May 29, 2010 at 10:53 · Filed under Personal
Well this isn’t really an ode in the greek sense, but it is a post about my girlfriend (reference below if in doubt who aforementioned girl I have been following around for a year is)
Like many others in today’s age we met online and played phone and email tag for a month. I was on a business trip to Tucson and her messages and voice were such a welcome escape from the crazy hours and stress. We exchanged stories of growing up, life dreams, and all the goofy little jokes that make us giggle. All I could think about in the desert that trip was, first getting home, second meeting her. I did so in rapid succession
The rest as they say is history, but as we come up on a year of dating I can say there is simply BB and AB, Before Becca and After. Life BB was a mix of black areas and wandering. AB she balances me out, is my confidant and advisor, my business partner and best friend. She accepts me for who I am in every way and I the same for her. In fact she hasn’t peeped about me sitting here writing a blog post, AMAZING! :)
I usually post technical documents on this website and insights into whatever geeky adventure I am on. Sometimes though it is important to know what powers the man who is typing. I love you Becca and thanks for letting me be who I am…
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May 26, 2010 at 01:53 · Filed under Personal
As I learned in a sink vs. swim situation, I wanted to share some books and blogs that helped me. UP FRONT LET ME STATE: I am still learning and screw-up ALL the time. I by no means have this figured out and would love to hear what works for you guys. We are all students of the human mind and can learn together on how this works.
Books you need to read from Amazon.com I compiled a list there so you can just purchase in whole or pick what is interesting. If you only pick one book be sure it is the Mythical Man Month. It brought home for me the resource vs. task view of the world. Being able to defend your position and schedules is just as important as being able to create them. Highly Recommend
From blogs you should monitor via Google Reader or various other RSS reader…
Specific posts that made me take pause and wonder what I was doing:
Tips for Managing Geeks is a big topic in my world. The models you will read in books apply to MBA and more traditional engineering models. Geeks have nuances, this is my mix of all the sites I have read on the topic and many you guys have heard me say:
- Whoever is right most, is the lead. Period.
- Know your people! Birthdays, anniversarerys, important events in their lives. Add it to your Blackberry or Google Calendar and setup a reminder. Calling them the day before their 10th Wedding Anniversary does two things: 1 – Lets them know that you see them as more as a FTE/EP and 2 – Reminds them to take time off and buy a card or do something special. Head down during OT periods makes doing that rough.
- Share credit. When I started giving my teams entire credit they became more willing to charge the next hill with me. Don’t worry about calling yourself out as having done well. Organic recognition, IE your folks see it will last longer.
- Define vision and expectations. Do not settle for less, do not become mushy on your values and DEMAND compliance. Anything less is unacceptable and will be dealt with. Now with that said your expectations are almost always going to be higher than your team can obtain, so let them shoot for the stars and if they get to the moon than you did alright
- Lead from the front. Geeks need to know you are a set of useful hands and not a set of beating hands
- Do not report out on Monday or call an all hands with geeks. Chances are the weekend will provide a set of fresh eyes and geeks need that to tackle a problem. My advice, push customer and leadership meetings to Tuesday
- If you have never programmed or specifically in the language or technology your teams use, then you will have very little credibility. Likewise your teams have never managed schedule or cost and deserve the same lack of credibility. As a manager and leader you provide the overall vision and will gain credibility by showcasing top coverage for them. Not going to meetings, covering scheduling and reporting…geeks hate that crap and will appreciate that they are not able to do the tasks. What you can’t produce in code you can produce in framework and structure. Just be sure you pickout the head person and develop a relationship of trust to augment
- Geeks are passionate as evident by their selection of careers. As such there is a challenge to not release as quickly as they report. Chances are the walls will not hold the “my hair is on fire” approach and leaks will occur to your customer or leadership. Let them leak. Because I established a chain of command and RAA (Responsibility, Accountability, and Authority) I always told people “You can take what my staff is telling you and run with it. Until the report leaves my lips or inbox it is all simply hearsay. They have no authority to report and as such your choice to act on their data puts you both in a bad position” That usually woke people up…it puts a LOT of responsibility on you though.
- Process and beuracracy exist in any company. Geeks hate it, shelter them as much as possible. There might be 10 steps to get something done, but only show them the 2 you need their input for.
- Management speak should be avoided like the plague. There is no socializing, synergy, energizing, leveraging, or “long poles in the tent” in their worlds. Save it for above blog posts where I mention knowing your customer lingo. Geeks don’t care
- Train your folks. Every person is usually hand selected, but if you want to grow them then you must feed them. In a bell curve we discipline the bottom 10%, train the 80%, and expect the top 10% to be amazing. When you train the bottom 90% you are reinforcing that it doesn’t pay to be the top dog
February 19, 2010 at 10:47 · Filed under Personal, Techie
I think in part to my tweets of N900 lust and desire, Nokia contacted me to see if I was interested in a demo unit. After validating the email was NOT from Nigeria I quickly responded with a “YES PLZ SEND MEZ FONE!”
Why the gadget lust when I have a top-of-the-line iPhone? Easy, I am a geek. While I enjoy the hell out of having nice and easy to use devices, deep down I want to tinker. My original move to Mac was because I didn’t trust myself to have a Linux or BSD machine with me on the road. Every waking moment would be spent tweaking the kernel or compiler options for just a little bit more speed. Bleeding Edge, you betcha.
Linux though has become a lot easier to use as of late. My days of Debian 1.3 are long gone and it has evolved to grandma levels. Can the same happen on a phone? The n700/800/810 I once owned were not able to.
The geeky things I care about:
- SDK that allows for quick-n-easy cross compiling of code
- Active user community
- nmap/kismet/libpcap based tools available
- IM client with encryption
- Terminal
- Multiplatform support
The shiny-side things I care about:
- Skype support
- Syncable media player
- Browser that can surf standard web
- Google Voice Support
- App support
- Multi-touch
- Maps
- Sync with the cloud
Things that annoy me:
- Steve Jobs
- iTunes
- DRM
- No published spec
When the device arrives I plan on walking through the device with each of those areas. I will pop the SIM card from my iPhone and turn it off for the period of time I have the demo unit. Results to follow in the coming weeks.
December 31, 2008 at 20:13 · Filed under Personal
Why stop a geeky tradition?! Here is 2008′s travel graphs. This year I did hit the 2 full trips around the Earth. I am not sure what 2009 holds, but I had a 30% increase in travel and I only have 17% to go before it is a full 100. Here is last years stats: Travel Days for 2007
December 25, 2008 at 08:26 · Filed under Personal
- Santa is bearded, corpulent, and dresses funny.
- When you ask Santa for something, the odds of receiving what you wanted are infinitesimal.
- Santa seldom answers your mail.
- When you ask Santa where he gets all the stuff he’s got, he says, “Elves make it for me.”
- Santa doesn’t care about your deadlines.
- Your parents ascribed supernatural powers to Santa, but did all the work themselves.
- Nobody knows who Santa has to answer to for his actions.
- Santa laughs entirely too much.
- Santa thinks nothing of breaking into your $HOME.
- Only a lunatic says bad things about Santa in his presence.
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