Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips For writers and those who name products and services: standard items have shorter names than special ones. Attach modifiers to exceptions to the rule, not the rule. Apple recently changed their line of laptop computers. As expected, the newer computers have more performance and a lower price than last year’s models. In […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The digital devices we have can dominate our lives. That still doesn’t change a simple fact – this is an analog world inhabited by analog people. We live in a digital world. Cell phones, Internet, digital cameras, digital video camcorders – all digital. At its heart, the digital world comprises only two […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The current administration is running into all sorts of obstacles that it didn’t have during its campaign. There are countless “stupid rules” inside government. These rules were created because at some time in the past someone cheated. Cheaters are the origin of rules and regulations. The Obama administration has been criticized for […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The May/June 2009 issue of IEEE Software has a paper by Greg Wilson on books that are “Not on the Shelves.” In it, Wilson gives the synopsis of 12 books that should be on the shelves, but are not. At least he can’t find them. Wilson asks for more suggestions of such […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are many methods to use to reach a conclusion. Since they all involve fallible people like me, most of the methods are fallible. Expect requests for further study. Anticipate them and ask others to study alongside you from the beginning. Arriving at a conclusion is a primary task of an engineer, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I did a lot of research on the Internet this week at work. I can’t mention the topics I researched, but I was researching for a good four days. It isn’t surprising to reveal that the information available on the net is astounding. Google is a great tool. The same is true […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are many forces in our culture that helps create workaholic people. Twitter joins the group. Twitter is cute, funny, silly, a waste of time, and many other things depending on who is telling you this or what you are doing at the time. Consider this one: Twitter is yet another means […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Small tasks should need small effort. Large tasks should need large effort. Those nuggets of management wisdom are often wrong. I find that task effort relates to task difficulty, and task difficulty relates to the experience of the people on hand. I recently helped some people remodel a person’s house. We did […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Bringing about change in a group of people is perhaps the most difficult task anyone can undertake. An old fable sheds light on one technique for encouraging change. I wish I knew the origin of this little fable. I hope that I relay it well enough. Anyways, here goes: Once upon a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I had an enjoyable evening yesterday. My son was working on a programming project for a freshman-level computer science class (college). I – after being asked – jumped into the problem. Several observations. (1) Computer science professors aren’t any better at creating meaningful programming assignments than they were 30 years ago. (2) […]

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