People who are close to a problem tend to keep repeating what didn’t work the first time. If it did work, they wouldn’t have called in a consultant. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Make sure they pay you enough so they’ll do what you say. — Jerry Weinberg
It’s Always a People Problem
Even when it’s “really” a technical problem, it can always be traced back to management action or inaction. Even so, the experienced consultant will resist pointing out that it was management who hired all the technical people and is responsible for their development. At the same time, the consultant will look for the people who should have prevented this problem, or dealt with it when it arose. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Television
Not once during those months did there emanate from the screen a genuine idea or emotion, and I came to understand the medium as subversive. In its deceit, its outright lies, its spinelessness, its weak-mindedness, its pointless violence, in the disgusting personalities it holds up to our youth to emulate, in its endless and groveling deference to our fantasies, television undermines strength of character, saps vigor, and irreparably perverts notions of reality. But it is a tender, loving medium; and when it has done its savage job completely and reduced one to a prattling, salivating infant, like a buxom mother it stands always poised to take one back to the shelter of its brown-nippled bosom. — Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes Read more →
Stick to the Script. Don’t Ad Lib.
I’m at the Carl’s Jr. drive-thru, and in keeping with the time-honored fast food tradition of having the person with the worst command of the English language and/or the most unintelligible accent work the drive-thru, the guy says, “Welcome to Carl’s Jr. Would you like to try [unintelligible] patty [unintelligible]?” “What?” “Welcome to Carl’s Jr. . . .” Read more →
Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.” Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked. Read more →
Aside
You can’t tell which way the train went just by looking at the track.
If You Want to Be Great
If you want to be great, you need to learn about all the possible relevant ideas that have worked for others. You need to create new ideas, blend, adapt and prioritize them, and constantly test the best ideas to see which ones work for you. Only then can you fully implement — while continuously adjusting — the ideas that really work. — Apple’s People Have Dented the Universe — Can You? | OpenView Blog Read more →
Speaking Ill of the Recently Deceased
This notice went out today from David Carson, the moderator of the Who’s Alive and Who’s Dead mailing list, which among other things, sends out an email to subscribers when a famous person (like Andrew Breitbart) dies: Something I unfortunately have to remind everyone of once in a while is, if you have something uncomplimentary or unpleasant to say about the recently deceased, you don’t need to say it to me. (This is only an issue when someone conservative dies, by the way. I’ve never gotten any nasty-grams when a liberal, moderate, or any other kind of person has died. But a conservative? Every single time, including today. Make of that what you will.) Read more →
World Record Paper Airplane Throw
Footnote: The “pilot” (the guy throwing the plane) is Joe Ayoob, who replaced Aaron Rodgers as the quarterback at Cal in 2005. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wedcZp07raE] Read more →
Keeping Up With the Kennedys
Why doesn’t this guy have a reality show: The son of Robert F. Kennedy has been charged with harassment and endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly clashing with two nurses who tried to stop him from taking his 2-day-old baby boy from a Westchester maternity unit, NBC New York has learned. According to a Mount Kisco, N.Y. police report obtained by NBC New York, Douglas Kennedy, 44, took his baby from the newborn unit of Northern Westchester Hospital on Jan. 7, against the instructions of hospital staff who told him the infant needed to stay there. He faces misdemeanor charges. . . . While holding the child in his right arm, Kennedy kicked [a nurse] in the pelvis with his right foot, knocking her backward onto the floor, police said. As he did this, Kennedy fell onto the floor with the baby in his arms. Kennedy then got… Read more →
As the Crow Flies
Let me tell you something about crows: Sometimes they fly in a big circle. Sometimes they fly every which way. Whoever invented “as the crow flies” to mean “in a straight line” must have never seen an actual crow . . . Read more →
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him. — George Santayana
Dilbert: Anecdotes for Morons
David Foster Wallace’s Last House
Via Curbed LA on the occasion of what would have been DFW’s 50th birthday today. What a depressing abode! I’m ready to drive out there right now and hang myself . . . Read more →
Things You Can and Can’t Do
Things You Can Do Discriminate against Asians in college admissions. Things You Can’t Do Use “Chink in the Armor” as the headline for an article on the New York Knicks. Read more →
Behind Every Great Product
Excerpts from “Behind Every Great Product: The Role of the Product Manager” by Martin Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group: Behind every great product you will find a good product manager, in the sense we describe here. We have yet to see an exception to this rule. Product ideas can come from any number of sources. Your job as product manager is to evaluate these product ideas and decide which product ideas are worth pursuing, and which are not. The art of product management is to combine a deep understanding of your target customer’s needs and desires with the capabilities of your engineering team and the technologies they have to work with in order to come up with a product definition that is both compelling and achievable. Of the hundreds of possible and even desirable features in the product, which are the few that are actually essential to… Read more →
Aside
Harvard Business Review: Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator’s Dilemma
When there are many approaches possible, the shortest path to exceeding expectations rarely goes through meeting expectations. — Ward Cunningham
“Am I a Success or Failure?” Is Not a Very Useful Question
To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth take place. To walk around asking, “am I a success or a failure” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to answer is to say, everyone is both a success and a failure. — Karl Weick Read more →