I’ve noticed that a couple of key entries keep getting comment-spammed. True, it’s typically only a few per day, but it’s annoying, nonetheless. More stringent measures yet to come, but, for the moment, I’ve turned off commenting for a couple of those entries. They’re older entries – I figure if you haven’t commented by now, you really didn’t have anything you wanted to say. And I’d rather not give the spammers an easy platform.
Need a Walker Yet?
I turned 30 yesterday, which for me turned out to not be such a big deal. We’re using the occasion to throw a big party, since hubby turns 30 in a week and a half, and I’m looking at 30 as something of a marking point. How have I done so far with my goals? Are the goals I had still the goals that are important to me? The story I’ve heard echoed over and over again is that folks get caught in up the everyday, in the things that have to be done today or by this weekend, or their big plan for next month, letting their bigger goals in life gather dust. I don’t want to fit that story. I want to both achieve my goals in life, and keep making new ones so that there’s continually a challenge, no matter what my age.
I talked with my mom today. She asked me if I needed a walker yet. I boastfully replied that I had run 9 miles this morning- no walker necessary here! She then reminded me that when she had turned 31, I had seen fit in my 11 year old sense of humor, to give her a cane that had a rearview mirror and a horn attached to it. When you’re 11, your parents don’t seem quite ancient, but definitely count as old. Not old like grandparent old, but stuck in the same state they’ve always been in and will always be. That cane had been my way of poking fun. And now, I’m merely one year away from the same age as my mom had been. Luckily, my kids are a lot younger. I’ll have to be 40 (ooh, ancient!) before Cora will be in that same pre-teen state to poke fun at her “old” mom. And I’m hoping to be able to proudly say, ‘I don’t need that thing, I just ran 9 miles today.’
Goals, Aspirations, and Other Sheister Tricks
Spent several hours this weekend working on my self appraisal. These are tricky things. You want to honestly evaluate yourself against your goals so that you know what to do better next year. The trick, though, is to figure out just how honestly to write your failings. Failings jump out in an appraisal. Successes, poorly expressed, end up buried. Business is a game – almost like a card game where you bet the number of hands to win. Aim too low, and even if your estimate is spot on, you still lose. Bet too high, and even if you win more than the next guy, you still don’t end up ahead. I think I bet too high this year. My goals outstripped my ability to deliver. (My project also outstripped any reasonable estimate of how much time and energy work should consume, directly contributing to my delivery problem.) What I did do was great work. What I didn’t do was check off the list of skills enhancing, career development goals – the goal of quickly assimilating new technologies to build a dependable solution that met my clients needs within a very tight timeline overtook all other career development goals. It also overtook a great deal of other time I hadn’t exactly earmarked for career stuff. Luckily, my husband and family don’t keep a file on me, and my pay rate of baby kisses and hugs isn’t tied to a requirements checklist or a timesheet.
Crystal ball in hand, I attempt to set new goals for the next review cycle. Will I bid too high? Settle too low? Bleah – settle, period? Not in my nature. I’ll probably be in the same spot next year. The consolation is knowing how much I achieved. The pain is in knowing how much higher I set the bar.
Two Tooth Teething
Poor Callie… It’s only 10:00, and she’s already back in bed for a nap, just plain exhausted from teething. She’s been a little one tooth smiling wonder for a couple of weeks now, and her gums decided to pop through two more teeth today. One’s already through, and the other I can’t tell for certain. She’s miserable, though. That has a snowball effect. If she’s miserable, then she’s fussing. Which gets her more attention. Which makes her sister fussy. Then there’s two little girls fussing, all on a morning when Jason needs to head out to get to church early for band practice. The theory is that I’ll then get the girls ready for the later service and join him at church. Looks like that’s not going to happen, though. Seems a less than Christian thing to her to wake her up from her nap, and then a less than Christian act to the nursery staff to hand her over when she’s been woken up from a nap and is teething.
People often say they’d love to be babies again, held by their parents, taking naps, having every need tended to. Not me. Teething, diaper rash, frustration at not being able to communicate or do things, complete powerlessness to fight against things like the dreaded confinement of the carseat… Babies have it rough!
Little girl rant
So, it’s Saturday morning and it looks like a beautiful day outside. Jason and his dad have plans to work on our deck this morning as soon as it’s reasonable to run power tools and not wake the neighbors. So, the long run needed to happen bright and early. No problem. Went to bed early last night so that I could get up super early and run before mommy-duty commenced (little girls and power tools don’t mix well). Jason stayed up, ‘cos he’d rather snag his goof-around time late in the evening than early in the morning.
Alarm’s set for a little before 6. A little before a little before 6, Cora yells out in her sleep. Which wakes up Callie. Which deep-sixes my run this morning. While Cora drifts back to sleep, Callie’s excited to be up.
Earlier this week, Jason had to wake Callie up at ten a.m., she had slept so long. Most days, both girls sleep until at least 8, and often closer to 8:30.
Drag and Drop What?
Line in (old, probably out-of-date) lab exercises for BEA:
“Add a NetUI Image to the top of the Design Canvas by dragging a dropping from the Palette.”.
Ewwwww… if I find a dropping in the palette, I’m not dragging it anywhere.
When’s Enough? Decisions on Learning vs. Doing
[This entry was drafted in early January, at the beginning of the project for which we’ve now deployed Phase 1. Interesting to run across this now, as I’m wrestling with a similar problem of knowing when I know enough, now that I’m working on a prototype application using BEA’s portal product.]
My new project at work is a Microsoft .NET project, building an e-procurement system for one of our government agencies. Our schedule is very tight (see my Project wishlist that came out of dealing with the schedule) and the set of functionality to build is large. And the development team, including me, is very inexperienced in the technology – the team’s very senior, in terms of general development expertise, but has very little actual hands-on .NET experience.
Given a tight schedule and an inexperienced team, there’s a tendency to want to learn everything. Let’s see, we need in-depth knowledge of C#, of ASP.NET, of ADO.NET, of Win Forms, ………… What we don’t know can hurt us! And no senior developer wants to feel like they’ve just scratched the surface of a technology in which they’re required to develop a system. Where’s the balancing point, though? If we spend the time necessary to feel comfortable in .NET, we won’t get that time back in the development schedule. Sure, knowing more will let us develop faster and with fewer problems, but there’s definitely a problem of diminishing returns. Spending two weeks training won’t probably net me two weeks back in development time. [Follow-up note: nope, the training wasn’t worth it, given the time necessary for the class. But I at least have something to add to my resume. Most of the stuff we had to figure out on the project weren’t covered anywhere in the training.]
Seems there’s some fine line somewhere of just knowledgeable enough to do the task at hand, or, put another way, just barely above stupid. But there’s no Geiger counter of knowledge, or sniffing dog for stupidity. We, the very ones who don’t know enough, are required to figure out that inflection point of stupidity: that point where we’re just knowledgeable enough to make it over the hump to build something useful for the project at hand. Don’t go far enough in learning to hit the inflection point, and you’re not going to build anything useful. Go too far, and anything you build won’t be done in time. Gotta know when you’re doing stuff fast enough to figure out you’ve crested the hill, and then go full speed ahead doing, and put the brakes on the high-powered learning gear.
8K broohaha
Key lesson learned for races – get directions TO the race, not just the race course map. Never made it to my race last night. Couldn’t find the dern thing. Found the Capitol dome and lots of neighborhoods that I didn’t want to be in, but no race. I need one of those GPS runners watches just to GET me to the race.
On the plus side, Jason and the girls had gotten my ice cream in which to drown my sorrows. And frozen orange juice to dip into, in case I was trying to avoid the calories of the ice cream. And then I ran this morning – 3 miles on the treadmill while I was trying to avoid the rain, and then 8 miles on the trail after I decided to avoid the boredom of the treadmill. All I can say is, Ken, I was actually glad the softball game got rained out. The idea of sprinting around the bases was none too appealing.
8K Beer Fest
Running a race tomorrow. 8K, which my calculator tells me works out to 4.96 miles. Not the longest I’ve ever run, but definitely a challenging test for me. So, I was surprised to hear that a coworker is running this same race, and that she doesn’t consider herself a runner. This came about, as she explained, as a result of ‘beer muscle’. A group of her friends and she were talking about the race, and decided on a whim to do it. Heck, and there’s beer at the end of the race – what more could you want?
I actually hadn’t realized the beer at the end thing when I signed up. To me, it’s another notch towards the marathon distance. I’ll run it, aiming for 55 minutes or so, and then I’ll meet my sis for dessert. Gotta replace those calories I’ve burned somehow – might just melt away otherwise… 🙂 Whilst my friend is pouring down the brews, I’ll be sliding down some ice cream.
I’m desperately hoping I come in ahead of my coworker. I’ve been beaten by grannies, by folks pushing jogging strollers, by little kids… I don’t consider myself fast. But I’m working on the dedicated runner angle… ‘Twould suck skunked beer suds if I was beaten by someone running purely for the frosty mug at the end.
What do Women Want?
Martha Barletta’s interview with Tom Peters, discussing What do Women Want?:
Key insight: women want what men want, just more of it. Martha makes the point that research has shown that women are more detail-oriented than men. Details bother us or delight us. To give a concrete example lots of folks can identify with, who’s bothered first by the dirty dishes in the sink at your house, or the layer of dust on the shelves? Women make the details work, and that benefits everyone (men like houses that aren’t dusty too, right?)
So, women want the details right. That’s true for the products marketed to us, the services given us (I won’t work with a company that does a horrible job at service, no matter how good the product is), and our work environments. OK, but so what? The ‘so what’ is that we, directly or indirectly, control the vast majority of the money in our economy. We either directly make the decision, or offer the input to the decision, for most purchasing decisions. We make more than our husbands 30% of the time, and as much as our husbands 20-30% of the time. We control the checkbook 83% of the time. [Think of your own finances – most of the money goes out the door for the basic category items that never hit the big decision making processes that the guys have been typically attributed with.] We talk (you knew that, right?) and give references lots more than guys do. If you’re looking to sell to us or to someone we know, that reference can make or break you. If you’re looking to hire us, or someone we know, similarly, that reference can be the difference between an enthusiastic hire of a super-qualified person, or the continuation of a long and expensive hiring process.
So, listen to us when we offer opinions about the details. Actively solicit our advice, encourage us to offer it, rather than burying us in low-level areas. Seek to find and develop women into positions of influence – who better to lead your business than someone who’s wired to make the details better for both your women customers (note that whether or not you see them, their influence is mighty!) AND for your male customers.