by Dwayne Phillips
Life takes a wonderful pause – my daughter-in-law gave birth to a beautiful little girl – Leah.
A Granddaughter
This is the first girl born into my line of the family in about 75 years. The wait was worth it.
For historical reference, see when my grandson was born.
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by Dwayne Phillips
Success leads to different things. One disturbing trend is that it leads to suspicion.
Why is it that (2) often follows (1)?
Google offers a free service to Internet users. Come to our site and search the Internet. I find nothing on Google.com that tells people that the results of their free searches are guaranteed to be impartial, objective, no-agenda-attached, or anything of the sort. I find nothing on the computers of Americans that forces them to use Google’s free service. There are other free Internet search engines available. Some of those search engines owned the market before Google appeared.
Google succeeded by giving away a service that people wanted and like. Google also found a way to make money at the same time. They have hired thousands of Americans at high salaries. They have hired thousands of people in other countries as well. They are a successful multi-national company based in America. Sounds good to me.
On a personal level, have you ever wondered why some person you know succeeded far more than me? I have. I write books, but none have sold millions of copies (none have sold tens of thousands of copies). I write short stories. To date, I have earned a total of $5.93 from fifty short stories I wrote (not $5.93 from each story, $5.93 total).
Why is it that other writers make more money than me? Would the FTC investigate these all-too-successful writers for me? They must be doing something worthy of a regulator’s attention.
Then again, maybe not.
→ No CommentsTags: Government · Success · Writing
by Dwayne Phillips
Writing students at George Mason University teach me how to cite Internet references using APA Style.
I continue to work with students at George Mason University on their writing. And they continue to teach me.
A recent student had questions about citing references from Internet sources according to the APA Style Guidelines (American Psychological Association). I knew nothing about APA style, so I did what most ignorant people do – search. This is a much deeper subject than I anticipated. Many universities require the APA style in science and engineering writing (here is one university source). Many students today go to the Internet for papers instead of the library.
I am happy to report that the APA Style folks have sources on information to satisfy the current circumstances.
First, there is a website about nothing but the APA Style. Here is the link. What I found most valuable is their blog. It has many posts concerning the particulars of everything in post-size bits. The blog is searchable; searching the blog led me to the valuable posts I mention below.
This post discusses citing just about anything you find on the Internet. A valuable source of information from that post is this chart that helps you resolve most questions about citing Internet references. I printed the chart and keep it handy. Excellent.
This post is just about citing pages found on Wikipedia. Excellent.
I hope GMU continues to let me work with students. I would hate to lose this valuable source of learning.
→ No CommentsTags: Learning · Wikipedia · Writing
by Dwayne Phillips
Advice is welcome and often heeded in one circumstance: when it is requested. Freely giving advice to the non-requesting tends only to waste energy, time, and emotions.
Consultant, author, and friend Jerry Weinberg has written (something like)
Most people interpret attempts help as attempts to interfere.
This is true for 98.6% of the people. And then 98.6% of us believe
The above is true, except when I am helping
Ahh, too bad. I am not exceptional. My attempts at helping are usually interpreted as attempts to interfere. Therefore,
I try not to volunteer help
The key word above is volunteer. Another odd thing about us people, there are many odd things about us people, is that when someone requests help, 98.6% of the time they interpret the result as help vice interference. Hmm, same action – help – but different result depending on the predecessor to the action.
Hence, the title of this post. I have lots of advice in my head. When I was younger, I eagerly offered my advice to others. It was a rare occasion that my advice was heeded. It seems that 98.6% of those on the receiving end thought I was interfering rather than helping. I was expending energy offering advice, and the other person was expending energy resisting my advice. Energy expended – nothing accomplished. I don’t like that.
I now try to live by:
I inflict (only) as much advice as requested
This seems to save everyone lots of energy and removes needless anxiety and vexation.
→ No CommentsTags: Communication · Culture · Expectations · People
by Dwayne Phillips
I have given many demonstrations of systems. I have watched even more demonstrations of systems. One thing I have learned to do during a demonstration is to pull a wire to see if the demonstration still works.
Many years ago, I was involved in a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day test of a system. This was a communications system, and a common test in a communication system is the loop-back test. In a loop-back test, you send a message out of your system. At some point, you “loop” or feed the outgoing message back into input of your system. The message you send should appear on your system as an incoming message.
A current example of this is to send an email to someone and add your own email address on the address line.
We were happily testing away in the “oh hours” (sometime between midnight and “oh six hundred” 06:00) performing a series of loop-back tests. Every message we sent looped back to us successfully. We typed a message, hit the SEND button, and the message was printed on our system – yes, a real printer. As I said, this was many years ago.
The loop back of our testing was performed via a patch cable at a patch panel. We had a physical wire enabling the loop.
At some point in the oh-hours, for some reason, I pulled the patch cable from the patch panel, thereby breaking the loop back. The message we sent out could not possibly come back to us.
Ooops, the messages we were sending out kept returning to us. I showed everyone the broken loop back. We all scratched our heads. I don’t remember the answer to the puzzle, but we all concluded that the preceding hours of tests were invalid.
I refer to this practice as the pull-the-wire test.
When I watch a system demonstration, I find something that should break the demonstration. I state, “If I pull this wire or turn off this box, the demonstration will stop working. Right?” After the demonstrators agree, I pull the wire or turn off the box. I have encountered a few demonstrations where the system failed the pull-the-wire test, i.e., the demonstration was a phony.
→ No CommentsTags: Problems · Systems · Technology
by Dwayne Phillips
The personal computer, the laptop computer, the home computer, the netbook – whatever title we use, they have all become the personal Google machine, i.e., the window into the knowledge of mankind.
I live in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Tony Kornheiser, one of those guys on ESPN’s “PTI,” has a local radio show. He does a lot of commercials on local radio. A phrase he often uses in his radio commercials is:
look it up on your personal Google machine
Kornheiser may be kidding. I am not sure as I often can’t tell when he is kidding and when he is being insightful.
I think Kornheiser is being quite insightful on this one. The personal computer has become the personal Google machine.
The personal computer, the Mac, the Linux box, the whatever, has become a window to search the content of mankind. The knowledge, the facts, the trivia, the disgust, the glory – they are all out there on the Internet. The search engine, epitomized by Google, is the window to all that stuff.
Those are such archaic uses for the personal computer. The personal Google machine? Yes, that is what the inexpensive computer is.
→ No CommentsTags: Change · Communication · Computing · Internet
by Dwayne Phillips
Watch out for the coming college bubble where tuition at prestigious universities crashes. Maybe some of those universities will crash as well.
I read a couple of things this week about college. They seemed to be related (in my mind at least). The first item was on TechCrunch and it discussed the College Bubble. Consider this qoute:
A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed
Hmm. That does sound like college. I believe in education. That used to mean that I believed in college. I still believe in education, but I am not sure that I believe in college these days. Consider the things that current colleges believe warrant degrees:
I could go on, but are you kidding me? How about we go back to degrees in
and how about lumping a lot of degrees and calling them
College seems to have gone off the deep end. I prefer to go back to plain old education.
College Bubble? Yes, I think that bubble is about to burst. Why pay $40,000 a year so you can have a degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution and then have a career in day care where the pay is just a little above that of a hamburger cooker at McDonald’s? I don’t get it.
Seth Godin discusses a similar topic:
Does a $40,000 a year education that comes with an elite degree deliver ten times the education of a cheaper but no less rigorous self-generated approach assembled from less famous institutions and free or inexpensive resources?
I can imagine that attending Duke, as just one example, is a lot of fun. I can also imagine that being around such a nice place with many other people seeking to learn can be a good education. I can also imagine many other environments where a person could learn more for much less money.
I worked for many years with many people who attended prestigious universities. They didn’t impress me with either their knowledge or their performance on the job. I was quite disappointed to learn about what prestigious universities do.
For the record, I attended two “cow colleges” (a provincial college or university that lacks culture, sophistication, and tradition). Southeastern Louisiana University and Louisiana State University. The cost was low, hence the return on investment was high.
→ No CommentsTags: Learning
by Dwayne Phillips
Sometimes no one will talk to me. There is a big message in the silence. All I have to do is find it.
I asked for input, but no one said anything.
I’ve heard that a few thousand times. The person is open for advice, criticism, anything from anyone. They are met with silence.
Sometimes silence is the loudest message
This is a tough one. Sometimes people don’t want to talk to me. That is their advice, criticism, anything. I may be
I could go on with the above list.
Listening to the silence
One question I ask myself is, “do I hear the silence.” I can stand around tapping my foot and leaning against the wall for hours. Then I shrug and walk away. But did I hear the message in the silence?
The message
What is the message? Well, the list above might contain it. I could think of other things for the list. I could speculate for days. I could drive myself crazy trying to think of the reason for the silence.
Try again
Stand up and say, “I haven’t heard from anyone. I am uneasy and a little bit scared about this. Please come to me and tell me why you didn’t come to me before.”
Sometimes that brings people. Often it does not. So I walk away with this message:
No one wants to talk to me at this time.
Notice, I did not conclude
→ No CommentsTags: Communication · People
by Dwayne Phillips
An identity rule is something that I must have or must do or must be to maintain my identity. If you violate an identity rules, you lose your identity.
People have rules, I know I have my own rules. Have you ever tied the shoe laces of another adult? That would be a kind thing to do, except that you don’t tie another adult’s shoe laces. That breaks some type of privacy rule.
Consultant and author Jerry Weinberg, has often discussed “survival rules.” These are rules that if broken leads a person to cease to exist. We develop these rules as small children, but often keep them with us once we are fully capable adults. (That is a short and inadequate description of survival rules. Maybe another post one day.)
Similar to survival rules are what I call identity rules. An identity rule is something that I must have or must do or must be to maintain my identity. If you violate an identity rules, you lose your identity.
Consider as an example Naval aviators. They fly aircraft. Well, so do aviators in the Air Force; they also fly aircraft. Naval aviators, however, operate their aircraft from ships. Air Force aviators operate from the land.
We operate aircraft from ships
is an identity rule for Naval aviators. Consider,
if we did land-based aviation operations, we might as well be in the Air Force.
That is an indication of an identity rule. Any statement of the form,
If we did or had or were such-and-such, we might as well be so-and-so
indicates an identity rule.
Violate identity rules at your peril. Suggest Naval aviators conduct land-based aviation and watch the ensuring riot. Suggest college professors give up tenure and watch the ensuing riot. Suggest politicians give up limousines and watch the ensuring riot. I could continue with more examples.
If you say something (that seems) simple and are given (what seems to be) an irrational response, you may have hit an identity rule.
→ No CommentsTags: Culture · Differences · Expectations · General Systems Thinking · People
by Dwayne Phillips
Here are some items I see often when working with college engineering and science students – part 2.
For the past couple of years, I have been working with engineering and science students at George Mason University on their writing. I found myself spending the vast majority of the time discussing a small set of items. The previous post discussed what I call “Big Concepts.” This post discusses the “Smaller Concepts.”
The number of words in a sentence
Keep this below 20. I emphasize this with engineers and scientist. We, I am an engineer, tend to count things. We also tend to write on complex subjects that have many modifiers to make things clear (See the 5-volt, direct current, rectified, bench-quality power supply.) These topics often lead to long, unreadable sentences.
Omit needless works
I guess Strunk and White said this first. This helps reduce the number of words in a sentence.
The hyphen
The again comes from the complex topics that engineers and scientists try to describe in writing. In general, if a word will not stand on its own, use a hyphen. Examples include: 5-volt supply, high-quality supply, ten-ton supply, ready-made supply, off-the-shelf supply.
Tense of verbs
Engineers and scientists often describe their work in writing. In the reports, we also describe work performed before us. When describing work performed before my own, use the present tense as in, “water boils at 212 degrees F.” When describing my work, use the past tense as in, “in my experiments, water boiled at 212.5 degrees F.”
If…Then
This construct is often used in computer programming. It doesn’t work in English. If I use if…then, then I will stumble often. This should be, “if I use if…then, I will not stumble.”
Numbers
Spell numbers that are less than or equal to ten. For example, one, three, four, ten, 13, 27, and 212.
Subject-Verb agreement
He walks. I walk. They walk. This is pretty simple and should not cause any problems. Again, engineers and scientists describe complex topics in writing with lots of modifiers in the sentences. It is sometimes difficult to find the subject of the sentence and match the verb to it.
Consistency
Use the same nouns and verbs over and over and over. This is boring, but we are describing complex situations and we want the reader to understand and not wonder. This is the opposite of mystery novels. If you want to confuse the reader until just the right moment, write mystery novels, not engineering and science papers.
→ No CommentsTags: Writing