Its hard to see the big picture when you are working on implementation details and it is no wonder that programmers are often viewed as being out of touch with the organization as a whole. When the developer is deliberating depth-first versus breadth-first for an algorithm they are bound to [...]
Blaise Pascal famously started a letter stating, “I would have written a shorter letter but I didn’t have time.” Its often easier to make things hard, complex or time intensive than to achieve the short and simple version.
If you would have asked me three months ago what I thought [...]
Have you ever seen those “x days since an accident” signs in a workplace? They are placed there because the very act of measuring something has an effect on improving it.
Every organization is measuring something but not every organization takes the time to make sure they select the right things. [...]
I recently upgraded to Wordpress version 2.6.5 and it appears that comments are currently broken. I’m investigating it.
Feel free to leave a comment with suggestions. :)
Update: This has been sort of low priority lately, but the comments are working again. The solution was rather simple and involved performing a MySQL [...]
The marketplace is, frankly speaking, a mess right now. Nothing earth shattering or newsworthy in itself, but what is driving the current malaise?
In a word, uncertainty. Take the latest example where the Treasury Department is considering a program to offer fixed mortgages at 4.5%. For the past two months [...]
On this day 491 years ago Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis as a challenge to the excesses of his day and opened the doors to mass schism. He could have been a renown reformer in the church, but the legacy today is nearly 30,000 protestant denominations.
I used to think [...]
An explanation from a well-read Libertarian is the best summary I’ve seen of how the markets have become so volatile and why the government bail out is the wrong answer.
[...]It doesn’t get any more succinct than this:
The very best manager you could ever have manages the people above him, not the people below him.
I’ll only add that I think great managers do both, but insulating developers from upper management is an often overlooked function of good gate control. [...]
I’m pleased to announce, for those not in my immediate email orbit, the birth of my daughter — Maria Katherine Gran. She joined our family the evening of August 13, 2008. She is 6 pounds and 7 ounces. She is quite healthy and adorable. We are adjusting to the new [...]
A Catholic Culture article summarizes the long history of the Church on matters of labor and human dignity. Of particular note to me:
Starting with Leo XIII and Rerum Novarum, often referred to simply as his “labor encyclical,” the Church would indeed have much to say! In fact that [...]
Charlottesville had the privilege of hosting President Bush to speak at Monticello for the annual naturalization ceremony on July 4th. Our community made the news regrettably because a handful of people felt that their vocal disagreement with policies unrelated to naturalization deserved attention.
The whole matter is unfortunate. If prodded I’ll [...]
A slashdot article features a question from a nervous database administrator who is worried about giving direct access to a database to a customer. He ends with the plea, “How would you advice me to keep my customer away from my precious tables?”
The right question is, “How can I [...]
If you are involved in a start up or work with technology in small organizations, be sure to read Keith Casey’s article about technology and startups. That he was the sole technology representative on such a panel is telling.
People familiar with the potential and limits of technology have a [...]
On this Good Friday I’m necessarily brought to a place of reverence for a carpenter and Savior who washed the feet of others. If the transition seems not too abrupt, I want to draw attention to one of the most thought provoking articles about labor that I’ve read in [...]
In the past week we have witnessed serious perturbations in the marketplace. It can shake the confidence of even the most planned investor, but I offer up the following words of advice from Warren Buffet:
Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center [...]
I’ve used Quicken for ages to organize (or at the very least categorize) personal financial transactions. Today I learned that Intuit will rewrite the application for the Mac. The application is a bit long in the tooth, but this announcement gives me little comfort and this may well be [...]
Johanna Rothman looks at several definitions of what constitutes a “project” and offers up a goal-oriented definition. Here is my stab at it:
A project is a temporary endeavor with measurable outcomes.
If that sounds too simplistic, consider for a moment the last project you worked on that never ended. Most [...]
As a fitting complement to Waldo’s entry I thought I would offer up a view from the other side, as it were. I’ve been managing software projects for years and suffered my share of management experiences described in Paul Graham’s article.
Software development is creative and structured. You ruminate about [...]
Dave Koelle has produced an elegant solution to a pervasive problem in computer sorting. The default sort order of a list places “z100″ ahead of “z2″ and makes the output of an application less polished. I don’t have an immediate use for this, but I’ve seen the problem enough [...]
Michael Kay wrote the following to the XSL mailing list recently:
THE FIRST LAW OF DEBUGGING: if you can’t find the bug after two minutes, it’s because you’re looking in the wrong place.
CORROLLARY: if you post the problem to a forum, you will snip the very code that contains the [...]
I’m cautious about the housing market, but I enjoy reading bearish analysis to keep some perspective. Mike Shedlock asks five questions everyone should consider as they contemplate the housing market place:
Understanding Demand - 3 Questions
- Who wants a house that does not have one?
- Who wants a house that can afford [...]
The old maxim of business that nothing happens until a sale is made holds true, but force of reality isn’t always enough to make truth ubiquitous. An impassioned counter claim from a technologist caught my attention. The point is simple enough and not so controversial. Business people need technologists [...]
I recently had lunch with a nineteen year old Computer Science major who requested my advice on many things software, but mostly about how to pursue a fulfilling career in IT. We had a wonderful discussion which concluded about how academic computing differs from what one finds in the industry. [...]
Who would have thought that Jim Cramer, of The Street, would be speaking today in Charlottesville. For a small community we seem to attract an interesting spectrum of speakers.
Cramer will speak at the Darden School of Business at 4pm and stand by tickets for the public will be [...]
It isn’t that long ago that I sneered at C programmers as I leapt tall buildings and turned water to wine with Java, but consensus is turning rapidly. The legion of slashdot — who always proclaim the death of a technology with every new birth — doesn’t concern me, but [...]
A brilliant Guardian article teases apart the myth and reality of China’s rapid economic expansion and how corruption threatens their transition to a market economy. From the article:
The truth is that China is not the socialist market economy the party describes, nor moving towards capitalism as the western consensus [...]
A delightful NY Times article delves into the moral implications of wealth and poverty and puts into clear relief how we have a moral imperative to serve others who are less fortunate. It has been years since I’ve read a good Kantian viewpoint and this article may well be [...]
Clay Shirky summarized my thoughts exactly about the faith people place in virtual reality:
Like video phones, which have been just one technological revolution away from mass adoption since 1964, virtual reality is so appealingly simple that its persistent failure to be a good idea, as measured by user adoption, [...]
