Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Take care when assuming that something was done correctly at some time in the past.

“I’ll copy this, modify it, and move on,” said a brave and trusting person.

Perhaps “this” was done correctly in the past. Copying and modifying is a good, time-saving tactic. What, however, if this was done incorrectly in the past? Copying further spreads the error. But if it has existed for so long, surely it was correct, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

I am installing software on a computer system. The right way to do it…yikes this isn’t working. But this is the right way to do it. Perhaps the computer system was not setup correctly. No wonder the installation procedures don’t work. Therefore, we will have to install this software incorrectly so that it is incorrect in the same way that the computer system is incorrect. Well, we have it working. All is well. Pity the poor fellow who comes along next week and tries to install something on top of this incorrect software which is on top of an incorrect computer system which is on top of an incorrect…

There are many systems that appear to work correctly, but are incorrect. Something or other was done incorrectly, but the result was good or good enough. Folks moved to the next thing in their long list of next things to do. No one ever went back and made the incorrect system correct. The next person who walked in the door had to do their work incorrectly to match the incorrect system.

How do we ever exit this loop of incorrectness that we assume is correct? We probably won’t, but we can.

This is hard work. Wait. Stop. Fix this. Now. And let’s hope that making the system correct won’t break everything that was installed incorrectly to match the former incorrect system. If it does, repeat the difficult process. Wait. Stop. Fix this. History provides us examples of how someone “bit the bullet” and exited the loop of incorrectness. Join that history.

by Dwayne Phillips

A conversation about writing and publishing and the like.

A: It sounds like you have a book—in your head, in your ear, maybe even on paper. It also sounds like you would like to one day have a book in your hand and maybe in the hands of others.

A: Tell me about what you have and where you would like to go.

B: I would like to make lots of money.

A: Well, if that is your goal, I suggest working on other ideas instead of writing a book. The great and vast majority of books don’t make a cent.

B: I would like to be published.

A: Okay, that isn’t too difficult. Amazon, among many others today, has a system where you submit you book and then buy a few copies of it yourself for about $10 a copy. Now you have published a book.

B: But what about the money?

A: See above. Sorry. Book writing very ever rarely brings any money.

B: I would like to be published by a real publisher.

A: Write a complete book. Go to the web sites of about two dozen book publishers. Follow their instructions on how to propose a book. Some of them, perhaps one or two, will ask you for some sample chapters. Send them you complete book. If they like it, they will send you a contract.

B: Now I make money!

A: Maybe, but probably not. If your book is priced at $20, the book seller (the book store or web site that carries you book) keeps have or $10. That leave you and the publisher with $10. The standard publishing contract says that the author keeps 10% or 12% of the income. So, you get $1 for every copy of your book that sells for $20. If your book sells a million copies, you get $1,000,000. If it sells a hundred copies, you get $100. Most books sells less than a hundred copies.

B: But when do I make a living?

A: Write a hundred books. $100 times one-hundred books is $10,000. I guess you better write a thousand books, so you can earn $100,000.

B: But when do I make a living?

A: In the daytime at your day job.

B: If I am working all day, when do I write these books?

A: At night and on weekends.

B: Why would I write at night and on weekends.

A: Because you enjoy writing stories. You do it because you enjoy doing it. You can’t beat that.

by Dwayne Phillips

Athletes are wearing encyclopedia’s on their wrists (some call them wristcoach). The device helps the memory at critical moments. Why can’t the rest of us wear them?

We have all seen these on TV for the past several years. They are great big wrist bands that have all the plays or something on them. The coach sends a number, the player looks up the number on the wrist gadget, and they have the play. Some call these things “wristcoach.”

The player is under pressure, tired, nervous, having a tough day. They should be able to remember things like what number is what play, but given the stress, they have this big thing to remind them. Some of these players are paid $30 million a year. They admit their memory is not perfect.

What about the rest of us? We have days when we are tired, under pressure, have people yelling at us, etc. Our memory fails us. Why can’t we wear a wristcoach that contains all the things we know we should do, but sometimes forget? If $30-million-a-year persons can admit their memory failings, why can’t we?

Our wristcoaches can contain simple things: sit up straight, don’t tug your collar. They can contain complex things: the list of AI models and their standard uses.

But we bring notebooks to meetings. Yes, but will I remember what page has the information I need? Will I remember to look at my notebook? And when I am in the hallway and confronted by monsters, will I have my notebook with me? I would have my wristcoach on me.

Look silly? How silly does that $30-million-a-year quarterback look?

by Dwayne Phillips

Employers give little clues that they won’t hire you because you are told old.

Here are a couple of age discrimination clues I have heard:

This job is really deep and difficult to learn. It will take smart person at least a year to learn all you need to know before you can start to contribute. Hence, we only hire people we know will be hire five years, and you will retire before then.

You don’t fit in our strategic plans. Our strategic plans reach more than two years into the future. By the looks of you, you will retire in two years. Hence, we aren’t interested in you.

by Dwayne Phillips

I finally did it—I spilled a cup of coffee on my computer (first time ever over 40 years). A few lessons learned.

After 40+ years of using my own personal computer, I spilled a cup of coffee on my current Apple MacBook Air. After a couple of hours, the coffee saturated the computer and it was kaput. This was a Sunday morning. I run backups on Saturday morning. I bought a new MacBook Air on Monday morning.

Lessons:

• It is a great idea to use cloud storage like DropBox, iCloud, and OneDrive.
• GitHub is also a great thing to use.
• Google’s Colab is also a great thing to use.
• It is a good idea to have a desktop Mac and shareable Desktops and all that iCloud stuff that I really had not noticed before.
• It took four hours to restore from backup using Apple’s software. That’s a long time.
• A new computer has a CLEAN screen. Wow, what a difference.
• The new keyboard feels better than the old one (two years old).
• This should be simpler to replace a computer on the spur of the moment (like an accident).
• I should be careful. I am growing careless.
• Perhaps I should replace my laptop every year. That would cost more $$$, but…
• Perhaps I should just be using a Chromebook.
• Are there Mac computers up in the cloud for rent?
• Time marches on.

by Dwayne Phillips

Is it okay to not be the person in charge?

I am nearing the end of my professional working career. Maybe I will retire in a year or ten. Regardless of the retirement date, I have worked many more years than I will work, i.e., the past is bigger than the future.

Questions I ask myself often include, “Am I willing to take direction from others?,” and “Is it okay to not be the person in charge?” Some days it is easy to answer “yes” and “yes.” There are other days when it isn’t so easy.

These are simple questions. They are not simple when my past has made me into some sort of expert. I have seen it before, done it before, made a mess of it before, and learned a few things that others have not. I guess that experience goes with expertise. Then someone who has not made a mess of things before comes along and tells me to do something that will make a mess of things. Oh well.

There are alternatives. I could open my own consulting business and be a one-person company. That isn’t so easy when working in the national security realm, but it is possible. As a one-person company I would take direction from me. I’m not sure if I could get along with me day after day, but perhaps I could.

It is good to have the opportunity to ask these questions. I have a blessed life.

by Dwayne Phillips

Considering DevSecOps—nothing to see here folks. It is just what computer programmers do.

Everybody in the software-creating world is doing DevSecOps (development, security, operations). Well, if you are anybody in the everybody, you are doing DevSecOps. If you aren’t doing it, you are a nobody in the everybody.

What is DevSecOps? It’s just what computer programmers do. If a computer programmer types the same command more than twice a day, you write a computer program to do that for you. Take repetitive actions, put them in a computer program, and run that program. That is sort of the reason we have computers—perform repetitive actions for us.

We have DevSecOps tools. Here is what they do:

1. Loop over time or events.
2. When triggered, do this, do that, do the other thing, too.
3. If something isn’t right, go back.
4. Repeat the loop.

Uh, well, that’s about it. Not so complicated, huh? No, it isn’t complicated. Someone thought about it and wrote a program to do it. Someone else used that first program, improved it, and wrote a second program. We are now on the um-teenth program that implements the above algorithm a little better than the um-teenth minus everything less than um-teenth (sort of like the 20 sequels to the Halloween movie).

This little blog posts simplifies everything. It all has been quite complicated. It if were really easy, someone would have done this in the 1960s. Still, it isn’t that complicated. It’s just what computer programmers do.

by Dwayne Phillips

Folks out there in the crowd are clobbering the high-tech giants and everyone else they want to clobber.

Yet another essay appears about how open-source software projects appear faster than systems produced by high-tech giants full of experts. Computing power is so inexpensive that there are many, many, many folks out there with the power needed to do big things in software. Someone out there hears an idea being worked at one of the tech giants, implements the idea this weekend, and releases the system on Monday.

Part of this concept goes to “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki. That book copied and was copied by many others. And the concept of the crowd goes back dozens of centuries.

Today, we have the crowd sitting around in front of computers with software that allows folks to write software. “It’s just software” is what I used to have on my business card. If you can think of it, you can write it in software and have it. It is a little more difficult than that, but that trite saying works.

And then we have the “hacktivists.” We don’t know what to call these folks and we certainly don’t know what to do with them. Hacktivists are living in their grandparents basements and piddling around on their computers. They have the technical resources and the physical and mental energy to do what they imagine.

Hacktivists messed up the Russian invasion of Ukraine by hacking into the rail system of Belarus and fouling the Russian logistics needed to conduct a successful invasion. These were not hackers employed by any world government. These were just folks sitting around who were angry and did something. Were they mercenaries? Were they contractors? We don’t know what they were.

A hacktivist broke into Uber in late September “just for fun.” Of course it was a teenager living in the family basement who did it.

Hacktivists took down the web sites of several US states in early October. These folks were “pro-Russian.”

The hacktivists are part of the crowd. The open-source software programmers are part of the crowd. The computing crowd has tens or hundreds of millions of members.

If you are part of a large organization (government, successful company, et al), watch out for the crowd.

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems that everyone wants to say or write AI or artificial intelligence these days. Please stop misusing the term.

Our Federal Trade Commission wants to regulate AI. The lack of literacy is astounding, but then again, this is the pinnacle of regulating instead of creating. The FTC, with all its good intentions, is not talking about AI. They are talking about noticing and marketing. Those are things that businesses have done since businesses were in business.

This is, “We noticed that you go to the grocery store on Tuesday, so we will send you a sale paper or email on Monday evening.”

Collecting the information (everyone calls it “data” nowadays) to notice when I go to the grocery store might be abusive. Then again, it might be helpful to me as well as to the folks running the grocery store (“here comes that old man who still uses cash”).

Of course, those folks who tend to abuse others might use all this to abuse others since that is the type of folks they are. That is a shame, but we have yet to figure out how to right laws that cause abusive folks to stop being abusive.

Funny, we haven’t mentioned AI in all this. I guess that is because AI has nothing to do with it. If you know anyone at the FTC, please mention this to them.

by Dwayne Phillips

A recent major survey shows that managers and the managed disagree on what work is and isn’t.

Microsoft recently surveyed 20,000 persons across 11 countries about work. The result:

• 87% of the managed felt they worked as, or more, efficiently from home
• 80% of managers felt that at-home workers weren’t working

Here is my explanation: the two groups were talking about two different things.

The managed were talking about work that is necessary to keep the organization operating, meeting its mission, serving the customers, satisfying the stockholders, etc.

The managers were talking about the above PLUS the work they assigned here and there, now and then.

The managed were doing the necessary work in less time in that they accomplished it in two or three hours a day. That is opposed to an 8 1/2-hour day in the office plus 1 1/2 hours of commuting. Two hours to accomplish the work of a ten-hour day is a leap in productivity. The managed are doing great.

The managers, however, were not seeing the extra work they assigned here and there, now and then. That work was not being worked. This at-home stuff was bad.

In my 40 years working in the office, I have seen much of the extra work assigned here and there, now and then. Since everyone is here (thinks the manager) and doesn’t have any necessary work to do, I’d like to see them do such and such. They need something to do. Here is something.

That extra work assigned here and there, now and then was a waste of time. The managed knew it was, but did it anyways because they weren’t allowed to go home, so they had to do it. Now, they don’t have to do it.

There are too many of the managed. Organizations can get by with half the employees they used to have. Would that increase unemployment to unmanageable levels? I doubt it. There is supposed to be a labor shortage, but I don’t see that. I see some organizations with too much extra labor on hand and other organizations who cannot hire the extra labor. There are probably some labor categories in some locations that have shortages. I think those are in the great minority.

What is work? I guess that depends on your perspective.