As for Hitler, he comes in for a lot of criticism — much of it justified, in my opinion — but at least he did something with his life. He didn’t just sit around laughing at pictures of cats, like a simpleton. — Harry Hutton Read more →
August 2006
Hate Crime in Irvine
Irvine police are investigating a possible hate crime that occurred early Saturday morning in the gated Turtle Ridge community. Officers arrived around 6:10 a.m. and discovered a car parked on Rose Trellis had been painted with race-related graffiti. The car belongs to an African-American family that lives there. — Orange County Register Now that’s a shocking piece of news. You mean to say there are black people living in Irvine?! Read more →
Drowning in Chocolate
My wife just read me a news item about a worker who was trapped in a vat of chocolate for two hours. “Really?!” I said. “Dark, milk or semisweet? Look, you think that’s bad, this guy should try working with some of the morons that I have to work with in the IT industry on a daily basis. In two weeks, he’ll welcome the opportunity to drown in a vat of chocolate. No sympathy here, candy man. “Now . . . what else is happening in the world? . . .” Read more →
Massive Accountability
Maybe you’ve noticed that most software sucks. Maybe you’ve wondered — if you work in the software business — why our aspirations are so low compared with the possibilities of our profession. Maybe you’ve wondered what, if anything, could be done about this. Here’s a fun story about the benefits of really holding people accountable for the shoddy quality of their work. In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote about King Xerxes, who in the 5th Century BC ordered a bridge of boats to be built across the Hellespont: A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy structure, and the King, thinking that to publicly rebuke the contractors might have a good effect on the next set, called them out before the army and had them beheaded. In the next ten minutes he let a new contract for the bridge. It has been observed by ancient writers that the second bridge was… Read more →
Grandma Died Yesterday
Grandma died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. Just kidding; it was yesterday, but I never get tired of that joke. Grandma was 94 years old. She was quick-witted almost to the end. She died at St. Jude Medical Center, the same hospital where I was born. She was 47 when I was born, the same age I am now. It’s the circle of life. Grandma was a Presbyterian. Everyone else in the family, except me, is Catholic. The Catholic chaplain at St. Jude anointed Grandma before she died. I’m not sure what that means, but I know that my mom asked the priests at her parish to do it and they wouldn’t because Grandma was not a Catholic. “He said he was deeply sorry,” Andrew savagely caricatured the inflection, “but it was simply a rule of the Church.” “Some church,” he snarled. “And they call themselves… Read more →
Beware Metrics
Beware metrics. We are enamored with them from the days of waterfall, when we couldn’t tell what was going on until the end of the project. So, we devised metrics to attempt to read the tea leaves of what might be going on so we could get early warnings. Earned value is a great example of this. Also, we developed metrics to prove that things were improving to our customers even though over 1/2 of our projects failed. See, we are getting better, so leave us alone and please don’t fire us. — Ken Schwaber Read more →
Our Competitors are Still Sucking Their Thumbs
We made mistakes. Most of them were omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today: While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version No. 5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version No. 10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan–for months. — Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg Read more →
At the Dog Park
This is a picture of me, Lightning Epps, at the Irvine dog park. I love the dog park! Even though I’m not a puppy anymore — I’m almost 3 years old — I still like to chase and play a little bit. The bigger dogs try to dominate me sometimes. Usually I can stop them with just a look, but not always. The puggle in this picture, for example, kept blindsiding me and trying to climb on top of me. I chalked that up to youthful exuberance for a few moments, but when he kept doing it, I had to knock him down, leap on top of him, and sink my fangs into his neck. Not hard, just enough to reestablish the natural order of things. I don’t instigate this stuff, but I don’t put up with a lot of nonsense either. You know what they say — it’s not… Read more →
Fidel Castro Needs to Die Right Now
“Is Fidel Castro dead yet?” my son asks. “No,” I say, “as far as I know he’s still alive. Why do you care?” “Fidel Castro is the most Communistic Communist in the history of Communist Communism. And I have him in a death pool.” “When do you need him to die?” “Like . . . right now.” “Do you have anyone else in your death pool?” “Maurice Clarett.” Read more →
There is No Road
Is it all a dream, yes, perhaps a dream. . . . Death, its closeness. . . . Was I in prison once? I cannot remember. At the end of what is necessary, I have come to a place where there is no road. — Iris Murdoch, Jackson’s Dilemma Read more →
Girls Talk
Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl’s brain. We’re not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It’s a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm. — Louann Brizendine, M.D., The Female Brain According to Brizendine, thoughts about sex enter women’s brains once every couple of days; for men, thoughts about sex occur every minute. Both numbers sound low to me. Sexy sexy sex sex sex . . . (sorry, thinking out loud) . . . Read more →
The Legacy of Waterfall
We are so unprofessional it is incredible. The legacy of waterfall is so dominant it is scary. — Ken Schwaber Read more →
Names for Your Band
From Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn: You Fucking Mooks The Chocolate Cheeseballs Tony and the Tugboats Jerks from Nowhere Free Human Freakshow Bucky Dent and the Stale Doughnuts Read more →
Put ‘er There!
God forbid I ever have to have my arm amputated, but if I do, I hope they let me keep it. I’d like to stick it back up my sleeve and shake hands with children. “That’s some grip you got there!” I’d say, when the arm comes off in their little hands. Read more →
A Rule of Thumb on Documentation
As a rule of thumb, I’d guess that 90 percent of what a team knows would be lost if they tried to write it down, and that 90 percent of what they wrote down would be lost when some other team tried to read it. But then, I’m an optimist. — Ron Jeffries Read more →
They Call Me The Hammah
My son’s holding a gigantic inflatable mallet that he won at Dave and Buster’s. “They call me The Hammah!” he announces in a loud ghetto drawl. “Do you know why they call me The Hammah? Go on, take a guess . . .” Read more →
The Semi-Gifted Students Academy
I’m driving my son to UCI this morning . . . he’s taking a couple of classes at the Gifted Students Academy. “Only about half the students are gifted,” he informs me. “The rest are stoo-pid.” “How can you tell they’re stupid?” I ask. “I can just tell.” “I mean are they actively doing stupid things, or they can’t answer questions?” “Both.” Then: “Drive faster. Mom dropped me off late yesterday and I almost had to run to get to class on time.” “That’s good. Your years of athletic training are finally paying off for you.” “I said I almost had to run.” “Oh. What happened next? You got to class and almost had to think?” Read more →
We’re No Geniuses
Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein. — Joe Theismann Read more →
It’s All My Fault
. . . it is utterly trivial to create a case (and to “prove” it, too) that pretty much anybody is pretty much to blame for pretty much anything. Since a causal link can readily be drawn from either of us to anything in our lives, we simply stipulate our own blame. This saves effort, reduces friction, disinvites defensiveness and promotes remediation. Of course I cause my own troubles. . . . If I am not the prime cause of my own circumstances, I am doomed to live in a victim’s world. That would suck so bad that I prefer personal accountability. — Jim McCarthy Read more →