Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

eBooks are taking over the world. Well, they won’t finish off the published paper books this weekend, but the trend is there. As with most things, I see some good and some bad in this.

I think it is good that college textbooks are becoming available in digital form. Pay $10 for a PDF file instead of $150 for a hardback book, print a few pages here and there, and keep the PDF until you lose interest. I still do a lot of reading as part of researching technical topics. I am happy to pay $10 and go the PDF file route.

What good is a printed book? One thing is convenience. I can buy a small paperback novel, carry it with me, and read it whenever and where ever I wish. I don’t need a computer or electricity. I read the little book, give it away, set it away, put it in a place where someone else will find it and read it.

The above works for cheap books, but what about the expensive printed book? A $150 hardback book is great if I refer to it for 15 years ($10 per year). That requires the book to be something you read again and again. That rarely works for books on computer software as the software changes every year or two. I bought a fairly expensive book to help me start working with this WordPress blogging software. That was okay, but it did hurt a bit.

So what will the final book published be? I think it will be the same as the first book published – the Bible. Substitute any sacred text as fits you. People tend to read scared texts over and over year after year. We seek guidance on big issues that occur again and again in our lives. A PDF file would work here in many cases, but there is the portability and ease of use that comes from the printed book. Then there is the issue of technical compatibility. The PDF wasn’t around 30 years ago. I have Bibles that are older than that. I hope to be reading these Bibles 30 years hence. Will PDFs still work in 2039?

I think eBooks will take over the vast majority of the world. Not this weekend, but in my lifetime. Some books, however, will continue to be published on paper with leather binding. Ah, the feel of a high-quality leather binding.

by Dwayne Phillips

I like to be ready. At times I forced myself to be less ready and learn during the moment. Those were quite satisfying. Project managers can take something from this and help their people learn.

I like to plan. Well, not to plan, I guess what is really like is to be prepared. That is part of the Boy Scout’s motto or something. I am not sure as I was never a Boy scout, but it sounds like I would have been an excellent Boy Scout. I hate to go into a situation where I am not prepared for all possible contingencies. There are many sleep-deprived nights where I lie in bed working through possible situations in my mind. I am ready for most of life far in advance.

My life is a contradiction to the title of this blog post. There, I admitted it. So why the title of this post? Because I find it to be a good way to go through life and the many experiences that comprise life.

Last year I walked 550 miles from Northern Virginia to Chattanooga, TN. (My wife was with me the entire time – don’t want to leave her out. I hope to walk again this year 550 miles from Chattanooga, TN to Southeastern Louisiana.) I thought about all the things that I needed to complete the walk and all the details and all…well you get the picture. In spite of my best efforts to be myself, I left plenty of room for learning. That was difficult! I cannot express how difficult it was.

The result was a joy. I learned countless things everyday as I was walking. I discovered each little town while walking through them. Every turn of the corner was new and enlightening. Learning at the place at the moment instead of ahead of time was great. In the evening, after transiting a town, I would read about it on Wikipedia.

On several occasions, I could no longer resist my urge to be ready ahead of time. I read Wikipedia before entering a town. The result was far less satisfying.

My long walk was a fun, extended vacation. Work at a paying job is work, not a vacation. What is satisfying on vacation may be a disaster at work, and enough disasters at work cause people to lose their jobs. Leaving room for learning, however, doesn’t have to be a disaster at work.

I am now writing to people who supervise other people. Take five minutes here and there during a frantic project to show people what they have just experienced, to help people learn from what they have just experienced. They will learn more at the place and the moment that something happens than they will ahead of time or even after in a classroom or formal “place of learning.”

On the job, be prepared, do your homework, be knowledgeable, exercise due diligence (am I leaving anything out?), and leave room for learning.

by Dwayne Phillips

The guitar player and inventor Les Paul died on August 13th, 2009 at age 94. He influenced my life in several ways and continues to influence the lives of others in an American family. For information on Les Paul, start at the Wikipedia article.

It was the summer of 1975. I was attending a Jazz Band camp at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. In an afternoon session, a saxophone player was demonstrating the use of electronics in jazz. He had an array of analog electronic devices that altered the sound of his saxophone.

The one device that caught my ear and eye comprised a small loop of magnetic recording tape. The sax player would record five or ten seconds of himself playing a background riff. The loop of tape would play that riff over and over while the sax player would improvise. This was so simple – a loop of tape. This was so powerful – a background played over and over. A musician could practice improvisation – the heart of the original American art form – for hours alone.

The looping device that the saxophone player demonstrated  on that blistering Louisiana summer day was a descendant of an innovation by Les Paul. The same could be said for the vast majority of electrical and electronic devices used in music today.

I didn’t know the name Les Paul or anything about him. What I did know was that I liked music and now liked electronics related to music. I looked around for a college major that would get me into both. I settled on something called Electrical Engineering. I had big plans for what I would do with music and Electrical Engineering. None of them came to fruition. Instead, I fell into computers as a subset of Electrical Engineering. I eventually graduated with a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Electrical Engineering. Three degrees, several  books, and over a hundred published papers came out of that afternoon mesmerized by a Les Paul innovation.

Thirty summers later, my second teenage son wanted an electric guitar for his birthday. He ordered it from Guitar Center and waited six months because it was back ordered several times. It was blue instead of some other color, and blue was in short supply and high demand that year. It finally arrived with the name Les Paul on the label (an Epiphone, not a Gibson, but still a Les Paul).

My third teenage son became enamored with the guitar and music. He is now in his junior year of college as a music major. He has a dozen different electronic devices to supplement his guitar, bass, and his own band of friends from high school. One of his devices is an all-digital “looper.” Funny how they still refer to that simple yet powerful little loop of magnetic recording tape that I saw in the summer of 1975. This son often makes multi-track recordings on his laptop computer. Les Paul invented the multi-track recording technique.

Les Paul’s innovations enabled something called Rock n Roll (a mixed blessing 😉 and forever altered the courses of popular music, jazz, and just about every other kind of music today. He also influenced the paths taken by two generations of one American family. For that, I am grateful.

by Dwayne Phillips

HP printers struggle to work under Linux if SELinux is “enforcing.” It seems that HP and others would have taken care of this foible by now.

I have a new computer, actually two new computers. Well, they aren’t new and they aren’t really two, they are one. Now I have confused myself.

I made a deal with my son the system administrator and programmer. He gave me his year-old gaming computer after doing some work on it. In exchange, I payed for him to obtain a new gaming computer. So the computer isn’t actually “new.” Part of the work he did on the computer before giving it to me was to make it a dual-boot machine. One disk boots MS Windows and the other boots Linux (Fedora 11).

The machine itself is fairly powerful. Four cores, 4GigaBytes of RAM, and the like. I added a 20″ LED wide-screen monitor. I like this.

The machine is a learning machine for me. I plan to put a 64-bit version of Windows 7 on it when I can. It may be years before Windows 7 arrives at my job (ITT – a part that works on government contracts. We still use MS Office 2003 because the government still uses it and we have to remain compatible). The Linux side is also for learning. I have used various -nix machines through the years, and wanted a fairly powerful hardware base for Linux.

I am getting my money’s worth so far. The first bit of learning came when trying to have my WiFi printer (HP psc 2510 Photosmart) work with Linux. It was simple to have it work with the Windows side, but the Linux side is a longer story. I learned

• you need something called HP Linux Imaging and Printer (HPLIP)
• you run hp-setup
• you run into the C Unix Printing System (CUPS)
• and this collides with Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux)

SELinux is an addition to Linux that increases the security of accessing various services in the operating system. Trying to access my printer via WiFi is disallowed by SELinux. It seems that it is a security risk of some sort. Disabling SELinux allows Fedora 11 to access the WiFi printer just fine.

It seems that HP, Red Hat, and SELinux would have worked together on this little feature years ago. Perhaps it isn’t worth the cost to HP. Red Hat, however, should have footed the bill as they have the most to gain.

Oh well, I know how to make my printer work. I haven’t decided how I will manage this situation, but one thing is certain:

I am learning

and that, after all, is the goal.

by Dwayne Phillips

We spend too much time avoiding some tasks. They are not interesting, praiseworthy, or worthy of note. We simply cannot stay on task. I recommend changing tasks – at least temporarily. There are many benefits to changing tasks. Some benefits apply to the original task. All the benefits apply to me.

I read a lot of blogs about “getting things done” and “do it yourself” and “life hacks” and of course “writing.” Many of these posts are about staying on task.

“I have a task that I must do, but my mind wanders, I can’t concentrate, I procrastinate, the hours creep by with no progress.”

Here is a suggestion:

Can’t stay on task?

Change the task.

Changing tasks works in many cases. Let’s consider a few.

(1) You forget the original task. If you can’t stay on that task and make any progress, you probably don’t have any interest in it. Life is to short to work on things that have no interest for you. Instead, do something that interests you; enjoy your short life by working interesting things. Besides, you have learned a valuable lesson: you have learned that some things just don’t interest you.

(2) You forget the original task and do something else instead. The hours creep by and you have accomplished something. You have something to show for the time and you probably feel better about yourself. In addition, you have learned about a new task, a new subject.

(3) Sometimes you cannot afford to move away from the original task. Someone is going to pay you for working the original task. You need the money, so you need to do it. You have learned a lesson:

Don’t put yourself in situations where you so desperately need money that you will agree to work on uninteresting things.

That is a good lesson, one whose value is difficult to estimate.

(4) Okay, you learned a great lesson, but you still have bills to pay and this uninteresting task sitting in front of you with a paycheck behind it. I still recommend the original suggestion: change the task. Do something else that interests you for a while. That doing has started your mind working. Now that your brain is engaged, switch back to the original task and hit it running full speed.

(5) A variation on (4) is to do something else that interests you for a while. You have moved to a new position mentally and emotionally. You can see the original task from a different perspective. That new perspective may be what you need to work the original task.

(6) I will stop at (5). More time and thought can probably bring to mind another half dozen ways to change the task. Please, don’t sit staring at an uninteresting task. There are far too many fascinating things around us to waste time on something that isn’t.

by Dwayne Phillips

Okay, soon after reading you may start disagreeing with me. This is about T H I N G S. People are not mentioned here as they are in a completely different and far more important area of life. These are NOT listed in order of importance.

Pencil and Paper – to record the events of life.

Guitar – soothes my mind.

Bible – instructions for life in both the short- and long-term.

Firearms – one shotgun, one handgun, one rifle – the caliber to be argued without end.

Pillow – to rest the head.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is the first post with this title. In the future, I will probably have more with the same or similar title. Just some thoughts about things I find essential, or at least somewhat important, for a writer.

Essentials

Paper and Pencil – Yes, let’s start with some real basics here. If I had a perfect memory I wouldn’t recommend these two items. Since I don’t have such a memory I write notes to myself.

Pockets – The above paper and pencil are of little use if they are not with me. I live with shirts that have at least one pocket. I always have a pencil and several 3″x5″ cards in my pocket.

Door that closes – This one is from Stephen King’s book “On Writing. “ There are times when I simply need to be alone to write without disturbance.

The Chicago Manual of Style – I have yet to find a question about writing whose answer was not in this book. I have two copies – one at home and one at my office at work.

A piece of cardboard and a clothes pin – No, I am not kidding. I prop the piece of cardboard upright next to my computer monitor and use the clothes pin to attach notes to the cardboard. It is much easier and more productive than putting the notes on a desk top and bending and stretching and squinting.

Flat Horizontal Surfaces – These surfaces, given the gift of gravity, hold materials and notes in an easy-to-see manner.

Flat Vertical Surfaces – These surfaces, given some tape and other adhesives, also hold materials and notes in an easy-to-see manner. You could say that I have a visual style of working. I like to see everything in front of me. The visual cues help me to think and write.

Computer – Yes, this helps. Although I believe that I could write a book given a stack of blank pieces of paper and a box of pencils. The computer helps in editing and printing, not so much in the actual writing. I recommend that you not become infatuated with software. I write books using an ASCII text editor (vim for those who wish to know).

Desire – You have to want to write to be a writer (in my humble opinion).

by Dwayne Phillips

Managers often start things that they cannot sustain. Great endeavors begin with gusto, but fade away quietly. I dislike these. There are ways around the continual disappointment of the unsustainable.

I’ll never forget the evening. My dad had pulled out his slide projector (in case your are too young to recall these machines, see Wikipedia’s article on them), set up his screen, and started showing us slides. I was a little boy (don’t remember the exact age) in wonder of all this technology.

My dad showed picture after picture of my mother and my older brother when he was a baby and about one year old. There he was crawling. There he was learning to walk. There he was walking. Wow, neat. I couldn’t wait to see what I looked like doing those things.

Something went wrong; there were no pictures of me at that age, and the same was missing for my younger brother. Where were we? I knew my dad’s camera wasn’t broken because I had seen him using it. Where were we?

This is a story of sustainability, or in this case non-sustainability. My dad had fallen to a common malady – take lots of photos of the first child, but just lose interest in the photo stuff with the rest of the kids. Aha, the key words:

just lose interest

Those words describe many of the efforts I have seen at work over the past three decades. Managers start a program with great gusto, but somewhere along the line they just lose interest and everything fades away. The effort was not sustainable.

Perhaps it is my temperament; perhaps it is the scars from that evening watching photos of my older brother, but sustainability has always been a big issue with me.

I don’t start things that I cannot sustain

This may have kept me from trying new things over the years. I believe that more times than not it has pushed me to finish the things that I started. It has also brought pain to me to see others start things that are clearly not sustainable.

There are things to do that help with this fear-of-the-unsustainable. Most have to do with limiting the scope of something when you start it. I recommend these practices (I am going to start this now, try it for three weeks, and reassess). If nothing else, consider the little boy sitting on the floor in front of the screen waiting for photos of himself that never appear.

by Dwayne Phillips

26 years ago today I married Karen.

My father, me, Karen

It was the smartest thing I ever did.

by Dwayne Phillips

Handwriting is not dead. It lives on despite the computer age. Cursive, however, is on the way out, and I for one am happy to see it go. (Start writing comments about how bad a person I am)

Time magazine mourns the death of handwriting. That is a nice headline, but I don’t put much stock in it. “‘Kids’ (those people who are at least ten years younger than you) don’t write by hand anymore. Everything is done on the computer.” Well, more is done on the computer than ever before, but not everything.

I do see the death of cursive writing, and I am not mourning its passing.

First, a disclosure: I always hated handwriting. I especially hated the subject of penmanship. We got grades in penmanship for grades 1 through 6. I went through that in the 1960s. Girls, excuse the feelings of a boy in the 1960s, were good at penmanship, but bad at the important things like baseball and football.

Anyways, fast forward out of childhood into my 40s.

Four years ago I bought a book on handwriting (“Write Now” by Getty and Dubay). I went through the exercises just like I did as a child. I have to admit that I tried harder this time around. I re-learned how to print. I also learned some history about the dreaded cursive style of handwriting.

“As students are just gaining some mastery of these forms, usually at the beginning of third grade they are asked to … learn a different set of 52 letters known as ‘looped cursive.’ This frustrates many learners”

Yes, it frustrated me!

“Paradoxically, the looped cursive…stems from letterforms inscribed by copperplate engravers and not from letters designed for handwriting.”

Aha! I knew there was some fundamental flaw in the whole thing and I was right!

For the past four years, I have printed exclusively and not written in cursive. I made this change at age 46 (so much for old dogs not learning). I write by hand in a journal daily – at least 500 words a day (that is a full printed page for you computer age types).

I feel younger. My 20-year-old son prints exclusively. I am impressed by his college notebooks as they look like they came off a printer. My 24-year-old son also prints exclusively. He learned to do that in engineering graphics. “If they taught us how to make perfect letters, why go back to that other stuff?”

Amen. Long live handwriting. Goodbye to cursive.