Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

This is perhaps the once piece of writing advice that has more return per ounce of effort there is.

How many words do you have in a sentence? Here is an example of the first sentence of an article in a nationally famous newspaper (The Washington Post, 1 April 2021, and it is not an April Fool’s Joke):

“In April last year, an investigator from the Food and Drug Administration reported problems he had discovered at a Baltimore plant operated by Emergent BioSolutions, a major supplier of vaccines to the federal government.”

There are 34 words in this sentence. I must take a deep breathe before reading it so I can make it all the way without stopping to breathe again.

How about writing this instead (caution: I am an engineer, not a journalist):

“In April 2020, an FDA investigator reported problems at an Emergent BioSolutions Baltimore plant. The company is a major federal vaccine supplier.”

Two sentences totaling 22 words or 11 words per sentence.

Are we still in the age when newspapers must will pages, so they put more instead of less words? Are we still in the age when journalists are paid by the word?

I thought we had past that. I was wrong.

by Dwayne Phillips

A basic principle in writing non-fiction is Don’t Repeat Yourself. Write it once and point to it.

DRY means “Don’t Repeat Yourself.” This is simple, but not often used, and that causes us lots of headaches and heartaches.

I have a background in computer programming. A fundamental part of computer programming is the use of a subroutine (we have created dozens of names for the subroutine, but they all refer to the same thing). A subroutine is a small(er) set of instructions to the computer that we set to the side. Every time we want the computer to execute those instructions we “call” or refer to that subroutine instead of writing those instructions again and again and again and…

This is a simple concept. Just “do what I told you to do yesterday. That same thing. No need to repeat myself.”

Ah, “repeat myself.” DRY, don’t repeat yourself. Simply write the schedule on page 12. In the rest of the book, write “See page 12 for the schedule.” If the schedule changes, there is only one place where the editor needs to go to change it. If I had repeated the schedule in a dozen places, I would have to go to a dozen places, make the change a dozen times, and hope I did it correctly a dozen times in a row.

Don’t repeat yourself. Put the schedule on page 12 and only page 12. Put the contents of the box on page 11 and only page 11. Put the assembly procedure on page 9 and only page 9. This is simple.

There are many reasons why I want to repeat myself. Some of them are excellent reasons. Violate the DRY principle when it makes sense, but only when it makes sense. Violating the DRY principle complicates my life and creates extra work for me. Sometimes that complication and work are necessary. Often, they are not.

by Dwayne Phillips

A simple method for writing a short story (I mean really simple).

I like to write short stories. Perhaps that is because I think I have so much to tell, but not enough persons to sit and listen.

Anyways, here is one method to writing a short story:

1. Remember an event in your life.
2. Write the event.
3. Change the names and the places.
4. Change the ending of the actual event to something (1) you wish would have happened, (2) you are happy didn’t happen, or (3) anything in between.

There you have it. It is really simple. It actually works. It is what many famous writers through the years have done.

by Dwayne Phillips

The weekend tends to erase all prior history. That is a bad thing in endeavors that are worth our time.

Monday morning. A good weekend behind me. Okay, now what? Well, what’s interesting in the tech and culture news? Oh, look at that. I’ll spend some time exploring it.

Problem: I am paid to do something. Now, what was it? Hmmmmmm… How did the weekend erase everything? Where was I?

Solution: Keep records. That is an organized-person habit. I’m not an organized person. My employer, however, pays me to avoid the great history eraser that the weekend can be and continue with what we were doing the last week(s).

One Solution: I’ve used this for about 35 years. It works for me. I keep a Steno pad on my desk. That is one of those spiral-bound notebooks that flips vertically instead of horizontally. Everyday, I pencil in the things that happen. Wrote this. Read that. Talked to this person. Emailed that person. Okay, I recorded history.

Monday: First thing, look back through the notes from last week. Avoid the great eraser that the weekend can be. Sometimes I open a document on the computer and write a summary of the prior week. Other times I merely read the notes, think, and jot new notes on the calendar of the coming week.

Wow. That is organized. I’m not organized. My employer doesn’t care if I like being organized. I am paid to be organized. I am organized at work. I can be as flippant as I want at home.

At work, I am organized. I don’t let the weekend erase history. I continue this week with what was left unfinished last week.

Yes, I use a lot of paper-and-pencil tools. They are backwards compatible. I can read the history I jotted 35 years ago. If the computer crashes, no problem. If the computing system changes and last year’s records are gone, no problem. Spilled coffee? No problem. Paper and pencil works. Being organized works.

Please, try it. Don’t let the weekend erase history.

by Dwayne Phillips

There is a risk to clarifying the message relative to an idea. We many learn that the idea is a bad one.

I have an idea. I have a message. My message is fuzzy, not good. I want to clarify my message.

Really? If my idea is a bad one, clarifying the message will reveal that it is bad. At that point, I would have to go back and work on the idea for a while.

Rats. I had promised everyone a message about the idea and it is time to deliver and I am going to be late with everything and…

I hate being late. I hate withdrawing my idea when I promised others that I would present it to them.

How did I get into so much trouble? I had not clarified the idea before telling others that I had a great idea and I was going to tell them about it. The act of telling others the great idea would teach me if the idea was great or not.

I need a group of folks who will listen to me as a practice, i.e., they won’t really care that much if my idea is bad. Where do I find such non-judgemental folks? I need to clarify that idea so I can find them. Sigh. Isn’t this where I began?

by Dwayne Phillips

Is a thought expressed a complete, accurate, well considered thought or merely thinking out loud?

Lots of folks express thoughts in social media these days. I define “social media” as anything that is published in any form without exhaustive peer review. Lots of folks are massacred because of some of these thoughts (pardon the extreme term “massacred”).

Most social media thoughts are incomplete or partial thoughts. Something just came to me, so I jotted it down on fill-in-the-blank-with-your-most-despised-place. Of course you can find many faults with my incomplete thought. So can I.

Pardon me, but did the writer, i.e., the person who jotted down a thought, ask you for your critique of the thought and your extension to the thought? Some of us know the “jotter” well enough that we know there is an implicit request for extra thoughts from some persons. Hence, I jot my thoughts on their jotted thoughts.

Perhaps the prior paragraph is a not-so-subtle way of writing, “Keep your thoughts on my thoughts to yourself.”

About five years ago, I wrote a post about, “To write is to be misunderstood.” That thought, which was more than a jot or incomplete thought, still holds. When I write, others will not know 100% of what was in my mind when I typed the words. I did not know 100% of what was in my mind when I typed the words.

And then there is the topic of the person jotting thoughts, their official position, and the social media forum of their jots. If you are the CEO and are speaking to shareholders, that is not the forum to state incomplete thoughts unless I preface them with, “Don’t take this next comment as official. It is an offhand thought. I am ‘thinking out loud’ or ‘jotting a thought.'”

Shareholders consider what a CEO says as official, well-thought policy.

I should understand the context of my thoughts. I should explain the context of my thoughts. And I should understand the reactions to my thoughts.

by Dwayne Phillips

Agile thought: do, learn, change, do learn, repeat. Great stuff in some situations. Not great in national policy.

Someone recently noted that the Agile Manifesto was 20 years old. This was a fancy way of stating the obvious when it comes to experiments: do a little, learn a little, do a little, learn a little, etc.

The computer as we know it today is perfect for this “agile” idea. Type words on the screen. Save them, read them, improve them, repeat. Type a computer program on the screen, run it, learn, change it, run it learn, repeat.

National policy. Sorry. That is not like writing something on a computer screen. Do a little, learn a little, change, do a little, learn a little, repeat. It doesn’t work with national policy about health or anything else at that level. Spend a few billion dollars. Learn a little. Repeat. Nope.

“We know more now” is a pathetic excuse for lack of thought.

An agile nation? Nope. Won’t work. Now, let me read the words I types, change, learn, repeat.

by Dwayne Phillips

All this mask wearing allows me to not recognize and not talk to people when I’d rather just keep doing things I’d rather just keep doing.

The year of the virus has brought us many changes. Let’s consider one that I discovered recently and like (on those occasions when I like it).

I find it difficult to recognize people when they are wearing a mask. Some people find it difficult to recognize me when I am wearing a mask. Since I live in one of the enlightened districts of America (that is both a compliment and a disparagement), everyone is still wearing masks here in mid-April 2021.

Situation: I am walking the sidewalk of a shopping center (you know the common type that is anchored by a grocery supermarket). I see someone I know. I recognize them despite the mask. By the glance of their eyes and the raising of their eyelids, I recognize that they recognize me.

I don’t want to stop and talk to them in this place at this time. Ah, here is the benefit of the mask. I just keep walking.

Sometimes we meet the next day in a situation where talking is either welcomed or unavoidable.

“Hey, were you at the shopping center yesterday?” the other person asks.

“Well, yes I was,” I answer.

“I thought I saw you, but you kept on walking so I thought it wasn’t you,” they say.

“Oh,” I reply. “I didn’t notice.”

“Yes,” they say, “with these masks sometimes we just don’t recognize people we know.”

“I know what you mean,” I say.

See? The masks give us anonymity at times when we just want to keep doing what we want to keep doing. Perhaps this is selfish. Perhaps this is finding some good in an otherwise bad situation—and I believe this pandemic year is a bad situation. I find that all the mask wearing is bringing more harm than good, but that is just me. I find it a good excuse to not recognize, stop, and talk to some persons in some situations at some times.

by Dwayne Phillips

Another variation of Lewis Carroll’s “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” This time we apply it to hiring data scientists.

“We can’t hire enough data scientists.” At least I read that almost everyday out there on the Internet. Well, why can’t we? Here are a few of my reasons.

(Reason 1) We keep raising the bar. It is not enough to (a) know programming, (b) know math, science, and statistics, and (c) know a subject area. Now we need to know artificial intelligence and machine learning as well.

“If you cannot deploy six different regression models on AWS SageMaker in less than 15 minutes, you are not a data scientist.” Or so the thinking goes.

(Reason 2) We keep lowering the bar. We want to “democratize” data science so that you drag a data file into a GUI, type a question, and hit Return.

(Reason 3) I guess we can’t agree on a definition of a data scientist. Hiring an Electrical Engineer is much easier; look at the college diploma. We don’t have many folks running around with a diploma that says “data science.” Hence, we have to think a while before hiring, and thinking gives us a headache.

We have the unknowing trying to find the undefined. Any road will get us there or get us lost in the woods. The results are predictable and predicted.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes decisions just sort of drift in and out with the tides.

The tide comes in; the tide goes out. Sometimes we find something that drifted in with the tide and remains on the beach. The next day, the next cycle or two of tides, and that something is gone. It was carried back out by the tide.

I have seen managers decide important questions like this. One day, they wake and, well, there you have it. Decided. A few days or weeks later and it is gone. Decided.

Nothing of consequence happened before each decision. The decisions just sort of happened. Just like the tides.

We often do just fine by considering the beach and what has come in or out with the tides. There is enough momentum and expertise in all the folks surrounding us that our decisions neither help nor hurt that much.

Sometimes are decisions shouldn’t be left up to what the tide brings or takes. And we shouldn’t let the tide decide if we are deciding by the tide.