On a late Sunday evenin',
At a start-up out of runway,
I sat next to The Greybeard,
We were both too tired to weep.
So we took turns a-sighin'
As the errors rolled from Jenkins,
'Til ennui overtook him
And he began to speak.
He said, "Grrl, I've made a life
Out of savin' founders' bacon,
Smellin' trouble brewin'
'Fore the pinks slips start to fly.
By the green hue of your skin-tone,
I can see you called your options
If you'll walk me down the hall-way,
I'll give you some advice."
So we headed to the break-room
And he kicked my butt at foos-ball,
Then opened up the drink-'fridge
And slammed a Mountain Dew.
Then the place got almost quiet
Once we set our phones to "vibrate."
He said, "If you wanna make the rent, grrl,
This is what you got to do."
[Chorus]
"You got to know when to ship it,
Know when to slip it,
Know when to refactor,
When to let things stand.
You never work ev'ry weekend
If the CEO's not there, too.
There'll be time enough for workin'
When the Round A lands."
"Now, ev'ry Greybeard knows,
That the secret to the pay-off
Is knowin' that ideas mean jack
When your team can't see them through.
'Cause every app. is Facebook
And every app. is Friendster,
And the best that you can hope for
Is your VCs know it, too."
And when he'd finished speakin'
He ordered up an Uber,
Buffed his LinkedIn resume,
Tossed his work-badge in the trash.
And once at his next start-up,
The Greybeard hit the jackpot.
But in his parting words I'd found
Advice that I could cash.
[Repeat chorus three times]
Saturday, November 24, 2018
Saturday, April 21, 2018
How to go from Dunning-Krueger* to Imposter Syndrome in 3 weeks or less
This past February, the (ahem!) "illuminati" of the Moncton User Group had a problem: No speaker lined up for March. Now, I had already started a spiel on basic AVR microcontroller programming. Problem was, it was intended for more of a Makerspace crowd. Alas, the local Makerspace has been in a lull for awhile now, which left a half-finished outline languishing in a folder alongside a bunch of transition slide images. But I figured that if I tossed out the hardware-oriented "What is a Circuit?" bits and amped up the code samples, it could be made to work...in a "niche" sort of way.
It's been roughly a year and a half since I stood up in front of my MUG colleagues to bang on about my latest nerdery. So I knew that I was basically out of shape as a presenter. Still, I had a bit over three weeks to finish the outline and turn it into slides, but no big deal because it's really only the bare-bones basics, plus I totally know where I'm going with it and, anyway, the Arduino presentation was so long ago that nobody will realise that I'm poaching half the image files and honestly it's not like anyone here will be starting out from scratch with a C-like programming language anyway, right???
Boy howdy, did that beastie hand ever me my head -- more than any other presentation I've given. It was pretty humbling, even before I was regaling my shower-door with the soundtrack for the slide-deck. :~/ I half-expected at least one of my coaches/mentors from UWEC Forensics to show up and administer a well-deserved smack upside the head. A sampling of mistakes:
But there was a ominous lack of response when I ended every section/subsection with "Any questions about that?" Uh-oh. Which tells me that, at best, I bored just over 20 very talented people who have better things to do on a Tuesday night. At worst, I made them lose whatever interest they might have had in AVR programming.
Cold comfort, I suppose, that I don't crawl out of the rubble entirely empty-handed. Quite apart part from the obvious perks of thoroughly understanding the material and having a sweet set of references all in one place, nat'cherly. And an even greater appreciation for everything that the Arduino ecosystem has accomplished. No, my personal takeaway from this three weeks of scrambling is where I need to turn my attention next. And next. And next. And so on. (Respectively, those "nexts" are Serial I/O, timers, pulse-width modulation, I2C and SPI communication, and then whatever I don't recognise while I'm tripping through all that.)
It goes (almost) without saying that I will certainly leave room in my brain for the lessons (and humility) acquired after ear-bashing my I/T colleagues. In another year or two, I'll be back up in front of the room. And it's not so much a matter of living down this talk as it is living up to the standards set by the other presenters who generously share their time and knowledge (and war-stories) with us.
- - - - - -
* The Dunning-Krueger Effect is the inability of a newbie to correctly assess her/his abilities in a new area of competence.
It's been roughly a year and a half since I stood up in front of my MUG colleagues to bang on about my latest nerdery. So I knew that I was basically out of shape as a presenter. Still, I had a bit over three weeks to finish the outline and turn it into slides, but no big deal because it's really only the bare-bones basics, plus I totally know where I'm going with it and, anyway, the Arduino presentation was so long ago that nobody will realise that I'm poaching half the image files and honestly it's not like anyone here will be starting out from scratch with a C-like programming language anyway, right???
Boy howdy, did that beastie hand ever me my head -- more than any other presentation I've given. It was pretty humbling, even before I was regaling my shower-door with the soundtrack for the slide-deck. :~/ I half-expected at least one of my coaches/mentors from UWEC Forensics to show up and administer a well-deserved smack upside the head. A sampling of mistakes:
- Not verbalising sections as I finished them. (The first few run-throughs always sound absolutely dreadful; better to break that much dreadful into smaller chunks.)
- Trying to cram too much into single slides/sections. The last-minute right-sizing set me back to square one for the most difficult (and crucial) part of the whole thing.
- The demo. part should have been chucked overboard. The idea was to pull everything together and mop up the important nitty-gritties that weren't covered by the basic examples. But even contrived and oversimplified, it was too much for a fatigued group of people, smart as they are.
- Procrastinating until almost too late on wiring up an actual breadboard with the demo. project and trying to upload my sample code. Rookie mistakes that egregious on the Friday before a Tuesday presentation is nothing short of speaker malpractice, IMLTHO.
- Procrastinating until too late for actually timing the whole presentation. It ran close to 90 minutes end-to-end, I figure that 75 minutes was pushing the limits of people's patience. My last minute cuts never actually made it all the way out the door b/c of nerves. Bad, BAD me.
- Overconfidence in how quickly I could translate my extremely n00b understanding of a subject into something that could be understood by someone coming into the subject fresh. (Arduino has made huge inroads into the AVR space for a reason, fam!)
- And the great-grand-matriarch of all the other mistakes: Having precisely zero practical experience before volunteering. Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge fan of learning by teaching, but this skirted dangerously close to the proverb about the blind leading the lame.
But there was a ominous lack of response when I ended every section/subsection with "Any questions about that?" Uh-oh. Which tells me that, at best, I bored just over 20 very talented people who have better things to do on a Tuesday night. At worst, I made them lose whatever interest they might have had in AVR programming.
Cold comfort, I suppose, that I don't crawl out of the rubble entirely empty-handed. Quite apart part from the obvious perks of thoroughly understanding the material and having a sweet set of references all in one place, nat'cherly. And an even greater appreciation for everything that the Arduino ecosystem has accomplished. No, my personal takeaway from this three weeks of scrambling is where I need to turn my attention next. And next. And next. And so on. (Respectively, those "nexts" are Serial I/O, timers, pulse-width modulation, I2C and SPI communication, and then whatever I don't recognise while I'm tripping through all that.)
It goes (almost) without saying that I will certainly leave room in my brain for the lessons (and humility) acquired after ear-bashing my I/T colleagues. In another year or two, I'll be back up in front of the room. And it's not so much a matter of living down this talk as it is living up to the standards set by the other presenters who generously share their time and knowledge (and war-stories) with us.
- - - - - -
* The Dunning-Krueger Effect is the inability of a newbie to correctly assess her/his abilities in a new area of competence.
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Revenge of the script-kiddies
This week, I was happy to discover that Digikey has a blog (Maker.io). Which -- even as an aggregator -- is still a good place to visit every night before I put the tablet to bed. Except for the rare occasion when the content is engrossing but still kinda nightmare-fuel. Like the gas pump credit card skimmer "autopsies" cross-posted from Sparkfun's website.
Don't get me wrong: All hacking post-mortems -- and boy howdy, is this a hack -- are like candy to me. (For good or ill, I tend to think more like a builder than a breaker. It's one of those "see how the other half lives" things.) And a few of fascinating, albeit disturbing, things jumped out at me:
Normally I try to be grateful for the incompetent criminals. But in the case the same lack of will/skill to configure the Bluetooth module for stealth mode allows data to be stolen multiple times. Senator Warren (D-MA) excepted, the political will to hold even the most egregious negligence to account just doesn't exist in Washington. The fact that fewer than half of American adults have checked their credit reports in the wake of the Equifax breach demonstrates why. (Not unlike the folks who won't patch their software, amirite?)
And given the knuckle-dragging, lead-paint-chip-eating, mouth-breathing stupidity to come out of the GOP "leadership" after every mass-murder, you can darned well bet that the completely obvious, logical solution -- a.k.a. mandatory encryption in gas pump credit card readers -- is beyond hope. Why, that's the kind of red tape that will kill jobs; let the free market sort it out; government shouldn't be picking winners and losers; something-something-something, freedom, apple pie, USA! USA! [eyeroll]
The worst part is, what with the #cybergrandpas (@Viss's delicious term) currently running the show, I almost hope that there's no interest in the problem. Because like as not, the "solution" would be to ban the Bluetooth modules. Seriously, I would not be at all surprised. See, #cybergrandpas think they understand guns. They might have even held one at a sportsmans' club photo-op once! But they know they don't understand electronics. Which makes geeks who can tell Schottky from Shinola infinitely more terrifying than angry white men mowing down someone else's children by the dozen.
- - - - -
* The Sparkfun article at one point talks about the skimmers using the (older) HC-05, but then talks about the HC-06 (and, at one point, the HC-01, which I'm not convinced is even a real thing). Psssst! Hey, Sparkfun: If you're looking to hire a technical editor who works remotely, call me. I know a gal. More than one gal, in fact. What I'm saying is, you have options here.
Don't get me wrong: All hacking post-mortems -- and boy howdy, is this a hack -- are like candy to me. (For good or ill, I tend to think more like a builder than a breaker. It's one of those "see how the other half lives" things.) And a few of fascinating, albeit disturbing, things jumped out at me:
- Credit card reading software transmits in clear-text...WHYYYYYY????
- The circuit board is being mass-produced. Granted, etching your own circuit onto a board is fairly low-tech. (For grinsies, I intend to give that a go myself, 'smatter'a'fact.) But this is not a homebrew board. Someone had access to professional production facilities. Multiple times.
- The software was widely available, even before Sparkfun published the .HEX file. That's evident from the fact that three different PCBs were using the same bytecode.
- Based on the small footprint of the compiled code, it's probably safe to assume that the software was written by a seasoned professional...possibly in possession of optimiser software. (Newbie/Hobby programmers tend to write inefficient code. And they don't pony up for optimiser add-ons to their IDEs.)
- The head-scratcher is why skinny code was installed on a (comparatively) fat chip. Did someone port legacy code? Was someone planning for forward-compatibility? There are other possible explanations of course, but those I mentioned don't bode well either way.
- The person who assembled the final product couldn't be arsed to change the default settings on the Bluetooth module. Which means that anyone with the inclination (and the software) could roll up to the pump and download your credit card info. Swell.
- At least one of these digital yobs is a crap solderer too ignorant and/or lazy to learn elementary circuitry.
Normally I try to be grateful for the incompetent criminals. But in the case the same lack of will/skill to configure the Bluetooth module for stealth mode allows data to be stolen multiple times. Senator Warren (D-MA) excepted, the political will to hold even the most egregious negligence to account just doesn't exist in Washington. The fact that fewer than half of American adults have checked their credit reports in the wake of the Equifax breach demonstrates why. (Not unlike the folks who won't patch their software, amirite?)
And given the knuckle-dragging, lead-paint-chip-eating, mouth-breathing stupidity to come out of the GOP "leadership" after every mass-murder, you can darned well bet that the completely obvious, logical solution -- a.k.a. mandatory encryption in gas pump credit card readers -- is beyond hope. Why, that's the kind of red tape that will kill jobs; let the free market sort it out; government shouldn't be picking winners and losers; something-something-something, freedom, apple pie, USA! USA! [eyeroll]
The worst part is, what with the #cybergrandpas (@Viss's delicious term) currently running the show, I almost hope that there's no interest in the problem. Because like as not, the "solution" would be to ban the Bluetooth modules. Seriously, I would not be at all surprised. See, #cybergrandpas think they understand guns. They might have even held one at a sportsmans' club photo-op once! But they know they don't understand electronics. Which makes geeks who can tell Schottky from Shinola infinitely more terrifying than angry white men mowing down someone else's children by the dozen.
- - - - -
* The Sparkfun article at one point talks about the skimmers using the (older) HC-05, but then talks about the HC-06 (and, at one point, the HC-01, which I'm not convinced is even a real thing). Psssst! Hey, Sparkfun: If you're looking to hire a technical editor who works remotely, call me. I know a gal. More than one gal, in fact. What I'm saying is, you have options here.
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Do the tools make the maker? Sometimes I wonder...
One of the electronics/computer repair shops in Moncton has been branching out into selling Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and a whole whack of, ahem!, "accessories" for them. Business is apparently brisk: One wall became two, then three. I alternate between referring to them as "Candyland" and "The Widget-pushers."
So I emailed the Alpha-Widget-Pusher last week to see whether he had a source for the ATMega328P DIP chip I've been having a difficult time tracking down...at least from Canadian suppliers. And since I'm probably going to be spending some time moving these from breadboard to breadboard, it's a good excuse to find a better chip-puller than the twist-prone cheapie that I picked up from Princess Auto. So I tacked a request for recommendation onto the email.
The reply was that their Alpha Chip-Puller is mostly using tools made in the 1930s. For which, mad respect. Plus a small side of jealousy. Take care of the tools and the tools will take care of you -- that's one of my tenets, and not just in electronics.
I griped to Dennis about how, after decades of Kanban, TQM, ISO-9001, and every other flavour-of-the-month underfunded QA push, they still "don't make 'em like they used to." That's something you shouldn't gripe about to a Recovering Manufacturing Engineer(TM). At least not unless you want an earful about how ISO-9001 only guarantees that your processes are executed as documented.
But he's right. A CNC machine capable of of 0.001% tolerances can't stop the cheap steel it just milled from warping or cracking in use. Consistency is not quality...or at least is only a part of it. In fairness, in some cases consistency is a Very Big Deal(TM). (Remember Intel's division-error and the resulting freak-out? Even the one-in-nine-billion odds were too much for everyone.) But consistency is a hard, easily-measurable metric. Thus its overweighted role as a surrogate for quality.
True quality, of course, is squishier, less easily shoe-horned into a database or aggregated into a colour-coded chart/graph. Let's face it; no one picks a tool off the wall at the big-box hardware store or out of a mail-order box and thinks, "My great-grandchild will maybe use this to build __x__ one day." So I very much doubt that, unless they were hand-made, the manufacturer of those antique tools gave much thought to their whereabouts in 2018.
That's not to say that no one cared about quality. In the Great Depression, people were more apt to look on non-daily expenditures as "investments," especially tools that would better allow them to mend and "make do" vs. having to buy new. Double that for the craftsperson putting food on the table. Print advertisements and radio jingles, doubtless, headlined "quality"* as a major selling-point.
But tracking down product made decades ago and measuring its longevity? Even scraping and comparing offerings on eBay is nothing any MBA could consider a "metric." No, the value is solely in the eye of the beholder--specifically, the craftsperson who imagines the spirit of previous generations of craftspeople echoing in their work with the tool in question.
I suppose that some savvy marketer could pitch tools as "future heirlooms." 'S'matter'a'fact, I'm kind of surprised they already haven't. (And if they already haven't, for the noodley love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, shhhhhhhhhhh...) Mind you, any such campaign will be waged by some giga-conglomerate offs-horing its manufacturing while writhing its last in the strangling grip of a Wall Street vampire squid. But maybe--just maybe--its last gasp will blow on whatever embers remain of the crafts(wo)man ethic.
Melodramatic? Eh, probably. But even for someone whose tool-belt can be so very ephemeral--wherever you are, PC-Write, know that I still love you!--it does matter. Particularly post-Christmas as I stare at a brass-rimmed steel thimble perched on my monitor-stand. Mom doesn't expect to have the fine motor control necessary for hand-sewing ever again. So I'm the heiress of a *whack* of embroidery floss and her thimble. Which turns out to be her Mom's thimble. It's clearly been stepped-on, and there's a patina of rust on the inside. Alas, my bone-structure takes after my other, more petite, Grandmother. But that's nothing a little padding and a skinny rare-earth magnet can't deal with. And it will be dealt with, and shortly. Enshrining tools on a shelf is the same as burying them. I'd like a bit of Grandma to live on, even if only in my crazy projects.
- - - - -
* A sound captured by Mark Knopfler in his dangerously catchy throwback tune "Quality Shoe." (You, Gentle Reader, have been warned.)
So I emailed the Alpha-Widget-Pusher last week to see whether he had a source for the ATMega328P DIP chip I've been having a difficult time tracking down...at least from Canadian suppliers. And since I'm probably going to be spending some time moving these from breadboard to breadboard, it's a good excuse to find a better chip-puller than the twist-prone cheapie that I picked up from Princess Auto. So I tacked a request for recommendation onto the email.
The reply was that their Alpha Chip-Puller is mostly using tools made in the 1930s. For which, mad respect. Plus a small side of jealousy. Take care of the tools and the tools will take care of you -- that's one of my tenets, and not just in electronics.
I griped to Dennis about how, after decades of Kanban, TQM, ISO-9001, and every other flavour-of-the-month underfunded QA push, they still "don't make 'em like they used to." That's something you shouldn't gripe about to a Recovering Manufacturing Engineer(TM). At least not unless you want an earful about how ISO-9001 only guarantees that your processes are executed as documented.
But he's right. A CNC machine capable of of 0.001% tolerances can't stop the cheap steel it just milled from warping or cracking in use. Consistency is not quality...or at least is only a part of it. In fairness, in some cases consistency is a Very Big Deal(TM). (Remember Intel's division-error and the resulting freak-out? Even the one-in-nine-billion odds were too much for everyone.) But consistency is a hard, easily-measurable metric. Thus its overweighted role as a surrogate for quality.
True quality, of course, is squishier, less easily shoe-horned into a database or aggregated into a colour-coded chart/graph. Let's face it; no one picks a tool off the wall at the big-box hardware store or out of a mail-order box and thinks, "My great-grandchild will maybe use this to build __x__ one day." So I very much doubt that, unless they were hand-made, the manufacturer of those antique tools gave much thought to their whereabouts in 2018.
That's not to say that no one cared about quality. In the Great Depression, people were more apt to look on non-daily expenditures as "investments," especially tools that would better allow them to mend and "make do" vs. having to buy new. Double that for the craftsperson putting food on the table. Print advertisements and radio jingles, doubtless, headlined "quality"* as a major selling-point.
But tracking down product made decades ago and measuring its longevity? Even scraping and comparing offerings on eBay is nothing any MBA could consider a "metric." No, the value is solely in the eye of the beholder--specifically, the craftsperson who imagines the spirit of previous generations of craftspeople echoing in their work with the tool in question.
I suppose that some savvy marketer could pitch tools as "future heirlooms." 'S'matter'a'fact, I'm kind of surprised they already haven't. (And if they already haven't, for the noodley love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, shhhhhhhhhhh...) Mind you, any such campaign will be waged by some giga-conglomerate offs-horing its manufacturing while writhing its last in the strangling grip of a Wall Street vampire squid. But maybe--just maybe--its last gasp will blow on whatever embers remain of the crafts(wo)man ethic.
Melodramatic? Eh, probably. But even for someone whose tool-belt can be so very ephemeral--wherever you are, PC-Write, know that I still love you!--it does matter. Particularly post-Christmas as I stare at a brass-rimmed steel thimble perched on my monitor-stand. Mom doesn't expect to have the fine motor control necessary for hand-sewing ever again. So I'm the heiress of a *whack* of embroidery floss and her thimble. Which turns out to be her Mom's thimble. It's clearly been stepped-on, and there's a patina of rust on the inside. Alas, my bone-structure takes after my other, more petite, Grandmother. But that's nothing a little padding and a skinny rare-earth magnet can't deal with. And it will be dealt with, and shortly. Enshrining tools on a shelf is the same as burying them. I'd like a bit of Grandma to live on, even if only in my crazy projects.
- - - - -
* A sound captured by Mark Knopfler in his dangerously catchy throwback tune "Quality Shoe." (You, Gentle Reader, have been warned.)
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