Iceland has overtaken Norway as the world’s most desirable country to live in, according to an annual U.N. table published on Tuesday that again puts AIDS-afflicted sub-Saharan African states at the bottom. — Reuters, Nov. 27, 2007 Iceland?! You can tell by the name that it’s not a good place to live: Ice Land. Land of Ice. You’re stranded in the middle of the ocean. It’s like living on Gilligan’s Island, but without the pleasant climate. As for Norway, my brother has the command of an Air Force base in Norway. He says when the sun is shining, it’s the most beautiful place in the world. The other 335 days of the year, not so great . . . Read more →
November 2007
A Message That Sticks
John F. Kennedy, in 1961, proposed to put an American on the moon in a decade. That idea stuck. It motivated thousands of people across dozens of organizations, public and private. It was an unexpected idea: it got people’s attention because it was so surprising–the moon is a long way up. It appealed to our emotions: we were in the Cold War and the Russians had launched the Sputnik space satellite four years earlier. It was concrete: everybody could picture what success would look like in the same way. How many goals in your organization are pictured in exactly the same way by everyone involved? My father worked for IBM during that period. He did some of the programming on the original Gemini space missions. And he didn’t think of himself as working for IBM–he thought of himself as helping to put an American on the moon. An accountant who… Read more →
What Am I Thankful For?
I’m thankful that I have a job! A lot of people don’t! I lost my last job a few months ago, along with 9,499 other people in the Orange County real estate/finance industry over the past year. We all got to compete against each other to find another one. The Orange County Register ran a story yesterday on how some of these folks are doing . . . Delia DeYulia, a grandmother, was recently forced to take her first retail job. For the holiday shopping season, DeYulia, 53, is working part-time at Kohl’s, placing clothes on racks and cleaning dressing rooms. She resorted to taking the temporary work after not finding other employment. After 15 years with Fremont Investment and Loan, she lost her mortgage job in Anaheim Hills in March. “I’m used to sitting in an office,” said DeYulia, who audited loans at Fremont, a firm from which she… Read more →
Subprime Sinkhole
The rising tide of the mortgage industry lifted some pretty spurious boats here in Orange County, so it’s fun now to watch the subprime sinkhole laying them low. Example: John Lynch, the “surfing banker,” executive VP of Secured Funding Corp., specialists in home equity loans and second mortgages to people with bad credit. I had this guy pegged as a moron years ago, around the same time OC Metro ran a fawning blowjob of a profile on him: For the foreseeable future, he will continue as a master of both the surfboard and the boardroom — plus anything else that he decides to do. — OC Metro, Jan. 8, 2004 Well, that was then and this is now: The party is over in Orange County. These days, Secured Funding’s once-buzzing office building in Costa Mesa, near John Wayne Airport, is gutted. The imprint of “Secured Funding” is all that remains… Read more →
The Dog Ate My Homework
It’s an old joke but does it ever really happen? My son’s science homework for last night was to build some Lewis dots using Froot Loops. This morning, the dog ran out and managed to take a couple of bites of a Lewis dot before we were able to fend him off . . . Read more →
The Wicked Messenger
He stayed behind the assembly hall, It was there he made his bed, Oftentimes he could be seen returning. Until one day he just appeared With a note in his hand which read, “The soles of my feet, I swear they’re burning.” Oh, the leaves began to fallin’ And the seas began to part, And the people that confronted him were many. And he was told but these few words, Which opened up his heart, “If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any.” — Bob Dylan, “The Wicked Messenger” Read more →
Community Leaders
I’ve got here an email from the Irvine Public Schools Foundation (IPSF), soliciting online donations at the IPSF website. Also on the website is a page listing the names of the IPSF board members, along with their corporate affiliation. Seven of the board members have no corporate affiliation and instead are given the tagline of “Community Leader.” Question: What in the world is a Community Leader?! How does one acquire such a designation, other than not having a real job? Couldn’t we just identify them as Volunteers or Parents or Parent Volunteers, instead of making them out to be some sort of tribal chieftains? Based on the one Community Leader that I actually know personally, I’d say a more appropriate label would be Community Nuisance or Gadfly. Read more →
Have We Lost Perspective?
I get very, very frustrated when I . . . hear certain Americans talk about how difficult the problems we face are, how overwhelming they are, what a dangerous era we live in. I think we’ve lost perspective. We’ve always had difficult problems, we’ve always had great challenges, and we’ve always lived in danger. Do we think our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents didn’t live in danger and didn’t have difficult problems? Do we think the Second World War was less difficult that our struggle with Islamic terrorism? Do we think that the Great Depression was a less difficult economic struggle for people to face than the struggles we’re facing now? Have we entirely lost perspective of the great challenges America has faced in the past and has been able to overcome and overcome brilliantly? I think sometimes we have lost that perspective. — Rudy Giuliani Read more →
It Seems Obvious in Retrospect . . .
. . . but something I just learned is that area codes were originally assigned according to the population density of the city or region, with the lowest numbers going to the most populous areas. Keeping in mind that phones in those days had rotary dials, and higher numbers therefore took longer to dial, the thinking was that areas with the most people should be the easiest to call. That’s why New York City got area code 212, Chicago got 312, Los Angeles got 213, etc. (Zero actually counts as a high number — a 10, essentially — because it takes the longest to dial.) Conversely, the area code for the entire state of Alaska was (and still is) 907. Read more →
A Missed Opportunity
USC coach Pete Carroll and UCLA assistant Eric Scott were both at Thursday’s Crenshaw game. — Scott Wolf inside USC Interesting . . . I would have thought Eric Scott would be out robbing the houses of people attending the Crenshaw game . . . FIGHT ON! Read more →
Pastagina
Theres a new restaurant opening up in our local shopping center: Pastagina. What is that — pasta for women? Even the logo is highly suggestive . . . Read more →
You’re My Dad
Will you come to see me Jack When I’m old and very shaky? Yes I will for you’re my dad And you’ve lost your last old lady Though you traveled very far To the highlands and the badlands And ripped off the family car Still, old dad, I won’t forsake you. Will you come to see me Jack? Though I’m really not alone. Still I’d like to see my boy For we’re lonesome for our own. Yes I will for you’re my dad Though you dumped me and my brothers And you sizzled down the road Loving other fellows’ mothers. Will you come to see me Jack? Though I look like time boiled over. Growing old is not a lark. Yes I will for you’re my dad Though we never saw a nickel As we struggled up life’s ladder I will call you and together We will cuddle up and… Read more →
Don’t Argue About Things That Don’t Exist
Some ideas. . . . Don’t argue about things that don’t exist, like whether Save buttons should do this or that. Instead, code or prototype it and then team members use it themselves. You’ll be able to tell if it could be better when you use it instead of talk about it. . . . One of the biggest blockers to team greatness is that members of team will have really good team diagnoses but they don’t say them out loud. So nothing can be done with the idea. You gotta say your great ideas out loud. . . . Stay out of the content. The real issues are not about UI and architecture. Those are just the excuses to act out team neuroses. . . . If you resolve the interpersonal issues you won’t feel like you have UI or architecture issues. Processes and planning will… Read more →
Hola, Estúpidos
Mr. Penn, Mr. Spacey, Ms. Campbell — Thank you so much for coming to visit me. Muchas gracias! Shortly after your visits, 80,000 Venezuelans will gather at the Central University to protest my attempts to expand my dictatorial rule. Eight of these people will be injured when masked gunmen open fire on them. I of course will be shocked by this display of brutality — as shocked as I’ve been since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe. The incident will no doubt raise questions in people’s minds as to whether you actually support the armed suppression of free speech, or whether you are just naive simpletons. Regrettably, there will be a writers’ strike on at the time and you will therefore have nothing to say . . . Tu amigo, Hugo Chavez Read more →
Too Close to the Piano
I play the piano for fun. I’m self-taught . . . I can play notes but I don’t know the first thing about proper technique, which is why I’m not very good. I don’t know why I never thought of it before, but last night as I was struggling to play a new piece, I decided to move the piano bench farther back than I usually do. Wow! Big improvement! For 40 years, I’ve been sitting too close to the piano. It’s the kind of thing that a qualified instructor could point out at the first lesson, but when you have to figure it out yourself, it takes a little longer . . . Read more →
Got a Job
After three months on the dole, I got a job offer from the IT director of a local non-profit healthcare association here in Orange County. I start next week. As Gerald Ford used to say, “Our long national nightmare is over.” It’s a small IT group — 8 people, including the director. I’ve got to admit I’m a little burned out on big corporate IT shops. I got out of hands-on programming and into leadership roles because I thought I could do a better job than the people I saw doing it. I wanted to develop teams that got things done using their skills and their collective intelligence, but in practice, you typically get locked into some corporate process standard. A process may be good for delivering consistent results, but they may not be consistently good results. Like at McDonald’s, every Big Mac is just like every other Big Mac… Read more →
Halloween 2007
My son put on a cap, a pair of sunglasses, hung a clock around his neck, and went trick-or-treating with his friends as Flavor Flav. I can’t imagine anyone in Irvine is going to be able to figure that one out. Postscript “One woman asked me, ‘Are you supposed to be Flavor Flav?’” he says. “What was her ethnicity?” I ask him. “White.” OK, I stand corrected. Read more →
Lost
As I arrived for an interview today, the hiring manager asked me, “Did you have any trouble finding the place?” As it happens, I did not have any trouble finding the place and said so. I had printed out a map from one of the numerous online map sites and the building was right where it was supposed to be. But even if I had had trouble finding it, my answer would have been the same. “Some people have trouble finding it,” he told me. Interesting. As an IT person, I consider myself a problem-solver — actually, I could make a case that any person in any job is hired as a problem solver — so I wouldn’t start out an interview by admitting that I got lost on my way over. “Don’t hire anyone who can’t find the building,” I said. Read more →