White House Adds $2 Trillion to Deficit Forecasts

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The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates.

The new projections add approximately $2 trillion to budget deficits through 2019. Earlier this year, the administration had predicted that Obama’s policies would require the government to spend $7.108 trillion more than it collects in tax revenue over the next decade.

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report will not be formally released until Tuesday, said the change is due primarily to updated projections of economic growth that are far less rosy than data used when the White House released its first long-term budget outlook in February.

— washingtonpost.com

I think I’d be way more upset about this if the numbers weren’t beyond human comprehension . . .

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HW ‘s Presentation Tips: Get to the Fucking Point

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Here’s a simple presentation tip that would help a lot of people: Get to the fucking point.

At a meeting this morning, the company sick time policy was explained to 100 people over the course of 30 minutes time via two PowerPoint presentations by two different people.

I’ll summarize it here:

If you’re well enough to work, you should come to work. If not, stay home. BUT — if you stay home too much, it may negatively affect your annual performance review.

That’s the policy. Let’s open it up for questions.

Don’t take 15 minutes to say something you can say in 15 seconds. Don’t feel like you have to include a historical introduction to the topic, charts, graphs, trends, industry comparisons.

Other people are not in love with the sound of your voice the way you are . . .

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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. #

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We Apologize to Jackasses for the Unintended Insult

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TV listings: The Prime-Time TV grid in Thursday’s Calendar section mistakenly listed MTV’s “Jackass” show on the MSNBC cable schedule at 7 and 10 p.m. where instead MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” should have been listed.

— latimes.com

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There Are Good Places to Hike Right Here in America

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TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran confirmed Tuesday the arrest of three American hikers who crossed into the country from neighboring Iraq and said they have been charged with “illegal entry,” a semi-official news agency reported.

— Iran confirms U.S. hikers arrested for ‘illegal entry’ – CNN.com

When you hear about people doing something pointless and stupid — and not just pointless and stupid but elaborately pointless and stupid — like traveling halfway around the world to take a frigging hike along the border of a totalitarian regime that hates Americans, don’t you secretly hope that something bad will happen to them?

So do I . . .

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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 obstacle? Get that done. What’s the next biggest? Get that done. Repeat.
— Michele McCarthy

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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.

Leo Tolstoy

“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.

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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

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New Used Books

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My new used books

I paid a visit to The Bookman — a local used book store — today, spent $36 and came home with the following haul:

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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 . . .

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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 #

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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 projects that deliver such marginal value?

— Tom DeMarco, “Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?”, IEEE Software, July/August 2009

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