Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

What did you do during the Wuhan virus lock in of naught-20?

First, I predict that in the future we will look back at this and double blind or blind our inoffensive offensiveness and call this the “Wuhan virus” because that follows the traditional naming convention of such. (Lyme disease is named after a town in Connecticut).

Second, yes it is naught-20 as there is a zero in front of the 20.

Next, we all did something. Doing nothing is choosing to do little instead of much. If nothing else we all chose what to do.

Did you stay in as a good person would do? Did you go out and help others as a good person would do? There was something good to do, and regardless of what we did, it was probably good.

Did you lose your job?

Did you work from home and still get a paycheck?

Were you essential?

Did you feel guilty because you got paid, didn’t get sick, but knew others who were less fortunate?

Did you give money to others who lost their jobs?

What did you do in naught-20?

by Dwayne Phillips

Things are better. Today. The statement is true for everyday if you make it so.

Happy new year. Well, I guess according to the official calendar the new year starts tomorrow. That, however, is just some arbitrary thing. Let’s just act like today is a new year.

The general consensus is that 2020 was a horrible year. I understand why some would agree to that. I also understand why some would say that 2020 was the best year ever (see, e.g., the value of tech companies and ask any of the tens of thousands of persons who own part of Amazon). Different persons; different perspectives.

We end one year; we begin another year. We end one day; we begin another day.

Today will be better than yesterday. There are days in life when something happens that brings grief. Let’s not forget, however, that yesterday is gone and today is just starting. We can do something today; we can’t go back and undo-redo anything yesterday.

I can spend the day on the couch. There is much good in couches and using couches. I can write a novel or at least part of one. I can produce a movie or at least part of one. I can love my spouse and my child and my grandchild. I can love a neighbor. There is much good I can do today to make today a good day.

Happy new day. Happy new year.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes we skim the surface to gather an overview. Sometimes we dive in deep to discover the details.

I like an overview. I like the nitty gritty details. Which do we like? On which day?

For me, the overview is easier. I learn the general idea. I tell people that “all I have” is a general idea.

Sometimes I find myself diving into the details. Once in the details, I am fine. I am working. I am accomplishing something. It is, however, that first look under the surface, that chill of death that accompanies putting a foot into the water, that is painful. I hate that. It hurts a part of me for some reason. I hurts just thinking about it.

Today is one of those days when I leave the comfort of the overview and dive into some details. I don’t anticipate it with joy. Ask me this afternoon while I am in the details. Better yet, ask me this evening after I have finished the details. Then I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I can still dive into details and find difficult, detailed answers to similar problems.

Are you a project manager? You have an overview of what is happening. Do you understand any of the details? Do you remember when you were a “worker bee” thrashing through the details all day every day? Some of us became project managers because we didn’t like the details. Some of us became project managers because project managers were paid more money. Some of us became project managers because we became older and older people became project managers.

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.