Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I write this on November 25th. What will Christmas be in the year of the virus? I don’t know.

The big media—network news and cable networks, the big newspapers—have botched everything this year, and botched everything badly and obviously. Can’t look there for any accurate predictions.

Fifty-one percent of the country is happy about the recent election. Fifty percent of the country thinks the election was fraught with fraud (that includes 30% of Democrats, so the fraud idea is not just on one side).

Can the optimism of 51% carry the holiday?

Online shopping dominates, so people may be buying retail. There could be a run on toilet paper again.

No hugging on Christmas Day. That isn’t allowed.

What are we to do? Who knows?

It is a holiday.

• Celebrate as much as you can.
• Help others as much as you can.
• If you can’t be with someone, call them and tell them you wish you could see them and hug them.
• Don’t let someone else ruin your holiday. Recall, they’ve botched everything this year.

by Dwayne Phillips

We tend to inflate events when we participate in them. We do this at our peril in professional as well as personal situations.

1. The 2020 election was one of the most important in history. And I voted in it.
2. The pandemic was one of the biggest events in the history of mankind. And I lived through it.
3. The experimental results last week were more important than anything preceding them. And I conducted the experiments.

Hmmm. See a pattern? The truly big and important and wonderful things all have one thing in common: and I was there.

The Presidential election of 1900—the first of the century—a pittance. McKinley and Bryan? Really? Nothing there. It ushered in the American century: the Wright brothers, Coca Cola, Elvis, Disney, Hollywood. Small stuff, huh? And I didn’t vote in it.

Well, maybe we exaggerate our presence in some of these things. But that isn’t important.

Go back to item #3 in the list above. This “And I was There” concept applies to professional situations. Conferences I attended, experiments I conducted, books I read, books I wrote, conversations involving me: do these professional events overshadow ones where I wasn’t present? Do all significant ideas involve me? Does someone else’s idea pale in comparison?

Ego. Self. All that psychological stuff. Meaningless. I mean sure, those folks are nice, but they aren’t, I mean they don’t, oh, and I wasn’t there. I wasn’t one of T H E M so their ideas aren’t. Hmmm. Maybe there is something to this.

And it must be important because I was there.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some things are so obvious that we all miss them for a long time. Moving from experiment lab to the real world requires some expertise.

To do artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, etc. you do computing. This means a lot of software work. Though not as old as physics and chemistry, there have been some seven or eight decades of software practice. You can’t pick up the practice of software in a few afternoons or months. The same can be said for general computing and all the things that go with that.

Interesting experiments may be interesting, but they are experiments. Products that involve computing require professionals with experience in that field. Those professionals may not be as smart, creative, or interesting as those who created the interesting experiments, but they are necessary.

Someone in your group performed an interesting and potentially valuable experiment? Great! Want to move from the lab to the real world? Great! There is no magic here. Go back to the fundamentals of projects and systems. Bring in the professionals in those fields. Be a little boring.

And succeed.

by Dwayne Phillips

Fiction, when repeated enough, becomes fact in the minds of many. So why aren’t we trying to stomp out fiction that is far from reality?

I have seen many movies on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries. 99% of murders in real life are not like that, nothing like that. 99% of murders in fiction are like that meaning they are far from reality. Repeat enough and SOME people begin to believe fiction.

We aren’t stupid, but we are human. We eventually believe some of what is repeated to us.

The murders are clean. A team of nice people dig for motives and threaten people enough so that they “want to have a lawyer.” And then, when the real murder is revealed, the nice people don’t go back and apologize for threatening innocent people? And the real murder gives up with, “Golly gee, you got me.”

So why aren’t we as a society trying to stomp out Hallmark and Agatha Christie and all those folks? Why do we allow these well-meaning folks to give us a false impression of life so much so that we believe life is that clean and nice?

Perhaps Hallmark and Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes are so far fetched that we just don’t fall into the trap of believing life is that clean. We aren’t so gullible. Let’s hope so.

by Dwayne Phillips

At last, I continue a series of essentials for writers.

The first Some Essentials for Writers was posted December 10th, 2012. I actually promised that I would write some more parts to that post. Well, 7 1/2 years later, here we go.

I have been working recently with things called Jekyll, Markdown, GitHub, Git, and the Atom editor. 

The one thing in common for all is ASCII text. American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The aforementioned Atom is an ASCII text editor that has lots of features to it. I guess it is better at many things than my old favorite Vim. (I still like Vim better.)

The one great advantage of ASCII is that it seems to live forever. I guess it won’t actually live forever, but I have been working with ASCII text since the late 1970s (yes, I am that old) and as long as I copy files from floppy disks before all the floppy disk hardware dies, I am okay.

Writings I wrote using WordStar are unreadable, unless you have a copy of WordStar still running. Writings I wrote using WordPerfect are unreadable, unless you have a copy of WordPerfect running. There are pieces of software that can convert WordStar and WordPerfect files, but with ASCII, just about any computer can read ASCII.

Long live ASCII. And by the way, I have a Kaypro portable computer that runs CP/M and WordStar. Still the best display and keyboard for writing ever made.

by Dwayne Phillips

I guess we haven’t changed much from the day of the snake oil salesman rolling through town with his mule-drawn wagon.

There is something about transience and lack of integrity that tend to make the two close partners. If we have transience, we lack integrity.

Back in the old days, or at least back in the westerns that showed a version of the old days, we had the traveling salesman in his mule-drawn wagon. This fellow usually sold some magic elixir that had oil squeezed from a snake as one key ingredient. The magic elixir was, well, magic in what it could do for anything that ailed us.

No one knew the traveling salesman. He was transitory. Here today, gone tomorrow. Should we trust this fellow as he passed through?

In some places today, it is the townspeople who are transitory. We move five times in our lifetime, or some large number of times. We don’t know all the local businesses. Hmmm. The unknown salesman appears.

Well, we have the Internet today. Anything we wish to know about any product is available to us. Anything we wish to know about the reputation of the unknown salesman is available to us. With all these “anythings” available to us, how can the salesman lacking integrity exist? They seem to find a way.

Yes, I recently spent an afternoon with a salesman who either didn’t know anything about his line of products or simply lacked integrity. Lots of fellows are struggling to make a living in the year of the virus. Some cut a few corners so they can feed their families. I suppose I should write a post about economics and integrity. That will be for another day.

by Dwayne Phillips

A bit of history and lost opportunity.

The Android operating system is 13 years old in November of 2020. Gosh. Horrible memories back to 2007 and early 2008.

Senior government managers looked at the mobile landscape back then and declared: The future was the Microsoft phone and its operating system.

Junior government engineers were speechless. Microsoft phone? Look at this Google open-source operating system. The world was wide open with everyone contributing to the system. Microsoft? Closed. Proprietary. Based on Windows or something, not x-nix.

History tells us that the senior government managers were wrong—laughably wrong.

Their mobile OS mistake, however, was not the BIG problem. These senior government managers spent the next few years judging who among the junior engineers knew what they were doing and who should be promoted and who sent packing. They didn’t judge any better on personnel than they did on technology.

I suppose there are some lessons to be learned here. Maybe had these managers been held accountable for their technology mistake—and been removed from their positions—others would have made better judgements for years to come. Maybe had people listened to the junior engineers, those bright junior engineers would now be managing and judging well. Who knows.

Just a bit of history and lost opportunity.

by Dwayne Phillips

It sure is hard to understand fill-in-the-blank. Or is it hard to understand what someone wrote about it?

I recently experimented with Jekyll. Good grief! That’s complicated!

I also experimented with Git and GitHub. Good grief! Those things are complicated!

And then I read several textbooks on machine learning and convolutional neural networks. Wow, how complicated can you get?

Then I read a short post on convolutional neural networks. Hmm. Simple. Oh, that’s what they are doing.

Which brings me to the title of the post. Is the thing complicated or the description of the thing? Why do people write convoluted circular complicated and whatever descriptions of things? Such isn’t necessary.

Are these descriptions some sort of test? If you can understand how I describe this, you are smart enough to be worthy of my time. I don’t understand. Someone please teach me, and do it in a simple manner, please.

by Dwayne Phillips

We are responsible in that we are able to choose our response. This isn’t a new thought, but one that bears repeating.

Around the first century in the world or Rome and Greece lived a man named Epictetus. He is the first persons recorded to have written the thoughts in this blog post.

Persons who are responsible are able to choose their response to events. The events do not spur a flinch or uncontrollable physical reaction. One attribute of being responsible is that persons choose to be responsible or choose not.

Examples:

• When I’m hungry, I am grouchy.
• When I’m hungry, I choose to be grouchy.
• When I’m hungry, I choose to sit apart from others so I don’t appear grouchy.

Hmmm. That is an intriguing. See the difference when a person chooses their response?

The trouble is, this takes much of the fun out of life. I lose the chance to be grouchy or some other reaction that I feel is bad and will reflect badly on me. I can’t gripe, I can’t lie, I can’t cheat, I can’t…well, I can’t do things that I think are wrong, but can be justified when considered an uncontrollable physical reaction.

Then again, I can choose that being grouchy isn’t bad and it is, in fact, a justifiable reaction to an event. Hmmm. This adulthood thing isn’t so bad after all, huh?

As a manager, what happens when someone walks in with bad news? Well, first I can choose to call it “news,” not “bad news.” I can choose the adjective I use with “news.” Then I can choose how I respond to the news.

Yes, this adult hood and responsible stuff isn’t all bad.

by Dwayne Phillips

After being asked the same question for years, perhaps I have found the answer to, “What is it that you do?”

I have spoken to many job recruiters. I have spoken to many persons in job interviews. Some of these persons ask a variation of the question:

What is it that you do?

The title of this post is the answer. I’ll call it Learnering.

This is some combination of writing, talking, asking, listening, simulating, problem solving, etc. I create opportunities for others and myself to learn. As a result, people around me generally become smarter and better.

Notice, this is not teaching where I sit people and tell them, “Listen to me. I am going to teach you something.” This is creating opportunities to learn. The other person may learn, but may not learn. And, I may learn, but may not learn. Nevertheless, the opportunity is there.

I think this is what project managers and others in supervisory positions should be doing. Provide an environment where people learn and grow and change in positive directions.