Grid security: A modest proposal

When the hacking of America's power grid came to light earlier this year, I just wanted to bang my head against the wall. Simply because it would feel better than watching history repeat itself. I mean, it was only nine years ago that I spent a good part of my (first) internship Y2K-checking the city government's computers. It wasn't a big city, so I don't like to think about how budget-busting it was to have all the extra emergency staff on duty New Year's Eve, waiting for the lights to go out.

Yet here we are, waiting for our old Cold War nemeses to take their pot-shots at our grid, simply because keeping the bloody lights on apparently isn't a top priority. Just like the sacred dictates of the so-called free-market were allowed to trample public welfare in California in the late '90s. In that case, it was only the financial overreaching that brought down Enron--not their criminally sociopathic behavior toward their fellow human beings. So it's not like you can expect folks like this to spend any money on effete trifles like security. That's the government's problem--because, after all, the game's always about privatizing profits and socializing costs.

Trust me--I totally understand the need for putting the power industry's feet to the fire on this issue, and it's one of the few times I can actually imagine the Department of Homeland Security--it just has such a lovely Orwellian ring to it, doesn't it?--justifying its existence. A smart grid is an inevitability, with or without New Deal-like funding. With any networked system, security is not something you hack in after the fact. If it takes the DHS to crack its knuckles and glower the power industry into doing what it should have been doing all along, so be it.

Yet, to spare us any more of Senator Lieberman's hyperventilating, how about a truly consumer-driven approach to fixing the problem? Simply put: For every outage that lasts over five minutes, the electric company is required by law to credit you for ten times what you would have paid for electricity. With a ten dollar minimum, just to cut out the quibblesome bean-counting. Smaller resellers who buy energy off the grids of larger companies are of course entitled to roll those costs upstream (with interest) if the outage was not their doing. Simple little system, right? No need for the taxpayer-consumer to ultimately foot the bill for reams of regulation--or legions of lawyers to suss out the loopholes to subvert the whole thing.

Somehow, though, I doubt that the champions of "deregulation" would line up behind a market that's "free" enough to give those downstream so much influence. Or--horrors!--make those upstream accountable for planning past the next reporting cycle.

Should HR be involved in hiring?

The HR-bashing that went in the comments of this Slashdot post ("Social Networking Sites Getting Risky for Recruiting") makes me think that HR in general is not doing a good job of marketing itself. I've had good experiences and mediocre ones with HR in the various companies for which I've worked. Understand that in the mediocre situations I've experienced, HR's staff has set itself up as one of the "gatekeeper" roles that I despise so much. That's symptomatic of a culture problem across the entire organization, so we won't go there.

But the substance of my questioning of HR's role in hiring comes from my head-scratching at the notion that a company gains any efficiencies by delegating even so much as the resume pile vetting to a centralized person or group. IMO, it becomes more of a liability as the company grows. To my mind, there's no reason why any team lead worth the title shouldn't be trained in (at a minimum) technical interviewing.

The bottom line is that team leads and first line managers know what skills they're looking for and have strong sense of the culture of their teams. Moreover, their understanding of what the resume actually says is considerably deeper than the buzzword bingo that so often is played when a non-technical professional is weeding the resume stack.

Mind you, an HR professional should attend every single interview to insure that nothing illegal happens, and (if necessary) to keep the interview from bogging down into minutia. If the professional's also been trained in reading non-verbal communication, by all means consider their opinion. But the hire vs. no-hire call must be made by the people who will be most closely affected. Anything less is a paint-by-numbers cop-out.

Why I sometimes can't believe it's 2009

First off, hat tip to Eliotte Rusty Harold's Java-blog Cafe Au Lait for the link to Bruce Schneier's blog post on Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices.

Here's the take-home:

This may be fine -- the advantages might very well outweigh the risks -- but users often can't weigh the trade-offs because these companies are going out of their way to hide the risks.

Of course, companies don't want people to make informed decisions about where to leave their personal data. RealAge wouldn't get 27 million members if its webpage clearly stated "This information will be sold to pharmaceutical companies," and Google Docs wouldn't get five million users if its webpage said "We'll take some steps to protect your privacy, but you can't blame us if something goes wrong."

If it weren't for my inner cynic, I'd be wondering, "What year is it? Y'mean that a decade and a half into the Internet Age, we're still discussing this???"

Time and again, you hear the platitude that democracy cannot exist without an educated, informed public. By the same principle, neither can Adam Smith-style capitalism (not the collection of oligopolies that masquerade as such). As the recent scandals with tainted consumer products, children's toys, etc. have shown, truth in labeling can be a life-or-death situation. Not to mention that an entire industry can lose millions, if not more when consumers are spooked en masse.

That being said, you cannot always trust people to make decisions that are emotion-free, even when all the facts are at hand. Which is why I think that the sleazier online operators are getting off more lightly than they should (assuming they can be brought to justice). Why? Because most people don't look at information and hard goods as being in the same category of "property." Yet stealing and misusing information is still stealing and misusing someone's property. Just because information is intangible doesn't mean that the damage isn't. But that may be lost on some, if not most. Maybe we should start calling it "data-jacking" to get the point across.

From a customer service standpoint, that bias combined with the lack of accountability scares me. Frankly, every time I hear the software gurus go all hand-wavy about pushing our flagship applications--meaning our bread and butter--into a "cloud" platform, I fight the urge to both roll my eyes and cringe. If my client's data is stolen or vandalized, it'll be a lot harder to figure it out, much less fix, when it's somewhere in "the cloud," rather than twenty feet away from where I sit.

The irony of course is that with all the meddling that governments worldwide have done with the internet--from blocking to mining--the bureaucrats haven't put a whole lot of thought or resources, much less planet-wide regulatory policy-making into making it a safer place to do business. At least not the legitimate kind.

Humble pie a la mode

Well, I feel a little more than chagrined. Last week, my most immediate boss sent me on a quest for a web browser plug-in capable of dishing out SQL Server Reporting Services reports, one that didn't depend on Microsoft Internet Explorer on the Windows platform.

After most of my many and varied incantations to The Almighty Google lead to dead-ends, I put the question to the mailing list where the local Linux illuminati visit. I also pinged the email addresses of two possible vendors.

Ideally, you're supposed to write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood. Wow, did I ever fall short of the ideal in all three cases!

Looking back, my foremost mistake was obsessing about the technical requirements/restrictions without ever thinking to mention what, exactly, we're actually trying to do with the technology. A little context would have saved more than a little time and typing, particularly b/c one of the vendors lives sixteen or seventeen time zones away from me.

That being said, there is a glass ceiling of sorts to the afore-mentioned ideal. (Ideals are prone to that, I've noticed.) Without mentioning any names, I'm pretty convinced that one vendor did not entirely want to understand the requirements, or maybe figured that they were someone else's problem after the sale. When even a relatively clueless key-banger like myself has the feeling of being hustled, I think we can safely say that the product probably wouldn't cut it.

I'm not sure what penance tech. writers are supposed to do for their sins. I'll figure something out. In the meantime, though, I thought I'd pass along the lessons learned, to hopefully spare others the wasted time and bad karma.

A "not safe for work" (NSFW) post

Your one and only warning: If you're squeamish about venturing into "adult" themes, however intellectually, please leave now. kthxby.

Still here? Let's get to it, then.

I don't have children--the human kind, anyway. But that doesn't mean that I'm not disgusted to the point of wanting to sack those responsible for the "Baby shaker" (ahem!) "game" available for sale at Apple's App. Store. Particularly in light of the fact that Apple rejected another "game" that involved making a set of breasts jiggle (on grounds of inappropriateness--for its business image).

But that doesn't mean that I'm not surprised that something like this would happen. Two reasons:

1. Whatever the "rules," someone will always find a way to exploit them.
2. People (in the main) can emotionally process violence better than they can sex.

Humor me by noodling this scenario for a bit: Suppose that an "extracurricular" tackle at Superbowl XXXVIII results in a full-on brawl with multiple injuries. You would have seen footage on ESPN all the way up to the Pro Bowl. The teams and players would be fined and disciplined, certainly, but the networks would happily use clips from the brawl while reporting on those sanctions, with nary a repercussion all the while.

But one inadvertent breast-baring--inadvertent on the part of the breast's owner, apparently--and the network is hit with a record fine, and the term "wardrobe malfunction" enters the national lexicon amid absolute hysteria from the self-appointed morality police.

Let's give Apple credit where it's due: It pulled the app. within hours. And, to be fair, a quick consultation with The Google yielded more than a few "An apology isn't enough" results. But until I see the deluge of 99-cent donations to various shaken baby syndrome foundations, I'm assuming that it's "business as usual" for our culture's incomprehensible priorities. And in the meantime, Apple will continue to decide for its customers what's most "appropriate" for them.

Another reason why Gallipoli should be remembered

I'm kicking myself because today is April 25th, but I forgot to wish my old pen-pal in New South Wales "Happy ANZAC Day" yesterday. Because his time zone is sixteen hours ahead of mine, it would have been too late by the time I was awake this morning.

In history, Gallipoli is pretty much textbook definition--maybe even the ANSI standard--of what happens when SNAFU devolves into FUBAR. (As if WWI didn't have enough of that.) To hear my Australian pal tell it, the mythos is that the British officers sipped their tea in safety whilst the regular soldiers were slaughtered in droves. Indeed, a distinct lack strategic leadership at the point of attack is documented. From John Julius Norwich's The Middle Sea (Doubleday: New York, 2006), pp. 580 - 581:

The Allied troops fought equally bravely, but their task was made harder by the extraordinary preference of Hamilton and his two subordinate generals, Aylmer Hunter-Weston and Sir William Birdwood--commanding the British and the Anzacs, respectively--to remain at sea throughout the vital first hours after the landing. Thus, when the signaling arrangements began to fail and there was an almost immediate breakdown of Allied communications, each individual unit was left to look after itsel, with no knowledge of what was happening on the next beach to its own.

Add to this that some of the landing areas--most notably what's known on the history book maps as "Anzac Cove"--were unknown. And that the British had loaded down an already discombobulated supply effort with trucks for an area that had no roads and forgotten little niceties like landing craft. To be fair, the British could not have foreseen the extraordinary leadership and initiative of Ataturk. Nor could they have known that within months they would also be facing the worst blizzard in forty years.

When the Allied position became untenable enough to trump the egos of those championing the campaign, the prospects for evacuation were grim. Hamilton--not that his opinion should have been trusted--estimated that only one in two men would survive the withdrawal. Inclement weather and the expected difficulties of smuggling people, pack animals, artillery, transport and other equipment off to the rescue ships were compounded by the fact that Allied and Turkish trenches were in some places no further than ten yards apart. During the evacuation, those remaining had to give the impression of being a larger force than they actually were; otherwise, the would be overrun.

Yet the soldiers managed to maintain the subterfuge long enough make it work. Casualties and loss of life were almost nil, and--almost as important--the weapons magazines were blown up so that they could not fall into the hands of the enemy. It's probably the closest thing you'll get to a happy ending when war is involved. At least for the Allies.

What does this all have to do with business or software or even people in general? Nothing specifically, except to demonstrate that leadership does matter--but that leadership doesn't count for much without a strong command of the minutia at hand.

Meanwhile, back at the addiction...

A very frivolous post tonight, in honor of the warm, lazy-feeling evening that the storm front has left at its back. In fact, I think that I might just make a tradition of "Frivolous Friday."

But about that addiction. I've gone more or less dormant for 20 days in Facebook's "Medieval Empires," mainly because I was on the cusp of leveling up, and didn't want to do so without considerably more firepower. That meant salting away income at a punishing 10% penalty. There was a short skirmish with my conscience a few days ago when I saw that my one and only "ally"--whom I consider an adversary, really--had made huge gains on my attack level. But patience paid off and I again command in excess of a 3:1 advantage. Whew! Glad to know that the Universe has been restored to its rightful proportions... [eyeroll]

One thing that bugs me about "Medieval Empires" is that the profile page for any player includes buttons for repeatedly attacking them and even "raiding" them (which actually reduces their current attack level). I see people do that all the time. I see that it's happened to me when I log in, and I see on the "recent activity" pages that others (including my so-called ally) do it to others. That's just cheesy, in my considerably-less-than-humble opinion.

But the phenomenon prompts an idea: Why not use a relatively simple text-based game like "Medieval Empires" as part of the job interview process? I'm thinking that you could set it up to be available on the off-hours, so interviewees don't have to take time off from work to "play" the game. The key is that you can't make the objectives known. Because you're not really interested in how many bazillion bling-y gold tchotchkes anyone racks up. You're interested in how quickly they latch on to the rules--written and un-. You're interested in whether they find the cheats--and whether or not they use them when they do. You're interested in how hard they push back against constraints. And you're particularly interested in whether or not they will screw over their "allies" if they think they can get away with it.

Now, undoubtedly, this sort of "game" would take considerable programmer-hours as well as beaucoup consulting hours (from your local psychologist) to set up. Additionally, a certain percentage of folks will always shy away from the competitive aspects, which undermines the value of the exercise. Truth be told, I'm not much of a gamer unless the alchemy of personality is involved. Aside to K.S.: One day, I will crush you at "Settlers of Catan!" Mark my words: Victory will be mine, I tell you! Mine!!! ;-)

Ahem.

Most importantly, you need to understand precisely what traits you're looking for. And I do mean precisely: gnothi seauton is the operative phrase here. But for cryin' in yer' beer, the absolute last thing you want to do is allow the archetypal HR Dept. anywhere near the scores. This sort of thing is intended to be a supplement--actually, make that an antidote--to the usual Buzzword Bingo and B.S. Bossa Nova that pass for vetting your co-workers.

Matt Hill is my lunch box hero today

First off, big ol' props to OrangeComputer (http://twitter.com/OrangeComputer) for the Tweet that pointed me to Matt Hill's exquisitely-reasoned pushback on ie6update. Particularly in the follow-up comments where the guy takes on the counter-arguments, hammering home the two essential messages that

1. Users' needs trump developers' wants. Period. Particularly when--indeed, because--the great steaming mound of suckage that is IE6 still commands a market-share that most companies would kill for.
2. Battles in the name of The Greater Good are not fought with slimy, underhanded tactics.
   

Understand that I think that those responsible for IE's deviations from W3C standards are triple-A wankers and prats to the marrow. I've also ranted elsewhere about the jack-booted arrogance of software companies (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, BusinessObjects) that treat those developing on their platforms like sharecroppers (to use Tim Bray's brilliant analogy)--perhaps even indentured servants.

Yet I've also been more than slightly annoyed to find that the same version of Firefox can behave differently on two different platforms. So let's agree to stop pretending that it's just a Microsoft--or even closed-source--disease. Fancying otherwise is no different than the Asian countries who refused to confront AIDS by claiming that only dirty foreigners (and the prostitutes with whom they did trade) were the problem. Kthx.

Y'know, as much as I loathe the "High Priesthood" mentality that crops up time and again in I/T, I still find the ends-justify-the-means arguments more than a wee bit self-serving. And that's when they're not patently dangerous. And, within the zeitgeist of the torture memos brouhaha of this week or so, you can safely square that sentiment.

Users pay the bills. If you don't like it, by all means go all Richard Stallman and set up a cot for yourself in the server room, live on microwaved ramen noodles and sponge-bathe at the drinking fountain for all I care. Just keep my users out of it.

Digital give and take

It seems that, for everything technology does to connect us--via email, texting, online forums, social media, etc.--it also does something to divide us.

Much has been made, of course, of the "Balkanization" of the web from the political and cultural standpoints. But even offline technology can do that, particularly as we become accustomed to schlepping our Universes around with us in gadget form.

For instance, my husband and I arrived early at the restaurant where we were meeting my best friend for lunch. To pass the time, I pulled out my iPod to introduce him to the over-the-top fun of Wine Library TV. So we sat cheek-by-jowl, each with an earbud, watching it together. All wonderful and couple-cozy, certainly. But it begs the question: Why not install two output jacks in the iPod? The cost couldn't amount for more than an extra few bucks, considering the brisk trade Apple does in those things. Ditto for any portable AV media device, including laptops.

From a product marketing standpoint, I think it makes great gobs of sense. After all, didn't they teach you in kindergarten that the only thing better than having what you want is having someone to share it with? 'Spesh'ly when you really like to sit close to the share-ee. Although somehow they neglected to mention that part in my kindergarten. An oversight, no doubt... ;-)

A reminder of the joys of transparency

There's a longish back-story on this incident. My husband and I are into the wine-making hobby, something that's common knowledge at work. Folks even bring in empty bottles for me to "recycle." One recent bottle was a hand-me-down from another hobbyist vintner. Trouble was, he wanted it back and I couldn't remember what it looked like. The guy who gave it to me was sure he would recognize it, though. So I brought in two different styles for him to choose from, plus a "Sorry I'm an idiot and forgot this three days running" (meaning full) bottle for my co-worker.

Naturally, as I'm pulling the lot from my backpack, the head of our office picks that moment to stroll by. "It's a little early for that," quoth the boss. And carries on without breaking stride.

Who knows? Maybe some people actually prefer to fire-wall their "home self" and "work self." Some perhaps cultivate a completely separate "persona" for work. Me, I think that you just dodge a whole heap of trouble when you work where where you can be your own offbeat self. Transparency just saves soooo much 'splainin'...

Reality 1, Doreen 0

Oops. Looks like I was blindsided by the news of Oracle acquiring Sun. Earlier this month, I predicted that the courtship of Sun and IBM had not completely unraveled, simply because both sides had too much to gain from the deal. To quote:

So I'll stick my neck out and declare myself fairly sanguine about an IBM absorption of Sun. If the acquisition founders, my money's on it being the decision of Sun. Not the decision IBM and most certainly not the result any antitrust paranoia.

Honestly, I've never really paid that much attention to Oracle, simply because they had a reputation of being too proprietary, too overkill and waaaay too spendy when I was pressed for time and harder pressed for money as a student. By the time I was making any database software decisions, there were too many other viable alternatives. So I had some catch-up reading to do tonight. By buying Sun, Oracle also acquires MySQL. So learning that Oracle purchased the commercial arm of InnoDB a few years back sort of raised my hackles. In that space, that's tantamount to owning Park Place and then snapping up Boardwalk. And I am not looking forward to learning the quirks of PostgreSQL as LAMP servers become LAPP servers.

My first concern is, of course, for the Java programming language. But despite this morning's initial "Say WHAT?!?!?! Huminahuminahuminahumina..." freak-out at the news, tonight's gut feeling is that Oracle won't be able to monetize Java any better than Sun did. Which is to say that it will effectively be a loss-leader. Thus, they don't have an incentive to pimp it. But, from the sound of it, they're also heavily dependent on the Java language, so killing it off isn't an option. Unless, of course, they invent something more effective. And--let's be real here--Oracle is about databases, not languages--unless you're talking about dialects of SQL.

Why freak out about Java's fate? After all, Sun open sourced the code, which means that Oracle will have Hades' own time slamming the lid shut again. What I'm actually worried about is the documentation. Not as a hangover from my tech. writer days, mind you. Understand that the documentation from Sun and JGuru actually made that language easy to learn. The API documents were organized in a concise but useful format, and tutorials abounded. Contrast that to the months I spent slogging through Visual Basic 4 and 5 and C++. In those days, I was actually surprised when I could find exactly what I was looking for in Microsoft's so-called "Help." And tutorials? Please. You're supposed to go to school or buy a lot of books if you want to know how to actually do anything with the APIs. (Silly programmer!)

Additionally, Sun gives Java developers the heads-up that a function will go by the wayside a few releases before retiring it. Contrast that to Microsoft's capricious transition from 1.0 to 2.0 in .NET, breaking not-so-very-legacy code without so much as a by-your-leave. A trick that Adobe Flex likewise pulled on me between 2.0 and 3.0.

Those two aspects, more than any single language feature--saving perhaps garbage collection--is what made me a convert to Java. (Of course, having had a few semesters of C/C++ made it so much easier--not a small consideration, by any means!) That's the part I worry about Larry and the gang dorking up.

Something else they never teach you in Programmer School

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is all well and good for creating reusable, atomic components, more closely modeling the Real World with your code and all that. But as I come back to Java from non-OOP languages, I realize that it's also good at slowing me down just long enough to have to think about what I'm actually doing--and how it all fits together.

Yes, it's true that "Better is the enemy of done." Yet, the last time I checked, 50-90% of the cost of software was in the maintenance, not getting it out the door. In essence, focusing too much on "getting it out the door" creates a code debt. And like (nearly) all debt, it incurs interest. Every patch on or hack into a debtor program makes it that much harder to add the next patch or hack. (Lather, rinse, repeat.) That's the lesson that's woefully neglected in school, where one does not normally have to live with the consequences of one's design choices. Learning this lesson is not necessarily encouraged in the Real World, either, where far, far too many "prototype" or "demo" or "proof of concept" programs are somehow loosed upon real users and their real data.

That being said, there are times and places for just shoving code out the door. But I think that it would be a better world, from a software standpoint, if one of the "users" for whom we're programming is the poor schlub who has to fix or add to our code.

Free invention idea

Here in La Crosse, it's the first not-already-spoken-for Saturday that's also warm enough to have doors and windows open. So the lion's share of today has gone to Spring Cleaning, with the lion coming back for seconds. Of course, the fact that Mom will be over tomorrow to belatedly celebrate Easter has nothing to do with that. Nope. Of course not. (What, you don't think that my patio door is always free of snotty little nose-prints at the kitty-level? [eyeroll])

But to the point. Cleaning the shower with sponge and Comet basically amounts to no more than an IOU to the glass doors, which desperately need a bath in (acidic) vinegar to dissolve the (alkaline) hard water scale. The problem is that there's nothing big enough to soak them in--not to mention that it would require gallons upon gallons of vinegar. Vinegar, of course, won't stay on a vertical surface long enough to do the job. So I'm wondering why in blazes someone doesn't sell a gel version of vinegar. Optimally, a gel version of vinegar that includes an ever-so-slightly abrasive agent, in the event that the scale is particularly stubborn.

I have absolutely zero interest in bringing a consumer/household product to market, and I wouldn't begin to guess how, even if I did. I do know that the scale removers on the market haven't done bupkis, but vinegar does the trick every time. So consider this a free idea, no royalty expected. I'll just be happy to buy the stuff at the supermarket. Optimally, before the next time Mom stays overnight.

The power of self-image

The creature snoozing a few feet down the hall from my "office" has a battered nose (from picking fights with her sibling and who-knows-what inanimate objects). She is also absolutely filthy (from having free run of the fenced-in backyard). And the last round of shots at the vet and a switch in kibbles has only slowed down the tendency to pull out her own fur. Yet she will survey the living room--front paws daintily crossed--from her perch at the top of the stairs with what can only be described as a regal attitude. She is--and always will be--my "Ladykin" or "Pretty Lady," even when grubbier than the "Peanuts" character Pigpen. Which means that she will live a life of ease and plenty that billions of human beings only dream of. (Doubtless, Her Ladyship thinks it a mere fraction of the homage due to her beauty and charm.)

Granted, I was raised with cats and have been tolerably well trained by them. My husband was not. Yet Her Ladyship--battle-scarred, dirty and considerably thinner than she is now--invited herself into our home. The first news I had was my husband calling me to know if I wanted a cat because there was one on the couch beside him. In minutes, the self-proclaimed "dog person" had become her willing minion.

Now, I don't imagine that we all can con--errrr, I mean charm--others into catering to our every need. Nor do I think that one cat "proves" a point about humanity in general--namely the idea that how we perceive ourselves affects how others perceive us. But the adage that you can learn something from everyone doesn't necessarily stop with two-legged critters. At least not for me.

Successful failure

Maybe it's weird, but I actually prefer the "Fail Whale" to Twitter "hanging" before it finally loads a page that lost its formatting somewhere in The Tubes. In Programmer School, they teach you the virtue of anticipating failure and handling it as gracefully as possible. The Whale's a textbook example of that. (Plus, I just think it's cute as all get-out.)

I was in a glass-half-empty mood this morning when it occurred to me to wonder whether Twitter's flakiness is kind of their "secret sauce." If you're suitably cynical, it makes sense in a couple of respects:

1. "Not quite perfect" means that a technology's still bleeding edge. That makes you, dear Tweeter, one of the cool kids. (Never mind I'm here right now, effectively canceling out coolness by the boatload.) Heck, when half the kids in Africa are tweeting from solar powered OLPCs in the coming years, "not quite perfect" will still whisper in your ear that you're edgy, so you're getting in at the ground floor, at the front of the line. Right?
2. Service outages enforce the perception of scarcity, something that always plays into the hands of marketers. Always. Worse, you have to keep that sparkling thought in your head just a few more seconds. Oh noes, maybe a few more minutes. Or--Eeek! How old school!--you may need to write it down and deprive the world of its luminosity for whole hours on end. (The humanity!)
   

Of course, my cynical little theory is contravened by the fact that everyone's waiting for the other shoe--meaning the assimilation into Google--to drop. Google can't get away with spotty performance and perceived scarcity. (It has a Microsoft to show up, after all.) Why? Have you've ever seen, say, Pink Floyd in concert? You just cannot-not-NOT imagine them as a garage band, now can you? Nope. Not ever. That's the difference between Google and Twitter, at least in terms of image.

But after the inevitable acquisition, you can bet I'll be watching the change in image as the marketing and branding folks step in. Personally, I think it will be highly instructional. Not to mention just plain interesting.

What's your time worth?

We're having the first truly nice day, weather-wise, that we've had since Spring first batted her eyelashes at us a few weeks ago. Naturally, we're supposed to be out of "nice" by the weekend (although we need the rain). Despite being an "indoor" kind of person, my list of Things I'd Rather Be Doing grew extensively, despite the fact that work was anything but dull.

You'll remember from Economics that this sort of thing is called "opportunity cost." To me it's one of the best arguments I can think of for finding a way to do what you love for a living--or at least as a sideline. Because your time is also worth the things that you aren't currently doing with it.

"Bambi" upside down

Disclaimer: I actually have never seen the movie "Bambi." Disney's "classics" were out of fashion by the time I was at the optimal age for enjoying them. Nevertheless, the message, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" cropped up in my childhood. But that maxim can also be turned that on its head: "If you don't have anything to say, say something nice."

Today is one of the rare days when my idea-basket has stayed empty the whole day. But that's okay, because it clears the decks for something I've wanted to mention for awhile. That "something" is how very impressed I've become with the team that creates the open-source Derby database system, currently under the wing of the Apache Foundation.

In the short time that I've been trying to stay on top of the mailing lists for internal development and user forum, I've been struck by how absolutely gelled the core group seems to be. No small part of that seems to be the excellent written communication skills. And this is a good time to point out that, based on the names of the core contributors, I'd be willing to bet that not all of them natively write/speak English. But you'd never know that. Which makes me embarrassed to think how I've let both Spanish and French rust since high school. (And to think how I used to pride myself on trilingualism!)

And so I think that these folks deserve a shout-out for their dedication and organization and their mastery of language, be it computer or human--all on top of being plain ol' freaky-smart. I very much look forward to learning even more from them in the weeks, months and years to come.

A missing link

While drafting Saturday's post, I knew I was missing one of the hyperlinks that I wanted to include. Naturally, I didn't run across it again until this morning's news-cruise. The irony was that reading it was the seed of wanting to address the topic of bottom-up innovation being squashed by top-down management.

I'm sorry to admit that I have signed non-compete agreements. The first time I was too naive to know that they are a legal joke here in Wisconsin. Or at least were--I'd have to double-check now. The second time, I had a lawyer ready to rock, should it come to that. (It didn't.)

But it just floors what intellectual fastidious remains in me that these ridiculous things haven't been outlawed at the federal level, upheld by the Supreme Court and notarized by God Almighty. They're Just That Stupid. I'm not saying that employees can't walk out with intellectual property and damage their employers. It's happened to firms for which I've worked, although the real damage has been that the, errr, "spinoff" company has absconded with clients, sometimes under false pretenses. But with other more legally viable options available, the use of non-compete agreements only further cements my opinion that "management science" is an oxymoron.

C'mon: Don't you find it just bit ironic that you can walk down the bookstore business aisle and find rows upon rows of dead trees breaking down "success" into seven habits or one-minute parables or six sigmas or whatever the paint-by-numbers meme-du-jour happens to be?

Yet, just as most people want the miracle pill in place of nutrition and exercise, you'd never sell a leadership book that says "Retain only the best employees and don't give them any motivation whatsoever to to elsewhere." Why? Because it's a "waste" of manager and potential co-worker time to spend hours vetting the top applicants. Because too many managers would rather try to isolate or ignore a "problem" (or even sub-optimal) employee than fire her/him. Because too many people--particularly managers--have been convinced that if they just tweak the reward/punishment mechanisms enough, they can close all the productivity and morale leaks and operate on auto-pilot.

Long story short, non-compete agreements are a cop-out. Just like threatening to fire people for discussing salary information. Or waiting until a downturn to remove the dead wood. Or hiring outside talent rather than growing it from within.

And so I hope that the Massachusetts Legislature sets a trend to remove one cop-out from the business play-book. For good managers--and there are many--won't miss it. Everyone else has one less excuse to suck. And that can't be anything but good news.

Can workaholism be encouraged?

To me there are only two coding "highs" worth having:

1. The fifteen-minute (or so) high that comes from fighting (and fighting and fighting) but ultimately vanquishing a gremlin.
2. The high that comes from falling into the vortex of the raw act of creation, and losing oneself in it for hours on end.
   

Because my debugging skills have vastly improved over the years, and because distractions are an occupational hazard in Cubeville, neither happens to me very often. As a mental game, I try to pinpoint what percentage of my current salary I'd be willing to trade for a soundproof office and the privilege of being able to ignore the phone and email. That number varies pretty widely, depending on the day/time. But it occurs to me to wonder if any other cube-dwellers are like me. In other words, wannabe workaholics whose "addiction" is frustrated by the work environment.

Sure, you can foster a workaholic culture through traditional means. The threat of firing--particularly in the depressed job market--will work for awhile. Sometimes workaholism comes with the territory: Both programming and investment banking have (or had) reputations for being "warrior cultures." Thus, managers in those industries could reliably expect 60-, 80-, and 100+-hour workweeks from their underlings, all the result of pure machismo. Huge incentives for equally huge performance might work for some in just about any industry.

But what about everyone else in Cubeville? Apart from being able to concentrate on what I'm being paid to do, other things that make me more inclined to stay at my desk (real or virtual) rather than leave it are:

• Is there a refrigerator where I can stash my lunch, or do I have to go/order out?
• Can I access email from outside the office?
• Better yet, can I remote into my desktop from outside the office?
• Best case scenario, can I remote into my desktop without having to fire up my Windows computer?
• If I have to stay late and (inevitably) get the munchies, is there anything besides junk food in the vending machine(s)?
• If I have to make a private phone call, do I have to go to another part of the building entirely?
• Can I flex my hours between weeks so that I'm not cleaning my filing cabinet and/or hard drive just to make the sacrosanct 40 hours one week and leaving stuff half-done the next?
• Am I working in the "cliquey" kind of office where people go on break in herds? Because it's rather disruptive when an entire herd disappears.

Those kinds of things are the difference me being on a first-name basis with the folks who clean the office, and not knowing them from Adam/Eve. Maybe this is just me being me (i.e. weird). I don't know--take it for what you will.

But it seems to me that getting extra productivity from the folks who make a business work doesn't have to cost that much. You just can't let the efficiency-freaks take over. Because "efficiencies" come with a price, sometimes up-front (mostly when you're talking about equipment or software), but with people the cost (in my experience) is ongoing. The underlying problem, of course, is that the true cost of "efficiency" most often doesn't appear as an itemized debit/credit on the books. But it does find its way to the bottom line.

Golden eggs and goose-feed

Sometimes I think that we take the mythos of Yankee ingenuity a bit too much for granted. Particularly when we expect to invent some new gadget that will set the world on fire and drag an entire economy out of its doldrums.

The essential problem is that we expect the proverbial golden eggs without any thought to what we're feeding the goose. To illustrate:

• The U.S. patent system is an unmitigated disaster that exists to keep lawyers in Armani suits.
  
• AP was suing its own affiliates for posting AP content. Fortunately, AP clued into its own cluelessness before any serious damage was done. (Which is only one level of stupid below Fox News suing The Simpsons a few years ago, which would have lead to Fox essentially suing itself.)
• A couple years ago, Microsoft's Visual Studio blatantly ripped off a feature from the open source BlueJ project, then attempted to file for a patent--which would, presumably, have led to an infringement lawsuit against the feature's actual creators.
• The whole issue of whether or not "orphaned works" can even be brought into the public domain--a no-brainer, one would think--devolves into an Olympian squabble over who cashes in, in the unlikely event that one of them turns out to be the next DaVinci Code.
  

So...explain to me how, exactly, the legendary two guys (or gals) in a garage are going to pull us out of this mess?

[Sound of crickets chirping]

Yeah, I thought so.

Time for Marketing 2.0?

It's a truism that the point of "classic" marketing is to make you unhappy. Unhappy enough to fork over your hard-earned gelt for whatever snake oil makes you believe that the unhappiness will stop. And if the marketing is particularly clever, you can pass on your unhappiness by flaunting your snake oil in the face of The Joneses so that they will rush out to own their very own bottle of anti-unhappiness.

Key term: "Anti-unhappiness." I don't mean "bottle of happiness." The opposite of "unhappy" is not always "happy." The no-man's-land between the two can be miles in breadth--and I think that it tends to widen if one does not have clear and concrete definitions of both terms.

But (radical thought) what if marketing made you happy? Not just an artificial injection of feel-good: Kittens and American Flag and cute guys/girls smiling Just For You. No, not the usual schtick. That's been done to death, too. What about marketing that treated the interaction as more of an ongoing consultation rather than a one-off slam-bam-why-are-you-still-here transaction? The closest thing I've seen so far is President Obama's 2008 campaign and subsequent "policy support" campaigns. You don't have to like the guy to recognize that he's a game-changer on a number of levels. That's merely one of them.

I'm old enough to remember Reagan, a.k.a. The Great Communicator. Particularly the feeling of turning to our national paternal figure for explanation and comfort after the Challenger explosion--and knowing, even as it was happening, what a pastmaster that man was at it. I also remember watching Clinton's State of the Union address as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was breaking and thinking, "Dang, you're good at this."

But the new guy at 1600 Pennsylvania? Those moves I haven't seen before. But you can bet that my inner consumer and I are certainly on the lookout for them now. Because not all marketers are Least Common Denominator troglodytes. Specifically, we're looking for the gap between those who grok the new rules and the warranty-scam or akai berry or wrinkle eraser sleaze-balls to form. If the bottom-feeders slither back under their rocks and more or less leave the field to the peddlers of actual happy, well, I can think of worse legacies for a President to have...

Flamebait, Part II

He doesn't--and almost certainly will never--know it, but I lost one of my mentors today: A geek who can write. Trust me, they're not exactly a commodity.

I've been a "Joel on Software" reader for at least eight, probably creeping up on nine years. Mr. Spolsky has provided some tremendous help/encouragement as I've morphed from technical writer to programmer and freelancing trying-to-be.

By nature, I have a hot temper that cools very quickly after an explosion. So I put several hours between reading his latest column for Inc. and this post, to allow time for cooling. That (mostly) hasn't happened.

The article, if you haven't perused the above link, discusses the compensation system at Fog Creek Software, the company that Mr. Spolsky and Michael Pryor founded. The passage in question is this, taking the liberty of adding emphasis:

In Fog Creek's system, every employee is assigned a level. Currently, these levels range from 8 (for a summer intern) to 16 (for me). Your level is calculated formulaically based on three factors: experience, scope of responsibility, and skill set. Once we determine your number, you make the same as every other employee at that level.

The experience part is pretty easy: It's based on the number of years of full-time experience you have in the field you're working in. No work done while you were still in school counts, and certain types of rote, menial work can never add up to more than a year of experience. If you worked as a receptionist for six years, for example, you aren't credited with six years of experience; I give you credit for one year.

I can't fairly say whether or not that made my eyes cross, because at the time all I was seeing was pure red--as in #FF0000 for the web and graphics mavens. It's merely a sign of creeping middle age that my pod-mates weren't treated to a spluttering round of profanity--for which I have some reputation of note, I might add.

Let's get one thing straight: There is no such thing as "rote, menial work" for human beings in any company. That's why we have computers. If you can't keep every last one of your employees mentally engaged and wanting more, it's a Management Fail. If you penalize employees for work you've created to be rote and menial, that's an Epic Management Fail.

Now, you--as in the rhetorical "you"--might argue that there is a distinction between "profit centers" and "overhead." That is, if you pay attention to the bean-counters. Isn't that, after all, how they start out every Microeconomics course ever taught? You remember: A doctor loses billable time scheduling his--and it was still invariably "his" back in my day--own appointments, filing paperwork and so on. So the hypothetical doctor hires an equally hypothetical assistant (at a considerably lesser hypothetical salary) to free up that time for more profitable use.

But then the logic goes one step further...and in my irate-and-considerably-less-than-humble opinion a step too far. That step involves finding a means to minimize the assistant's cut of the billing rate to maximize the doctor's take. Naturally, the quickest route to depressing the receptionist's earnings is to trivialize that work as "just answering phones" or "just typing" or "just" what-have-you. And, frankly, that's just stupid. For any company, not just a doctor's office.

Of course, much of what passes for the "science" of accounting involves pushing costs on third parties: WalMart employees on public health care, Delaware corporations, companies going bankrupt to avoid litigation, or offshoring to less...shall we say..."legally fastidious" countries. And so on. The profit-center/overhead distinction is, to my thinking, living on the same street, ethically, as the cost-avoidance tactics just mentioned. And, contrary to the world in which bean-counters and Econ. professors inhabit, the costs are no less real for not showing up on this quarter's P&L statements.

Dude, that "assistant" is the first contact that a potential customer/vendor/employee/partner has with your company. Possibly even the last. You'd better believe it matters. Do you think I give a fat rat's patootie if you cater in lunch for your programmers or let them play Rock Band on company time when I'm calling with a question/order/problem? What planet do you live on? All I want is a friendly voice that connects me to exactly the right person in thirty seconds or less. Imagine how, in this day of Byzantine touch-tone menus and call centers whose function is not unlike that of the Soviet peasant in wartime, how much of a competitive advantage it is to have a person who can tackle the problem at hand without a script?

Similarly, you can consider software testing and data validation "menial" if you care to. I'll take a pass. Caste systems are for incompetent managers who can only see value in what looks suspiciously like what they've done for a living. For me, it makes too much sense to have people doing what they're best at. Case in point: I'll spend close to a day of "programmer" time reconciling messed up data. Which is all well and good at the beginning of the fiscal year when there's funding to do so. But later? Well, we've hired several "data people" who have moved up the supposed "food chain" to other things--not always to good effect, organizationally. We'd managed to find one person who actually liked (go figure) scrubbing and importing data. Except that we laid off that person when the chips were down. So much for that doctor theory from Microeconomics, hey?

So here's where I want to hammer home an important distinction: I've said before that I want nothing to do with prima-donna employees. But I do want an All Rock Star team. Sure, I want rock star programmers. Who doesn't? I also want a rock star receptionist, rock star testers, rock star data folks, and so on. If I can afford it, I want a rock star barista for the coffee/wine bar. The friggin' janitor should be a rock star. Why? Because I don't want botulism from ookey coffee carafes. I don't want a potential customer/employee/vendor/partner swinging by the rest room and being put off the drippy soap dispenser or scale around the faucets or what-have-you. I don't want people getting sick from the HVAC system or whatever cleaning chemicals are floating in the air. So you end up paying your janitor an outrageous wage. Ooh-lah. When you think about the obnoxious bank that pure incompetents were/are making, running entire companies into the ground, I don't think that a so-called "overpaid" janitor really matters in the grand scheme of things. I mean, if you're looking to hire only "the best," that should permeate the entire organization--not just the "caste" with which you most strongly identify-- should it not?

And, yes, I realize that there is a price to be paid for this ideal. That's why they call them "ideals." Organized religion wouldn't be 1/100th so profitable if folks had the stones to live up to what they profess. Originally, Ben and Jerry's pay scale was such that the salaries of the eponymous Ben and Jerry were never more than ten times that of the lowest-paid employee. Eventually, they sold out to the Dark Side. We've seen that movie before. It's easy to say that, if I won the small business lottery and found myself heading a big company, that I'd be different. Heck, it's probably sheer hubris to say it. But I'm gonna say it anyway. In front of the entire internet, even. And I'm gonna go one better than B&J. My salary? Five times, max. If the bills are paid and there's a bit left over for a vacation once a year and a gadget or three, do I really need anything else? Okay, maybe setting up college/retirement trust funds for my family. But a beach house? Oh, please. I'd have a company to serve. Not to mention that I sunburn in a heartbeat.

But here's what: I'm also the kid who hid her stacks of $500s and $100s under the Monopoly board and looked the other way when her stepsister landing on Boardwalk or Park Place would have bankrupted her. Why? Because that would have brought the game--and consequently the fun--to an end. If you're not in it for the game, why bother? You can make more working for The Man. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The only thing "wrong" is becoming The Man. When your bathwater starts tasting like '82 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, it's time to stop drinking. (Actually, when it tastes like anything other than bathwater, it's time to stop drinking, but you know what I mean...)

So, on second thought, perhaps I am somewhat wrong about losing a mentor. Because an example of how not to be can be equally instructive.

A caveat for consultants...and consultees

I've spent most of my official geek life as a consultant in one form or another. And while I'm still mystified over what constitutes "consulting skills," I have developed an appreciation for consultant jokes along the way. (My rationale: If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, at least show them that you don't take yourself all too seriously. ) To date, the best consultant joke I've heard is...

Q: How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the bulb and the other to hammer it into the faucet.

[Rim shot]

Being quite politically clueless m'self, I'm grateful to William Cohen and his How to Make it Big as a Consultant for pointing out that your immediate function as a consultant may sometimes have bupkis to do with your technical skills. Rather, you may at some point be brought in as the figurehead "expert" for a purely political battle. In the proverbial nutshell, you're being paid so that someone can go all "Neener-neener-neener" on someone else.

For the politically-unsavvy technical folks out there: File this away in your list of "occupational hazards." If you haven't heard why the ancient Greek sage Teiresias was blinded, look it up now. This is anything but a new phenomenon.

For the more politically-inclined folks: Please don't think about doing this. Sure, maybe you'll be lucky enough to draft a new or naive technical person to The Dark Side. But the odds are better that you're just tipping off the geek in question that you've become power-blind--and as such, the proverbial useful idiot for anyone who's clever enough to work you. Watch Yojimbo (or A Fistful of Dollars if subtitles annoy you...or Last Man Standing if you prefer shooting to scriptwriting), should you want further illustration of the concept.

The virtue of limitations

I've been a bit annoyed lately with my inability to make my posts briefer and pithier. Perhaps the Powers That Be overheard. Last night I wasn't careful enough while ensuring that the honeybees in our garage are adequately fed before going into their hive later this week. I accidentally frightened one (poor lady--honeybees don't survive stinging), and have a kielbasa finger to show for it.

Yet I've surprised myself at how effectively I can still type tonight, despite having to look at the keys every time I type the letter C, D or E. And how natural it feels to use only one finger for mousing.

For all that, however, the activity is starting to bother my hand, so I will leave you with this as anecdotal evidence that you can learn to do more within constraints--and more quickly than you think.

Blue Java

As if I needed further proof that I would never survive in a cut-throat business environment, it was my husband who speculated that IBM low-balling Sun, then dropping negotiations over the weekend would strengthen Big Blue's hand when Sun's stock dropped Monday. Which it obligingly did.

To read the trade commentary, I'm apparently in the minority for thinking--rather radically, for me--that this merger actually makes sense from both sides. Granted, I'm not overly qualified to speculate: I spent just over two years as "vendor scum" inside IBM as a tech. writer at the end of the Lou Gerstner regime. I'll be up-front and say that--although I do care about and keep in touch with a number of folks I met there--there's not much love lost between me and "The Blue Zoo's" culture. (Though I still miss the Ritazza coffee stand and the cafeteria's chili and their beef and barley soup. Those all rocked.)

Let it also be noted that Java is my hands-down favorite language because Sun made it easy to use their language with decent documentation of the APIs and helpful tutorials. Plus they gave away the tools--which was pretty darned revolutionary Back In The Day. I used my HTML editor plus the command line as a Java IDE for a few years, actually...and didn't feel in the least "deprived" doing so.

So I'm surprised not to find more cognitive dissonance in my brain over the prospect of Big Blue assimilating Sun and letting loose their slimy battalions of bean-counters and patent lawyers on the not-inconsiderable IP portfolio. Mainly because Sun so obviously needs to be saved from itself, to learn how to monetize again. Sam Palmisano, the current suzerain of IBM, made his name selling services, not hardware or software. That's critical. And, for love of Pete, someone needs to take Scott McNealy and Jonathan Schwartz out behind the garage and shoot--errrr...what I mean is...ummm...give them to a nice farm family. Yeah. Farm family.

Ahem.

Also, significantly, IBM has been heavily into the Java space for a decade; in UNIX longer still. And, for all I diss on their patent lawyers, IBM shows every sign of understanding the software development ecosystem in a way that Microsoft and Adobe, IMO, quite emphatically do not. Culturally, Sun and IBM seem to have a weakness for "trophy geeks," which is likewise important for assimilation. (Woe betide you if you belong to a lesser caste, but that's another story...)

So I'll stick my neck out and declare myself fairly sanguine about an IBM absorption of Sun. If the acquisition founders, my money's on it being the decision of Sun. Not the decision IBM and most certainly not the result any antitrust paranoia.

Game-changers

December before last, I was--for about the first (and possibly only) time in my life--the "cool" kid on the block when I picked up one of the first-generation Eee PCs. I brought it out at the Linux User's Group meeting and someone insisted that I put it alongside the OLPC that Frank had just scored through their "Give one, get one" donation push. People--meaning guys who have forgotten more about networking and Linux/UNIX than I will ever know--cooed over the wee ones like they were new babies. It was hilarious.

This week I'll be upgrading to a 901 Eee for more screen real estate, longer battery life, and Ubuntu (rather than Xandros or Windows XP Home) for the operating system. (Epic props to Mom for the suggestion of donating the original one to a shelter.)

But, dear me, how the laptop landscape has changed in a mere eighteen months! The work "netbook" is in cant use now that other companies--besides Asus--got the memo that it was possible to build a lean, durable mini-notebook that didn't put frugal people like me into cardiac arrest with the price tag. Okay, cardiac arrest is an exaggeration, but when my co-worker told me how much he'd paid for his itty-bitty Sony Vaio, my eyes bugged. Seriously--you could almost hear the cartoon "Ah-OOooo-GAH!!!" sound effect.

But isn't it...interesting...how quickly competing models came out of the woodwork after years of scoffing at the OLPC concept? (Yes, I know that OLPC still hasn't achieved a $100 model. Keep your wig on: Inevitability takes time.)

Now we just need the equivalent clue-bomb to hit the auto and home energy industries. In the former case, there is already Mercedes-Benz's "smart fortwo," Toyota's "IQ," the Tata Motors' $2000 "Nano," and at least one more micro-vehicle whose company and name refuse to come to mind. (Sadly, the legendary Volkswagen Beetle--the greatest car ever made, IMO--was re-invented as a Yuppie-mobile travesty, so it doesn't count. Certainly not at 20/29 MPG in this day and age--it should run on three rubber bands and a hamster in a wheel, fer cryin' in yer beer...)

But I digress.

The point is that the game-changers will, probably more often than not, be born during times of stress or severe constraint--e.g. sulfa drugs, rocket science, ramen noodles, machine guns, nylon, webmail and so on. If you can ally scarcity and creativity...man, you are sooooo ahead of the folks who think that the answer to failure is doing more of the same.

Update, 10:22 PM: More game-changers, courtesy of CNN Money.

Don't shoot the questioner

Where I work, our alpha- and beta- and gamma-geeks have the bad habit of penalizing people for asking their assistance in debugging. The penalty is the impatiently-phrased question: "Why did you do it that way?" Worse, the question may well not even apply to the problem at hand.

I know for a fact that I'm not the only programmer on staff who would prefer to spend inordinate amounts of time Googling and experimenting to avoid those seven words (or, more aptly, the tone behind them). The upshot is that hundreds, if not thousands of dollars are wasted in one smallish office. In that light, is super-smart really worth the price if it comes packaged with that attitude?

Please don't make the mistake of thinking that this problem is limited to programmers. I've seen it elsewhere, from people who definitely do not meet the alpha-geek stereotype. So the next time someone comes to you for your assistance, please pay attention to how you help solve their problem. Because shooting the questioner is just as counter-productive as shooting the proverbial messenger in any organization. The organization will pay the price.

The recession in the trust economy

Apart from the tangible miseries that can be laid at the feet of unemployment rates at quarter-century highs, another casualty is the erosion of trust. This recession's particularly bad by simple virtue of the vices of avarice and gluttony that triggered it. With the bar thus lowered, you see the bottom-feeders slithering out from under their rocks to fight over the scraps.

And the new lows are rather depressing, particularly as I cleaned out my spam-box today. Why would I (who am female) be emailing myself promises of enlarging, er, appendages I don't actually have? Facebook ads, likewise: Why would my confidence in a teeth-whitener or wrinkle-remover be boosted by the fact that it was "discovered by a mom?" Grant you, my Mom has a biology degree and did great gobs of Chemistry coursework in the process. But neither qualifies her to mix up any wonder cream in the kitchen sink. Or the out-and-out sleazeballs like the folks who tried to make my browser look like a free Windows application scanning my hard drive for viruses. Very convincing stuff...except for the fact that I'm running Ubuntu.

Today's blog post from the always-fantabulous Seth Godin delves into this better than I ever could. But I actually think he's too modest with that last paragraph. America's been living in fear for over seven years (for reasons both reasonable as well as the confection of demagogues who never waste a crisis). The institutions--businesses, non-profits, public institutions--that earn our collective trust stand to make leapfrog gains in the next several years. Sure, the sleazemeisters will never run short of gullible people. All the same, we (meaning America and friends) are in a place we haven't been for at least a generation. Those who realize that and act accordingly will be in commanding positions--be it in terms of money, influence or thought-leadership--for quite some time.

Who's standing over your shoulder?

A few stories to show where I'm headed with that question.

Mom was--still is--old school in some ways, one of them being that we were taught not to address anyone by her or his first name until given permission to do so. Mom lives two hours away, but Misters and Mizzes and Missuses still abound in my universe--despite the fact that I'm personally weirded-out when addressed as "Ms. Clemons." (What? Y'mean somebody mistook me for an adult???)

In the sixth grade, Mrs. Reinhart lined us up like soldiers at reveille and drilled us in making formal introductions. (In case she didn't get to you, it's "Person A, may I present Person B? Person B, this is Person A." When the genders are heterogeneous, Person A is the female. When homogeneous, Person A is the eldest of the two. Got it now? Good.)

When writing and editing (in general), the essence of Dr. Doherty stands at one shoulder, inverting and pruning passive grammar to make it vibrantly active, ruthlessly bi- and trisecting run-on sentences and so on. When I write/edit technical material, Cheryl is at my other shoulder, helping me leaven the professional tone with a variety in phrasing that keeps the reader engaged, rather than insulted by cut-and-paste boilerplate verbiage.

Several years ago, I had to pare down a carefully timed and rehearsed presentation with next to no notice before I had to present to a hundred or so co-workers. That rattled my nerves enough that I started speaking with (horrors!) my hands behind my back. In the several long seconds it took to get back to my comfort zone, part of my brain was freaking out: "Bucky's gonna kill me...Bucky's gonna kill me...Bucky's gonna kill me..." "Bucky" being my mentor on the speech team my Freshman year of college.

So, the question for you, reader, is: Whose instruction/guidance lives on inside you to the point where it's become habit? Reflex, even? Doctor Warloski, from a history class twenty-odd years ago, taps me on the shoulder to insist that I add the all-important "And why?".

Useful drudgery

My first favorite computer-related pastime involved "making pictures," as we said in my Upper Midwestern '70s childhood. Initially, it was crayon-coloring on the punch-cards Mom brought home from work. Then, in the early '80s, it was making Christmas trees with *s for the foliage and @s for the ornaments and ||s for the trunk and so on. One of my first software purchases was a shareware drawing program (on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies) for my 8088 in the early '90s.

So there's more than a bit of irony in the fact that graphics programs in the '00s intimidate the living daylights out of me.

Nevertheless, I've achieved enough detente with The Gimp that tonight I'm more or less capably massaging freeware images for the final project of my games programming class. It's boring as all get-out. But that's okay--it's been a more-stressful-than-usual day at work, and the tedium is actually kind of soothing. I can do just enough of it on auto-pilot that the major design aspects of the game will stay at a slow simmer on the proverbial back burner in the meanwhile.

And, via this navel-gazing route, I come to a point where I wonder why people (who can afford it) reflexively outsource drudgery. Sure, I could afford to pay a graphic artist, but tonight I'm in a head-space where I can coast without What-I-Should-Be-Doing looming in my rear view mirror. That's a luxury of sorts. I think I remember Agatha Christie writing that the best time for "plotting" was when she was doing the dishes. I can appreciate the sentiment.

So the takeaway tuppence I'll offer is this: Save enough drudgery for yourself. I believe that, nine times of ten, you'll actually be more efficient in the long run.