I am letting you into the secret of all secrets, mirrors are gates through which death comes and goes. Moreover if you see your whole life in a mirror you will see death at work as you see bees behind the glass in a hive.
Political Season
How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
People Who Bear Watching
Anyone with a stock over-amped response to a question about how they’re doing, e.g., “FAN-TASTIC!” or “I’m terrrrrrrr-IF-ic!”
Especially if accompanied by a gesture, like an arm-swinging fist pump . . .
Asian Gang Activities
A co-worker informs me that a Santa Ana elementary school teacher has been charged with child endangerment for keeping a gun in her classroom.
“Well, that’s Santa Ana,” I say. “What do you expect from people? Not a day goes by that you can’t pick up the Orange County Register and read about a gang-related slaying in Santa Ana. If I were a teacher in Santa Ana, you best believe I’d be packing heat too. Thank god this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Irvine where I live.”
“There are Asian gangs in Irvine.”
“Asian gangs in Irvine?! What a racist you are. I’ve lived in Irvine for seven years and I’ve never seen or heard of any Asian gang activity. Unless studying for AP exams counts as a gang activity. Blowing their brains out with mathematical formulas . . .”
He Didn’t Go Crazy
JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — Paul Davis, a singer and songwriter whose soft rock hit “I Go Crazy” stayed on the charts for months after its release in 1977, died Tuesday. He was 60.
That’s disappointing.
Not the fact that he died, because who cares, really, but the fact that he didn’t actually go crazy and kill himself in some bizarre fashion . . .
Cool Gadgets You Can’t Get
His mom and I are trying to get the boy to log off the computer and go to bed.
“Hang on,” he says, “I’m looking at a PC World thing.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“’10 Cool Gadgets You Can’t Get in the U.S.'”
“If you can’t get them in the U.S., what do you care?”
“They’re cool. Don’t forget about that part.”
His mom is running out of patience. “Oh, am I steaming,” she says.
The boy’s still looking at the computer.
“Mmmm . . . cool,” he says.
EppsNet Book Review: The Elegant Solution
Unreadable . . . unbelievably bad. Ironically, for a book about innovation, the concepts are trite and the prose consists of one lazy cliche after another.
Watch — I’m going to open the book to a random page and list the cliches: “secret sauce,” “blow the doors off,” “boil the ocean,” “where the action is,” “ivory tower,” “marching instructions.”
The book is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who might conceivably want to read it.
Embedding YouTube Videos in Valid Web Pages
One thing I learned from this post is that YouTube’s recommended method for embedding videos in web pages will prevent your page from validating:
<object width="425" height="355"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xRCWnfMAmqE"></param> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param> </object>
The <embed> element is Netscape’s method of embedding plugins and players in web pages. It’s not part of the XHTML specification.
If you care about this kind of thing, you can use the markup below instead. It’s simpler, it validates, and it works (I tested it) in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" style="width:425px; height:355px;" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/xRCWnfMAmqE"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xRCWnfMAmqE" /> </object>
USC Ranked as a ‘Dream College’
In more evidence of the growing popularity of USC’s undergraduate programs, the university recently was ranked in the top 10 “dream colleges” based on a Princeton Review survey of college applicants.
FIGHT ON!
Out in the Streets – The Shangri-Las
California Enacts a Cell Phone Law
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation that prohibits the use of handheld mobile phones while driving in the state.
Effective July 1, 2008, the legislation prohibits drivers from using a wireless telephone while operating a motor vehicle unless the driver uses a hands-free device. Drivers who violate the law will face a base fine of $20 for a first offense and $50 for each subsequent offense.
I can’t talk on my cell phone while I’m driving?
What a dopey law!
Can I still eat a chili dog while I’m driving? Can I drink a beverage? Can I try to find my favorite song on the CD player? Can I perform any number of activities that require the use of at least one hand and are at least as distracting as a phone call?
Has anyone else noticed that we have too many laws? And that every new one takes away one more precious freedom or one more hard-earned dollar, usually for no good reason?
It Isn’t a Thing You Do
Agile development isn’t a thing you do, it’s an attitude, it’s a set of personal values about responding to the real world, being open to the information that is there and being willing to do something about it.
Cat and Dog Photos on Flickr
That’s What You Think
My son’s on spring break this week. Today he spent the day with a friend volunteering at the local Boys and Girls Club.
“I was watching kids for seven-and-a-half hours!” he says.
I say, “I’ve been watching a kid for 15 years.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a lot easier.”
My Wife’s Philosophy
You win some, you lose some, but I prefer to win them all.
A Couple of Tips on Bad Parenting
1. Give your son a fashionable name like Tanner, Braden or Travis. You can handicap a child for life with a goofy name. You can give him a sorry start from which he’ll never recover. By the way, you know what’s a good name? Paul. Paul is a name that’s stood the test of time. It dates back to the Bible . . .
Tanner is not even a name. Braden is not a name. Travis is a name, but it’s a hillbilly name, like Zeke. If you’re tempted to name your boy Travis, go ahead and name him Zeke.
2. Use up your moral authority on things of no importance. I was in Subway this afternoon and heard a man telling his kids, “No soda. You’ve had too much soda lately.” It turns out by soda, he meant cola, because he let the kids fill up their drinks with a mixture of Sprite and Hi-C.
First of all, cola is not bad for kids, certainly no worse than Sprite or Hi-C. I drank about four colas a day as a kid — still do, although now I occasionally pour some rum or bourbon in them, which I don’t recommend for the kiddies. As for Hi-C, I’d rather drink water from the sewer.
Second point: it’s micromanagement. Nobody, including your own child — especially your own child — wants to listen to you tell them what to do every minute. They’re going to tune you out. So by the time you finish telling them what to drink, what to eat, what to wear, and get around to something important, nobody’s listening anymore . . .
What Kind of Person Are You?
I’m definitely not a morning person. I used to be a night person, but now I’m more of a nothing person. There’s no hour of the day or night that I wouldn’t rather close my eyes and sleep . . . and sleep . . .
The Agile Elevator Speech
You begin by stating that agile is basically three things: a set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, a project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, and a leadership philosophy that encourages team work and accountability.
You go on to say that success in today’s economy requires us to respond quickly to changing market conditions. Agile processes allow our teams to meet the changing demands of their customers while creating environments where top developers want to work.
Gathering Requirements
The most common verb associated with requirements is “gather.” Yet most requirements that end up fulfilled in a system aren’t gathered. Yes, I know, there are always a few requirements that are so obvious in a new system that you can “gather” them from stakeholders, but gathering implies that the requirements are already out there, fully formed and fully understood, and ready for harvest. It just doesn’t work that way. No stakeholder ever says to an analyst, “Requirements? Why, yes, I have eleven requirements. Eight are functional, one is a usability requirement, and the other two are operational requirements. Are you collecting constraints now, as well? I have three of those. Please sit down, and I will elucidate perfectly clearly on each and every one in turn.” Most requirements are discovered–or invented. Many are transformed or compromised along the way.
Most stakeholders don’t consider the underlying requirements of their work; they do their work. They are not in the business of reinventing the work. The arrival of a new project is the point in time when the ideas for new possible ways of doing work force us to consider the underlying requirements. If you go to an experienced front-desk hotel employee and ask what requirements there are for the check-in process, you are most likely to hear in excruciating detail exactly how the check-in procedure works today. Indeed, you will probably hear more than just about check-in; you will hear about the reservation procedure and how it impacts the check-in procedure. It never crossed the mind of that employee to consider what information and material goods the hotel needs in order for a guest to do self check-in with a new automated system. And the idea of the guest selecting a room from all those available is a shock. It’s not done that way!
This is why we have folks with “analyst” in their titles. Analysis is never simply about recording requirements from clients and other stakeholders. Analysts are not waiters who take orders without comment. Analysts need to learn how to tease out the basic rules–the policies–of the system and liberate all stakeholders from thinking that the new system should be based on current procedures. It is invention that is at the heart of analysis, not gathering.
Honor Roll
My son made the honor roll his first semester in high school. I’m very proud of him. He’s in a competitive (translation: high percentage of Asian kids) high school and he’s taking honors classes, where every kid thinks they should get an A but there aren’t enough A’s to go around.
An email went out to parents listing the Honor Roll kids. There are a lot of kids on the Honor Roll at this school.
They should send out a list of the kids who didn’t make the Honor Roll. It wouldn’t be much longer and it would teach the kids a good lesson: Work hard or be humiliated.
Another idea: Only kids taking honors classes would be eligible for the Honor Roll. All other kids would be eligible for the “Honor” (insert finger-quotes here) Roll.