Typo

I was just looking for information about a nasty little program called QMX that my company, the Biggest Little Software Company in the World, has been using lately to keep track of their voluminous documentation. Which, as a rule, means Bigger Databases with Lots More Unique Requirements and No Helpful Tools -- like, say, a tool to import from a common format like .txt or .doc or whatever into QMX's greedy little maw.

Along the way, I saw a web site that seemed to say it had such a tool, but what got me was its title - I thought it said 'Use Our Handy Import Lizard'.

Lizard? That almost sounds....right.

Posts

Does anyone know how to make the New! Improved! blogger list the titles of the last ten or so posts over in the sidebar?

I found some HTML in the blogger help files --

 BloggerPreviousItems>
  a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"
     <$BlogPreviousItemTitle$
   /a>

/BloggerPreviousItems>

(leading and trailing arrows removed so it'd display)

but it didn't seem to work.

Why do we say that kittens are cute?

They are, I know.

But I wonder what makes us think so?






(From here.)

Scholastic News

My daughter was not accepted for Harvard Med. Ditto MIT, Cal Tech, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Which is okay. She's just twelve, after all.

But she did pass the qualifying tests to enter an advanced math program. She took the tests last year, barely missed it, and this year passed with flying colors.

We're quietly pleased.

Platypus

One of the things I don't like about the new blogger is that it requires you to sign in using a 'google' id -- which is then put on your Google screen (like many, I use that as a home page). You can always sign out, but there's an easier solution. The Firefox 'Platypus' extention lets you alter the appearance of whats delivered to your screen (the web site thinks its painting one thing; a user script on your PC alters it upon arrival). In my case, it eats the display of my user id, not to mention, part of the extra little items that the big G has been putting on their home page from time to time.

Firefox. It's a good thing.

Vista

I'm sure that Microsoft Vista is in my future, but I'm hoping that it's in the distant future. This article is one of the many explaining that logic, but the underlying thoughts have been known to people who like Macs and Unix, and people who subscribe to the precepts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for years.

No Jalapenos

I didn't have jalapeno and sardine sandwiches last night, but I had a weird dream anyway. I was taking a subway up to where I used to live, in New York City. It wasn't quite the same as when I was there; as the subway flew over the city (yes), I noticed that it was all lush and green, but noplace more than where we were going, surrounded by mini-waterfalls and elegant statuary. The subway ride eventually dead-ended against a building. I pushed my way out and found myself on a desolate street with grey, looming clouds and the feel of rain. I finally found a telephone booth, and, under the muttering gaze of someone who looked like a guard but sounded like a drunken vagrant, I called my home. The phone rang distantly for quite some time -- had I dialed the wrong number? -- and finally my cousin, who still has somewhat of an accent after immigrating decades ago from Nicarauga, answered. At first I couldn't undersand him, but he eventually said that my father was not there -- he was out, driving his cab -- and as for my mother -- and then he hung up. I stared at the dead phone handset for a minute -- and then I woke up.

Got to knock off those peanut butter and anchovy on rye sandwiches, I think.

Hobby

Sitting at the dining room table, my wife looked up from munching on a newly baked chocolate chip cookie and remarked that she thinks baking is my hobby. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, as I don't think of it that way. Baking is something that I like to do, but its not particularly relaxing -- more like satisfying. I'm pleased when a recipe comes out well; pleased when other people think so, at least in my hearing. (Though why so many of them feel the need to retreat abruptly to the water chamber immediately after tasting, where the sounds of loud hawking and harrumphing are heard, escapes me. Perhaps its a religious thing.)

So I don't think it's my hobby. Its just something that I like to do.

Like this recipe, from the excellent Holiday Cookies, which was put out by Cuisine Magazine:

CRISPY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup crisp rice cereal such as Rice Krispies
1/4 cup oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon salt

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips


1. Whisk the flour, cereal, oats, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt in a bowl, then set aside
2. Cream butter with both sugars until light and fluffy
3. Stir in the chips and flour mixture just until flour is incorporated.
4. Drop dough in 3 tablespoon mounds onto baking sheets, spacing about two inches apart.
5. Bake in 350 degree(F) oven for 12-14 minutes or until cookies are set and golden around the edges.
6. Let cool for 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to cooking rack.


Yields a crisp, somewhat tart chocolate chip cookie.

Sat Schtuff

Today I went to a color guard event that my daughter is in. It was .... uneventful. Okay, it was downright dull. I intended to stay the whole time, but when I found that her group's routine (which I knew would be less than ten minutes long) was in fact more on the order of three minutes (and thats being generous), I decided to bag it shortly thereafter. Not to say that there were not truly talented groups, or that it wasn't fun simply to stand and listen to the drum lines practicing their stuff in the hallways (halls with metal lockers make excellent sound tubes), but after a while, I just wanted OUT of there. Partially, too, was that I was put off by the amateurish style of how the local parent group was running things. I ALWAYS think that I could do better. There is absolutely no proof of this; I simply believe it.

Its like my belief that organizations would be better places if they spent more time cherishing their employees. (I know; cherishing? Its the best way I could think of to say 'appreciating, encouraging, valuing, helping to grow....) Do I know this? Hell, no. But I believe it. I don't think companies feel this way, at least, the ones over, say, about a thousand or so employees. As I said, I know mine doesn't, and I know that the place where I used to work doesn't, either. Both used to -- I know this for sure on the old place, and I'm told it was true here, too. Actually, I'm told it IS true here, but I don't see it, and I don't think so -- but that gave me an insight. I think that both organizations used to cherish their employees, years ago, and the people who are running the place now, assuming they were in the organizations back then, think its still true. They act as if it is; they think it is; they might even be treating their own directly-reporting employees that way. But whether they are or not, by the time the corporate this that and th'other gets trickled down to the grunt level (mine; as distinct from the operator level, which is subgrunt), its been leeched of whatever humanistic qualities it had. The aroma is still there; the content is gone.

It is my great conceit that I can do something about this. I know that I cannot; yet I beat myself up because I can't think of a way, not one way, to make it better. In a way, its like an article I read in the Mensa journal, back when I was a member, entitled 'If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" My variant of it goes "If you're so smart, why can't you fix this problem?" Because clearly its possible -- people are written up all the time for coming up with innovative solutions, fresh ideas, forceful insights. But me? Not a dammed one. I must be pretty lame, not to have even one.

So thats my Saturday schtuff.

Persuasion

What would persuade me that a troop increase -- 'surge' be damned -- in Iraqistan would be a good idea?

And, assuming that were possible:


What would persuade me that sending my daughter there would be a worthwhile thing?


Because its always easier -- not easy, but easier -- to let someone else's child die.

Later the Same Week

My wife and I both woke up early this morning. Not so early as to catch our daughter before she sprinted down to watch television (she gets up easily on days when she doesn't have school; with varying degrees of difficulty when she does), and not so early that we felt cheated by lack of sleep, but still: early. We hung out together for a bit, in a way reminding ourselves of why we like to be with each other. I don't think we're ever in danger of forgetting that, but its nice to remember.

My wife says that once again at her company there are rumours of layoffs to occur, and she said that the thing that worries her the most is not that she will be -- she doesn't think she's impervious to that, she's just grimly aware that its a possibility - - but that if she is, it might and probably will affect my intentions of retiring. I admit that thinking about that gave me pause, because I've gotten into the mode of thinking this year, possibly six months past that, and no further. That external events might make me hang around past that, and substantially past, at that, is a little unsettling. That feeling is frosted over with my dismay at my findings of which I spoke yesterday, and its reinforced whenever I hear a manager say that something ought to be done 'in case' an auditor doesn't like how we do it now. I won't go into that now except to observe that wariness of auditors seems to have replaced intelligence and foresight at my organizational level. But if that should happen, and she does get laid off, and I do have to stay around -- I won't be happy, but I'll know that she is happier to be out of that environment. (Its not a sweatshop; its just occasionally mismanaged. There's no word that means 'not managed according to the precepts celebrated in Fast Company', is there? Perhaps 'managed according to the precepts of The Harvard Business Review'. Which isn't entirely fair to HBR. ) Anyway -- though staying past that mid-next-year date would be a high price to pay, I'd pay it. Her happiness is more important to me than mine is.

Whats better than that is for both of us to be happy at what we do, of course. I wonder sometimes how happy people are, as a rule. And I wonder why we lost (if we ever had) happiness at work. Certainly, there must have been a time when people routinely got satisfaction from working. They may and almost certainly did not enjoy it, and even in times where everything was done manually there had to be tasks that were unbearably difficult, soul-draining, and dangerous. But (and perhaps this is my sense of whimsy, or belief in the Easter Bunny) I like to think that when those tasks were done, they felt a sense of satisfaction along with the bone-deep sense of weariness. By god, that tree is finally cut down to size.... that mountain is finally tamed... But the people I work with don't seem to have that sense of satisfaction, and as for the ones last night, they seem to operate on a much lower plane even than that. I want to do something about that. Yes, I know thats ludicrous, to assume that I can do anything about it, when I frequently cannot even manage the evironment of my own job, let alone, my reactions to it. Yet I want to. More accurately, I want an adult to take care of it, and since they seem to be in short supply, I am looking around for alternatives. Easter Bunny, you there?

I learned on Friday that starting on Tuesday I'll be on call for the operating systems. I don't doubt that I can do it, though I know that there will unquestionably be events where I do what I think right and reasonable, and its not the way the current operating system people do it. I am a little apprehensive that I'll make errors, because this is an unforgiving environment. But overall I'm pleased. Its something that I've wanted to be able to do.

Startled

I had a most unsettling experience this afternoon.

I had gone over to our company's computer center this afternoon to tell them what address they should use the next time that they IPLd a specific system. There's a change record to tell the customer what we're planning to do, and the record is supposed to contain all of the information that will be needed if you want the system operators to do the change. Usually, you don't;this is just an approval mechanism, but sometimes, you do. IPLing is something that operators do all the time, so it made perfect sense to me that the address of the pack to use would be in the record. Oh no, I was told, you have to physically go over there and key it in yourself. I thought this very odd, but I went over, and the operator told me that I was mistaken; this information appeared in the 'operator instructions' part of the record. Oho, I said, and went back to the office, where I updated the change ticket to include the IPL address.

Later in the day, I happened to meet the person who'd told me that I would need to go over, and he said that he was about to go over, in case I wanted to go over with him. I informed him of what had occurred, and he seemed quite surprised. Oh no, he said, we don't do it that way. You have to key in the address yourself. Well, I said, I don't have a problem with that, but thats not what the operator told me. So he went looking for the other programmer, who got quite agitated and said that under no conditions were the operators supposed to touch that field on the console. Under NO conditions. He said they weren't paid to do that, and he was going to call the Operations manager to complain that his operators were taking liberties with the system.

Now, this amazed me. I have known for quite some time that I expect more from operators than most of the people I work with, and I know that I do because the company that I used to work for expected more from them than this company expects from them -- heck, even from most of its programmers. (They really don't expect much. If you're one of the top fifth or so, its different. But otherwise, you're just well-paid auditor fodder. Head down, mouth shut. And they don't want to hear your ideas about improvements, either, unless -- well, that's another story.) Over time, though, that other company expected less and less, and the level of operator ability gradually drifted down. So it was not out of the question that our operators would be, overall, unambitious. But I didn't think of them as dumb, and my feeling was (and is) that if they wanted to stretch their abilities, that was a good thing, and they should go for it. Okay, within limits, but still: good thing.

This was not, as they say, the prevailing view, which I discovered on my return to the operations area. The operations manager hustled out to be there when the operator who had told me that it wasn't necessary said, quite stiffly, that she had misspoke (actually, she said that there had been a 'miscommunication', one of those weasel words that I despise), and that under NO conditions did they touch that console without first clearing it with the programmers.... and only then if there was a crisis, at which point they would ask for instructions. They would not think, they would not improvise, they would not try things. They would ask for instructions, and they would do just exactly that.

We walked over to the console and I quietly asked her why it was that way -- why couldn't operators touch this operator console without the clear approval of a programmer? And then this lead operator said what startled me, and startles me still:

"These operators are stupid. You can't trust them. They'll screw it up."

Surely not, I said. They may not be trained, but they're not stupid.

She nodded. "Stupid."

How can people view themselves that way? How can they do that?
. .
.
.

Mp3 , continued

While noodling around for something else (for some reason, I find it easier to read something technical by periodically interspersing something that's non-tech; go figure), I thought to poke around for MP3 again. And to my surprise, I found a site that talks about exactly the point I was making earlier. Only it turns out that this guy has a solution.

Snow Day

Yesterday, my daughter glumly observed that all of the school delays thus far were in a community that's east and south of here.

This morning, that's not true.

One school north of here is also delayed.

Inexplicably, this fails to console her.

Grown Up Stuff

I'm listening to a teleconference where people are saying that they don't like a new database because its hard to use. The answer is that we can't change it, though we can humbly beg that the owners of the database change it. We don't think they will do it.

And I'm reading this on the Fast Company web site. And even though the content is what I'd call business fantasy, I'm making comparisons between it and the teleconference. As you might expect, the folks on the telecon don't come out ahead. In the BF, they're talking about improving incrementally, making what they do, and how they do it, better, constantly. On the telecon, they're talking about getting approval, and making sure that managers are shown as the owners of the documented processes, and moving all of the processes into a common database.

The thing is, both are parts of reality in business. People write about the first kind because they're sexy. No one writes about the second kind because they're boring. I'd like to think that it's possible to get rid of the second kind, or have the dull people -- you know, like auditors -- be the only people who bother with it, leaving the jazzy, creative stuff for the rest of us, but that doesn't seem to be the way the world works. There's much more of the humdrum, dull things than there are of the jazzy, exciting things, and it seems the nature of large organizations to be able to take even the truly invigorating concepts and encumber them with barnacles until they collapse -- all in the nature of the corporate icons of 'standards', 'procedures', and so forth. Not to say that those are bad. Just that: has anyone ever leapt for sheer joy at the issuance of a new Corporate Instruction? Has anyone gone in to the office early, or stayed late, because they were so jazzed by the possibility of reading a new Standard, implementing a new Guideline, following a new Process? I strongly doubt it.

I don't question that the company in the BF probably has its own corp of nitpickers -- people who worry about the accurate encoding of items on expense reports and time cards; people who insist that the employees' cars all be parked head-in, and not the reverse; people who insist that the documents in a new database all be written the same way, with the same font, and the same spacing; people who collect, collate, summarize, and forward status reports. But somehow the organization manages to come up with concepts that are worth writing up in Fast Company, too. I wonder: is it only possible to find that magic if you look at the organization in the abstract, distilling out just the magic and leaving the daily drudge behind, just for the purpose of the presentation? And: is it possible that the bigger an organization gets, the better its ability to generate drudge, and the worse its ability to generate magic, becomes? As it becomes more 'adult', does the experience of being part of it -- the line staff, not the folks in charge, though maybe some of them, too -- become less delightful, less something that invigorates? You know my bet.

I bet this, too: if what I'll call the application of magic (has a ring to it, doesn't it?) is going to happen to me, in my life, it has to be because I made it happen, at the personal, micro level. I suspect that, barring an overwhelming concentration of interest and resources from above, thats the only way. The organization's not going to do it. It can't.

Scrambling for Black

A lot of people have noted how the president seems much more interested in cooperation now that he can't count on a solid majority in the Congress. His assumptions haven't changed -- he still acts as if he alone possesses the one clear vision, and disagreement might as well be a check sent directly to bin Laden & Co -- but now he makes at least a passing nod in the direction of cooperation as a good thing. I heard someone say the other day that you couldn't possibly want the president's plans to fail, could you? when in fact yes, you most certainly could want them to fail. You'd like to see him have to admit abject failure, were it not that failure costs the lives of our children. Not just for that reason, it would probably be more accurate to say that you'd love him to succeed, but you don't think he will, and you aren't willing to give him the slack he wants -- the time that he says he needs for them to come to fruition --just so you can later say 'I told you so' when they don't. Organizational leaders get a lot of slack when their tenure starts -- the classic honeymoon -- and if they can get some quick victories, they can get more later. But the further into their tenure they get, the harder it is to keep the magic going, and if you've lost it early, then the harder it is just to get back to zero, let alone over and into the black. Which is where the president is now - scrambling for black. So far, it isn't looking good.

Blacks the color of pleasure at our home, at the moment, though, because my wife got her new work laptop -- a jet black Dell Latitude 620. It's quite nice, and its a tad bigger -- more of a letter box screen than the squarish one on my work laptop or our home one. It boots quickly, and it connected almost immediately to our home network -- which was worth looking at, as it seems that when I got the new laptop, I'd never configured the network to accept it -- I just disabled wireless access checking. My bad. Now its back on, and the network knows both my MAC access and hers. Technological coziness. And I found a new command: GETMAC.EXE . Quite slick.

Where's Waldo?

Amazingly....right here.

Eternal Server Error 500

I am getting damned tired of these Internal Server Error 500 messages.

I wonder if the manual explanation for that error is: Switch to Wordpress. Or Squarespace. Or ....

Going to the Mattresses

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

By now, you may have heard the story of the soldier and the mattresses.

I would like to suggest that the comment by the store employee proves nothing other than that he's apparently incapable of self restraint. Neither does the ownership of the store by someone who's a Muslim. Doesn't prove there's a movement by Muslims, or mattress sellers, or anything.

Maybe there is, but it'll take more than just this one episode to make that case.

Its just one person. Let it stop there.

No, But....

Every so often, I get a catalog from a company that I'd love to buy something from. This reaction is almost invariably to an excellent product created and sold by a small company. And it's almost invariably expensive.

Because I got a bit of a surprise with my credit card bill (one of my payments seems to have vanished into the aether), I'm being very cautious about what I spend, for a while.

But John and Kira's catalog, I'm keeping.