old city. They can afford to do so as they ride the Google bus or the Apple bus or whatever private bus that takes them to and from work to the dismay of long-time city dweller who slug it out in traffic in their little cars.

People who laud such things are lauding these moves of the youngsters to the city. This heralds a new age of post-post-modern life (I am not sure if I put enough “posts” in front of “modern. Corrections are welcome.).

I, however, doubt the great migration is a movement. Instead, I think it is just one of those things that people do that is the opposite of what their ancestors did. Here is a secret from most of our lives:

Our adulthood is a (mostly) thoughtless reaction to our childhood.

We can claim all sorts of wonderful thoughts in hindsight, but that is hindsight and quite charitable. There is too much happening too quickly for too many of us and we are too fatigued to have a great plan for our lives.

We react to our childhood. We grew up in the suburbs so, as a reaction, we move into the city. Why not try something different? Who knows what we might learn? Our parents ate lots of read meat so, as another reaction, we eat lots of vegetable matter. The reactions go on and on. We are mostly planning to send our kids to MOOCs instead of colleges because, well, you know – another reaction.

by Dwayne Phillips

I often heard “it is obvious to the casual observer” in grad school. I even read it a few times. Guess what? That is not a true statement.

I used to hear that in grad school, “It is obvious to the casual observer.” That was sort of a joke when we were looking at something that none of us students understood. Sometimes, the professor wasn’t joking: he actually thought we should see the answer without any explanation.

Graduate school is not the real world. The room is full of students who are anxious to impress and please the professor. The professor is being paid a salary no matter how much or little learning occurs.

The real world is certainly different. If I understand something, I can assume that I am in a tiny minority. My brilliant idea or product or service – it – is not obvious to the casual observer. I need to to explain it. If I cannot explain it to the casual observer, none of those casual observers will buy my product or service.

This explaining is usually called “able to communicate effectively in both the written and spoken word.” Many students understand neither the need nor the value of that ability to communicate. That is because they have spent several years in that crowd of people wanting to impress and please that one person standing at the chalk board.

by Dwayne Phillips

Organizations strive for growth or progress, but are they accepting of the change that comes with it?

Let’s assume that growth is good for an organization. If you don’t like growth, think of another word that would mean good things for an organization, e.g., progress, innovation, creativity, etc. and substitute your word every time you see “growth.”
When growth comes, change comes. New people arrive. New work arrives. New money arrives. These “new” things mean change.

Do you want change? Think before answering. Change in the organization means that you will have to change what you do every day at work. Do you want that?

Perfect world: the organization can grow and change and I won’t have to change.

If you find that perfect world, tell me where it is so I can join you there. Otherwise, be ready for the change.

by Dwayne Phillips

Give yourself permission to not be involved with an argument, especially an argument between another person and yourself.

I have often seen people argue. The vast majority of the time, I told myself:

I won’t become involved in that argument.

In essense, I give myself permission to stay out of a discussion that is heated and won’t lead to anything worthwhile in the vast majority of cases.

How about this little twist on that situation. When I notice myself arguing with another person, perhaps I tell myself”

I won’t become involved in this argument, either.

Hmm, I give myself permission to stay out of a discussion that is heated and won’t lead to anything worthwhile in the vast majority of cases. Simple as that. Life can sure be easier.

by Dwayne Phillipe

My wife and I have been married for 30 years, and we still fold clothes differently.

My wife and I have been married for 30 years; we still fold clothes differently. I suppose there is some lesson or twelve in there somewhere. We love each other, but neither of us will change how we fold clothes – neither of us will bend.

Perhaps the lesson is:

when something doesn’t matter much, it doesn’t matter much how you do it

Hmmm, let’s try to apply that to work. I have seen people at work make much of things that don’t seem to matter. For example:

These are not made up silly examples. They are from real life. They are equivalent to me telling my wife, “fold clothes my way or else fill-in-the-blank-with-something-serious.”

Sounds pretty silly when I write that. I wish I could get people at work to think about their “or else” statements.

by Dwayne Phillips

Opposite of the conventional wisdom, there is a good reason to have your friends test your work.

The conventional wisdom about testing software it to have someone who does not know you do it. That unknown person will dive into the software and try to find every little fault in it. They are impartial and earnest and all those good things.

Yet there is a good reason to have some of your best friends test your software:

When they do things you don’t expect, you won’t call them idiots.

Those accusations are common in software development. At least I have heard programmers murmer about idiots who report problems with their software. If the testers only knew what they were doing and what they were supposed to test, they wouldn’t report half the problems they report. The programmer then has to answer questions about all these reported errors that aren’t really errors.

If the tester is the programmer’s best friend, the programmer will probably attribute some good will to the reported errors. Of course there is a danger here. The danger being that the tester doesn’t want his best-friend programmer to look bad, so the tester won’t officially report all the errors.

If that is the case, we have discovered what is truly the problem in the software development organization: people are afraid to “look bad.” Appearances are more important than working software that delights the user.

Hmmm, we learned something here, not what we were trying to learn, but something important.

Perhaps I digress. Still, if the testers and the programmers both want the best for the other, things will work out better. Consider that when staffing a project.