Woohoo! My hard drive crashed! Made for a miserable afternoon at work, but then the silver lining kicked in. Crashed hard drive means no functioning development environment. No functioning development environment means no no work tonight. No work tonight – oooh, whatever shall I do with myself? (Sleep is high on the list.)
Bookstore in my office?
Out on one of the various book vendor websites, looking for a location near work that might have a book I need ASAP. So, I put in my zipcode and ask for the nearest locations. Lo and behold, one pops up that lists itself as remarkably convenient to me: only 8 feet away! I knew I have a lot of books in my office, but…
Toasty code
Just a basic economics of software development question: do you ever find that the quality of your after-hours coding goes up in direct proportion (though potentially with diminishing returns) to the number of beers you’ve consumed? In the spirit of continuous software process improvement, I believe I need to test these working conditions further. Anyone willing to provide me grant money, all in the spirit of research, of course? Fair warning: my requirements for beer are a definite determining factor on the cost of this research – no Bud Light, Natty Bo, etc. I hypothesize that my code works better because I’m more relaxed and suddenly find things amusing to fix, rather than pain-in-the-neck annoying or beyond-the-level-of-frustrating to fix. Note that this is not my usual method of after-hours coding. Somehow, tonight just felt like a good evening to imbibe. More follow up analysis required, particularly as I look at the results of my coding in the light of complete and unblanching sobriety.
Disappearing act
If you checked this page earlier today, you’d have found an empty blog! Somewhere in my settings, I must have set the main page to display entries for the last month. Generally, even in a bad month, that’s five or six entries. This past month, however, I’ve come nowhere near this page. The combination of two little girls and an overwhelming project at work has kept me well away from blogging. Sometimes even well away from sleeping. I promise that this blog hasn’t died – its author is just conserving strength and hours for sleep.
Where is, where is, where is Derek?
You know you’ve watched too many children’s videos when
(1) you get the jokes when the Daily Show mocks children’s programming (love those Boohbah’s)
(2) when a coworker doesn’t show up on time for a meeting the tune from Bear in the Big Blue House thing of “where is, where is, where is shadow?” becomes “where is, where is, where is Derek?”
(3) Bach’s symphonies now conjure up visions of toys and puppets
(4) The theme from Elmo’s World (go ahead, tickle him) seems pretty catchy to you
Badge off
Cora’s a pretty sharp little kid. Before I headed to work today, I hung my requisite identity badge around my neck. Cora’s response: “No badge, no badge!” But wait… it gets better. Calling home, my usual late afternoon reminder to both me and my family that the workday is soon to be over, Cora got on the phone and said “Badge off! Badge off!” When she figures out that Mommy can’t get into the building without her badge, I’ll be lucky to ever find it.
Where are the Women?
Fast Company magazine’s cover asks “Where are the Women?” The starting point of the article is to ask why there aren’t more women in corner offices / executive positions, given the number of women in the workforce and the number of years we’ve now had to make it into the cushy chair. The article basically examines a study done by a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business that determined that men are almost exclusively the ones in executive positions because men compete harder and sacrifice more of their personal lives than women. Women are just as competent, just as skilled, etc, as men, generally, but men are m ore willing to work longer, relocate, and just generally give more of their lives to work than women are. This is actually the second article I’ve seen that’s based on this study. The first was in Fortune magazine, entitled “Power: Do Women Really Want It?”.
Particularly in article in Fortune, the spin seemed to be that women just aren’t willing to go that extra mile for the executive spot, and that, hey, that extra mile is required for those who want to reach the pinnacle. Two thoughts come to mind: one, is that extra mile really required for the job itself, or is it just more of a barrier to entry, a way to winnow the competition? Couldn’t companies figure out better ways to use their top job resources, so that above and beyond all call of duty _isn’t_ the required duty? Seems like then the company would be less about the man (nearly always) at the top, and more about its mission of producing something that produces value (to shareholders or some other ownership).
Second thought, and more interesting to me to explore… If the reason that more women aren’t at the top is because they value other things in life over the rewards gained via sacrifices for work, why is it that men don’t value those same things? The articles pointed out that women aren’t stepping aside merely for the “mommy track”, that they’re often stepping aside for other jobs that provide a better balance of work and life. Lots of folks seem to look at that as “settling”, as somehow demeaning what you could have been. But that supposes that the best you could be was the person wholly focused on beating the competition out to win the top spot in this one arena of business, and thus necessarily losing focus on other areas in life. Those other areas – family, personal time, other interests – why are they of so relatively less value to the men examined in this study?
Selling Tech Toys to Women Geeks
I’ve been hunting the perfect PDA for a while now. I generally carry a phone and a PDA, and worry about dropping one or the other. Women don’t tend to wear the Bat-belt setup that guys do, with a pager, PDA, and phone all strapped to them like either techno bombs or Batman’s equipment belt. We just don’t tend to draw attention to our waist, particularly not with things that stick out from it. And it doesn’t matter if we’re geeks who’re just as excited about the newest toy as the guy in the next office: we’re not going to strap that thing to us and have someone pay close attention to whether we’re quite as tight in the abs as we want to be. The woman thing of wanting to look thin beats out the geek excitement any day. For guys, that whole thin waist thing doesn’t seem to apply for any but the very few. Given the “street cred” a cool geek toy gives to a techie, women need to find an appropriate way to wear their PDA. PDA armcuffs? A mini purse? (A real purse is generally too bulky to pick up and lug into meetings.) More thought required… both on the case and that perfect PDA.
Humor in government contracting
Seen referenced in some Florida government contracting guidelines and documentation:
“Cone of Silence” requirements.
Seems specific to Florida, given my brief check via Google. So, if you’re at a purchasing conference and you see someone wandering around with a shoe to their ear, you can pretty well assume they’re from Florida.
Comment blather ads – continued
Was amused to discover, as I deleted the latest comment hawking the opportunity to buy generic Viagra, that this particular comment was posted to my rant on comments that hawk products. Brashly obnoxious, rather than merely obnoxious.