Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

This Apple ad is deep in several aspects.

Here is a precedent for this blog: a video inserted and on top of that it is an advertisement.

To the reader, first watch the video, then read my comments.

Apple Family Christmas Ad

(1) There is the lost teenager in a big family of little kids. I have the impression that he is a child from his father and a woman who is not his father’s current wife. Double dejected teenager.

(2) The pocket computer that is a sensor. He carries around the sensor. Everyone assumes, at least I did, that he is consuming content – playing games, listening to music, watching videos, reading messages from his real friends.

(3) The pocket computer is a production machine. He pastes video clips together, edits them, and adds a sound track.

(4) The pocket computer as a presentation device. He sends his video to the big screen television in his grandparents’ house.

(5) Magic. It all works.

Apple hires people who know how to make these things. Touch the family while you promote the product. Show people what they can do and release the imagination.

by Dwayne Phillips

A phrase I often heard from my superiors, what “no surprises” really means.

I don’t know how many times I heard it uttered in angst, “No surprises, no surprises, no surprises.” That is what my superiors constantly told me and my colleagues.

This was one of those things that everyone acted like everyone knew what it meant, but no one – especially me – had any idea what it meant.

I was too afraid to ask. Afraid that the reply would be ugly and also afraid that the superior I asked wouldn’t be able to answer and he would chew me out for embarrassing him in front of other people.

Years later I learned the meaning:

If you tell me something so late that I don’t have time to do anything, that is a surprise, and that is bad.

Aha, so that was it. The interpretation:

Monitor your project closely with a keen eye towards the future. Tell me about potential problems as soon as you have an inkling.

I could work with that. I wish those guys would learn to speak English, but that is a wish.

by Dwayne Phillips

I enter the world of cloud computing and learn that, once again, we go forward to the past.

I finally did it. I entered the world of actual virtual cloud computing. Not just Facebooking or DropBoxing, but actual computing. Well, not much computing, but making a few bits move.

Earlier this year I obtained a free, one-year trial of Amazon’s Web Services (AWS). After months of procrastination, I worked my way through the instructions of creating a virtual computer on Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Compute (ECC or EC2). The instructions were pretty good, but not as good as I would have preferred. I would have preferred a person talking me through it, but that is me.

Anyways, I

• created a virtual Linux machine
• created an instance
• initiated the instance
• connected to it
• downloaded the gcc compilers
• wrote a Hello World program
• made it and ran it

Not very impressive when I look at it like this, but I learned a few things and that is worth time.

Problems: I did all this from an Apple iMac OS X (10.9) machine. Some of the things promised in the instructions did not work. Maybe there is an OS and a browser problem. I eventually went to the terminal shell on the iMac to set the mode of the key pair file and connect to the virtual cloud computer (ssh -i /path/key-pair-file.pem ec2-user@public-dns-name).

What threw me next was that Comcast had a problem and the Internet was disconnect for 12 hours. The next day, I went back at it and finished the experiment.

Conclusions: We go forward to the past. Thirty years ago it seems I was doing the same thing. I sat in front of a computer and used it as a terminal to another computer that was somewhere else. My terminal this time was much more powerful than thirty years ago, the distant computer was also more powerful, and the network connection was through the Internet instead of a dedicated network.

I can see why people like to use AWS EC2. Amazon does most of the work by having servers running all the time. All I have to do is right software that does what I want. And that has always been a challenge.

by Dwayne Phillips

What is the least-expensive in the store these days? Is it really a computer or merely a terminal?

I was browsing a few stores recently (you know those places that actually exist, have an exterior and interior?). I looked at the computers and, being as cheap as I am, sought the least-expensive one. The result:

The Acer C7 Chromebook

The above link goes to the Best Buy site, but I think I was in a Staples or something when I saw it in person. It has an 11.6″ screen, a keyboard, and some memory and processor inside. What kind of processor? Who cares? It seemed to work as I visited the parts of the Internet that interest me.

But can I program it? Well, I can go to Amazon AWS and write programs there. I can go to Google drive and DropBox and Amazon S3 and all those places where I can store all the files I would ever have.

I guess we have once again come full circle. Nice computers are really terminals connected to other computers. I can write novels and poetry and everything on those other computers. It sure is nice of those other people to loan me their computers at no cost. I do, however, have to connect to those other computers, and that might be inconvenient at times.

by Dwayne Phillips

Beware – tests before hire are often a way to obtain free work from you.

I have been applying to freelance jobs recently as a writer. On occasion, job openings require taking a “test” such a:

• edit this text so we can determine if you are a qualified editor
• write a piece on this topic so we can determine if you are qualified to write for us

BEWARE: some “employers” sell they results of your test to their clients. I don’t know that is has happened to me. I have test edited a few papers that I thought were too long to determine my abilities. I have never written a trial piece for someone at no pay.

Here is a report on one company accused of selling test results to clients.

If a company wants to see something that you have already written and sold, fine. Point them to it. If a company wants to see something you have edited, that is a bit more complicated as the person who paid you for the editing may not want you to send that to others. Refer people to other people – these are called references and they still work.

Beware of any “test” that requires hours of work. It may be actual work for free.

by Dwayne Phillips

The most important moment in a project is not when you hold your breath during the final system test. Rather, it is a moment of interaction between persons.

Quick and to the point:

The most important moment in a project is when a person tells the project manager some “bad” news, and the project manager reacts.

The project manager doesn’t have to say anything. Actually, what the project manager says is not important. What is important is that look, the facial expression, the eyes, the return in the moment of hearing the bad news.

If the project manager gives an angry look, the project is dead.

No one will bring bad news to the project manager again. People will hide information from the project manager – information that is necessary to manage the project effectively. How does the project manager react to truth?

by Dwayne Phillips

Further evidence that people tend to do only what they want to do while at work.

Years ago, one of the guys in our office went missing. He was safe and sound, but we didn’t know it at the time. He was told to attend a meeting at a motel in another city, but was told the wrong motel. Be that as it may, he was still officially  missing. He should have made a few more phone calls and such to let us know where he was, but he didn’t.

Someone in our office has the job to locate missing persons (this is a Federal regulation for the Federal workplace). That someone called the police, called the hospitals, called the FBI, and called about everyone else you would call to locate a missing person.

The missing person finally contacted the office late in the afternoon.

A week later, the missing person was in the office and was confronted by the someone who made all those frantic phone calls. The someone was “chewing out” the formerly missing person, when the missing person said, “but, that’s your job.”

The missing person was correct. The person who made all the locate-the-missing-person phone calls had that on his job description. He hated that aspect of his job, but it was his job.

People (try to) do only what they want at work.

There are dozens of lessons for those of us whose job is to supervise and lead other people at work. The top lesson is to recognize and accept the above about people – no matter who they are or how long they have been doing their jobs.

by Dwayne Phillips

When it comes to government documents, shorter is better almost all the time.

I used to write government documents. I still read government documents. Such is the life of someone who worked for the government, retired, and went to work for companies that compete for government contracts.

Here is it, something regarding government documents that is true practically, not quite absolutely, all the time:

Shorter documents are better.

There are many reasons. Here are two:

1. Fewer words means fewer mistakes
2. Shorter documents leads to more attentive reading

Item 1. – a friend of mine has an expression, “- diarrhea of the mouth.” That is his way of saying that some people say too many words. In this case, they write too many words. There is some math or statistics property at work here. x out of 1,000 words is a mistake. If you write 1,000 words, there will be x mistakes. If you write 5,000 words, there will be 5x mistakes. A simple ideas, I know, but it seems to hold true.

Item 2. – People who read government documents, allocate a set amount of time to each document. There is, after all, a set amount of time in a day. Documents with fewer pages mean more time is spent reading each page.

When are longer government documents better than shorter ones? I don’t know. I hedge here because nothing is true 100% of the time, except this last statement.

by Dwayne Phillips

Dementia in any form removes a person from your life.

I miss my mother. She is still alive and, for someone her age, is in remarkably good physical health. She has no aches or pains, has a strong heart, and, except for failed hearing, is in great shape.

Her mind doesn’t work well. She asks the same questions over and over. She doesn’t pick up on new conversation topics. She won’t improve or recover – ever.

I have two adorable grandchildren. They are wonderful to be near. They are the source of great angst with missing my mother. I want to tell her about the wonderful little things they say and do. She doesn’t understand what I’m trying to tell her. She can’t share in the wonder of small children who think you are big and smart and loving and a joy.

In essence, my mother just isn’t there anymore. I miss her.

That is the tragedy of a failing mind – the cute little things that make life interesting go away. I guess these cute little things are far more important than those things that pass for importance in the world.

by Dwayne Phillips

I cannot overestimate the importance of starting well. What a person does on the first project of their life is out of proportion in importance.

This is quick and simple:

The most important project in a person’s life is the first project.

Why? Because the new person knows nothing about real-world projects. What they experience on the first one becomes “the normal” in their mind. If people come in early and stay late on that first project, that is normal. If people take two-hour lunches on that first project, that is normal. If people poke fun at all the managers on that first project, that is normal. I could go on and on.

Managers later in life will not know anything about a person’s first project. They won’t know to say, “I understand that ten years ago everyone took two-hour lunches in organization X. That, however, was not normal. In fact, that contributed to all sorts of problems. That is why we don’t do that here and now.”

The habits, bad and good, from the first project carry through many years and many more projects.

I had the great (mis)fortune of working on a superbly managed project right out of college. I call it a misfortune because I thought all projects were managed that well. It took years for me to realize that I should not put so much faith in managers – the vast majority simply were not as good as those who managed my first project.