My Office at Starbucks

My Office at Starbucks

One thing I like about the work I do is that it's largely mobile. When I'm doing work in the evening (or sometimes even during the day, depending on what I'm doing) I do so on my laptop at the Starbucks in Bellevue. I think it's a pretty nice office. There are usually a lot of people around, so my habit of observing others gets a good workout. I've also noticed that I actually focus more on my immediate task when there are some distractions around. It's almost like part of my mind needs to be engaged with general "stuff" so that the currently working part can be more directed on the work part.

Where do you work best?

Skyline Loop, Mount Rainier National Park

Skyline Loop, Mount Rainier National Park

I guess I've lost my marbles over this hiking thing. I got up at 7am, earlier than I normally do to go to work. I was out the door by 8:30am, which is about when I'd leave for work, but I did a couple things to prepare for the day that I wouldn't normally do. Then I drove 100 miles (each way) to hike in Mount Rainier National Park for six miles in inclement weather, unable to get the usual stunning vistas that can be seen on a clear day. All that, and I had a perfectly good time. Crazy, really.

I haven't had a chance to get to the photo album creation yet, but I'll post again in the next day or two when I do. In the meantime, the photo above really captures the feel of the hike today. It was wet and rocky on a trail winding up to well above the treeline, twisting its way to and into a cloudy sky. My GPS tells me my I climbed about 1845 feet to a maximum elevation of 7065 feet, roughly half the height of Mount Rainier's summit, which is a bit over 14,000 feet. I travelled about 6.7 miles in horizontal distance.

It's interesting that when I first started doing this hiking thing, five or six miles was a pretty long hike and challenging. Now, today's hike seemed almost short. Nine or ten seems to be about right for me, and even that's growing as last week's trip to Goat Lake was longer than that and I recovered from that pretty quickly.

The new hiking boots also worked out really well. I think I bought those just in time, as today's trail was pretty rocky. There were a few points where I aimed for a bunch of specifically pointier rocks just to test out the soles of the boots. What an amazing difference! My now discarded Thom McAn's would have left me feeling every spike - I swear I could read Braille through those things. The new Timberland's, though, are tough stuff and dealing with rocks was only about balance, not pain. OK, I guess there was still a little pain, as they aren't fully broken in yet, although I wore them to work a couple times this week and that seems to have helped.

Another big difference between a Mount Rainier hike and a hike like Goat Lake was the number of people present. There were huge buses unloading people at the bottom. For the first mile or so after leaving the parking lot, the trails are actually paved. It feels a little silly walking along behind some guy carrying nothing and wearing sandals on his feet when you have on hiking boots and are carrying a pack that weighs about 12 pounds (like mine) containing enough gear you could spend an uncomfortable but safe night out in the wilderness if you had to. This particular trail goes up pretty high, though, so after a bit the only people left around were a Boy Scout troop, some people practicing mountaineering by climbing through snowpack instead of on the trail, and a few other folks in groups of one to three. The last bit is again on pavement (since it's a loop) and then there were points I had to say, "Excuse me" a few times to get through a big knot of young Japanese tourists clustered on the trail with umbrellas.

Anyone actually reading this far will have noticed I wrote, "snowpack" in that last paragraph. Yes, it's July and I walked through some snow at one point. According to the park rangers, the snow level is currently at about 8000 feet, but there are still pockets of snow down as far as about 6000 feet, including on the Skyline.

All-in-all, this was a good hike, but not a great one. I'll need to try it again on a clear day and add in the side hikes that are available, like Pebble Creek, to put some extra distance on it. Then, I expect it will be great.

Nude Clowns on Stilts

No, I'm not going to share a picture, but in recent email discussion list message, this guy named Russell used this phrase:

"...and nude clowns on stilts coming out of the woodwork in a loathsome 'show of solidarity'…"

The subject matter of the email hardly matters. All I could do was laugh!

Dinner with Kyle

Tonight I went the The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. (Owned by Overtons and now with a 6-carb cheesecake on the menu!) I went there alone and it was pretty crowded, so I headed for the bar, which has open seating. Well, should have open seating anyway. The closest thing to an open seat was that there was a guy sitting at one of the table alone with three other chairs there.

Being as shy as I am, I would never presume to ask someone if I could join them at a table that would make it look like we were there together.

Moments later, sitting at the same table as this fellow, I read my magazine until he was done with his menu and was just kind of looking around waiting for the waitress to come back. I started with something clever, like, "You know, if conversation with a total stranger that just sat at your table is better than eating alone in silence, I'd be up for such a thing." So, we had dinner and a conversation.

His name is Kyle, he works for Progressive Insurance as a claims adjuster, and he was in the area working for a week or so. He returns home Friday to Anchorage, Alaska. We chatted about the merits and demerits of buying houses, outdoor activities, and living in Alaska. (I lived in Alaska through most of my teens for those that don't know.) All-in-all, pretty pleasant and much better than eating alone.

Too bad I'm so shy.

Ian's Recent Predictions

Ian has recently predicted a couple of things that I find wholly unlikely. I'm going to relate them here and keep an eye on whether they come true or not.

• We're going to see a global chain reaction collapse of the financial-economic system in either July or August, probably July.
• Lyndon LaRouche will win the presidency in 2008. (Not sure how if the first one comes true.)

Goat Lake

Goat Lake, July 2, 2005

Yesterday saw my longest day hike, at least since I was in Boy Scouts as a teenager. I've put up an album of the pictures. The day promised to be overcast, so the original plan, to tackle Mount Dickerman again and achieve the summit this time was set aside for a hike that would be interesting without require long distance visibility at the end. Thus, Goat Lake.

I had company this time. Gaurav, who had joined me for last week's trip to Bearhead Mountain, came along and brought three of his friends, Sachin, Harish, and Krishna. (I'm hoping I'm spelling of their names correctly. Guys, when you read this, please feel free to correct any errors.)

The raw data of the trip is that we had about 1400 feet of elevation gain with a round trip of 12.3 miles. The guidebook gave the distance as 9.5 miles, but that was from the trailhead and assumed we would take the Lower Eliot trail the entire distance. Unfortunately, the Mountain Loop Parkway is completely washed out about a quarter mile from the turn-off for the fire road that leads to the trailhead. The fire road itself is another mile or so long. Finally, on our return trip, we took the Upper Eliot trail, which is a bit longer than the Lower Eliot, although it's in way better condition.

The Lower Eliot trail itself was washed out just a quarter mile in, but we were able to pick our way along the creek bed and recover the trail only a few hundred feet later. The remainder of the Lower Eliot saw numerous obstacles with fallen trees and extensive overgrowth. Despite these problems, we were in general agreement that we picked the best choice - Lower Eliot out and Upper Eliot back. My posted photo album captures a general sense of the problems with the trail.

In addition to being the first hike I've taken over ten miles since taking up hiking regularly again, this one also convinced me that I'm serious enough about hiking that some better hiking boots are in order. As such, I've now retired my Thom McAn boots that I picked up for $30 in a Walmart in Hawaii. They are being replaced by a pair of Timberlands with a much stiffer sole. I've had enough of feeling every pointy rock I step on right through the soft soles of the Thom McAn's. I'm looking forward to breaking them in, perhaps as early as tomorrow.

Gregory on Sugarloaf Mountain, June 18, 2005 

Ohnynwun-tep

Ohnynwun-tep - my 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, on the road back from Bearhead Mountain.

Batman at the IMAX

I went tonight to see Batman Begins at the Pacific Science Center's IMAX theater. What a show! Really, I think this is my favorite of the Batman movies, as it really feels a lot more like the Dark Knight Returns graphic novel series, which was one of my favorites as a teenager. On top of that, it sure doesn't hurt that I only had to pay $3, even for an evening show, thanks to the Microsoft Prime Card.

Bruce Campbell

Actor Bruce Campbell signs a book for me. This wasn't the best picture, but his assistant didn't follow the directions on how to use my camera. Campbell came to Microsoft for a question and answer session followed by a book signing.

Old Code

I opened up an application in PowerBuilder today. It was one I wrote back during the Heatherstone days that I started in 1997. The first piece of code I saw included this comment line at the top: Created: ALO - 10.19.98. This is an application that is still in production and in daily use by clients.

I did a rebuild of the application and when it completed successfully, I just sat there grinning to myself. It's just so cool.

When was the last time you came across something cool you did a long time ago?

Uncertainty

While driving back from yesterday's hiking trip, Gaurav and I were talking about various topics relating to marriage, starting with the idea that he's feeling ready to get married. I don't know how many times I've heard the theory that almost all disagreements between married couples have to do with either money or sex. It occurs to me that this is looking at the symptom, not the cause. The cause is uncertainty. Thinking about money, for example, couples that know from the outset what they are each allowed to do with money, what requires approval of their partner, and what's out of the question are probably going to have better marriages.

I've discussed undocumented expectations in this blog before, which is another way to describe uncertainty. What problems do you have in your life that you've thought were caused by a particular factor, but are in fact caused by uncertainty? What could you do to establish certainty and perhaps finally fix the problem?

Foggy Bearhead Mountain

On top of Bearhead Mountain in the fog - Gaurav and I hiked up Bearhead yesterday and while the hike was a good one (6 miles out and back, 1700 foot elevation gain), unfortunately there was no view to be had. The sky completely cleared two hours later as we were driving back to Bellevue.

Unrated Versions

A lot of movies on DVD are now advertised as the "unrated" versions, "including scenes not in the theatrical release!" I've seen a couple of these and realized that the unrated versions are advertised as such, not because they necessary include more of the stuff that gets the movie a bump from one rating to the next (PG to PG-13, PG-13 to R, or R to NC-17), but more often because it gives the casual movie watcher the impression that this version moves along the scale toward the NC-17 end. Apparently, this sells or rents more copies of that version. Not that viewers have much choice in whether to rent the theatrical release over the unrated DVD release in many cases, at least at Blockbuster, as usually all the copies of a movie are of the same version, rated or unrated.

Based on the movies I've rented, I'm guessing (I have to guess, since I generally haven't seen both versions) that this is almost entirely a marketing ploy and has nothing to do with the content. I suspect that the unrated version is no better and possibly worse than the theatrical release and that the scenes left out were left out for good reason - they didn't make the movie any better, especially when the theatrical release was mediocre.

Personal Scorecard

I've started a personal scorecard. I posted it on a personal bCentral Sharepoint site I have so I can get to it from any of the three computers I regularly use, or really any computer with an Internet connection and PowerPoint installed. In it, I will give myself a daily grade, like those you get in school, A to F, on each of the five areas I've decided to set as my initial focus. I'll also retain the accumulated previous week's grade.

I've decided to start with these areas: Diet, Exercise, Microsoft, Heatherstone, and GTD System. The first two are obvious. Microsoft is a representation of how well I'm doing my job at Microsoft. Heatherstone is a catch-all for my progress with my personal, generally financially orient projects. GTD System is how well I use David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology for time and project management.

I've also added to my calendar a recurring "meeting" from 8:55am to 9:00am to update the scorecard. This will push the update into my attention every day as I try to make it habitual. I graded myself for today immediately (rather than tomorrow morning) since I was already in there setting it up at the end of the day. For those that are curious, today I gave myself a "D" average (C, F, B, F, F).

With an average of a D today, I already feel an internal push to do better tomorrow - which is of course the point.

First Stint with a Customer

At this very moment, one of our internal customers, Gary, is using our newly launched product on his laptop in my office. One of my coworkers is here, too, helping him.

Our product has two websites, one a customer-facing site (that is, at connect.microsoft.com for people participating in our Beta programs) and the other an administration site for internal people to set up those programs and the content that will appear on the site.

Preparing for v1.0, our team set the site that is presented to customers as the highest priority. That meant that as we got close to delivering, if we saw a problem with the customer site we fixed it, if we saw a problem with the administration site, we usually let it go to a future version. So, the internal site has a lot of open issues.

Now, Gary's using this for the first time as the first person to use our administration site. While he does stop occasionally to say we have done a great job overall, as he's trying stuff, he's also rolling his eyes, groaning, and giving endless ideas on how we can improve it. It's pretty entertaining, pretty illuminating, and generally a great time finding out just how hard it is to please a customer, especially a Microsoft employee.

If I Had Time

I've decided to remove "if I had time" from my vocabulary. Instead, I will recognize the reality: I have time, but choose to spend it elsewhere. In accordance with the actor/prop metaphor, "if I had time" is prop language, "I choose to do something else" is actor language.

Because of that, I've dropped out of an activity I was participating in on Monday nights. It just wasn't worth the time.

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink

I've just returned to work from a week's vacation. One of the things I was able to do while off from work is read several books. Since I like to post book reviews to my blog, I have some writing to do!

Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, is his followup to The Tipping Point, but now focused on those first few seconds or less when a person is confronted with a new situation and makes a judgement about what is observed. He discusses many examples, from art forgery detection to John Gottmann's divorce prediction where people use what he calls "thin-slicing" to quickly make highly accurate decisions with what appears to be minimal or insufficient information. Gladwell also covers how to know when to trust or not trust such insights.

The book is a good read overall, flowing well from topic to topic, example to example, with one exception. This book could have been about 20-50 pages shorter if Gladwell had left out the repetitive references to material previously covered, and would have been better for it. Despite this shortcoming, there's more than enough interesting material to keep the reader engaged throughout.

For a shorter version of the basic concepts, Business 2.0 published an article called "How to Think With Your Gut" by Thomas A. Stewart in November of 2002. I'd read that article at the time, so Gladwell's discussions of a group of Marines wargaming with guys that work the trading floor on the New York Stock Exchange was already familiar.

I've never read The Tipping Point, but after reading Blink, I will.

Learning by Teaching

Next week, while I’m on vacation, I’m going to visit with a long-time Heatherstone client of mine. While I’m there, I’m going to provide some coaching to two of the employees on using David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology.

Of course, I’m personally not nearly as good at GTD as I would like to be. Trevor and I talk about it quite often, and I have slowly, painfully slowly, improved at using the system, but I feel I have a long way to go to be truly effective in this way. My hope, however, is that since I understand the principles, coaching others on the subject will help me learn more about it myself. Teaching another person helps the teacher organize his thoughts and solidify his own thinking on the subject.

When I was a freshman in college, I tutored other students in the math lab in business calculus. I had taken calculus as a junior in high school and done very well, but I think that at the end of the year after tutoring others for several hours every week I knew calculus better than at any other time.

This opportunity to teach others about something I’m still learning therefore seems like a great one I’m excited to have.

Remember Solutions

I just finished reading Angels & Demons by Dan Brown, the well-know author of The Da Vinci Code. Like The Da Vinci Code, this book seems to be as much about passing on the fruits of his research as it is about the storyline. The city of Rome, the artifacts of the Illuminati, and the (possibly real) revelations about mysteries hidden in plain view are the real meat of the story rather than the characters.

Here and there, though, a reader finds a concept more applicable to daily life. Early in the book, the prominent female protagonist, Vittoria, is trying to figure out the solution to a problem that seems hopeless. She mentally changes modes of thinking into one of remembrance rather than the more usual dependence on creativity and imagination. The idea is that by tricking your mind into believing you already know the answer, that solving the problem is a foregone conclusion, and that all you need to do is remember what to do, the stress that comes from the part of your mind that insists there is no solution is relieved.

Brown refers to this, through Vittoria’s inner monologue, as a Buddhist invention. If there is more to be read on the subject, I’m going to do so once I’m not on an airplane as I am as I write this.

Ship It! (OK, Almost)

The product I've been working on for the last year at Microsoft, called Microsoft Connect, is off for final privacy and security audit! Soon, the beta programs for MSN's Messenger and Hotmail and Windows Longhorn will launch at connect.microsoft.com through the web property we've built. We've been on death march for weeks, putting in long evenings and weekends to get the thing out the door by a set date. That is finally over. The three days of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday had me at the office for about 35 hours dealing with final bits and pieces, along with most of our team of about 18 people.

I say about 18 because I'm not actually sure how many of us there are. Our test team is mostly in China and has had so many staff changes I haven't been able to keep up with how many people are on the team. This way of handling testing has many pitfalls and has been the most difficult, frustrating, and ineffective part of our project. The good news, though, is that we also now have a test lead in Redmond who also speaks Chinese and will be here for the next version.

Within a couple weeks, the audits and rollout to production will happen and the shipping of the product will be truly complete. As I'll be on vacation for a bit, my part is done. When I return, I'm on to work for version 1.1, such as the addition of web forums and an Outlook toolbar that lets our internal program administrators send mail through our system directly from Outlook. The toolbar part is especially interesting, since that will be a true innovation to how Microsoft people communicate with customers.

In the meantime, what a relief to be done!

The Italian Internet

The code for our new website at Microsoft is about to be locked down and we're doing final testing of version 1.0. As such, I'm running my browser in Italian. I'm sure many Americans aren't familiar with how you change the language preference in your browser. For Internet Explorer, you do that through Tools Internet Options, then select the Languages button on the General tab. I've set mine as Italian, then English.

When I open up the test version of our site, all the menus and such appear in Italian. It also gives a (Resource Not Located) message when we're missing an Italian version of a particular piece of text. I can log that as a bug so our localization team will know to fix it.

What's more interesting is to then go to other sites and see which ones are presented in Italian. For example, I'm typing this on the Blogger website and about half the text is in Italian, such as "Consenti nuovi commenti su questo post", which I think means, "Allow new comments for this post". However, the link for "Recover post" still just says "Recover post".

I may leave my browser this way for awhile and see if it teaches me any new Italian. Now I'll go click "Pubblica post" and share this with you, the reader.

Davey Crockett on Government

http://www.stanley2002.org/crockett.htm

I had cause today to refer someone to the link above. It is a book excerpt quoting Davey Crockett from when he was a U.S. Congressman from Tennessee on the limits of governmentally funded charity. I find it inspirational and wish modern politicians were more like him.

Actor or Prop?

At lunch the other day, Adam was talking about something he had heard from someone else whose name I don't recall, but was pretty interesting and I'll repeat despite my lack of attribution.

Some people are naturally actors and will describe an event in terms of what they did, whether good, bad, or indifferent. Others are naturally props and will describe an event (event the same event) in terms of what happened to them outside of their control. Of course, no one is really all one way or all the other, but we generally have tendencies toward one or the other.

For example, a prop might say, "I thought we were friends and then he stole money from me. Trusting people sure can get you kicked in the head." In the same circumstances, an actor might say, "I really blew it that time. I put my trust in the wrong guy and paid the price. I'll need to keep a closer eye in the future, especially when money is involved."

Although this conversation wasn't really directed at me (there were several people at this particular lunch), it got me thinking. How often am I an actor? How often a prop? Am I comfortable with the ratio between the two? In answer to that last one, well, in a word, no. Or at least, not until now. My future will be one of acting rather than being acted upon.

Summit Lake Album

Okay, so I'm excited and enthused about this particular hike, and can't stop writing about it. This is absolutely the last post on the topic - until I go again!

I put the best shots from the hike, thirteen of them, together into an album.

Me above Summit Lake

One last one from Summit Lake - me above Summit Lake in front of Mt. Rainier

Summit Lake Hike Map

I recorded the Summit Lake hike on my GPS, and here's the map with my track highlighted. The photo from my previous post was taken from the point the furthest to the left on the map.

Summit Lake Reprised

Summit Lake. Yesterday, with the Ruggeri family, I made this hike that had been previously aborted because of snow. There's a summit above the lake that gives one of the most amazing views I've ever seen. This photo has Bear Mountain (on the left) and Mt. Rainier in the background.

I will almost certainly go on this hike again.

New Debate Blog

I've created a new blog for the purpose of debates amongst members of my family called Thrust & Parry. The initial debate has just started, in which Ian insists I am a fascist and I insist I am not. We're already a little bogged down in that Dad, our moderator, put forth the resolution and the definition of fascism and Ian doesn't agree with much of even that. If this is something you might find interesting, take a gander and perhaps subscribe.

Fixing Little Annoyances

It's amazing how good it can feel to fix some small thing that's been bugging you for a long time. I fixed two of them today, and I feel pretty darn good about it.

One is that my workstation at home has a noisy hard drive. Between the anti-virus and anti-spyware software on the machine, each looking to read or write from the disk every few seconds, the hard drive is ticking away constantly. In a small apartment, this ticking is very noticeable. For example, if I wanted to watch a movie, I'd have to put the computer into hibernation to keep from having it distract me. When the computer was on, the only way to mask it was to play music, which is not always practical. To fix it, I put the main box in the kitchen and ran the necessary cables over to my desk, which is fortunately not far away. Now there's just enough barrier between the ticking hard drive and the living/dining room that it's no longer noticeable.

The other little annoyance was that when I listen to music on my phone with headphones, something I do often when walking places, I didn't have a good way to carry the phone. The phone's holster doesn't have any cutouts for the headphone jack, so I would plug it in and put the phone in a pocket or upside down in the holster. Neither way is as comfortable or as securely held as when the phone's in the holster. Since the holster is leather, today I just cut a strategically placed hole in the bottom of the holster and the headphones now fit perfectly and I can listen to the music while the phone is securely in the holster.

Each of these fixes was just a few minutes of time and really easy to do. I need to strive to recognize easily corrected other annoyances in my life and fix them. The rewards are so great for such little effort.

Work vs. Life

Work vs. Life

We talk about work/life balance at Microsoft quite a bit. This blog entry on Fast Company Now mentions how it's a European Union policy as well. I agree with the author that it means work and life are completely separate, a point of view that doesn't sit well with me.

Trying to use the Getting Things Done methodology promoted by David Allen, for example, is severely hampered by too many walls dividing work and life. Projects might be work projects, "life" projects, or span across both. Considering work and life to be two separate worlds also hampers ones ability to be effective in either as it creates a mental barrier to applying lessons learned and best practices from one to the other.

Thackara says in his blog entry that it explains why so many people dislike or hate their work. I think it also explains why so many people, content at work, dislike or hate their lives.

Offices and Reward Structures

A contributing factor to my current discontent in my position at Microsoft is that I've been moved into a new office, doubled up with a coworker for the first time after being here two and a half years. Our team hasn't really been given enough office space to fit everyone, especially since we have quite a few temporary employees that are taking up offices that would normally be apportioned to full time employees.

There's also a Microsoft policy that offices are given out based on longevity with the company. It's the one thing here that doesn't seem to have anything to do with performance. An employee that's been here ten years and is now just skating by, in danger of being managed out of their team or out of the company, still gets a much better office than the employee that's been here three years and is producing fantastic results.

To me, that's just ridiculous. I'm guessing here, but it's probably a way to mask performance. As I look around, I see that the reward structure is largely invisible. If you pay attention, you can figure out some stuff, and let's face it, people know which of their coworkers are doing a great job. But people's levels aren't known, review scores aren't known, bonuses aren't known, and there are awards that are considered confidential where you may receive one but aren't supposed to tell anyone. In essence, differentiation is largely missing at Microsoft.

I've been reading Jack Welch's new book, Winning, and he has a section on differentiation. Differentiating between your strong performers (top 20%), your solid performing majority (middle 70%), and your poor performers (bottom 10%) is a policy Welch strongly endorses. It's something that makes a lot of sense to me. The underlying principle is that being open about performance rewards the best, encouraging them to stay the best. It also provides incentive for the middle 70% to at least consider trying harder, because they can see the potential rewards. For the bottom 10%, it lets them know they are in the wrong place and encourages them to seek alternatives.

I believe that on my team, I'm in the top 10%. I've certainly been trying to be. But the reward structure is a bit disappointing. Perhaps I'd do even more if the reward structure was commensurate with the effort and success, like it was in my consulting small business.

Is Employment about Benefits?

Mark, a friend of mine, was lamenting at lunch the other day, "Oh, I really want to just write code - but they only let me do it a little." He's very good at his work, so they made him a development lead, and now he spends a lot of his time managing other developers.

I suggested a couple ideas which seemed obvious to me. How about an individual contributor job, say in the Windows Shell team, where he could crank out code all day and they'd love him for it? The response, "The Shell team scares me..." didn't really make much sense to me. So I pointed out that we could leave Microsoft and start our own venture. Success in my consulting business would have been much easier with a great developer who wants nothing more than to write code on my staff. That one met with a concern about benefits - health care, vacation, and the like.

Adam was there, too, and asked, "So, Aaron, what benefits do you offer?"

My defensive, and perhaps flippant, answer was, "An opportunity to work with others that don't think about benefits first." After that, the conversation turned to how the best way to get ahead at Microsoft is to pick a team and "camp" there, effectively staying with that team as long as possible. I couldn't really get into the idea.

There's nothing wrong with how Adam's view or Mark's view. Those are safe views that will achieve almost guaranteed success in the long run. It probably won't be phenomenal success, but certainly comfortable success. I'm just more interested in phenomenal success even if it means phenomenal failures along the way. For me, employment isn't just about the benefits, at least in the traditional sense. Benefits include excitement, opportunity to learn and explore possibilities, and the chance to be the guy on the cover of Wired or Business 2.0.

I doubt the guys that started Kazaa and are now building up Skype ever asked up front about the benefits. I'd like to be like those guys, and I will be someday. I'm working toward it even now.

What Effect, the Truth?

After reading my post about discussing other jobs with my manager, a reader asks, "If you don’t have a new job before review time, didn’t you just impact the number of goodies you’ll get?"

Perhaps I have. I'm okay with that. Any "goodies" that might be due to me from my current group are because of work I've already done. A decision to withhold them because I am thinking of leaving the team would simply indicate that I'd be making the right choice.

What bothers me about hanging around the group to receive a reward for great performance while doing work on things that are only mildly interesting is it's a lot like waiting. Also, not telling my manager what I'm thinking would be a lot like him not telling me important information. I've been very critical of that behavior in the past, so it would seem hypocritical of me to engage in exactly the same behavior. Transparency goes both ways.

Matt & Daniel

One of the best steakhouses in Seattle is Daniel’s Broiler, but it’s expensive. I happen to like the burger at Matt’s Oyster Bar & Grill in Redmond, and it’s way cheaper. I ate at Matt’s recently, and my waiter’s name was Daniel. I asked him if he thought there was anyone named Matt that works at Daniel’s. As it turns out, there is and Daniel knows Matt, but Daniel said he had never thought about it before.

The Virtue of a Selfish Act

In a move that would meet with Ayn Rand's approval, I am looking to my own self interest in determining whether I'd be better off changing jobs. This action could cause my current organization to change for the better in an effort to retain me (and perhaps other top performers) from leaving. Or, after losing one or more valued employees, the organization will change in order to slow or halt "bad attrition." (Yes, Microsoft, like many companies, I'm sure, also thinks about "good attrition.")

So, by considering other potential employment and making my management aware of that fact and the reasons behind it, I am incidentally applying a force for positive change in the organization. My selfish act is virtuous in nature.

How to Play

Trevor has talked a couple of times with me about Jason Womack's blog. Jason works for the David Allen Company, creators of the Getting Things Done methodology. So, I subscribed.

Already, I have something new to talk about from it. Today I was explaining to my manager why I was going to start looking for another job (within Microsoft.) In part, it's because we're about to ship the exciting first version of our product, which is great, but due to budget constraints, the v1.1 of our product we plan to ship in September will have less features than expected. The features it will have will be only the most necessary, so the more exciting but less necessary features will be postponed to some indefinite later version. My enthusiasm for the working on the next version has therefore waned somewhat.

A recent entry in Jason's blog discusses how much more interesting it is to play to win than just play to play, in his example the difference between kicking a ball around and trying to score a goal when playing soccer. I think there's a parallel there. I don't want to just kick a ball around, putting in a few basic features to this product that while necessary are still just stuff we didn't quite get to in the first version. I want to try to score a goal with something groundbreaking. With the current plan, I just don't see it.

What's with Ebert's Review?

If you think my last post was too close to spoiling the movie, you really won't want to read this:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050515/REVIEWS/50503002

What I can't understand is how Roger Ebert could give Revenge of the Sith 3.5 stars. I read through his review, and he doesn't really have much of anything good to say. "Weak dialogue, love story worse than Hallmark cards, flat acting, graphics not really used to their best effect, oh, what a great movie!" It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Star Wars, Episode III

I went to the 12:01am showing with some friends, and just got home. I can't say as I was overly impressed.

Yoda and Mace Windu are pretty great characters, and R2D2 gets some extra screen time that is an interesting contrast from "his" presence in the other movies. There were some interesting fight scenes, both with light sabers and ship-to-ship combat. The backdrops of the various worlds are very well done.

Despite these high points, the rest is merely average. Padme, who seemed so strong in Episode II, was just kind of weepy and a mere cardboard cutout of her earlier self. Anakin's descent to the dark side wasn't even very interesting as he seemed just too easy a target for the Chancellor. In general, I just didn't find myself really caring about most of the characters, and since this installment had to end just right to make Episodes IV-VI follow, there really weren't even any surprises.

I'd seen "Crash" a couple weeks ago, and while of course a very different kind of movie, I felt way better about purchasing a ticket to that one compared to this. As they say, though, your mileage may vary.

A Good Walk is Good

I've been feeling pretty low since the car accident. I still feel physically pained and there's an emotional element to it as well that's harder to isolate or understand. Tonight, though, I had an urge to just walk somewhere, so I did, and I think that's helped.

I went from my apartment to the Whole Foods and had some dinner there, as they have tables where you can eat the just purchased prepared hot foods. From there I walked to Cheesecake Factory and had some 6 carb cheesecake, which is surprisingly good - which is something I guess I should expect from a company owned by Overtons. Then I walked home, stopping to exchange a movie at Blockbuster and deposit a check at Wells Fargo.

When I got home, I checked the distances on Google maps and found that the total trip was around 3.5 miles. Not a bad bit of walking for an evening, although my hip joints are kind of sore, as they have been for the last five days or so. I think it was only in the last little bit, after the stop at the bank, when I really started feeling a tinge of "up." A little at a time, I guess.

More on the Accident

http://www.komotv.com/stories/36767.htm

Apparently, witnesses are saying I was at fault. That's not my recollection, but we shall see.

Car Accident

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/223788_pedestrian11.html

I'm the Jeep driver, and I'm okay. My Jeep is totaled, though.

What, No Hike?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but by not hiking I set myself up for a lot of questions about where I went hiking. This past weekend, I did get exercise, but just not through hiking. I played squash with Richard on Saturday, then walked around in downtown Seattle with Trevor. Sunday, I swam a bunch of laps. Later on Sunday I went first to the Experience Music Project and then to a movie, Crash.

In between all of that, I did a bunch of work and cleaned my apartment, which needed a fair amount of work as I'd kind of let it go for a couple weeks. I finally broke down and bought a small vacuum cleaner, so I was able to vacuum the carpets for the first time since I moved in back in February. Up to now, I was kind of getting by with just picking up anything large enough to show.

So, no hiking, but a lot of stuff I had to get done. Next week, though, perhaps Lake Twenty-Two.

Working Saturday

So, I'm off to work again this morning. This is the fourth weekend in a row that I've headed in to the office. The funny thing is, I don't actually have that much in the way of work to do. I'm going because our entire team was instructed to come in and sitting out would be less than supportive of the team.

The whole team's supposed to come in because our project schedule, while still looking pretty good, only allocates a certain amount of time for bug fixes and has a couple people that are lagging behind enough that we're having other people help them out. As such, coming in on the weekend helps ensure a product delivery that's on time even with a few unexpected last minute issues to address.

As a program manager, focused primarily on planning schedule and feature specifications, it makes sense that I'd be basically done for this version. I can empty my inbox and I can test the latest build of the application, and those are good things, but then, what'll I do on Monday? I guess I will start thinking hard about the next version!

The Queen in Yellow

I've noticed that I sometime give internal nicknames to people I see regularly, but don't know. Like "Big Dog Guy" for someone I always see walking a remarkably large dog.

Lately, though, it occurred to me that I have a kind of funny one. I've taken to thinking "The Queen in Yellow" as an internal nickname for the woman that lives directly across the hall from me. In part, it's a reference to the fact that every time I see her (which has been four or five times now) she's dressed entirely in yellow. In part, it's a reference to the King in Yellow, a book in the Cthulhu Mythos tradition.

I wonder what nicknames I might have.

Demo Day

Our team did a demo of our upcoming release today. I was the one running through the application while Michael, our PM lead, did the in-between talking. Unfortunately, due to a number of technical problems with getting our demo server set up, we didn't have the time to practice we had intended, so this demo was only the second time through the script and the first time via LiveMeeting.

The first ten minutes were just awful. I would start the registration process and the PowerPoint deck also in LiveMeeting would do some kind of timed transition and my screen would switch to that. Navigating back to the web page would reload it and I'd have to start over. Finally someone on the phone suggesting trying to share the desktop instead of embedding the web page in LiveMeeting. That worked much better, although I went through the whole registration process on the wrong site, so had to do it again.

After that, it went much better. The demo parts were pretty solid, with only one or two places where something unexpected happened. Our voiceover stuff was pretty weak, which is to be expected for having had almost no practice. I expect we'll do more demos and it'll get better.

All in all, I'm relieved it's over, although we had a pretty good reception to our work.

PostSecret

PostSecret

It's been mentioned on Boing Boing and NPR already. I think it's fascinating.

Tiger Mountain

After working Saturday morning, then getting a bit frustrated with a server configuration task in the afternoon, I decided late in the day to go hiking, despite the time. Tiger Mountain, in the Central Cascades, is very close. It took me just over two hours to reach Summit #2, which is (by the path I took) almost exactly three miles and a 2381 foot climb to 2757 feet. This photo was taken from the top as the sun began to set. I went from there to the slightly lower Summit #3, then down a direct, steep path only maintained because a power line is buried there. The total trip was just over five miles and I was pretty darn beat at the end, but I'm glad I made it to the top because this sunset was worth it.

Tick, RIP

The young stray cat Olympia and the kids took in some seven months ago has succumbed to the disease she already had when we got her and had to be put to sleep Tuesday. We had named her Tick in reference to the dog tick she also had when she joined us. What she had was Feline Infectious Peritonitis, which is incurable and fatal.

She really was quite a friendly one, and it's too bad she had such a short life, but I'm glad we had an opportunity to make her last months very comfortable. She'll be missed.

Best Photos

http://www.warpeyes.com/albums/best%20shots/

I now feel I have enough really interesting photos that I've put together an album with just the ones I think are the best. More are from Kauai, Hawaii than anywhere else, but Washington State's clearly catching up. This album is a nice alternative to the albums with 75 or so "hit and miss" shots and really captures why I like travel so much (even if there's one with Brad bowling in there, too.)

Wallace Falls Hike

http://www.warpeyes.com/albums/wallace%20falls/

This weekend I had to work on Saturday, but in the absence of anything pressing to do in the evening, I did a short two hour hike to the Coal Creek Falls. Unfortunately, since it was starting to get a little dark and ended up raining on me pretty heavily, the pictures weren't really worth sharing. (As an aside, I stopped to get some food from Whole Foods on the way home and the guy behind the counter asked, "Hey, how'd you get all wet?")

Much better was Sunday which, despite weather reports to the contrary, proved to be a gorgeous day. So I took this opportunity to go to Wallace Falls, a state park right next to Gold Bar, Washington or perhaps better identified by Seattlites as 13 miles east of Monroe. This is part of the Western Cascades. Particularly nice was that I had company this time, as Richard and Na came along as well.

This was a great hike on a beautiful day, about five miles round trip and an elevation climb of about 1500 feet. Along the way, there are four different lookouts where you can see Wallace Falls at various points. The last leg of the hike, from the middle falls to the upper falls, is the most difficult and since I think the middle falls is the most impressive, those that might want to hike this but take it a little easier wouldn't need to feel like they are missing the best part by turning back after reaching the middle falls. I was very happy, though, to go on to the upper falls and if there had been time (and Richard and Na had been up for it) I would have continued on to Wallace Lake, which adds an extra three hours to the hike.

Last week's aborted Summit Lake attempt made this hike all that much sweeter. It was good to pick something at a lower elevation this early in the season. I'll try Summit Lake again later, along with the many other opportunities in the Mt. Ranier area.

Photo Experiment

I found this photo experiment on my web site when I was publishing the new album associated with the last post and I think it's pretty cool. Too bad I can't seem to find the original photograph.

Summit Lake Attempt

http://www.warpeyes.com/albums/summit%20lake%20attempt/

I attempted to take a hike to Summit Lake about sixty miles south of Seattle. Unfortunately, it's too early in the season. I made it to an elevation of about 3600 feet on the road in my Jeep before needing to turn back because of the snow that made the road dangerous to drive. The trailhead was about two miles further along and about 800 feet higher. The trail itself is about 2.5 miles one way and climbs another 1000 feet or so.

I did get some nice photos from a one-lane bridge I crossed driving out there, plus shots from the road leading to the trailhead. There are two showing the road covered in snow. I had parked the Jeep and started walking to the trailhead, but only went about a half mile before turning back.

Don't be too alarmed by the picture I took of myself that's in the album. I figured that since I never have other people in my pictures, as I've done all the hikes for which I have albums alone, I might as well add a picture of myself since this hike was cut short.

I also wonder if I will now have a tradition of encountering wildlife on the highways to and from my hikes. Last week it was the black bear I mentioned. This week, a bird was flying crosswise over the highway and nailed the driver's side of my Jeep at full speed with a resounding thump. Ouch!

Monte Cristo, population 0 

Monte Cristo

http://warpeyes.com/albums/Monte%20Cristo/

Yesterday, I hiked to the ghost town of Monte Cristo, Washington. Of course, if there were ghosts there, I don't know where they would live, because the town is so obliterated that the buildings themselves are gone and in most cases virtually undetectable. For example, the Monte Cristo Preservation Association has put up signs to indicate where different buildings were, and the three story Royal Hotel is a sign in front of a bunch of trees. The founders of the town must have really liked the book, as they even named the street through the center of town Dumas Street instead of the more usual Main Street.

In many respects, the hike to the town is the best part of this particular exploration considering the very impressive scenery you see along the way. That people built a town deep in the wilderness like this, with incredibly steep mountains on every side, is just amazing. Of course, it's also why the town failed, as the value of the ore they extracted from the area wasn't enough to justify continuing in a place that proved to be very harsh, what with avalanches, blizzards, and flooding.

I took pictures until my camera ran out of batteries, which was far too early in the hike (or perhaps walk is the right word, since it was mustly just along a fire road rather than a trail.) I snapped a few more with my Treo, which means no color correction, flash, focus, or anything much but grabbing pixels, so you'll see the last few pictures in the album I posted above are kind of odd.

On the way home, as I was driving, I also saw a black bear loping across the highway. The lack of batteries for the camera was especially disappointing at that moment, as that's the first time I've seen one in the wild, even with all the camping I did as a kid in Alaska.

Weirdest Power Grid Game Ever

We played Power Grid again tonight. There was a bidding round that went like this:

Bryan: 39
Barry: 40
Trevor: 41
Aaron: Pass
Bryan: 80
Barry, Trevor, & Aaron: WHAT???!!!!

It ended up being all too typical for the game. I really blew it on the next to last round, which probably dropped me from 2nd to 4th place and allowed Trevor to pull off a win instead of being in 4th. Too bad for me!

Schaivo and Jackson

So much has been said on this subject already, I don't feel I have much to add, so I haven't. I guess I can point out I was on the side of letting her live.

Perhaps more notably, it's seldom I find myself on the same side of an issue as Jesse Jackson. I really don't have much respect for the man. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to have full-time civil rights activists (or in his case, with Al Sharpton, agitators) when the core issues of the civil rights movement have already been settled and won. But Jackson stepped up to the plate in what is arguably a real civil rights issue, and while unsuccessful, he was stood for what I feel was good and right. Kudos to him.

Mini-Microsoft: Better off without Ballmer?

Mini-Microsoft: Better off without Ballmer?

This is an intensely interesting read, especially when you consider that it's a Microsoft employee who wrote it. This further justifies my approach to employment at Microsoft, that I'm motivated more by the opportunity to learn stuff that will be long-term useful to my career, regardless of where that takes me, than to become heavily invested in Microsoft stock given as rewards for good work.

Window Factory

I was talking to a friend this weekend about past jobs, and it struck me the analogy between a job I had long ago and what I've had recently. When I was 18, I worked for a summer in a window factory. Now, I'm at Microsoft in what could be called the Windows factory.

To take a merely amusing analogy further, when I was 18, my job was as a glazer, putting the glass in the windows. My first role at Microsoft was Windows Server Community Lead, trying to get the development team's work to be more visible to customers. So, one could say that in both window factories, I was involved in transparency.

Crime & Punishment in Suburbia

http://imdb.com/title/tt0197384/

It's been awhile since I saw a movie I liked as much as this one. It's one of the benefits of the Blockbuster movie pass - instead of feeling like I'm taking a chance with my four bucks on a movie that may be awful, I can rent movies about which I know nothing and if they are awful, just run back over to the store and get something else. I was skeptical that this would be very good, and the IMDB rating of 5.7 isn't in the realm of where I would have expected much.

But instead, I think this one was well acted and contained enough in the way of interesting characters that I was hooked in quickly and cared about what happened to them. Most interesting is the character of Vincent, played by Vincent Kartheiser. He has some cliche elements of the stalker freak at the high school who follows around his favorite girl and takes her picture from the shadows and occasionally does odd things like offer her a necklace of garlic in the middle of science class. But where such a character would normally be the classic "goth", in ever scene he's smiling as though all of life entertains him. He's also the only character in the movie with a strong sense of morality and unlike so many Hollywood heroes, his morality is even allowed to come from basic Christian beliefs.

Also intriguing about the movie is that every character, no matter how far they fall, they have redeeming qualities. Even the step-father, played by Michael Ironside, who commits one of the worst acts in the story, has moments of peace where you think he need not have turned out so bad.

Real Estate Excise Tax

My brother Adam asked me today about the move in the Washington State Legislature to increase the Real Esate Excise tax, something with which I'm particularly familiar, having just paid it on the recent sale of my house. Here's my reply to him.

When you sell a house, this is a tax levied by the county or the city or the school board or some combination of them levies on the seller of the house. How much depends on where you are - it's a state law that gives local governments the right to do this, but doesn't mandate it or the amount. The various government bodies that can hit you with the tax each have limits on how much tax they can apply, like .004% for this one, and .0025% for that one. Looking at my closing docs, it appears that in Redmond Ridge, it's currently 1.78%, which was about $9,113 in tax I just pay out as the seller.

Except for the real estate commissions, which are usually 6% for houses under $1 million, it's the biggest chunk of money that reduces that what you get for the sale of the house. It's also useless to the seller, because the seller is typically moving out of the area where the money will be used. That's an easy win to get passed through the legislature because the people that have to pay it are not the ones that benefit.

Interestingly enough, there's a clause in the law that says that if the government hasn't used the money within six years, you then have a year's time (so between year six and seven of paying it) to ask for it back and if you do, you get it back with interest. I've never heard of anyone asking for it back and can't imagine anyone actually getting the money even if they did.

The bill as it stands now (which may not be it's final form) is here:
http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/2005-06/Htm/Bills/House%20Bills/2196-S.htm

If it passes, I guess it doesn't mean that anyone's taxes will raise immediately, it just means that local government is authorized to raise them. Of course, such authorization is practically the same thing anyway.

Back from the Near Dead

My blog has sat idle for some time now, but that makes me unhappy. I like to write to my blog.

First, I had all the moving stuff. That's finally done, as I've mentioned.

Then, I had a trip to Maryland to visit Olympia and the kids.

The last day of my trip, I started filling ill. As it turns out, I had the flu, and I had it worse than I can remember since I was a kid. I have a vague memory from childhood about being that sick. I think it was during the time we lived in Alaska before our 18 month sojourn to Arizona. I recall laying in bed utterly miserable and Dad coming in to check on me periodically and looking really worried. That was over twenty years ago, but especially last Thursday, I think I was there again.

I'm still under the weather, coughing and having occasional other weirdness going on, but I'm up and reasonably functional again. We had our daily bug triage meeting a little over an hour ago, and during that meeting I suddenly felt like my right eye was going to just start spewing blood or something, there was so much pressure there, but then it just kind of went away. Let's all hope that stuff doesn't continue.

Effective Protest

A Maryland radio station, WHFS, announced suddenly a month or two ago that they were finished. The station switched over to Latino music at noon on their last day with so little notice that even the staff didn't know it was coming. Olympia described to me that there was a lot of protest by listeners.

It occurs to me that a more effective protest than just telling them not to close would be to actually purchase advertising. Isn't the most effective protest to the closing of a business to purchase that business' goods and services?

Last Time in the House

It's been a busy bunch of days getting everything out of the house, but I'm now done. Some things went to my new apartment, some to storage, some as donations to Value Village, and some things just went in the trash. It's always that way, I guess, as until you have to move it, it's hard to recognize things as no longer useful or otherwise desireable to keep.

It was a lot of work, and it was great that I had some help. I especially appreciated that Michael, Nathan, and Roberto were all able to come and lend a hand at one time or another. They say that when moving, you find out who your real friends are. I think I can subscribe to that notion.

I ran into the new owners today when I went out to dispose of the last of the trash that needed to go, and I gave them keys and garage door openers. I'm sure they will enjoy the house very much, and for that I'm glad.

Delayed Apologies for the Delay

One of our mail servers was running slow because a bad script generated tens of thousands of unintended emails and overloaded the capacity of the server. Users whose mail accounts were on that server were experiencing delays in getting their email messages. The operations team figured out the problem and set about correcting it, but first sent an email to all users on that server explaining the problem, the resolution, and the time frame for resolution.

What's particularly funny to me is that the email began with the phrase, "Apologies for the delay in getting this out...."

New Apartment

I slept in my new apartment for the first time last night. The commute to work was a great side effect of the new digs. Eleven minutes door-to-door, right in the midst of rush hour!

The Apprentice

I don't watch this show, but I've heard about it a lot from friends that are truly addicted. For those that don't even get that much exposure to it, it's a "reality" show that pits two groups of people in working at various tasks for Donald Trump. At the end of each show someone gets fired, and Trump utters his new catch-phrase, "You're fired."

It occurred to me today, as I was talking with Stephanie at a local furniture rental store, that there may be a valuable societal side-effect to the show. We were discussing the recent sale of my house and how it seems to have been a good thing I fired my first realtor and put Steve Saftler on the job. Stephanie mentioned that after we'd had our first discussion about this four months ago, when I was last in the showroom, that she'd heard a lot of people talking not only about how they weren't happy with their realtor, but that they'd fired them and found someone better.

Frankly, I think most people are too nice when it comes to bad service. You arrange for a realtor, an accountant, an insurance company, a plumber, or even a babysitter, and then, when you get lousy service, you make endless excuses for the person and do no one any good. You continue to have poor service, they probably don't even realize they are giving poor service and certainly have little incentive to care, and people who are willing to do a better job don't get your business. If you fire the poor performer, sure, it hurts him in the short-term, but you do him a favor in the long-term as he learns to do better for his next client or switches to a line of work to which he's better suited.

To bring it back to The Apprentice, though, I suspect (without a shred of empirical evidence) that the show is teaching people how to fire those poor performers. This is a lesson many people need to learn and will overall help our economy. It's a good thing I've already learned this lesson, since I'm not going to start watching the show anyway.

Blackmail or Business?

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050215-110442-3672r.htm

In essence, Microsoft wants to see a directive accepted in Denmark that protects intellectual property rights. Microsoft has threatened to pull an 800-person division, Navision, from Denmark if that doesn't happen. Lobbyists opposed to the directive are calling it blackmail. I call it basic business principle.

Like my earlier post about McDonald's finding alternatives to paying higher minimum wages by using a technological alternative, some people just don't see that governments hostile to businesses drive those businesses elsewhere, often to the detriment of the very people the government is supposed to serve.

I also don't doubt that the lobbyists involved in opposing the directive wish they had some leverage to counter Microsoft's threat, such as "Company X will bring a new division to Denmark if we reject this directive." If they did, they'd be using it rather than trying to cry foul and spin a practical business choice as a crime.

Update:
Statement from Microsoft

Microsoft has announced that the original story is factually false, in that no such conversation ever took place. However, my point about such a move, if it were made, being simply business for the right reasons, not a crime, still stands.

Eleanor Rigby

I stopped to get something to eat at Matt's on the way home. (I should ask them if they want help with their website, perhaps paid for in gift certificates.) When the piped in music included "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles, I couldn't help but find that kind of funny. I mean, it's Valentine's Day. Could there be a more inappropriate song for loving couples to listen to over dinner? If you don't recall the song or just don't recognize it by name, you can read the lyrics and see what I mean.

Of course, I looked around the restaurant to see if anyone else even noticed, and I think they didn't, so I guess it doesn't really matter. Maybe it's even positive, since I was amused.

In the Midst of Moving

The last few days, the reality (or perhaps unreality) of moving has set in, and that's had me in a very odd state of mind, one that has not been overly conducive to blogging. Maybe that will change over the next couple days and I'll get back to it with my now more usual consistency.

I took several pieces of furniture to the new apartment today, and it has me feeling somehow... strange. Since I started living in the house alone almost eight months ago, I have occasionally gone into some of the empty rooms for a few minutes and it's kind of funny. I still think of them according to their old occupancy - this one is Elizabeth's room, that one Gregory's, that one Katerina's.

When I switched to only living downstairs (except for my computers in the loft area of the second floor), the bedroom there became mine. Despite that, I still think of it as "Yia-yia's" room, even though it'll only be a few months until it's been longer that it hasn't been her room than how long she lived there, and before that comes to pass, it'll be someone else's, either the twenty-something new owner's or his parents'.

Despite the fact that I've moved more times than I can recall without careful thinking, there's a fair amount of emotion involved in this one, and I'm not sure I can even really say for sure what it is.

Outlook Needs This Feature

Something I do fairly regularly is schedule a meeting based on an email thread and invite all the thread participants to the meeting. Unfortunately, dragging an email to the calendar only creates a calendar item with me as the sole participant and I have to retype the names. By default, I wish it adding everyone on the thread to the meeting, as deleting unnecessary attendees is way easier than typing in names or aliases.

Inaction vs. Failure

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743212126/103-1289538-4451835

The above link is for "Weird Ideas That Work", a book by Robert Sutton that I read recently. It's all about how to encourage innovative thinking in an organization by doing certain things in a different way, including a contrast with how most organizations do things in ways that encourage routine. He does point out that routine is good for many tasks, so the rules shouldn't be the only way things are done. As examples, he suggests flying airplanes and cooking fast-food hamburgers are tasks where routine is better than innovation.

Conceptually, the thoughts spurred by the book that have been most interesting to me are about failure. First is that more failures will mean more success overall because people generally have the same ratio of success to failure, so the only way to get more successes is to try more new ideas.

In conjunction with that, an organization that wants to encourage innovation should adjust reward structures to reward success and failure, and only punishes inaction. Of course, in routine work, failure should be punished, too. But punishing failures in effect takes away any incentive to try new things, since some (likely high) percentage of what is tried will fail.

At Microsoft, I've noticed that our culture is one that purports to encourage innovation, but doesn't address failure by considering rewards. I've heard second-hand that at the executive level, failures are accepted, but it's all-too-common that at the level in the company where I am, a failure ends up on a mid-year or annual review as a problem. I've been the target of this personally, especially when I was in my community lead role, which was an entirely new effort in Windows Server and required trying a lot of new things.

To Some, I'm a Rabble-Rouser

I mentioned previously that Ian’s joined the LaRouche Youth Movement. When he was first telling me about the group, he mentioned an upcoming weekend educational retreat and invited me to attend. Later, he had to uninvited me, as apparently people over 30 are not allowed to attend as they are considered too likely to be disruptive because of they have been too long steeped in the wrong kind of experience. As I’m 36, that includes me.

Ironically, I can just imagine Ian’s outrage had I invited him to something, then uninvited him due to his age. Such discrimination! It’s probably just as well I couldn’t go, because if I had, I’m sure disruptive is exactly what I would have been.

Break vs Renegotiate

It bothers me when people break commitments (even when I break commitments.) It does not bother me when people renegotiate commitments. Consider the recent real-life example of a commitment that "Jack" will respond to my request for feedback on some potential screenshots by 11am the next morning.

If, at 10:50am the next morning, I run into Jack in the hallway and ask about it and Jack tells me he got held up in morning traffic, then had something else to work on, so doesn't have it done, that's breaking a commitment. It's worse when Jack doesn't even give me a new time.

If, as Jack sits in traffic, concerned that he is delayed and that it will affect his ability to deliver on his commitment, he gives me a call and tells me the problem, the impact, and the proposed alternatives, that's renegotiating a commitment. While consistently renegotiating every commitment or many commitments can in aggregate still become frustrating to others, the need to renegotiate a commitment is understandable and it's appreciated when it's done.

So, to sum up, if you tell someone you're going to get something done for him by a particular time, then part of your responsibility is to renegotiate the delivery time as soon as you know that you can't meet the original one, and you should expect frustration over the missed deadline if you don't do so.

Weird Conversation

While this took place over a few days via email, here's a conversation I've had with "John." Obviously, I've cut out a lot and replaced it with shorter, meaningless phrases, but that's so I can focus on the real meat of the communication style, not the substance. As I think you'll see, the substance is largely irrelevant, because the style makes the communication largely ineffective.

Him: The modern advent of blahism is our only hope, according to Dr. Blah.
Me: I read up on blahism, and it centers on tithing income to Dr. Blah- isn't that worrisome?
Him: You have to read deep into Dr. Blah's writing to understand, as I have done.
Me: OK, I read "The Zen of Blah", and there are a bunch of problems. He bases his thoughts on the writing of Dr. Past, but Dr. Past has clearly said elsewhere that such thoughts are misinterpretation.
Him: You are too steeped in Sheepism to ever understand. It's despicable. And Dr. Past liked snuff.
Me: I don't understand how that's relevant. What about what I said?
Him: You should contemplate "Flumox in Velvet" by Brushy O'Painter.
Me: Huh? Could you try responding to just one thing I've said?
Him: You are being nasty to me, and I won't stand for it. I'm through talking to you.

Apparently, he's not really through talking to me, because the attempt at conversation continues, but this is where we were when I wrote the above to try to see if there was really something I was missing.

Moose

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akakie/4373325/

The above is a link to a picture my father took off his back porch. Note the moose running across his back yard and that it is 10 degrees below zero.

A Power Grid Moment

During an evening game of Power Grid, Trevor manages to outbid me for a crucial power plant. Notice the utter glee on Trevor's face (he's on the right.) He went on to glorious victory, while I was doomed to ignominious defeat.

[photo by Tom Larson]

Microsoft Bowling Event

http://www.warpeyes.com/albums/Taranna%20Bowling%20Event/

We had an outing for our team today, bowling at a local bowling alley. I've put up an album with the pictures. I didn't do any editing, and some are kind of blurry, but I think there are some pretty good shots here.

I also managed to take a pretty good movie of Chris, David, and Ram attempting to program the bowling scoreboard by committee. I hope you enjoy my voiceovers.

There's also a shot in there of my backwards bowling (I'm in the long-sleeved red shirt, for those that don't know me by site). I'd like to point out that I was able to improve on my technique by facing away from the pins to the point I achieved a couple spares and even a strike by the end of the event. Woohoo!

Minimum Wage Effect

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6890092/

The article listed above is short, but here's a still shorter synopsis: Since the minimum wage is much higher in Oregon and Washington than in North Dakota, McDonald's is putting the drive-through order takers in a "call center" in North Dakota. At a difference of over $2 per hour for every order taker, that's pretty significant.

Of course the locals in Oregon and Washington are outraged and think government should step in. What they don't consider is that the government did step in, and this is the effect, rather than the other way around. Minimum wages hurt those that need jobs the most. Whether the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour (as in North Dakota) or $7.25 per hour (as in Oregon) is irrelevant to people like me with skills in developing software, but it's deeply relevant to unskilled labor. That is, those without significant education or experience.

If the value of a task is $5, and could be done by a person for $5 or could be done by a machine for $6, the business is going to employ someone. If the government steps in and says that the price of labor has a floor (in other words, a minimum wage) of $7, the business is going to use a machine and the person is going to have to look elsewhere for a job. If that person has no skills or experience worth $7, the minimum a business may now pay, he is only going to have available a job that can't be done in some other way for less than $7 and can't be foregone in favor of a more profitable alternative. With less jobs available, but more inexperienced workers competing for those jobs, some just won't get jobs. So who was helped by a minimum wage?

It's always helpful to see a real-world example of the long-term effects of a given economic policy. It's unfortunate that those expressing outrage over the problem should choose to seek more government intervention, the original source of the problem, rather than less.

Microsoft & Doublethink

The edition of George Orwell’s 1984 that I bought (for $1 at Half Price Books) included a preface by Walter Cronkite and an afterword by Erich Frömm. In Frömm’s text he discusses how the book is not just an indictment of Stalinism, as the book is often interpreted, as reasonable as that may be as it was written in 1946. It is also a warning about totalitarianism and the trappings thereof that can come out in any society. He continues by a discussion of the concept of doublethink, i.e. the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in mind and yet believe them both. An example of doublethink that he uses as it pertains to Western society is how a person working at a corporation will fervently believe that their company’s products are the best right up until the day they change jobs to work at a competing corporation, when the new employer’s products are suddenly the best. Recalling that you once were a cheerleader for Company A, yet still acting as a cheerleader for Company B, is classic doublethink. Even without the job change, being able to read and acknowledge criticisms and unfavorable comparisons of your current company’s products to your competitor’s, yet continue to proclaim your own products as the best is still doublethink.

At Microsoft, there are people that look at our products and see where they are weak, broken, or inferior, yet work hard to make them better. There are others that profess Microsoft products as the best no matter what they are shown. I am not only in the first group, but find myself drawn more to others in the first group and repelled by those in the second.
It’s particularly fascinating how the blind praise of Microsoft products by some employees is sometimes expressed in the exact terms used by Party members in 1984. For example, when I pull out my Treo 600, a Palm-based mobile device, there are those that are not only surprised, but say things like, “Is that a Palm? You traitor!” It’s telling that most of my closest friends also use Palm devices, but continue to watch progress both by Microsoft and the competition and are prepared to use what’s best, rather than stick with blind loyalty to the corporate brand.

A Random Blog Catches My Attention

http://ihatemyflatmate.blogspot.com/

I installed a newsreader plug-in for Outlook and a bug in it (that I've reported and the author is looking into) dropped some news from a seemingly random source into some of my folders. I read a post, though, and I'm addicted.

Orwell’s 1984

I have just finished reading George Orwell’s 1984 for the second time. The first time I read it was probably in 1984 at 15 years old and when some impetus to read it again came along, I realized that it would be very different reading it as an adult. The impetus is that my youngest brother, Ian, has joined the LaRouche Youth Movement and in doing some reading about the group, I see that 1984 is a book that the group discourages members from reading, at least according to a former member. Since I’ve also done some reading of LaRouche’s work, reading something his group sees as dangerous seems like a good counterpoint.

As it turns out, there are many things I can say about 1984, so I’ll likely write a few posts about it in the coming days. The first is that it was, in fact, a very different read as an adult. This was especially true because I had some familiarity with the story through dim memories of the book and the movie. Unlike what I seem to recall about my first reading, I found the basic story a little slow and couldn’t wait for first Winston’s reading of the heretical history book, then his capture and subsequent breaking. It was the political discussion that I found intriguing, not the underlying love story. I also found the character of Julia much less compelling, as I was much more aware that she was far less a traitor to the Party than Winston. Her tendency to fall asleep or grow bored any time Winston began to talk about more serious topics than their (treasonous) affair showed she was far more conditioned and a far shallower person. I don’t recall picking up on that as a teenager and I don’t think I had a depth of experience that would allow me to really understand the political elements.

I also read Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World as a freshman in college, and had done a very well received book report on it for an English Composition class. I think I should go back and reread that one as well.

Aanya

I had dinner at Ruby’s tonight, and my server’s name was Aanya. Why, you might ask, is this interesting? For my entire life, my first name, Aaron, has always been alphabetically first. I have found that I am no longer an edge condition.

My Father's Blog

Readers will already know my father as Akakie, the most prolific commentator on my blog. He has a new blog location on BlogSpot, and I have found the first few posts there very interesting.

Dingos

I passed by an equipment rental place today that rents, among other things, Dingos, which is a type of frontloader. The sign out front read, "Our dingos won't eat your baby."

The Kids do CSI

I've put up another very short photo album. Elizabeth and her friends created their own CSI episode, "filmed" by taking a series of photos of their staged shots. It's pretty creative and I invite you to check it out.

The Importance of Reading Comprehension

Someone I know that we’ll call John (and some of you will know who I mean) recently demonstrated to me just how important it is to be able to comprehend what you read. He read the preface to a book I’ve recommended, Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. It’s about two pages where Sowell lays out the underlying principles of his book and what he hopes to accomplish with it.

John then expressed to me how awful Sowell is and told me how he would never bother with someone with so clearly low morals. I found this totally confusing, as I’ve read a lot of Sowell’s writings and have a lot of respect for the man. John told me that he couldn’t respect anyone whose underlying belief system includes the Machiavellian concept, “The ends justifies the means.”

Thinking that maybe there was something in the preface I’d missed or that maybe I’d just skipped past the preface and not read a key concept, I went back and read it with an eye toward what John had discovered. I believe I found the offending sentence: “That means that consequences matter more than intentions….” Yes, that sentence includes the word “means”, although used with a different meaning, and “consequences” have something to do with “ends”, but clearly John had seen a couple of words relating to concept he’d heard before and jumped to a conclusion that was entirely false.

Now that I got what John meant, I sent him an email clarifying what he’d read and asking if it has changed his opinion of Sowell and if he’d then give Sowell’s writing a chance. So far, after three days, I’ve heard nothing back.

Nice Feature of Office

I have recently discovered a very nice feature of Office 2003. I don’t know if it exists in earlier versions. If you highlight a word and right-click, one of the options on the pop-up menu is “Look Up…” This brings up a sidebar in your message that looks though integrated reference books, like a dictionary and thesaurus, and gives you definitions, pronunciations, and such. This is very handy and works even when reading someone else’s email to you in Outlook.

House-Cooling Party

Shortly before settlement on my hosue sale, I plan to have a house-cooling party, which is like a house-warming party, but without toasters, vases, or candles as gifts.

New Offer on My House

The previous offer I mentioned in my blog seems to have fallen through, although that potential buyer was back at the house last weekend for over an hour taking measurements, perhaps in preparation for a new offer. Unfortunately for them, they are now probably out of luck, although that's good news for me.

I have a new offer, full price with almost no potential roadblocks. I've accepted the offer and that means my house is now officially under contract. If all goes well, I will have my house well and truly sold by February 24th.

Once the inspection contingency lifts, a process I expect will be a mere formality considering I had it inspected in June and the builder fixed the few things discovered, my agent says that it's then basically a done deal and I can make my move plans.

“Driving” Requires Involvement along the Way

I have been asked to “drive” a meeting next week. Unfortunately, I was not asked to be involved in the discussions leading up to this meeting, which is the denouement of a long set of discussions between our management team and another management team that has a product with which we have considered integration. This is a mistake.

Driving, by the way, is one of those Microsoft (or perhaps corporate) words with special meaning. Driving means to set the agenda and ensure that the agenda is followed and the goals of the meeting are met.

To effectively set the agenda and make sure the goals are attained, you have to fully understand the background of the situation. This requires, at a minimum, that you are fully informed about the discussions, meetings, and materials that pertain to the subject matter. Better, since only rarely is there good documentation or accurate and inclusive verbal synopses of what has already been discussed, is to simply have meetings driven by someone that has been regularly involved.

How Movies Identify the Villain

Something I’ve noticed recently is that when a character, early in an action, drama, or thriller movie, kills one of his own henchmen, that means he’s the major bad guy for the story. Most recently, watching “King Arthur”, it was the Saxon leader. I don’t think he was on screen for more than a couple minutes before he killed one of his followers that was molesting some English woman in a sacked village. Of course, just to make it absolutely clear he’s not just defending the woman (which might make him have some good in him), he instructs his surviving followers to kill her, too, admonishing them not to dilute the Saxon gene-pool by fraternizing with non-Saxon women. Maybe it’s not the best example, but if you watch for it, you’ll see this pattern time and time again.

Locking Your Workstation

One security precaution you learn really fast at Microsoft is to lock your workstation each and every time you step away, even for a moment or two. When I started here, I never really thought about it until a co-worker, while I walked to the printer and back to get something we were discussing in our meeting, hopped on my email and sent a message to a bunch of people in our group that said, “Hi, my name is Aaron and I’m insecure.” It was just after that I learned about the Windows-L button shortcut for locking your workstation. (See, there is a use for the Windows button on your keyboard – Windows-L is a shortcut for Ctrl-Alt-Del followed by the Lock Computer button.)

Another of my co-workers apparently left his workstation unlocked and left for a long time, as he’s now had at least two long emails that have been sent to Bill Gates. An excerpt from one: “I have to say, you’re really being rude here. I mean, I’ve been there for you man. Remember that time back in college? Yeah, THAT time.” Ah, correction: As I’m writing this, the guy that wrote the messages tells me he only typed and addressed them, but was nice about it and didn’t actually hit Send.

The point is, once you log in, don’t just assume that no one will walk up to your workstation while you’re around the corner and do stuff with it that is totally attributable to you. Lock your workstation, even when you step away only for a few minutes.

Photo Albums Online

I finally got around to putting some of my pictures from Hawaii online in photo albums. I don't have them all up or any kind of index to them, but here's what I have so far.

Opeakaa Falls
http://warpeyes.com/albums/Hawaii%20-%20Opaekaa%20Falls/index.html
This short hike takes you down a relatively secret path that leads to the base of a pretty significant waterfall. If you don't know about the path (that is, didn't pick up the right guidebook and read about it, or hear from a local, both of which I did) you'd never know you could get there and would have to content yourself with the view from the highway-accessed parking lot. The last few pictures in the album are from there.

Outfitters Day Trip
http://warpeyes.com/albums/Hawaii%20Outfitters%20Trip/
I bought a timeshare while in Hawaii. Since I'd agreed to go listen to their sales pitch, I got a full-day "adventure" package for something like $18. These photos are from that day. The large pool with the rope swing at the end was especially impressive, but there was a limit to how much I could photograph since I was busy swimming instead. That particular spot was especially interesting to me, since it was where they filmed the opening scenes of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which is one of my favorite movies.

Why Kung Fu Movies Are Cool

OK, I think there are a lot of reasons, but I was just going to mention one that occurred to me after watching “Shaolin Soccer” recently. What’s cool is how men and women in those movies are seen as different but equal, but in a way that is so understated that it’s not even really stated. Most Hollywood action movies have a heroic man who does all the physical stuff and women that scream a lot and can’t seem to run more than five steps without falling down, at least when chased. However, when that’s not the case, the female character is made into an almost masculine hero instead – that is, in an overstated way. Not so for kung fu movies, and I think that’s great.