Author Archive: Paul Epps

Twitter: 2009-08-21

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Want to buy a customized Michael Vick Eagles jersey for your dog? http://tinyurl.com/la3o36 # Obama: "We are God's partners in matters of life and death." Good mission statement for the death panels! # RT @diablocody: Obsolete memory: pushing card catalog drawers in and out at the library. Also, the tangy smell of the old cards. # Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-18

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If you can substitute toothpaste for spackle, can you substitute spackle for toothpaste? Might be good for whitening your teeth… # RT @paulandstorm: [S] Today's trillion-dollar idea: patent the concept of "technology" # Read more →

An Obstacle Course

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Pretend that your project is an obstacle course and you want to get the biggest obstacles over with in the beginning. Here are some strategies for being on time or early: You want to know what all the obstacles are as soon as possible. You want to deal with the biggest, hardest obstacles first. You want to complete every obstacle as soon as possible, rather than “on schedule.” If you can go around an obstacle or skip it, do that. Your team has to stay on the same course. You don’t want part of your team on a different course. Getting your team aligned about the blocks and how to deal with them using the entire team IQ is much more efficient than “working hard” or pounding away at the problem. Look for the big ideas. Make sure team members aren’t going over obstacles that don’t exist. What’s the biggest… Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-17

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My uncle fell down and cracked his head open. He's 80. No, he's not a member of Aerosmith. # RT @ericmusselman: Jerry West "Sometimes talent gets in the way of people being able to play well together " # Read more →

Family Happiness

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I was reading a Tolstoy story called “Family Happiness” in bed last night. It was close to midnight when I finished it. “Good story,” I announced to my wife, although she was 90 percent asleep by that time. Without opening her eyes, she asked, “What was it about?” “A man and a woman fall in love and get married. They’re very happy for a while but then the marriage starts to come apart.” “Because the husband spends too much time on Facebook?” she asked. “No, they didn’t have Facebook in 1860. What I didn’t see coming though is that the story turns out to have a happy ending after all.” “Perfect,” she said. “What did you learn from it?” “The past is gone, but you can still find a new life and a different kind of happiness.” “With the same wife?” “Yes.” “Perfect,” she said. Read more →

Comfortable With Our Stupid Children

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Researchers have found that generic American parents, faced with a child who can’t do math or science, will say “Don’t worry, Johnny, because you have so many other talents.” Asian parents, supposedly, will say “Since you aren’t apparently naturally gifted at math or science you’ll have to study extra hard in these areas,” and not stop nagging until the kid is doing well. — Philip Greenspun Read more →

New Used Books

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I paid a visit to The Bookman — a local used book store — today, spent $36 and came home with the following haul: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories, Leo Tolstoy Despair, Vladimir Nabokov Hunger, Knut Hamsun The Lover, Marguerite Duras New York Trilogy, Paul Auster Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray The White Hotel, D. M. Thomas Read more →

Pug on a Diet

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Early every morning, the pug comes into our room and paws at my side of the bed for me to lift him up. It’s too high for him to jump — the top of the bed’s about four feet off the ground. This morning I leaned over and hoisted him like I always do, but instead of the dog ending up on the bed, I went over the side and almost decapitated myself on the corner of the nightstand, on the way to a hard meeting with Mister Floor. “It’s okay,” my wife said. “Try again tomorrow.” The dog was unharmed. He’s not fat but a modest weight reduction program may be in the cards for him . . . Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-14

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$200K? That's all? The kid doesn't play hockey obviously. http://bit.ly/p0NxA via @TheOnion – Cost To Raise Child Exceeds $200,000 # RT @capricecrane: Cops called to Gosselin home, but somehow forgot to shoot Jon and Kate. What are my tax dollars paying for, exactly? # "Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?" by Tom DeMarco http://bit.ly/k32gm # Read more →

Control is Not Important

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To understand control’s real role [in software development], you need to distinguish between two drastically different kinds of projects: Project A will eventually cost about a million dollars and produce value of around $1.1 million. Project B will eventually cost about a million dollars and produce value of more than $50 million. What’s immediately apparent is that control is really important for Project A but almost not at all important for Project B. This leads us to the odd conclusion that strict control is something that matters a lot on relatively useless projects and much less on useful projects. It suggests that the more you focus on control, the more likely you’re working on a project that’s striving to deliver something of relatively minor value. To my mind, the question that’s much more important than how to control a software project is, why on earth are we doing so many… Read more →

Twitter: 2009-08-13

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HarvardBusiness.org: How to Innovate With Less http://bit.ly/V0upg # RT @capricecrane: Heidi Pratt claims 20-30 orgasms in a day. Less impressive when you figure she has one every time she talks about herself. # Read more →

What Was Difficult

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One friend described an interaction with Fujio Cho, former head of Toyota, visiting a plant and gently chiding people for too much attention to accomplishments and too little on struggle points. If he didn’t know what was difficult for them, he was reported to ask, how would he know where he could be of help? — HarvardBusiness.org. Read more →

Ultra Lean Planning

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I’m not wholeheartedly endorsing the Ultra Lean Planning approach but it does lead you to question how much of the overhead of traditional software development is really necessary. It may be important to know that the author is one of the top guys in the industry and not a random flake. Read more →

Cash for Clunkers

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Cash for Clunkers has the following elements of spectacle: Americans destroying perfectly functional cars Americans whose skills are uncompetitive in the global marketplace driving around in fancy new cars Somewhere in China and India they must be having a good laugh. — Philip Greenspun Read more →

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