Katie Couric talks about Twitter: I don’t think anybody gives a rat’s ass whether I am about to eat a tuna sandwich. I don’t even care. Some of it is so inane and narcissistic and bizarre I don’t quite get it. I don’t know why anyone would want to read it, much less why I would want to write it. Unless “tuna sandwich” is a code phrase for “vagina.” In that case, I’d be very interested to read about Katie Couric eating a tuna sandwich . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Quotations
Microblog: 2009-04-10
RT @TinaFey: It’s so nice out. It almost makes me want to go for a walk. Almost. # Philip Roth: “The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy — that is every man’s tragedy.” # Read more →
Be Disloyal
”Be disloyal. It’s your duty to the human race. The human race needs to survive and it’s the loyal man who dies first from anxiety or a bullet or overwork. If you have to earn a living, boy, and the price they make you pay is loyalty, be a double agent — and never let either of the two sides know your real name. The same applies to women and God. They both respect a man they don’t own, and they’ll go on raising the price they are willing to offer.” — Graham Greene, “Under the Garden” Read more →
The Conundrum of Fame
Here’s conundrum of fame, as I see it: It’s always said that if you want to be famous, you must endure criticism. The fabled “trade off”… …But the whole reason people want to be famous is to be loved. They’re love-addicts. Hating a celeb is like kicking a hemophiliac. Like I bet Tom Hanks internalizes a shitty remark way more than, say, the HR lady in your office. He’s needy. That’s why he’s Tom Hanks. All right, enough Psych 101. My Chihuahua looks like Billy Crystal and my Shepherd is Gheorghe Muresan. They need a development deal. — Diablo Cody Read more →
Microblog: 2009-04-01
These are the days of miracle and wonder / And don’t cry baby, don’t cry, don’t cry… # Love Southwest ads: “Air…is a 35 dollar…UPgrade.” “I want that!” # Seek to move forward toward a particular goal, by biasing your behavior toward action: http://tinyurl.com/5z2rg6 # Read more →
Tweets on 2009-03-26
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. –Seneca # The definition for “value” that I recently started using is “what guides us when we have to make a hard decision.” http://tinyurl.com/chzkqp # @tweetmeme @smashingmag Reading ‘Designing Drop-Down Menus: Examples and Best Practices’ http://tinyurl.com/dnzeyh # Love the Weinerschnitzel vs Carls Jr 2 for $3 chili dog battle. The customer is the true winner! # RT @BonnieLowe: Reading “Thirsty plants cn twttr 4 water w/ new device.” nxt it’ll be yr cat tweeting 4 snacks. http://tinyurl.com/dfh8dk # RT @KathySierra: Choosing a dog based on breed name is ridiculous, but the coder in me is geekily drawn to: http://tinyurl.com/d3gmkc # At Uni High 4 Irvine Band Festival # Read more →
Why Would You Use Agile for Offshore Development?
More of my customers have been asking me how to use agile processes, particularly Scrum, to help them manage offshore development. Since offshore development undercuts many of the practices that promote agile productivity, I ask them why they don’t just increase the productivity of their teams by thoroughly introducing agility? It seems that offshore development, with its potential for lower unit costs (dollars per programmer day), offers management hope that their losses can be reduced. Since the project is probably going to fail anyway, let’s minimize our losses by lowering our investment by using lower priced resources. A more optimistic, agile, way of looking at this problem is to fix the problem at home and increase the probability of success. — Ken Schwaber Read more →
Tweets on 2009-03-23
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? # A woman just sent me a doc on web hits in which she uses the phrase “extraneous back-end activity.” What would Freud make of that? # Read more →
Building Credibility
Many people worry that not knowing something is a sign of weakness, and that if a leader seems not to have all the answers they will lose the confidence of their team. Such people try to pretend they have the answer in every situation, making things up if necessary and never admitting mistakes. However, this approach ultimately backfires. Sooner or later people learn the truth and figure out that the person never admits when they don’t know. When this happens the person loses all credibility: no-one can tell whether the person is speaking from authority or making something up, so it isn’t safe to trust anything they say. On the other hand, if you admit that you don’t know the answer, or that you made a mistake, you build credibility. People are more likely to trust you when you say that you do have the answer, because they have seen… Read more →
Clearly and Simply
Anyone who cannot speak clearly and simply should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so. — Sir Karl Popper HT: Clearly and Simply Read more →
Unable to Make Anything Easier
Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere. . . . — Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript Read more →
Failures and Mistakes
I had mistakes, plenty, but I had no failures. We may not have won a championship every year. We may have lost games. But we had no failures. You never fail if you know in your heart that you did the best of which you are capable. I did my best. That is all I could do. — John Wooden Read more →
The Art of the Possible
The role of the economist in discussions of public policy seems to me to be to prescribe what should be done in light of what can be done, politics aside, and not to predict what is “politically feasible” and then to recommend it. — Milton Friedman Take out the references to economics and public policy and you can probably apply the “what should be done in light of what can be done” approach in your own work. It’s the art of the possible . . . Read more →
Stealing Ideas
Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down peoples’ throats. — Howard Aiken Read more →
Not Knowing Things
But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me. — Richard P. Feynman Read more →
The Man Happy in His Work
The man happy in his work is not the narrow specialist, nor the well-rounded man, but the man who is doing what he loves to do. You must fall in love with some activity. — Richard P. Feynman Read more →
Happy New Year
And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been. — Rainer Maria Rilke Best wishes to everyone who’s taken the time to read this site over the past year. Read more →
The Life That is Waiting
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. — Joseph Campbell Read more →
Sarah Palin
As Warner Baxter said to Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street: You’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star! Finally, a breath of fresh Alaskan air! Not yet another Ivy League lawyer, yet another warmed-over political hack, yet another condescending, posturing, preening, pandering, pontificating blowhard who’s lost sight of the fact that politicians are employees. We hire them, we pay them, we give them trillions of dollars to spend any way they want to . . . if we didn’t hold them to such ridiculously low standards of accountability, it might be easier to remember who works for whom. And hockey moms are hot! Why? Because hockey’s an expensive sport, so hockey dads have to knock down a pretty good income, which in our materialistic society allows them to be more selective in the spouse department. My wife is sort of a hockey mom, in… Read more →
What We Choose
I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose. — Margaret Cho Read more →