A Backyardigan’s intermission becomes a chance to help a kid

If you have a four year old son, you know that every outing revolves around going to the bathroom. An interesting and funny event happened to me last summer when my family went to see the Backyardigan’s live on stage in downtown Tampa. After the first act was over, there was a mad rush by everyone to get to the bathroom. The average age of the kids in attendance was probably right around 4 years old, which led to hundreds of mommies trying to take their kids into the women’s bathroom all at the same time. While I did not see any fights break out, I did see a large number of little boys turning green and jumping up and down.

I walked past the women’s bathroom with my son grateful not to have to wait in that line, but went straight to men’s bathroom which did not have a line. I almost made it into the bathroom, but then one of the mommies rushed over to me with her son and said “can you take my son? He needs to go bad!” I think I smiled and said “sure”, but now instead of being responsible for one 4 year old boy about to pee in his pants, I was responsible for two, and one of them I did not even know! This would not have been that bad, except for when I walked into the bathroom, I realized that none of the toilets were available and all of the urinals were for adults only. A kid I don’t know and an adult urinal, what to do?

I had on occasion allowed my son to step on my foot as a sort of stool for this kind of situation in the past, but when I asked the kid to step on my foot, he was non-responsive. I imagined having to return this kid to his mom without him going to the bathroom and decided I needed to come up with an alternative plan. We could wait until one of the toilets became available, but the line for the toilets was too long. So I did the only thing that I could do.

I picked the kid up under his arms so he was at the height on the urinal; he definitely had to go because he peed for about thirty seconds into the urinal. I wasn’t expecting him to pee this long and was not in a comfortable position. While holding him in the air, a toilet opened up on the far end of the large bathroom and my son ran over to it. When I put the kid down, he immediately zipped up his pants and ran out of the bathroom as fast as he could go. I told him he did not wash his hands, but he ran too fast down the hallway to hear me. I did what I could for the kid and was not surprised that he wanted to get back to his mommy, and I needed to make sure my son was alright in the stall.

Advice worth sharing came to me recently from an unlikely source. The demand for audiobooks appears to have dropped to nothing due to the economy allowing me to pick up large selections of books. One of those books discussed the loss of loved ones, and its words immediately resonated with me. The implication of the advice has more to do with how we should interact with and think about other people than just helping in dealing with their loss.

A friend wrote to another describing the feelings of loss associated with losing his brother. He described his pain over the missed opportunities that now existed with his death. The entire focus was on the loss that had occurred and its impact in the future. The response was a simple, but profound, question. If you knew that your brother would only be with you for only this short period of time, would have ever wanted to know him? The answer was “Of course!”

The profound sense of loss we feel when a loved one dies is often worsened by our thoughts of what we should or could have done with them in the future. This simple question immediately switches focus back onto what is important, the gift of our time that people share with one another. The anticipation or expectation of some future event is not part of that gift, and in fact can stop us from seeing what others give to us. Also, the gift others give us will not come in a beautifully wrapped package with a bow, so it will not always be obvious or even desired.

When you view other’s time as a gift, it alters your view of their actions. Fun times are still fun, and even more so as you are aware of the joy that you are sharing and receiving. The difficulty is in seeing the gift when it comes in the form of pain directed at you. When people who care about each other share their pain with one another, the ability to see this as a gift allows the pain to be overcome. There is no greater gift then the gift of other people.

Does sleep and dreaming really act like a problem solving tool or is there something else going on?

Have you ever been unable to solve a problem one day but after sleep the solution became obvious? Many in our society are no longer directly paid for their actions but for the results of their thought processes. Understanding and controlling thought processes contributes directly to work success. But even with this change from physical to mental labor, the social pressures surrounding physical labor have for the most part been maintained. This disconnect has lead to many mistaken concepts including one that sleeping on a problem helps in its solution.

After immediately solving a problem that appeared unsolvable the previous day, it is logical to conclude that sleeping created the solution. Sleep did not create the problem solution and understanding what did will allow you to become a better problem solver without waiting until the next day (and will allow you to get a better night sleep). The belief that the brain solves problems while sleeping is a mistaken belief. When in possession of the necessary facts to solve a problem, the benefit that come from sleep is not mystical knowledge generation, but instead is the regaining of focus. Instead of the brain mulling all night in an attempt to solve the problem, it is actually doing the complete opposite, it is releasing focus. In the morning, when you regain focus is when the solution appears apparently from nowhere. This is the moment of problem solution and may have been entirely reachable the previous day.

Focusing causes a reduction in the information that the brain can access with the benefit of finer processing of the information left, directly analogous to focusing with vision. The object of focus becomes clearer while the surroundings become blurry. But what if the object of desire is not the object of focus? Mental focus also has the unfortunate effect that we sometimes see past the solution or see a related but suboptimal solution. But while time spent focused on a particular task with physical labor is directly related to work output (up to the point of exhaustion), it is almost inversely related with mental labor. If the solution is not almost immediate, then the longer and harder you focus, the further the solution moves from your grasp.

When confident that you know the necessary information to solve the problem, releasing and regaining focus may speed problem resolution. When the solution appears impossible or improbable, simply write the problem down and relax. How long should you relax? Take as much time as it takes to relax. If you are unable to relax at work, then you should first address this as a primary problem.  After relaxing, focus on doing something else or solving some other issue. Only after switching focus to at least one other topic should you switch it back and attempt to solve the problem again. Also, do this with the understanding that you may not be able to explain your actions in a socially acceptable way to those that have a physical labor mindset, but methods of effective problem solving are not easily explainable anyway.

Bubbles are supposed to happen only once in a lifetime, but we have had at least three in the last decade! Baby boomers and everyone else look out!

 

The last decade has brought the dotcom bubble, the housing bubble, and now the Baby Boomer Bubble. Never heard of the Baby Boomer Bubble? Just talk to anyone nearing retirement, and you may quickly find out that there is a hidden bubble that is now bursting. Baby boomers have been investing large amounts of money for most of their lives, much more than any previous generation. Now they are losing tremendous amounts of money and are slowing becoming very angry.

Boomers have been taught to be frugal and save money while the rest of the society been on a credit induced spending orgy. Unfortunately, our society’s receptiveness to debt has now infected the Boomers savings, which may have been cut in half during 2000-2003 and now cut in half again during the great unwinding of 2008. This would be bad enough, except that 2008 is not over. If this keeps up, Boomers may start to invest in under bed mattress storage bins for the storage of their cash.

The Baby Boomer Bubble is not a single event, but an aggregate bubble across the stock, real estate, and bond markets. Basically wherever the Boomers have put their money has gone bust! Even reverse mortgages will probably not work well with the drastic drop in home prices. So what investment is left that is safe for Boomers? Are the only things left cash and T-bills? Are the Boomers angry enough to cash in their chips?

Not a Boomer so you don’t care? Well, consider what the next couple of years holds – the largest most politically active group in the US (the Boomers) is angry and demanding action, the finance system is tanking, the federal government now owns pieces of banks and soon insurance companies, the President will likely be a Democrat in two weeks, the House of Representatives will definitely be run by the Democrats, and the Senate may have a filibuster proof 60 Democrats. Want change you can believe in? How about change that you are powerless to stop?

This is not to say that everything that is coming is bad, there is widespread agreement that the healthcare insurance system is broken and that a realistic long term energy policy is needed. It is clear that Republican “leadership” in these areas was either non-existent or being used as political bargaining chips. The energy policy of the Republicans seemed to be “drill baby, drill”, unfortunately we got drilled. The only thing that looked like a Republican healthcare insurance plan was to reduce taxes on cigarettes.

So, where does this leave us? Two weeks out from a US election that is likely an inflection point in history. Not only does it impact the US, but the entire world will be impacted. The US military is fully engaged in two wars, the financial system is in turmoil, the economy is slowing with unemployment likely to go double digit next year, and individual debt is exploding. Will a change in the political situation in Washington fix all of this?

Hillary’s only road to the White House requires McCain to win in 2008

Microsoft has a distinct advantage over its competitors because it uses its own tools to create its products.  Historically, its only perceived meaningful competitor was Borland, which was why Microsoft was so joyous when Borland became irrelevant.  Even so, Microsoft has been able to use Office and Windows as smoke screens for its actual intentions – domination of the internet.  Described here is how I perceive Microsoft intends to accomplish this.

The public concept of the Internet changed in 1995 from being an interconnection of networks and associated tools to being viewed solely as the World Wide Web.  News groups, gopher sites, and telnet bulletin board systems were the main applications of the internet prior to that time.  The web was introduced almost as a logical replacement of the menu based gopher servers with hyperlinks instead of the gopher menus for navigation.  It is no wonder that Microsoft was not the first on the web bandwagon, but the introduction of WPF and XAML cleary signifies a change.  If Microsoft is successful in implementing its strategy, the public’s perception of the Internet will change from a data dominant format (web pages) to an application based format (WPF applications).

WPF and XAML are not about making web pages more interactive or flashy but are intended to obsolete web pages.  Instead of trillions of documents linked together, the web would be replaced by seas of Internet applications.  These applications will use web services for interaction instead of HTML hyperlinks, eliminating the need for web search engines.  The internet will slowly become opaque to the search engine crawlers because interpreting XAML application code will not yield the same sort of meaningful results generated from HTML documents.

The introduction of WPF will generate a market for off the shelf internet applications that never fully existed with HTML.  The imposed connectionless nature of HTTP that hampers HTML is removed along with gaining the abilities to easily use local processing and storage. This can be leveraged to remove the significant privacy concerns that many users have related to web sites while significantly reducing the need for web server capacity.  WPF enables the creation of new forms of internet applications.  For example, instead of newspapers maintaining their own separate websites, a single browser based internet application could be created that would be able to access any of their content (either fee or ad based).  But, how would internet applications be found if they are not searchable through Google?  

Some of my more embarrassing learning experiences of being a father for the first time are things that I would ordinarily prefer not to share with others.  For example, the first time I changed a diaper is something that I would rather keep to myself and would have except for the fact that it went so poorly.  The worst part about it is that I knew how to change a diaper, but sometimes circumstances override one’s reason, which is how the great diaper mishap of 2002 happened.

It all began innocently enough.  The night after the birth of our first child, we were in the hospital and everything was going well.  Nurses would come in periodically to help us with our baby and had showed us how to change our baby’s diaper using gauze pads instead of baby wipes.  The nurses explained that baby wipes could be too harsh for a newborn and that we should use gauze pads for the first week instead, which seemed reasonable.  The only problem is we did not see the nurse wetting the gauze before using it, but how could that matter?

After settling in for some sleep on the fold-out couch provided for fathers in the hospital recovery room, I knew that the chance of sleeping more than a couple of hours was slim.  Even so, any sleep was welcome.  Waking to the sound of our newborn crying, it was about 4AM and we knew immediately that it was time to change her diaper.  Should we ring the nurse to help us? Of course not!  A diaper change is not that big of a deal and what could go wrong?  Undoing the diaper, it was obvious that our parental instincts were right on target.

The poop was a dark color, similar to a spinach salad that was put in the blender.  So I began to wipe with the gauze pads, but immediately noticed something was amiss.  Instead of wiping the poop off, it just smeared it around and made everything worse!  I remember my wife’s words which were a half laughing “oh no!”  Realizing that I am a man who just made a terrible blunder, I did the only thing that I could do as a man, which was to get more gauze and continue wiping making the situation even worse.

The rise of the Microsoft as the child of IBM

There is one dominant company that impacts computing.  Even if you do not use their products, you are impacted by their decisions.  They are a one stop shop for operating systems, databases, and software development.  Is there a particular company that comes to mind?  Well, twenty to thirty years ago, it would have been IBM.  Now that company is Microsoft.

Before I go any further, I should explain one important point.  Do not let this point mistakenly cloud the bigger idea that comes later.  I have spent the last decade or more making money using Microsoft products.  Prior to that, I was a kid and beholden to no company, especially IBM.  Even so, I was a geeky kid and very much integrated into the computing community, which included products from Atari, Commodore, IBM, and Apple.  I experienced the thrill of 8-bit, 1-Mhz, 48 KB Atari computing and thought that IBM was the big nasty behemoth that was forcing everyone to suffer with choosing between four colors and no colors.

Even so, I was excited the day my father brought home an IBM-PC, if for no other reason than it was something new to learn.  I became an expert at switching diskettes from one drive to another, a skill that was necessary to properly execute Lotus 1-2-3 successfully.  I also experienced the whir of a 10MB hard drive, which was equivalent in my thinking to a 100 TB drive today in size.  The only downside was that we almost got a Macintosh instead, which probably would have transformed me from a geek into a geek whose father spent a large amount of money on being a geek.  So I got to see the Atari/Commodore/Apple battle along side the IBM/Clone wars that started to occur in the mid to late 1980s.

The common thinking, as far as I knew it, early on was that MS-DOS was only an interim OS until CPM or some UNIX variant matured enough to take over.  Of course, I was not in on the meetings between IBM and Bill Gates where he sold them something he did not have, so I could not have witnessed the rise of Microsoft from the ground floor.  But, I did witness the rise of Microsoft Windows, mainly because I was interested in an alternate product called GEM (Graphic Environment Manager, or something like that) which was a solid competitor to early versions of Windows and was included with new Atari ST Computer (welcome to the 16-bit world!).  I also witnessed the rise of Microsoft Office, which took multiple iterations until it crushed the entrenched competitors like WordPerfect, Paradox, Lotus 1-2-3, etc.  But the biggest morale boosting win for Microsoft did not come from the operating system market or office suite market, but instead it was on the development tools side.

Microsoft’s core concept of itself is as a software development tool company.  This permeates everything Microsoft develops, even Windows and Office.  Linux definitely threatens or threatened Microsoft’s dominance in the operating system arena.  There have been multiple attempts (some feeble) to dislodge Microsoft from their dominance in the office suite arena.  But nothing, not even the excellent free development tools available (Eclipse being one) have caused Microsoft to change their course, although it possibly led to the free express versions of Visual Studio.  There is one competitor, whom Microsoft lovingly called “Buck Forland”.  If you switch the “B” and “F”, you will understand.

The earliest IDE (Integrated development environment) that I can remember is Borland’s Turbo C.  You could write, compile, and test the code all within a single application, which was a huge advance in development tools.  This innovation may have led Borland to make an excellent development tool for Windows called Delphi.  If Delphi was a Microsoft product, it would have been the dominant development tool and Visual Basic may not have survived.  I say this even though for most of my career I would likely have been called a Visual Basic developer.

Many late to the game may look at Microsoft first through the lens of the Netscape/Sun lawsuits.  Most people misperceive the threat that I believe Microsoft envisioned from Netscape and Microsoft’s view of Java at that time.  A common view has something to do with Windows becoming irrelevant or some other interesting but unlikely situation.  Another view that seemed to permeate had something to do with web applications replacing Microsoft Office.  This may happen at some point, but from what I can see, the company to do it will likely be Microsoft itself. Both of these still miss the core of how Microsoft sees itself as a company.

The real threat had to do with Microsoft losing its ability to control the software development landscape.  If Microsoft had lost the software development business, it would become just an OS and software application vendor completely exposed to all the other application vendors.  The interesting point from the lawsuit was that the judge had ordered that Microsoft be split into two – an OS company and an application company.  What was Microsoft reaction to this?

Ignoring the legal reaction, the technical reaction appeared to be the development of MS.NET, which can be thought of in non-technical terms as a layer between application development and the OS.  Prior to the lawsuits, it appeared that Microsoft was embracing Java as a future software development path.  Some believe, maybe correctly, that the intent by Microsoft towards Java was to “embrace, extend, and destroy”, but I think this may be a mistaken view.  The extension Microsoft made in its J++ product definitely had the impact of making the applications solely usable on Windows, but they were necessary to make the applications usable at all.

Along with being a Visual Basic developer, I also have multiple years of experience in Java development.  I understand that what Microsoft was doing with J++ was required, because otherwise GUI J++ applications would have required using the Swing library, which is a dog.  So Microsoft had the choice of releasing something that would have been cross platform (but absolute crap) or to build their own non-crappy GUI library.  The interesting thing is that you may be able to get away with using Swing now because of the significant improvements in computing hardware, but then (1997 era) it was not acceptable for business use.

Getting back to the point about MS.NET, after the lawsuit, Microsoft dropped all real attempts to continue down the Java path and threw its weight behind MS.NET.  Even if the company was split into two, it would still control the underlying foundation for its development tools.  Microsoft adding a Windows GUI library to Java did not kill Java for Windows applications, but the end result of MS.NET definitely has.  I don’t see too many Java based (non-crappy) Windows applications floating around anymore.

Louis Gerstner (IBM CEO from 1993 to 2002) interestingly says that IBM was the Microsoft of the 1960s-1980s with the IBM 360 Mainframe dominance.  It sounds interesting to me to call IBM the Microsoft of the past because I tend to view it in the opposite light with Microsoft (partnered with Intel) as the new IBM, or at least as an offspring of IBM.  Microsoft, as the child of IBM, probably rebels in some areas, but picks up where big blue left off in others.  From my perspective, it is obvious that Microsoft is much better at building development tools for small to medium size businesses then IBM was.  Unfortunately, Microsoft actually writes worse documentation then IBM did, which I thought was impossible based on IBM’s history of generating worthless documentation.  The IBM of the past was the master at writing technically correct but unusable documentation.  It could tell you the name of a switch, describe its basic function, but not tell you why you should switch it.  Instead of going down a Microsoft or IBM bashing route, let’s get back to the main point.

In the late 1970s, IBM was the unquestioned dominant computer company.  In the early 1980s, a small (maybe considered inconsequential) decision by IBM led to it’s almost bankruptcy only a decade later with Microsoft and Intel picking up the pieces.  Most leading businesses share market dominance with multiple other businesses, but in the technology game it is winner take all.  Only in technology will you see people willingly using products that they hate out of necessity.  The network effect in technology causes gravitational market shifts to occur.

The more times a program is run successfully does not decrease the chance of failure

A common mistake that is often made by businesses is to trust software systems that have run for a long period of time.  These systems are usually considered trustworthy because all known issues have been “shaken-out”, which means that all problems related to the business have been corrected.  Systems that become a tried and true piece of the business may become the Achilles' heel.  The point that businesses miss is that the longer a system runs, the greater the likelihood that the system architecture will fail.  There are multiple reasons for this, but two of the main reasons are as follows.

When software systems are built, there is a tendency to overlook the lifetime of the system in the design of the system.  All software has a point of failure, but it is rarely determined or taken into account when building systems.  When this point of failure occurs, it can lead to a catastrophic failure causing the system to no longer function, which is the best case scenario.  This is the best case scenario because the worst case is that the system continues to appear to function properly but is actually destroying your business data.

The second reason for failure is that systems are altered over time, increasing the chance of failure.  Rarely does the person altering the system have the same understanding of its function as the initial development group (I may be falsely assuming that the initial development group was competent).  These changes are usually attempts to correct some mistake in the business process logic, but sometimes it can be changes to the underlying architecture driven by some business need.  Taking one brick out of a building is not likely to cause a problem, but deleting even a single line of critical architecture code can yield dire results.

Are businesses doomed to have their critical software system fail at the worst possible time?  Not if they take action to mitigate the risk association with system failure.  Unfortunately, this requires an incredibly difficult step – businesses must change from being risk adverse to risk conscious.  As described earlier, businesses mistakenly tend to trust systems that have run for a long time without major failure, but businesses should never trust their core operational systems!  There should always be a fall-back system that can be used if the core system fails.

These fall-back systems should be able to run the business in case of the main system failure, but they can be significantly simplified to meet only the critical business process needs.  These systems also have the added side benefit of being proof of concepts for redesign of critical system.  Instead of critical systems being tied to one specific implementation, the business will have other options which can be leveraged in the future.  The critical point to understand is that creation of system business process logic is expensive, time-intensive, and risky while the designing and architecting of small software systems is not.  Businesses should assign a small portion of their staff to constantly research how to improve their critical system along with building secondary backup systems for all critical business systems.

- Luke