Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems to be a good idea to invest a portion of my money and time to personal training or learning experiences. Some reflection on 2010 shows that I spend much more time than money on such. Perhaps in 2011 I will pry more money from my wallet.

Last year I realized the concept of the personal training budget. When I was a government employee, I was able to work the system to have the government pay for training courses that I wanted to take. Now in private industry, such is not nearly as easy. Hence, I had to think for myself per learning experiences. I happened across an idea of using one-to-three percent of my income on learning experiences. That justified buying an iPad (see several posts with the tag iPad). I have learned a lot from having an iPad, so it was a good investment.

Aside from the iPad, I failed. I failed to spend even one percent of my income on learning experiences.

I did succeed, however, in spending large amounts of time on learning experiences. By my calculations, I am awake 16 hours a day 365 days or 5,840 hours.

Here is the time I spent on learning experiences in 2010:

• daybook or Internet viewing: 1 hour per day = 365 hours
• two blogs: 1 hour per week = 52 hours
• reading books: 3 hours per week = 156 hours
• working with writers: 40 hours
• teaching (includes prep time): 120 hours
• journal writing: 61 hours
• attending lectures: 52 hours
• attending free classes: 60 hours
• wrote a novel: 45 hours

These sum to 951 hours or 16.3% of my waking time. Whoa!!! That’s more than I thought. I’m glad I took the time to figure this. As an aside, I calculated this three times. Every time I calculated it, I thought of something else to add to the list.

Now, how can I pry some money out of my wallet to increase the dollar portion of my personal training budget?

by Dwayne Phillips

I was watching Wheel of Fortune recently. It has been years since I saw that program. The contestants had their ten seconds to describe their lives including what they did for a living. One contestant was an

Associate Director of Policy

That is all they said – no more information. I surmised that this contestant worked for a government organization at some level. Who else would have such a job title except for a government organization?

What would an Associate Director of Policy do? Well, there is a policy department that issues policies for everyone else in the government to follow. That department has a director who is the Director of Policy. The director has several people in the policy department that are one level down in the government hierarchy. These people one level below the director are the associate directors. Hence, their job titles are Associate Director of Policy.

See? It is all quite simple and quite logical.

The associate directors of policy probably supervise people who draft policies for the government body. The associate director will host a meeting to charge the employees with a must-needed policy. Somehow the world changed and the government is no longer able to cope with the world. A new policy will set the world aright again. One employee will draft the newly needed policy. The draft will be passed about through the other employees. Each will make a change to the draft (if they don’t make a mark on the piece of paper, they can’t justify their continued employment). A few weeks later, the draft will return to the originator with a bunch of meaningless marks. In a few more weeks, the draft, with a few changes per the meaningless marks, will be presented to the Associate Director of Policy. The Associate director will make a few marks on the paper to justify his or her job. The paper will go back to the originator, and the entire process (there must be a process in the government) will repeat a few more times.

See? It is all quite simple and quite logical.

Some may read this as a funny story. As a veteran of more than 25 years of government, let me assure you that this is not a piece of humorous fiction. It is a, sadly, non-fiction.

Now why in the world was I watching Wheel of Fortune?

by Dwayne Phillips

If you want your books noticed in the bookstore or the library, have a last name close to that of a famous author. Another way is of course to write a great book.

I was sitting in the public library this past week. While waiting for someone, I was looking at the books on the shelves from my spot at a table. I guess I was sitting in the fiction section as there was a shelf full of books by Louis L’Amour the author of old west tales. On either side of L’Amour’s books were others in the same genre.

Then it hit me – if I were looking for a particular book by L’Amour that wasn’t on the shelf, the next books I would peruse would be written by authors whose last name is next to “L’Amour” alphabetically. Duh! The libraries shelve a lot of books alphabetically by author. Most of the book stores do the same – in order by author’s last name alphabetically.

If you want your books noticed, have a last name close to that of a famous author.

For examples:

“L’Amous” if you write novels of the old west

“Asimow” if you write science fiction

“Steell” if you write romance novels

I haven’t tried this, but I only came upon the idea this week.

Of course, another way to have your book noticed is to write a great book.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some various thoughts on Apple, writing, the TSA, the Talent Economy, and National Novel Writing Month.

sundry: (adjective) assorted: consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds. wordnetweb.princeton.edu

My mind is racing with a number of different things. I couldn’t decide what to write in the regular Thursday blog posting. Then one of those goofy questions hit me:

Why decide?

Okay, maybe I won’t decide. I’ll just write short, short posts about each item and put them all up on one post. So here goes.

Thanksgiving: Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. Yes, a bit of historical research will show that the stories we were told in school as kids were a bunch of bologna. Still, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday followed by the 4th of July.

Apple continues to do everything wrong: Apple finally received permission to sell music from the Beatles on iTunes. How stupid can Apple be? Everyone knows that all the Beatles fans already own all the Beatles music they want. Ooops, two million Beatles songs are sold on iTunes in one week. And to add onto that, sales of computers are rising again. Sales of Apple computers are rising three times faster than Windows-based computers.

The TSA continues to do everything wrong: I find it unfortunate that this heading is not sarcastic. The TSA is actually doing just about everything wrong. The past week has given us examples of patting down nursing mothers and crying three year olds. And then Adam Smith of Mythbusters carries two 12-inch razor blades onto an aircraft (accidentally) after going through a full body scanner. Your tax dollars at waste.

Writing students: I continue to work with students from George Mason University on their writing. They continue to teach me.

Talent Economy: I ran across this phrase this week. Aha! That phrase solve many of the puzzles I have found at work this year. My current employer is struggling with expanding our business (we are not along in this struggle). We need instant expertise in new fields; we need to hire people who have worked on something for ten years and are expert. That is the Talent Economy. Talented, expert people are the most valuable resource.

NaNoWriMo: November is National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you write (I prefer to tell people “draft”) a 50,000-word novel during the 30 days of November. I am trying this. As usual, I love the writing, but hate they gyrations needed to find the time. I need about 90 uninterrupted minutes each day. I can usually find those minutes, but it isn’t easy.

by Dwayne Phillips

I often see claims that software systems will be secure, i.e., only authorized people will be able to see the information. Just as often I see cases where “secure” software systems are broken and the data are spilled onto the floor for all to see. Why? I believe it is a simple numbers game.

All minds are not created equal. There are some of us who are much smarter than me. Folks like me, however, like to think that there is some sort of average mind out there (and of course I am a little to the left of the average mind). Given the great average mind, what makes the difference among groups of people is which group is larger. On average, we like to think, 50 average guys have more brainpower than 20 average guys. I am sure there are cases where one brilliant person can out perform 50 average persons. Those cases, however, are exceptions.

Now let’s go discuss software security. Consider WiFi access on commercial airplane flights. The nice airlines didn’t want people to be watching “objectionable” materials on the Internet. Such material would offend some of the paying customers. Hence, the airlines put “filters” in their systems that would block the objectionable material. People broke through those filters the first morning.

How did they do it? Simple – the numbers game. The number of people trying to break through the filters was much greater than the number of people building the filters. In math, it looks like this:

# of filter breakers >> # of filter makers

The symbol “>>” reads, “is much larger than.”

Why not just increase the number of filter makers? It costs too much. How did the number of filter breakers become so large? There are a large number of programmers (potential filter breakers) out there. A large enough percentage of these potential filter breakers found the challenge issued by the airlines too great to resist.

Let’s move to online election software. It is “secure,” right? I mean their are programmers who write the election software who put in security features, right? Yes there are. And as with the airline filters:

# of security breakers >> # of security makers

Let’s move on to one day promised when every-one’s health records will be available (via the Internet, what else?) to any doctor (with the right passwords) anywhere. These health records will be secure. What are the odds that

# of security breakers >> # of security makers???

There is the wish that a few of the security makers are brilliant, and their brilliance will be enough to overcome the large numbers of average security breakers. Let’s consider that for a moment. National electronic health records will be a government project. How often do we see individual brilliance on government projects. Oh well, it was a thought.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some people are undependable. Most of the time, I can choose to work with them or not. My choice can tell me much about myself.

I know people who fit the title of this post.

If they tell me they will be someplace at nine o’clock, I am almost certain they will appear no sooner than 9:15.

If they volunteer to bring cookies (or whatever) to an event, I ask someone else to also bring cookies (or whatever) to the event.

Politicians – let’s use them as one stereotypical example – are dependably undependable. If they say a bill will not raise taxes, I can depend that the bill will raise taxes.

Computer programmers – let’s use them as another stereotypical example – are dependably undependable. If a programmer says he tested the changes he made to software, he probably didn’t. If a programmer says he didn’t touch any code other than the code he was supposed to touch, he probably touched other code.

Are these people liars? Think about this. They say something (I’ll be there on time, there are no taxes hidden here, I tested the code) that isn’t true, and they often say things that aren’t true. That is the definition of being a liar, isn’t it? I suppose there is a difference between lying and merely being undependable. It seems that the undependable have good intentions. They intend to appear on time and bring what they promised. Something just seems to get in the way or come up at the last minute or … I can always depend on the undependable to have plenty of excuses.

Enough about those dependably undependable people. Let’s talk about me.

Why would I depend on someone who I know is undependable?

Have I ever confronted one of the dependably undependable about their undependability?

Do I relish watching the dependably undependable fail time after time?

Do I depend on the dependably undependable to give me a sense of superiority?

The questions and their answers start to hurt. The questions and their answers tell me much about myself, some of which I may not want to realize.

by Dwayne Phillips

I noticed a recent story on outsourcing. It seems the state of Ohio required work performed on state contracts to be performed  in Ohio by residents of Ohio. Imagine that! Work funded by the taxpayers of Ohio should be done by other taxpayers in Ohio.

That seems reasonable to me.

It doesn’t seem reasonable to outsourcing companies in India.

Several years ago I wrote an article for the Cutter IT Journal (a link to their base web site, not to the article I wrote). It was about how to survive as a programmer in a world where programmers in India, the Philippines, and other places would program just as well for a much smaller salary. One way to survive in such a world was to work on government contracts. Even back five years ago, governments at all levels were requiring work to be performed by residents of the contract-issuing government.

I pay taxes. I want the government to obtain the most work for the least tax money spent. Still, I don’t like my tax money going to a foreign country or to non-citizens. I have no animosity towards non-citizens. I just don’t want them to receive taxpayers’ money.

My advice to programmers in the U.S. remains largely unchanged:

live in a low-cost-of-living area of the U.S., i.e., rural

live an hour from an airport, i.e., still rural and cheap

keep your personal overhead low

if you can stomach the inherent problems, work on government contracts

if you can stomach the really bad inherent problems, work as a government employee

Some or all of the above may be repugnant to many programmers. If you can earn a living programming in the U.S. without doing any of the above, good for you. Please write me and tell me how you are doing it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Time and again I have seen people make a terrible mess, work hard to fix their mess, and be proclaimed a hero. I still don’t understand why anyone would reward such a person.

In the mid-1980s I started managing projects. I looked about to see what my peers – other project managers – were doing. I kept hearing praises of some of my peers, so I looked closer to learn from their successes.

I got sick.

“So-and-so is dedicated to the project. Look at him, he cancelled a cruise that he and his wife were to take so that he would finish his project on time.”

I looked closer.

So-and-so had,

1. estimated the project to take X hours of work
2. estimated the project to end on date Y

So-and-so was a terrible estimator as the project required 2X hours, and the date Y would not move because so-and-so was a hero. To finish on date Y, so-and-so literally slept at work. He worked nights; he worked weekends, and he cancelled his cruise with his wife. I never heard if so-and-so’s wife divorced him.

Hmmm, so-and-so worked like a hero to save the day and put out the fire. The problem, as I saw it, was that so-and-so was the person who started the fire by terribly underestimating the work on his project. This all seemed obvious to me. Why would anyone hail so-and-so as a hero?

Well, senior managers didn’t see it the way I did. They rewarded so-and-so and everyone else who made the same terrible mistakes while estimating the work required on their projects.

Thirty years later, I see the same happening again. People make a terrible mess, work crazy hours or something, and clean up their mess. They are heroes.

Why do we proclaim heroes those people who make terrible messes or set their own houses on fire?

by Dwayne Phillips

HP’s new Photosmart printers have a feature HP calls ePrint. I can send an email to the printer, and the printer prints it. iPad and iPhone apps allow for taking notes and emailing them. In this case, emailing them to the printer.

I can now print from my iPad. Well, I can print some things. This is none of Apple’s doing; all the credit goes to Hewlett-Packard.

My HP Photosmart all in one printer (PSC 2510 Photosmart All-in-one printer) finally quit on me. I lost track of how many years I had it. Sometimes it would print, sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes it wouldn’t come on after I turned it off. Strange things. Oh well, it served us well. It was our first wireless printer in the house and I loved it.

I bought an HP Photosmart Plus e-All-in-One model B210a. )I have to throw in the part about model B210a because the model B209a is not the same thing and though it looks remarkably similar in the store and has the almost exact same box, phew, don’t get it.) This costs less than $200. One side note, the first HP ink printer I bought in 1989 cost $600, printed only black and white, was slow, was loud, and didn’t do any of the scanning and copying stuff either. We have come a long way. Sometimes I drift when writing about HP printers.

Anyways, the nice feature in this new printer is that it has what HP calls “ePrint.” You can send an email to the printer. It prints the contents of the email and even files attached to the email. I have to take care as I often have emails with hundred-page attachments.

The iPad, and the iPhone, have a few note-taking apps. Each of these note-taking apps allows me to email the note. I can type or write notes on the iPad and email them to the printer. This works, wow, great. Printing from the iPad. At least printing of notes that I write from the iPad (and the iPhone).

by Dwayne Phillips

Don’t just encourage someone to do something – teach them how. Modeling the behavior yourself is probably the best method of teaching.

Sometimes it takes me a while to remember things I have learned. Someone comes along, does something, and it all hits me: What are they doing?  Don’t they know…?

I guess that is why we have blogs, so we can write things that we know and maybe remember them better. First point,

Don’t (just) tell, teach

Recently, I sat in a class and the teacher encouraged the attendees to do something. He encouraged them to do something again. He encouraged them to do something yet again, and again, and … well so on. This is like telling people to invest their money wisely without explaining what wise investments are. It doesn’t do anyone much good.

Then the class continued on and it occurred to me,

Don’t (just) teach, model

This is a twist on the old cliche, “don’t do as I do, do as I say.” (or is it the other way around, I forget) Again, if a person who is bankrupt walks in a room and says, “Invest your money wisely and here is how.” Not effective.

This takes me back to author and consultant Jerry Weinberg. I first met Jerry in person some dozen years ago at a week-long class he did called Problem Solving Leadership. All week long, Jerry led us in solving problems. He not only taught being a leader when solving problems, he did it, i.e., he modeled it. Jerry also teaches congruence. He doesn’t just teach it, he does it all the time when teaching his various classes, i.e., once again he models it. (For a chance to meet Jerry and others who model what they teach what they encourage, see the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference.)

So, instead of sitting in front of a class and telling people, “take time to get to know one another,” bring another person to the front of the room, sit, face one another, and have a conversation where you get to know one another. Model how you would do that.

“But that would take all the class time,” protest some. Yes, it would. And, believe it or not, getting to know a person takes time.