If there’s any justice, David Letterman will one day be recognized as the father of our era. Like other great men, Letterman knew that Americans were dumb as rocks but still had their pride, so if you were going to feed them the intellectual equivalent of hogslop, you had better flatter their intelligence at the same time. . . . Let the rubes in on the gag. Call the pet tricks “stupid,” make the showbiz flash-and-rattle even stupider than it needed to be, and cheerfully represent yourself as the hollowest of hollow men, and the suckers would applaud not only your twaddle, but the label on the twaddle that said it was twaddle. — alicublog Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Popsicles and Crucifixions
My creative-writing students say they’re postmodern, too. One wrote the relativist sentiment that popsicles and crucifixions were equal; I said it depended on which you were offered. — Oronte Churm Read more →
Improving the Joke
There was a recipe for Kitty Litter Cake circulating at work today. The joke, as you can see from the picture, is that it looks just like a box of used cat litter. Ho hum. A better joke would be to circulate the recipe, tell your co-workers that you’re going to make it for the next department potluck, then serve them a real box of cat litter. Bon appétit! Read more →
The Brotherhood of Teeth
My son’s having some teeth extracted tomorrow as part of his orthodontics regimen. “I’M NOT GOING!” he shouts. “MY TEETH ARE A FAMILY! THEY CAN’T BE SEPARATED! YOU CAN’T SEPARATE BROTHER TOOTH FROM BROTHER GUM!” Oh, what an impassioned speech it was — the way he made the teeth come to life! I’m going to almost cry tomorrow when they come out like fallen soldiers . . . Read more →
Brush with Greatness
I saw Lindsay Davenport yesterday at Borders in South Coast Plaza. She was sitting in the cafe area talking with another woman when I walked past. I had to double back to make sure it was really her. I expect famous people to be larger than life, and Lindsay Davenport is a big girl anyway, so I’m thinking that she should be gigantic, which she wasn’t. But I walked past a second time and it was definitely her . . . Read more →
Halp Us Jon Carry
You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq. — John Kerry And I think this reveals, is a glimpse into what the Democrats actually mean when they say we support our troops. They support them as victims, as children, as people too stupid to know better. But they don’t support them in the mission they’re fighting, thousands of miles away. — Mark Steyn Read more →
Asians and Idiots
My son’s junior high school is having a co-ed pickleball tournament at lunch. The results are posted on the school web site. The funny thing is that if a team name contains any sort of cultural reference, the P.E. teacher in charge of the tournament either can’t or won’t put the name on the web site without a deliberate misspelling. For example, 3 White Guys and a Hindu becomes 3 Wite Gus and a Hidu, because identifying someone as white, male or Hindu is unacceptable. Curiously enough, the team name 3 Blondes and a Brunette comes through unscathed. Why are people allowed to self-identify as blondes, but not as white guys or Hindus? It seems like the same thing to me. The weirdest one to me is 4 Asians and an Idiot, which comes out as 4 Ans and an Idiot. I ask my son, “Who’s the idiot?” “Some white… Read more →
Three Reasons for Software Project Failure
Jerry Weinberg‘s top three reasons for software projects going over budget or failing to meet their original requirements: The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to speak truth to power. The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to understand and acknowledge their own limitations (which we all have). Even in those rare cases that people pass those first two hurdles, they lose emotional control during the project when something goes wrong — and something ALWAYS goes wrong. In 50 years, I’ve never seen a project where something didn’t go wrong. When it does, the project’s success is determined by the leaders’ ability to manage themselves emotionally. Read more →
A Forceful Dose of Reality
. . . there is nothing like a tested, integrated system for bringing a forceful dose of reality into any project. Documents can hide all sorts of flaws. Untested code can hide plenty of flaws. But when people actually sit in front of a system and work with it, then flaws become truly apparent: both in terms of bugs and in terms of misunderstood requirements. — Martin Fowler, “The New Methodology” Read more →
What I’d Say to My Son in My Angriest Moment
I’ve tried to give you every opportunity that I could possibly give you but I can’t do this stuff for you. You’ve got to decide what your life is going to be about: someone who stands up for himself and does his best, or someone who lays on his ass and gives up. Let me know when you figure it out. Read more →
Hockey Families I Have Known
I know some “hockey families” where the kids — boys or girls — can play any sport they want . . . as long as it’s hockey. They have email addresses like smiths4hockey@hotmail.com (assuming their name is Smith), and from the parents’ point of view, it simplifies things a lot. You don’t have kids getting into one sport, losing interest, moving on to something else. From the kids’ point of view? Maybe not so good. And I actually think it helps kids athletically to do more than one sport . . . Read more →
What Has Steve Jobs Done With His Money?
Bill Gates and the Microsoft crowd have been very prominent in charitable circles, saving Africans from disease, etc. By contrast, a Google search for “Steve Jobs charity” or “Steve Jobs donation” turns up nothing except an article on how Apple bought him a $90 million Gulfstream bizjet. So… if Steve Jobs doesn’t give money to charity and doesn’t pay for his own jet, is he doing something interesting with his $billions? — Philip Greenspun Read more →
Pug Photos from Flickr
Originally uploaded by letskyce. Originally uploaded by laputa. Originally uploaded by laputa. Originally uploaded by laputa. Read more →
PowerPoint Tips from the Pros
As part of a presentation I’m putting together on managing software projects, I want to talk a little bit about what not to do and how things can go spectacularly awry. A great recent case study for this is the FBI Virtual Case File system, cancelled last year after spending over $100 million. The original slide I put together (click to enlarge) showed the basic facts of the case illustrated with a photo of a rocket sled crashing into a wall. The heading I put on there — “Another fine mess” — didn’t seem to add anything to the mix, and I couldn’t think of a better one, so I started to think about other ways to lay out the slide. In the second version, I dropped the header, used the rocket sled photo as the background, and overlaid the text on top of it. I think it came out… Read more →
Whatever Happened Five Minutes Ago
The whole “whatever happened five minutes ago was the biggest thing that ever happened” school of making sports arguments has to be one of the most annoying sports media trends of this decade. — Bill Simmons Amen, brother! As far as I can tell, sports media do three things: Make predictions. Second-guess coaches and game officials. Blow things out of proportion. None of which add to anyone’s understanding or enjoyment of the games . . . Read more →
Another Argument Against Day Care
Cypress babysitter jailed after infant’s death — Orange County Register Read more →
The Intellect of “Ordinary” Employees
It took Detroit more than 20 years to ferret out the radical management principle at the heart of Toyota’s capacity for relentless improvement . . . Only after American carmakers had exhausted every other explanation for Toyota’s success — an undervalued yen, a docile workforce, Japanese culture, superior automation — were they finally able to admit that Toyota’s real advantage was its ability to harness the intellect of “ordinary” employees. — Gary Hamel Read more →
A Methodology Question
Let’s say your software development methodology tells you to do A, then B, then C, then D, and so on, until you get to Z, at which point, you’re done. And let’s say you do A, then B, then C, then D, and you notice that your project is not going according to plan for reasons that appear to be related to the methodology. What do you do? Do you forge ahead with E, F and G, even though that now looks like the wrong thing to do? If you’re committed to the methodology, you have to, right? Or — do you fall back on the knowledge and experience of the project manager and the project team, and rely on them to do the right thing? And if you can rely on the knowledge and experience of the project team now, what was the point of the methodology in the… Read more →
Lightning Goes to the Beach
The Seven Wastes of Software Development
The seven wastes of software development are: Partially Done Work (the “inventory” of a development process) Extra Processes (easy to find in documentation-centric development) Extra Features (develop only what customers want right now) Task Switching (everyone should do one thing at a time) Waiting (for instructions, for information) Handoffs (tons of tacit knowledge gets lost) Defects (at least defects that are not quickly caught by a test) — Mary Poppendieck, “Lean Software Development” Read more →