Hat Trick

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My son’s hockey team didn’t do so well at NARCh this time around. They got knocked out in the round-robin portion of the tournament. That left us with some extra time on our hands, some of which we used to drive up to Tampa to watch the Angels get worked by the ordinarily hapless Devil Rays, 7-2. We got good seats though! — right behind home plate about 10 rows up. Completing the hat trick of futility, I arrived back in California to find that the mortgage bank I worked for had laid off 400 people, including me. The good news is that I did get a severance package, unlike the last time I got laid off (from a dot-com company), when all I got was a handshake and an escort to the parking lot. Oh, and I’ve got more time to read the last Harry Potter book. I’m really… Read more →

Why I Got Into Management

by  on The Programmer
 

My first 10 years in the software business, I had great managers. They did the management thing and I did the programming thing and we got great results together. Then, after the dot-com boom torpedoed industry hiring standards, I got tired of working for managers who should not have been allowed anywhere near a software project, people who were not fit to direct a professional software developer to a table at the Olive Garden, much less direct their activities on a complex project. I couldn’t possibly have continued to work for people like that — it just made a mockery of all the work I’d done over the years to actually learn something — but I still miss being a developer . . . Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →

Overheard

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A male and female co-worker are bickering, as they often do. An onlooker says, “You two are like a married couple . . . but without the sex and everything.” Read more →

Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007

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7-Eleven marks 80 years with free Slurpees — Dallas Morning News, July 11, 2007 Former first lady Lady Bird Johnson dies — Dallas Morning News, July 11, 2007 She was 94 years old. I actually thought she was already dead. I hope she got her free Slurpee . . . Read more →

Pacific Cup 2007

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My son’s roller hockey team won the Pacific Cup final last weekend. For teams in California, Arizona and Nevada, Pacific Cup is the biggest tournament of the year, not counting national championships. The team will be playing at NARCh in a couple of weeks. His 12-and-under team won the NARCh tournament two years ago, but I’m not as optimistic with this year’s bunch. The problems include: Read more →

Is There a Drummer in the House?

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We were at my son Casey’s 8th grade graduation this morning when one of his teachers came up to me, obviously revved up about something, and asked, “Did you hear what happened at the assembly yesterday?” From the breathless tone of his question, I assumed at the very least that someone had lost a limb. “No,” I said, “what happened?” He told me they had a performance by a street percussion group called Street Beat, and as part of the show, they asked for a couple of volunteers from the audience. Casey plays the drums, and a lot of kids were yelling and pointing at him to be selected, so he was. What they did with the volunteers was, the Street Beat guys would play something and the kids would try to match it. My kid was able to match everything perfectly, the other kid wasn’t, so they sent the… Read more →

Antipattern: Exactly on Schedule

by  on The Programmer
 

I work with a company that has the following set of milestones in its standard project methodology: Vision/Scope Complete Requirements Complete Design Complete Definition Complete Build Complete Test Complete Rollout Complete I’ve noticed an interesting pattern at the weekly enterprise status meetings: a significant number of projects report being exactly on schedule for each milestone — not one single day ahead or behind! — until they get to rollout, at which point they suddenly go several months late. Some things can be faked and some things can’t. As long as you have milestones that can be met simply by declaring them done, or by signing off on a document, you can always hit them on time. But when it comes to putting actual working software in front of a customer, that’s when you really have to deliver the goods, and that’s when the milestones start getting missed. This is a… Read more →

I Forgot About Her

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I’m explaining to my 8th-grade kid that his mom is pretty attractive for a mom, but he’s not seeing it. I list off several of his friends’ unattractive moms by way of example, and then ask him, “Which of your friends has a better-looking mom than Mom?” “Lopez,” he says, naming one of the kids on his hockey team. OK, I’d forgotten about her . . . Read more →

The Finer Things in Life

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One thing you can’t help noticing in spending a day at LACMA, what with the proximity to West Hollywood and all, is that gay guys really like art. I mentioned that to my son and his response was “Case in point: you,” which wasn’t very nice. He’s not much of an art lover . . . I admit that I occasionally drag him along to an art museum, because I feel like he should know at least a little bit about it whether he likes it or not. On our way back to Orange County — in keeping with my mission of introducing the boy to the finer things in life — we stopped off at the original Tommy’s stand at Beverly and Rampart, not only an L.A. landmark, but a favorite of USC students for decades, where you can still get — as the boy did — a double… Read more →

T.J. Simers Must Die

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I thought sports columnists were appointed for life, like Supreme Court justices, no matter how irrelevant they become, and yet I see that the Los Angeles Times has just dumped J.A. Adande. Well, by golly, that’s a good start! I can’t think of a single print columnist, at the Times or elsewhere, who’s remotely relevant anymore. There are dozens of sports websites (not that one — start at Deadspin and follow the links) with at least an order of magnitude more energy, insight and wit than you’ll find in your local print rag, which is why newspapers are going the way of the 8-track tape, the buggy whip and whale oil. The next in line to go at the Times should be fatuous blowhard T.J. Simers. Simers positions himself as a pot-stirring wiseass, and the line on him seems to be that if people don’t like him, he must be… Read more →

Another Reason I Never Put My Kid in Day Care

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A day care worker in Tulsa, Okla., was looking after eight children ages 7 and younger. One of the kids, a 2-year-old boy, would not be quiet for nap time, so she bound his hands and covered his mouth with masking tape. That silenced him — permanently. The boy died after several days on life support. I never did trust people enough to have them raise my kid. Never did. Now if you were to respond that the average day care worker is no less capable than the average American mom of raising a child without killing it, I’d say — you’re probably right! I’m just talking about my kid . . . Read more →

How Much I Care

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We’re having dinner at Chili’s, and long before the food arrives, my kid has already informed me that I should have ordered meat instead of a salad, and that he can’t believe how quickly I ordered a refill on my soda. “Are you going to micromanage the whole meal for me?” I ask. “I can’t see how it makes any difference to you what I order or how fast I drink my soda, but somehow it does.” “It shows how much I care,” he says. Read more →

Foundations of Mediocrity: Scheduling

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My primary complaint about scheduling is simple: that people are willing to proceed as if they can look into a crystal ball about the future. They act as if they can plan out the future. As if they can control the future. It’s the control part that really gets to me. It bugs me because it’s a false belief. It’s simply not true. You can not control the future, and the belief you can is just so destructive of creativity, teamwork, spontaneity and interaction among one another. This false belief is just a complete energy zapper, an unwholesome energy sink. — Michele McCarthy This transcript of a Jim and Michele McCarthy podcast is the best discussion of scheduling I’ve read today, maybe ever . . . Read more →

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