Frivolous Friday, 04.29.2011: More dorky things I wonder about

Why isn't bubble wrap filled with helium to save on postage?

(And if bubble wrap were filled with helium, would it squeak instead of pop?)

Why are they called "zipped" files? (I mean, if your jeans compress you that much when you zip them, do some crunches, already!)

Would there be any cosmic fallout from buying a "Adam" tablet...and then an "Eve"...and then an Apple?

Why aren't vehicles made for the sake of conspicuous consumption (e.g. Hummers, Tahoes, etc.) engineered to run on printer ink (up to $8,000 per gallon) or--at the very least--Starbucks coffee?

(From the "Harry Potter" universe) If the genetic rarities of a Muggle-born (a wizard/witch born in a non-magical family) and a Squib (a non-magical child of a wizarding family) have children, what's the probability of the child turning out magical vs. non-magical?

Why doesn't the shiny spandex of superheroes' costumes made a tell-tale "zip-zip-zip" sound when they walk?

When a Jedi's weapon runs out of battery juice, is it considered a darksabre?

(And from the same universe) If the Sith are pure evil and know no law but their own will, why would they respect the "There can only be one master and one apprentice" rule?

Am I the only one who would only watch the royal wedding in hope that the archbishop would sneak in a "Princess Bride" riff?

The difference between programming and playing with Legos

Alpha-Geek gave us a reading assignment last week, namely a SimpleTalk article called The Framework Myth. And, of course, be ready to discuss during the weekly dev. meeting. (For the tl;dr crowd, the gist of the article is that writing code for multiple purposes is overrated; you're better off staying out of the way of people who will tighten up code organically rather than imposing it from the top.)

During said discussion, Beta-Geek opined that the piece was "schizophrenic" and (not surprisingly) came out in defense of writing code in such a way that it's easier to snap existing pieces together than letting everyone roll their own. Personally, I completely missed any "schizophrenic" aspect: I thought it was just trying to cover a reasonable representation of the major points. Which, in the software world, is the proverbial breath of fresh air, given how many manufacturing/engineering philosophies are over-enthusiastically misapplied. (And, by "misapplied" I of course mean "shoved down everyone's throat with the business end of a bayonet.")

To illustrate: The same dorm-room-hacking that made Mark Zuckerberg a bazillionaire should probably not be used for software that controls nuclear reactors or the space shuttle or guide military equipment. And vice-versa.

So. Yeah. Context. It actually matters. (Who knew?) Sadly, when management gets a methodology "religion," they're far more likely to be mixing Kool-Aid in the Jones compound than, say, brewing coffee in the Unitarian fellowship room.

And that's a whole 'nuther blog-post.

But what I think is missing from the commentary was the human--i.e. personnel--cost of implementing frameworks. In my world-view, the "cost" of an over-rigid framework is not so much its overhead--meaning all the bells and whistles you don't use, but have to waste memory space on anyway. It's not even so much the rigidity of them--meaning the programming equivalent of a Happy Meal vs. going a la carte. Or even what a tedious pain in the wazoo it is to try and make a change under the hood. Particularly when the original authors consider themselves illuminati--as evidenced by lack of documentation.

Actually, maybe I should qualify that criticism of pre-fabricated "framework" code. If you want to hire people willing to snap together other people's code for a living, you can stop reading now with my appreciation for your time...and fervent hopes that you will keep those people from potentially becoming my co-workers. (Or--shudder--promoted to their proverbial level of incompetence into management.)

But that tab-A-into-slot-B Ikea mentality brings us right back around to the afore-mentioned mis-application of an industrial/manufacturing model. In that mind-set, a few bright lights (e.g. Henry Ford, Taiichi Ohno) set up the machinery to feed piece-work to droves of interchangeable automatons. Efficiency and profit ensues. (I'm doing a disservice to both gentlemen by oversimplification, btw, but you get the point, yes?)

Problem is, software is the business of solving problems, sometimes before people know they have them. But the problems change continually. Granted, history is sometimes circular. Not every problem, for instance, is solved optimally the first or second iteration through. Sometimes solutions create their own problems. The point is, that if you find yourself implementing the same solution or small set of solutions, chances are you're solving the wrong problem. Which is precisely when and why you need the sort of person who recognizes that...and can push solutions upstream. As often and as forcefully as needed. That's pretty much antithetical to the top-down ethos of manufacturing.

And, for that matter, frameworks.

In my considerably less than humble opinion, comissioning the programming Brahmins to write lego-code for the Untouchables to snap together is no less than a blatant admission of failure in software management. Possibly any number of failures. Failures of not cross-train people (or cross-pollinate functions) so the same problems aren't invariably solved redundantly. Of not smoothing out inter-team frictions (i.e. the "Not Invented Here" syndrome). Of not making it stupid-simple to sift and search existing code libraries for plagiarization--errr, I mean, code re-use. Or--most especially--of leaving no time to poke, prod and tinker.

Don't get me wrong here: I like playing with Legos, especially the very, very basic ones. Dennis gave me Lego knights and horses one Christmas, but I tend to gravitate back to the plainer blocks. More possibilities, I think. Just like writing software.

Frivolous Friday, 04.22.2011: The Monty Python edition

As any geek worth their login could tell you, the near-toxic levels of coolness that come with being a software developer have...shall we say...downsides. Among them certain stereotypes. You know. Black turtlenecks. Hipster glasses. Mini-coops. The crushing fashion responsibility that comes with knowing the difference between a quotidian backpack and Tardis-on-your-back "urban-wear."

That sort of thing.

So I figured that, seeing what Chapman, Cleese, Idle, Palin, Gilliam and Jones did for the stifling stereotypes surrounding the profession of lumberjack, I could at least try to do the same for my own. (Fellow geeks: You're welcome.)

Programmer
I didn't want to be a barista anyway.
I wanted to be...a programmer!
Leaping from gig to gig--and every platform fad that rolls through Silicon Valley!
Ruby on Rails!
LAMP stack!
iOS!
Android Honeycomb!
The smell of fresh-pulled lattes!
The crack of Red Bull cans!
With my QA Team by my side, we'd sing! Sing! Sing!

[Music swells]

I'm a programmer and I'm okay,
I code all night, I code all day!

SysAdmin Chorus
She's a programmer and she's okay,
She codes all night and she codes all day!

Programmer
I chunk out code, I unit-test,
I use a reposi't'ry!
On Fridays I refactor
But make the build bug-free!

SysAdmin Chorus
She chunks out code, she unit-tests,
She uses the reposi't'ry.
On Fridays she refactors
But makes the build bug-free!

She's a programmer and she's okay,
She codes all night and she codes all day!

Programmer
I chunk out code, I drink cheap beer,
I like to watch NASCAR.
I put on studded leather,
And hang in biker bars!

SysAdmin Chorus
She chunks out code, she drinks cheap beer,
She likes to watch NASCAR.
She puts on studded leather,
And hangs in biker bars?!? [look at each other confusedly]

She's a programmer and she's okay,
She codes all night and she codes all day!

Programmer
I chunk out code, wear combat-boots
And camo. for paintball!
I roll three hundred bowling,
And pwn the whole pool-hall!

SysAdmin Chorus
She chunks out code, wears combat-boots
And camo. for paint-- [chorus disperses, grumbling in disgust]

QA Team
[crying] Dude, srsly?! We thought you were so l33t! [storms off]

The lantern and the shovel

Poor SysAdmin was run ragged this past weekend, what with a major upgrade (to a new server) landing on a regularly scheduled maintenance weekend. Come Sunday, a scheduled SQL job had not fired off on the new system, and with SysAdmin trying to catch some well-earned shut-eye, Alpha-Geek stepped in.

When Alpha-Geek is scratching his head, you know there's trouble. But eventually most gremlins were run to ground. It might have been lingering guilt for grilling me about an oversight that turned out to be his, but A-G surprised me by thanking me for "all [my] hard work." The way I see it, I was just doing my duty to "my" application--that's just the flip-side of the autonomy. So I duly thanked him for giving a chunk of his Sunday--freshly arrived from a business jaunt out of town, no less--to working out the remaining kinks in the new system. "There's no substitute for having the person who knows where all the bodies are buried," I IM'd--or something to that effect.

"I just hold the up the light so others can dig," quoth A-G.

Which, I suppose, is the description of an Alpha-Geek's job in the proverbial nutshell. Not a bad thing for an average geek to want to be when s/he grows up.

No blog post: The upgrade that ate my weekend

Major software roll-out kicking off tonight (later than usual, b/c we're catering to West Coast business hours with a bit of a buffer thrown in). Catch y'all on the flip-side--hope your weekend is significantly less paranoia-fraught than mine will be.

Another thought on knowing what business you're in

Being a rather passionate book-lover and a programmer besides, eReaders are pretty much a perfect storm of two different branches of nerdery. Coming from that viewpoint, I couldn't help but think that David Carnoy's "Fully Equipped" column in last week's CNet was missing the point--and a very large one at that.

When you buy a book, you take home a bundle of dead tree and (hopefully) plant-derived ink and that's the end of that. No account number to track what items are at your fingertips or lent out. No remembering what page of each book you're on. No built-in dictionary. And if you lose it (or some dastardly soon-to-be-ex-friend doesn't bother to return it), too bad for you.

An eReader--at least one tied to a brand-name book vendor--is a bit more lingering. Or should be. For all the previous reasons as well as the fact that corrections and/or updates and/or addendum can be pushed to it. It's not like the editors at Doubleday microchip your paperback bodice-ripper to tone down the breathy dialog/narrative whenever federal CO2 emissions standards are tightened.

I think the problem is that two different products are being sold under the same heading. To the detriment of the electronic product's value proposition. Sure, I have my problems with the extremely haphazard quality of eBooks (and even the unsuitability of the format for some). But as a programmer I do realize that it's an apples-to-pumpkins kind of comparison. Mainly because I know that storage in the cloud is not free--even simple database table associations between people and books. Nor is 99.9+% uptime. Nor are device software updates.

Now, I'm not saying that retail shelf space, shipping, offloading overstock, staffing, etc. come at a discount, either. For all I know, the costs may come out even--though I rather doubt it. What I'm saying is that the vendors are doing a dreckish job of justifying the price differential to the consumer. No, that won't be an easy campaign--too much of anything delivered over the internet is liable to be considered "free." But that's a campaign that should have been planned well before any of the gadgets ever hit the market. Currently, the perception of what an eBook should be priced is based on a perception of cost that's not entirely accurate. By all rights, "cost" should not have entered the picture. Instead, the instant and ubiquitous access and the ongoing curation of the experience (not to mention one's ever-expanding library) should have been what was sold. Not words and pictures.

Frivolous Friday, 04.08.2011: The break-room economy

The Inner Curmudgeon has a field day earlier this week. Not only was one of the two breakroom tables appropriated to samples of wickless candles, but a certain coworker apparently gave my work email to Tastefully Simple: Grrrrrrr. And what in blazes is a "Norwex party" anyway? (On second thought, don't answer that. If I expect to carry cash to a party, I'm sure I can find a kegger somewhere in this town, no?)

Really-and-for-true, I have actually built up immunities to this sort of thing over the years. Honestly. Case in point: My sister's progressed from home decorating frou-frou to Avon to scented candles. We were both still living with Mom in the frou-frou phase, so I dodged that bullet. But Avon dropped animal testing, like, 20 years ago...and thus I have a couple years' worth of loose powder under the bathroom sink. Now, I thought the candles phase had burned itself out--so to speak--until Mom unloaded half a dozen on me. And--harking back to a humbler era when resourceful 9-year-olds weren't too proud to freeze their own popsicles--I would be remiss not to mention Great Aunt Coquella, the mafia Don of Tupperware dealers.

But, you have to admit, three in one week is rather a lot to process. Too much, I fear, for my left-most brain-lobes.

Or was, at least, until I twigged into the possibility that what's going on here is basically a shadow economy. Not in the contraband, black market sense, of course. But neither do I think of it as being quite synonymous with the "egg money" or "butter money" of bygone rural Americana. And therein lies my beef with the whole business: Dropping a catalog on the table and sending out an email does not add value. Moreover, it kind of implies that I can't cook for myself. Or that my face hasn't earned its lines. Or that my home needs to smell like something other than itself (don't mind the garlic hanging in the basement). Or that my houseguests are dumb enough to be fooled by fake flowers or the anachronistic fiction of wall-sconces. (They're likely to be real anachronists anyway, who won't bat an eyelash at armor, a rapier, arrow-quiver or spear hanging out in the den.)

In my grumpier moments, I find myself wishing that the "shadow economy" would just go the full monty and just develop its own currency, already. Or maybe even to straight to a barter system (as in, "Okay, I'll trade my 'Heather Glen' votives three-to-one for your 'Fiesta Cheese-ball Spread' mixes: Deal?"). Although, after further review, that could (in our globalized supply-chain world) all-too-easily lead to a nightmare of market-rigging by unscrupulous overseas gew-gaw farmers. After all, who wants to see honest wine-glass-charm artisans shuttering the shop they inherited from their great-grandparent to beg their living in the streets? Certainly not I, for one.

In all seriousness: I like to think I've had this nailed down for awhile. To me, such "entrepreneurial" ventures are a means to make a hobby--or habit, in some cases--pay for itself. Fair enough. Though I would appreciate not having the office smell like the syrupy inside of a gas station bakery case. And not be spammed by a company from which I will never, ever buy a single product. And certainly not pay the inevitable political tax that comes with not having the same priorities as my peers. (Because--let's not kid ourselves here--we all know that peeps are keeping score on an invisible DJIA-board that might as well be posted in the breakroom.)

Sigh. That's the problem working in a shop with programmers and other linear-minded folks (e.g. CAD drafters). You start expecting humans to be all Point A-to-Point B and If-Then-Else themselves. A bad habit, that. But, alas, one I can't seem to shake. And that, in turn, is probably a compliment my co-workers in general for raising the bar.

Recovered treasure

Some projects like to snowball, and 2011 "spring cleaning" is one of them. Dennis & I have lived at the same address for going on a decade. Before we moved to La Crosse, I was already working here, which left only weekends to help pack up the former house (90 minutes up the river). And by "pack up," I of course mean the process of triaging stuff.

Unfortunately, pulling up stakes for a brand-new career and town is not the best mental mind-set in which to wage the battle against sentimentality and narcissism that is part of the pack-rat's mental make-up. (Plus, when you grow up on the lower rungs of the middle class ladder--as did both Dennis & I--a certain "waste-not-want-not" mentality is baked in.) Thus, too many boxes from the attic or back closet were left with their original tape intact and stuffed into the moving truck unexamined.

Which, in itself, is a form of waste. So I want the record to show my embarrassment at the sheer number of things destined for Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or what-have-you--where they should have been doing other people yeoman's service years ago.

Fortunately, even chagrin has an upside that has nothing to do with the sense of aescetic virtue one can work up from the sight of bare shelf-space. It's rather the knowledge that it's easiest to appreciate our own wealth when we give some of it away. Not--as the adage goes--after we've lost it.

Naturally, "wealth" is not merely a matter of material things--it also encompasses our time, our skills, even kindness to folks we might not feel "deserve" it. Or maybe...just maybe...sending a life-lesson--earned at some personal cost--out to the world in the hope that it can do some good.

Frivolous Friday, 04.01.2011: The limits of crowd-sourcing

A co-worker showed me a copy of a Ray Bradbury short story* where a family whose daughter suffers from a mysterious ennui-tinged illness. Rather than waste money on doctors, the family turns the conundrum into a going concern. On the premise that people are nearly incapable of withholding their advice (particularly when they can't be proven wrong), the family decides to charge all comers who wish to dispense their wisdom. (The story does have a happy, albeit suggestive ending, so no worries about the sick young lady.)

Unfortunately, that was nearly 20 years ago, and I cannot remember the story's title. But it immediately popped into mind when I saw the above ad on the "Weregeek" online comic strip tonight. Yes, I understand that we're living in an age of blogs and YouTube channels and podcasts and what-not. No better time to be alive, if you're creative.

But, really. If a professional musician doesn't write their own material, wouldn't you agree that Mr. Cruz (and his corporate sponsor) is dragging crowdsourcing down the rabbit-hole just a bit? True, the fans know what they like, and will probably draft something suited to Mr. Cruz's style. But--all things considered--it's an admission that there's nothing particularly special separating amateurs and professionals--at least in terms of talent (luck, self-promotion and an immunity to certain lifestyle elements are another story).

And that's a fiction we can certainly do without, particularly if we hope to enter a post-payola meritocracy of talent. Plus, if Coca-Cola and Taio Cruz raise their brand equity through careful management of crowdsourced talent, I (for one) would be keen to expand the scope. Here, in my opinion, are a few areas where crowd-sourcing could be put to good use in leveling the playing field between the buskers and rock stars of other professions.

A.) The seat for Minnesota's 6th Congressional district could be thrown open to an essay-writing contest for 8th Grade History students. (Bonus: The current incumbent could take the winner's place, which would be a win-win situation if I ever heard of one...)

B.) Assuming the immediate family and/or descendants of Paul the Octopus can be located and a big enough tank devised to hold the logos of all publicly-traded companies, Jim Cramer and his ilk could be easily--and far more entertainingly--"delisted."

C.) Some white-haired Australian dude could cultivate inside sources and put power and privilege under the microscope with documentation, rather than peddle opinions and press releases under the name of "journalism." Oh...wait...that's already being done, isn't it? Dang--I knew that sounded familiar. Sorry: My bad...

D.) Dark Shadows fan-fic could readily fill America's appetite for vampire porn, thus freeing up parsecs of bookshelf-space for literature that doesn't make Ann Rice look like Jane Austen by comparison.

E.) Admit it: You know as well as I do that Board of Directors meetings would be far more fun--and infinitely better-informed-as flash-mobs recruited from the mail room, call centers, janitors' closets, reception desks, etc.

F.) Womens' apparel/lingerie catalogs and the PhotoShop Disasters website: Same deal except for the dead trees part--am I right?

G.) Neilson ratings vs. YouTube/Hulu router logs: Again, 'nuff said.

H.) The clubby inanity of Superbowl commentary could be replaced with thoughtful analysis by filling the stadium with retired high school football coaches (and a few Vegas bookies) armed with laptops and close-captioning the game with randomly selected tweets.

I.) Rather than subsidize yet another comic book hero's CGI'd splash onto the big screen, can we please all agree to fire up the air-popper and settle down to stop-motion Lego animation on YouTube on Friday nights?

J.) Rather than give faux-libertarian pundits another pretext for hyperventilating, census takers will merely friend up said pundits and copy all the necessary information from their Facebook profiles.

- - - - -

* The story might be part of the I Sing the Body Electric anthology--whose "The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place" is worth the price of admission. (Not ROFL-funny, but I double-dog-dare you to not smile when the subject of French art comes up after you've read it.) Then again, it might not. The same co-worker introduced me to "Conflagration" at the same time.