Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

My wife and I are visiting our son in Germany. Being a good, bad Ugly American, I have thoughts that capture the entire country ( 😉

My youngest son has been teaching English in Ludwigshafen, Germany this school year. Since the year is almost over, my wife and I are visiting him. Yes, this is a bit late, but that is how it works sometimes.

This photo from Wikipedia is the view from our window at the Best Western Motel.

The weather has been cool with a few sprinkles every morning. There, the facts are out of the way, so now I can share my opinions with the world. Please understand, I am jet lagged and fatigued from not sleeping on a motel bed with lousy pillows. Don’t take most of this seriously.

Germans grind all their meat and form it into patties of one sort or another.

Germans don’t put much spice in their food. I was saved one day to find a bottle of Tabasco on the table of a restaurant.

Stuff here is really old. Here is a photo of my son and me standing on a tower that was built 900 years ago in a place called Bad Wimpfen. 900 years old folks, that is really old. Note: the wooden railing is not 900 years old.

My son and me on the Red Tower in Bad Wimpfen

I am surprised at how much things in Germany are like things in America. The clothing fashions are almost identical. I keep waiting for someone to walk up to me and start in with, “Hey, Kevin Durant is going to dominate basketball for the next ten years. The Thunder will win 6 or 8 titles.”

I have always been confused about whether the “i” went before the “e” or the other way around. I am totally lost now.

I stood in the same spot and looked at the same things that Mark Twain did over a hundred years ago. That is pretty neat.

My son lives in a part of town called “Little Istanbul.”

The Germans are off to a good start in the 2012 UEFA championships. I am not sure if that is the official name of the tournament, but they are trying to beat all the other Europeans in a soccer tournament. They are very excited here.

I have never ridden trains so much in my life. I like them. My son tells me all the ways you can ride without paying (he pays, so do my wife and I).

I go to bed at 3PM and wake at 11PM. At least that is what my watch tells me.

I should have paid for international data roaming on my iPhone instead of just telephone roaming. I really miss not having maps and other data accesses on my phone. I could be ruling Instagram by now.

German Doner is like American pizza. No one would recognize it in the old country, but everyone here seems to like it.

Germans spell many words the same way Americans do, but they pronounce them differently.

Enough rambling. It is time for breakfast. My watch says 1AM.

by Dwayne Phillips

Longevity almost always wins over positions of authority.

A conversation:

Person A: You must do what I say because I am a VP or deputy under assistant director of something or other.

Person B: Really?

Person A: Yes.

Person B: Let’s see, I have 15 years to retirement and the average above average super hero like you sits in that elevated grand illustrious position for about 3 years before moving upwards to yet another elevated grand illustrious position.

Person A: Yes, I will continue my meteoric rise to places that meteors rise to.

Person B: Did you say something? Oh, I wasn’t listening. Anyways, continue your meteoric rise. I’ll still be here when you are gone.

Person A: That’s too bad for you.

Person B: Maybe, but I’ll continue to do my job the way I want, not the way you say.

Who is in charge? Who decides how things will be done? Right, the person who will sit here for the next 15 years. Sometimes the period of time for both persons is shrunk. The meteoric riser will pass through in two weeks while the worker will stay on a project for two months. Who is in charge?

Sometimes in private industry, the meteoric riser will fire the worker  quickly. That happens, but not often. In government, that never happens because the worker isn’t doing anything that warrants firing.

Hence, in government, the younger employees are in charge. Most of them don’t realize the power they have, and that is what gives the meteoric risers the illusion of power.

You might think that this is all pretty childish. I agree. So? Who is in charge here?

by Dwayne Phillips

Using the iPad (version 3), PlainText and DropBox makes writing even better.

I now have the new iPad or iPad version 3 as some of us like to call it. I even have an Apple Bluetooth keyboard (I know, the keyboard is an old device, but new to slow adopters like me). I have struggled to write on the iPad, but things continue to improve.

My latest tool additions are PlainText and DropBox. DropBox isn’t a writing tool. It is a cloud disk drive or something like that. To me, it is storage somewhere else. I have been using it for over a year, so I guess that shows that I like it.

PlainText is a relatively new piece of software from HogBay Software (how can you not like software from a company called HogBay?). PlainText runs on the iPad. It gives you a plain box to write text, hence the name. The ASCII text is stored on the iPad. That is simple enough, just like the notepad that comes from Apple.

The neat part for me is that PlainText and DropBox work together. PlainText creates a special directory on my DropBox account and moves a copy of everything I write on the iPad to that directory. Later, when I am sitting at an old fashioned computer, I access the PlainText directory on DropBox and there it is – what I wrote.

I like this combination of tools and I find myself using it more often as the weeks pass. Write local with the results going to the cloud.

Sometimes it just isn’t worth being on the leading edge. It was 1981 and an attempt to purchase an office computer turned into a monster.

1981 – the Apple II was fun and the TRS-80 was, well it was something you could buy at Radio Shack. These little computer things could store data on floppy disks. They had BASIC interpreters, so you could write your own programs.

You could write little databases to store inventory information.

I was a new engineer out of college who could write programs. I worked with a group of older engineers. We had field sites that were a long, long ways from our home office and had hundreds of pieces of accountable equipment. We kept all this inventory on yellow legal pads. We had to write the inventory twice because we didn’t have copy machines (they costs tens of thousands of dollars in those days).

Let’s buy one of those new computers to keep track of everything.

That sounded like a good idea. The computer would be useful, and it would be fun. We had lots of spare time at those far away field sites. I would be programming BASIC during all my spare hours.

One (not so) little problem:

this was the Federal government.

I still don’t know what the real problem was. I think people were afraid of being accused of wasting money. That seemed odd to me as we were spending about $20million a year on the overall program and the computers cost a couple thousand dollars.

Anyways, our quest for a little computer went on for months – most of a year. We would meet, discuss what we would do with the computer, discuss what brands were available, discuss how we would record the inventory, discuss how we would keep copies in the field and at the main office, discuss this, discuss that, and discuss lots of things. The discussion were endless.

We finally had a last meeting where we would decide what to do. The main decision maker – the big boss – was delayed with something else. The people in the room reached a consensus:

the benefits of the little computer were not worth the pain of pushing through the purchase.

The big boss walked into the room. People looked at him and begged, “Say ‘No.’ Just say ‘no’.”

The big boss paused, looked puzzled, and said, “No.”

Everyone smiled, stood, and exited the room. We never bought a little computer to track our inventory. The yellow legal pads and pencils lived on for a few more years.

by Dwayne Phillips

If we change something, it will be different. We know that, but we act surprised when we see it.

Recent studies indicate that large wind farms increase the temperature of the wind farm area. People are speculating if there will be other changes in the weather at wind farms. Some people are wondering if affecting the weather, even in just a small area, is worth the energy.

Let’s stop a moment and consider something that we all know.

If we change something, it will be different.

There, wrote it.

But alas, the change will only be with respect to the one thing we want to change. Sigh.

We seem to think that we can change one thing and that will be it. Nothing else will change. We are so smart that there will only be intended consequences. Unintended consequences, like the temperature rising one degree Celsius, will not occur. We have considered all possible consequences and designed the system to block all but the one we want.

Such folly. Such pride. Can we be any more wrong?

by Dwayne Phillips

Wearing a health monitor practically 24 hours a day is now possible. Our physicians can know everything about our life style and work with us on our health. But do we want to be that healthy?

Computers are smaller and lighter and use less battery power and all those things that engineers have been working on for decades. One result is the wearable computer.

We can sew tiny computers and such into our clothes. These things can monitor our daily activities and and transmit them to our physicians. We don’t have to report anything. Our doctor would send us medicines or email us advice based on the mountain of data received from our activity-reporting computers. See this story for a discussion of such.

If we could create such a system securely, and I doubt we can do so, I have a question:

Does anyone really want their doctor to know what they are doing all the time?

I agree that health would improve, but really, do you want to receive this email from your doctor:

You’ve gained three pounds this week. If the weight doesn’t go away next week, I will setup an appointment for you.

or

Your blood pressure rises sharply every evening at 7. Stop watching baseball games on TV. Instead, go for long walks.

or

You are stopping at 7 11 on the way home from work every day. Your blood sugar is out of control. Stop the snacks and wait until you’re at home to eat dinner.

How healthy do we want to be?

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems we still do this old time waster – hurry up and wait. Let’s try to reframe it into something more productive and creative.

I am writing this blog while waiting. I had been working feverishly on something and completed the task. Now…well, you know…

Hurry up and wait

Let’s see if we can reframe this into something else. For me at least, this waiting time often becomes

Hurry up and goof off

I can’t think of a better term for it. I am goofing off. I am wandering about trying to find something to do. It seems that I’m wasting the time of other people as I chat with them about this and that. At least surfing the net doesn’t bother anyone else here. I guess it does consume some of the shared net bandwidth.

Let’s see if we can reframe this into something else. For me at least, this goofing off becomes

Hurry up and think

Ah, that is a bit more productive. I use this waiting time to think about things. Maybe I can even think about things related to work. Well, maybe not.

Let’s see if we can reframe this into something else. For me at least, this thinking time often becomes

Hurry up and create

Ah, I like that one. Create new products. Create new ideas. Create things that satisfy. Yes, I like that one.

Come to think of it, this time that exists after the hurry can become the 20% creative or innovative time. The rumor is that at Google, and other really successful companies, employees are given 20% of their working hours to be creative and invent new products. The mythology is that the Post It Pad was invented during one of these 20% times. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t. At least the idea sounds good.

Therefore, I don’t have to ask my boss for 20% creative time. I just use that time after the hurry to be wonderfully creative and invent things that benefit the company or at least benefit my own mind.

by Dwayne Phillips

A school district in Maine has (accidentally?) created an excellent learning program for its high school students.

The Portland, Maine school district is issuing laptop computers to some high school students for use in school. The computers are loaded with censorship filters that will keep the students away from social media web sites.

This may be the best education program I have seen in years. Imagine, you give teenagers computers and tell them, “We have software on these that tells us what you are doing. There is nothing you can do to escape our oversight.”

The school district has just turned on these teenagers.

The kids are going to dig and study and practice and learn and learn and learn until they hack their way past the adults’ software filters. These kids are going to learn more in this weekend exercise than they have learned in years of formal school programs.

The kids will learn so much that I have to wonder if the school district created this situation on purpose. Did some adult actually figure out a way to challenge the kids and turn them on?

Some well meaning adult may have created a situation actually believing that the kids wouldn’t try to break the censorship tools. That interpretation is hard for me to believe, but since a government body is involved, that is probably the truth.

by Dwayne Phillips

Why don’t we have more engineers and computer scientists? Maybe, for better or worse, we don’t have enough “tough” people.

I have recently read of a shortage of engineers and computer scientists. I have my doubts about this shortage, but enough people are declaring it that there may be some truth to it.

One question I see asked is, “Why don’t people take online programming courses and fill these open jobs?”

The answer is, “They don’t want programmers, they want people with degrees in engineering or computer science.”

Aha! So that’s it – credentialism (or something like that).

Engineers and computer scientists take two years of calculus, one year of chemistry, and one year of physics in college. Those are difficult courses. Passing those courses requires an amount of toughness or fortitude. Taking online programming courses, while not trivial, does not require the same toughness or fortitude.

Note, I wrote “for better or worse” in the summary at the top of this post. Being “tough” may not be a good thing. It could simply be arrogance, and we could tolerate a shortage of arrogance.

Nevertheless, companies look for people with degrees in engineering and computer science. They look for people who have worked their way through difficult courses. We have yet to find another way to equate something to that difficulty.

We are open to suggestions.

by Dwayne Phillips

Answer questions in the same forum at which they are asked. If possible, answer questions immediately. Failure to follow these usually leads to suspicion, and that is the death of organizations.

Does anyone have any questions?

Yes, speakers feel obligated to say this. I am not sure why, but there is something that just pulls this question out of people.

Okay, so you ask for questions. Someone raises their hand and asks a “tough question.” That is a question that you may not want to answer now or don’t have an answer now or just don’t know what the answer is (what is the square root of 13)?

Here is point 1:

Answer questions in the same forum in which they are asked.

Speakers often miss this point. They respond with, “That’s a good question. Let’s talk about it later after the meeting.”

This answer is often heard as, “How dare you ask that question here and now. You are trying to embarrass me. I’ll fix you later.”

The answer is often also heard as, “I don’t want to tell all these people the answer to that.”

This leads to point 1.a.:

If you ask for questions, answer them.

This leads to point 1.b.:

If you don’t want questions, any possible questions, don’t ask for them.

Unanswered questions or questions passed to some other, less public, place lead to (among other things):

suspicion

There are few things for the life of an organization that are worse than suspicion. People stop trusting one another. When trust is gone, just close the door and turn out the lights because it is all over.

There is, however, at least one other way to delay a question to another place. Tell the asker, “I don’t have the answer to that. Will you help me work on the answer and distribute the answer to everyone here?”

Give this response only if you mean it, only if you have the time to work with the asker, and only if you can arrange a way to distribute the answer to everyone present.

Preserve the trust that exists among the people.