Mind The Gap

Tried to snowboard today. Biffed a few times. The boots and general method of snowboarding hurt my ankles a lot, I layered up like one is supposed to and got all sweaty due to the sun, then caught a chill which gave me a fever later, and I don’t think I like snowboarding. The views were awesome though. I was wondering if the folks would let you buy a ticket and just ride the lift all the way up and back down, just to see the view.

It snowed last night so we had fresh pretty white snow all over the place this morning, and it also seems to have helped clear up the smog down in the valley. Getting to go up into the mountain and see it all was worth the annoyance of the snow boarding (to add insult to annoyance, my sweater was rubbing against the new tattoo and I was concerned about messing it up, which played into my decision to bail pretty early and hang out at the lodge until quittin’ time). I’m not sure if it’s the altitude, the cold, the sunlight (it’s extra bright because it reflects off the snow), or the smog but every day in the early afternoon I get a headache that lasts until at least dusk. This has happened since we got here, further supporting my theory that I am actually an amphibian and should only be kept in environments that are 78-85 degrees in temperature, sort of dimly lit, and very humid. The snow sure is pretty though.

Ryan took some pictures from the snowboarding expedition, but his phone can no longer ‘see’ the laptop in order to beam the pictures over. Hopefully I can eventually get that sorted out, in the meantime I’ve emailed myself a few of the pictures from Ryan’s phone, in order to include them here, hopefully I’ll update with more later.

Yesterday we drove into Park City to go snow tubing at Gorgoza (aka Gorgonzola) Park. Park City seems to be fairly high up (relative to the basin) in the mountains, so we were above the haze (called “inversion”) and the views were pretty good.

The snow tubing was LOTS of fun, and after that we walked around the historic/downtown part of Park City, trying to grab a snack and a drink. This took a little while and was very cold. During this part of the outing some snow melted and seeped past my shoes’ defenses, and my feet got very cold, along with the rest of me. By the time we got back to Hof’s house, I was going feverish (either due to cold wet feet, or due to wisdom teeth bugging me, blech), and either the smog or the altitude (along with the cold) increased the pressure in my skull several fold. I dosed up and went to bed early.

The next morning (day 3) I felt better, but still kind of under, so I slept in while everyone else went to ski (and Theresa went to campus). Ryan kindly stayed to look after me and bring me tea. After we got up and went downstairs, we found a note Theresa had left with a little map and info on where some nearby cool stuff was, which bus to take, etc. That was really cool of her. By noonish I was feeling a bit better, so we went walking.

We found a cool tattoo shop nearby, and I indulged my growing habit of getting a new tattoo on each vacation/trip that allows for it. I got some pink/purple/magenta orchids across my collarbone/shoulder.

And here was a cool art piece that was hanging in the shop:

Which chronicle the voyage in, and some of the things we saw on our first day here.

The restaurant we ate at in the Midtown airport (Chicago, Illinois) during the layover between flights:

And a shot of the view from Hofstetter and Theresa’s front yard:

(Unfortunately the cloud cover makes the view of the mountains in the background less than optimal, they are behind the odd gray blurry part of the horizon.)

On our first day, we went shopping to stock up on the cold weather supplies we couldn’t reasonably procure in Gainesville before leaving, and then hit up the museum of natural history at the University of Utah here in Salt Lake City.

Neat stuffed wolf in the biology hall:

Another view of said wolf, which shows the ‘underwater’ fish he’s staring down:

A squirrel for Emili:

Upward view of the cavernous hall which had lots of fossils, information about basic evolution of some species (like fish), and some information about earthquakes:

And on our way to find food after leaving the museum, we happened upon a cute statue:

Members of my immediate family may appreciate the humor behind this one. Petunia is for my dad.

Puppy toy squeaking
Piercing the night so loudly
Waking us from dreams

So last night the dog decided to sleep on the corner of the bed and squeak her favorite toy cow repeatedly. She’d stop, we’d go to sleep, then she’d start again. I mostly managed to ignore and sleep through, but apparently Ryan was not so lucky. He didn’t take the toy away and hide it though, so I must presume it didn’t bother him too much.

More house pictures. Only like 2 weeks til closing!!

http://home.acceleration.net/hmfullen/valwood2/

Recording this link so’s I don’t lose it: http://vesicular.livejournal.com/123053.html

Wonder if I can get mario and princess toppers to decorate and paint white for the top of the cake for our upcoming wedding.  Guess we’d still have to figure out what to do for the groom’s cake, or just not have one…meh…too many choices.

An old poem I wrote back in June 05 that I found today. Thought it deserved to be recorded properly such that I might not lose it again.

Your days are long, your announcements are stilted
Sometimes working all night causes you to feel jilted
Denied gratitude, from your users en masse
Although toiling hard you might hit an impasse

You live to fix breakages, spending hours in house
At least once daily making efforts, a fire to douse
Some of you even, perhaps partake in vice
To support your attempts, to always be nice

Users are users, and will always be
Not even at five, are you finally free
Pager and IM beeps, and cell phone rings
Into all hours your job relentlessly clings

Although it’s not recognized, for the courage entailed
Those in the know, would not see you curtailed
And so though rarely said, well known it should be
Your endeavors serve to keep this ship worthy for sea

Always around, to step into the fray
To coordinate help, and to know what to say
Valiantly striving, a client’s fears to calm
So to you I offer this, even though it’s no psalm

Fear of Failure

Although almost every person with a lot of responsibility holds some fear of failure, some managers allow themselves to be paralyzed by this fear. Symptoms include inability to make decisions even when presented with adequate information, severe aversion to even the most calculated of risks and a strong attachment to the status quo, regardless of how much a change could improve the current functional state, and in the most extreme cases, regardless of how much a change is needed because the current state is dysfunctional.

Some of the wisest leaders will say that it does not matter if a person makes some mistakes or wrong decisions, so long as they learn from them, and their overall decision making process generally produces good results. Mistakes will happen, but to consistently refuse to take action, or to fail to seize opportunities because of risks when those risks are minor or manageable in proportion to the gains, is a much larger mistake.

There are times when waiting it out will work, and the situation bullying the leader will get bored and go away, and the best thing to do really is nothing, but a leader must not allow their fear to cause them to believe this is always the case and should become the standard behavior. Each situation must be picked apart, all inputs considered, and all options for action thought out thoroughly, bringing in the knowledge that is available to that manager in the minds of his team, and then a decision should be made.

The best leaders acknowledge that there is a risk and cost with everything, but they are willing to face that risk honestly, and also face the potential gains honestly (without exaggeration and inflation) and then make a reasoned decision about what to do.

There is no gain without risk, and so a manager who refuses to take risks, is also effectively refusing gains in almost every situation. Don’t be one of these people.

Other Fear Driven Manager Posts:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

I find it interesting that there isn’t so much out there in terms of open source project management. I don’t mean software/project management tools – those really aren’t the hard part to find, as far as I can tell. I mean vital information on the major projects that companies have to do over and over again, upon which companies that want your money keep a close reign on the data, so that other folks have a hard time figuring out what the thing really is, and what really needs to be done, without doing all the research themselves, or coughing up to someone that specializes in the subject.

Now, I’m all for consultants making their money, but shouldn’t I at least be able to get enough information to figure out what’s got to be done and start mapping that out against the systems I’m dealing with in order to get an idea of scope? Wouldn’t it be better to take a stab at all the obvious stuff, and then have the consultant come in to help us fine tune it if it’s needed? Usually if there’s a big project (in my industry, these may be common product features or subsystems, security compliance efforts, industry standard file processing formats that we might need to deal with, and so on), you have to redo all the research to turn the ‘implementation guides’ and what not into something you can really use to see how far you are from the target.

Side note: a solid gap analysis is crucial to properly defining your effort’s scope, and properly defining your effort’s scope seems to be crucial to putting in a reasonably accurate estimate. A reasonably accurate estimate seems to be a large factor in whether or not the stuff gets done on time, and whether or not everyone gets to keep collecting paychecks.

There just don’t seem to be enough products of this preliminary research: assessment questionnaires, guides translating the other guides, post mortems and horror stories, and other such useful information on major projects like security compliance, audit preparation, and the like. When I start out on a big project that it seems like other folks certainly should have tackled before, I try to see what I can find on it, maybe someone else has shared some experience that can help me make sure we cover our bases. You get the idea.

I’m sure this kind of information is probably out there (duh, the information is absolutely infinite), but most often it’s very difficult to find, or what is found will be completely customized to someone else.

I was thinking about that (while looking for information on PCI Compliance) and decided maybe I could do something to help. Hopefully the google gnomes can index this content every time I type in ‘PCI Compliance’ (as an example, I’m sure there are other such efforts) and the next time someone googles that they will find this stuff and maybe it will be helpful. There is something to be said for trade secrets and competitive edges – but now that we’ve proven how successful open source software can be, why don’t we prove how successful open source project management could be? So much of what we research, discover and produce in the course of trying to implement something could be valuable to others later trying to implement the same thing. While we can’t share all of it (trade secrets and all) some of it we could share.

By sharing the information, even just in stories and warnings, maybe as we use it we can refine it, and begin creating things that others can use to save them some effort or potentially steer them away from a silly mistake. It takes only a short amount of time to create a document or template in a generic version that isn’t specific to your situation or company, and then save it off to the side to share, rather than going straight to the company-specific, non-sharable version. To top it off, you could use something like the creative commons license to ensure that your efforts should be attributed to you.

I’d like to see more of that going on – with more folks than just the major project management websites swapping around templates and things. On sites like gantthead, you can register and get some templates, but they are vague, intended to be used for any project, filled out with information on that project – what if you don’t yet have much (or any) information on that project, where do you go when you don’t even know where to begin? If the project is something done over and over all over the country or the world (I bet you can find enough blog posts about building a login page) why can’t you find the insights of others out there and readily accessible? Having something more than the raw technical documentation (that may not even be read by anyone outside development staff) on hand would likely help the stewing process a lot, maybe for more than just project administration staff – but for development teams as well. This kind of information might help them get an idea of the real value (and costs/pain) of a particular undertaking (ISO certification anyone?).

Maybe the more functional/schedule projecty-types (who are undoubtedly and infinitely valuable) just haven’t yet discovered the value of sharing this kind of information like the software development community has? What would happen if they did?

I bet it would be cool.

Today I went to the asian market with Emili and found some fun things, some of which became a partially pre-manufactured dinner. Everything is simmering now, and I think it’s going to be pretty good so I’m recording the ingredients for my own future reference if I want to make this again. Anyone else that likes curry is also more than welcome to try it out.

Ingredients

1. 1 can Maesri Red Curry Soup
2. 2-3 stalks of celery, chopped
3. 1 whole tomato chopped
4. 1 package tempeh, cut into small bits
5. rice…I used 1 bag from a package of success boil-in-bag brown rice that we had sitting in the cupboard
6. olive oil
7. salt
8. pepper
9. sriracha (sp?) or other exceedingly hot chili compound

Instructions

1. Start some water boiling for the rice…at least on my stove, getting a big pot of water boiling takes a long time so you have to start it early.
2. Chop up the tempeh
3. Combine in a pot already heated at High/Med-High
1. olive oil (pour for about 1-2 seconds…it’s probably something like 3-4 tablespoons)
2. Sriracha garlic chili paste (about 1-2 tablespoons, or more if you like things spicy)
3. about 1 tablespoon dried red pepper flakes
4. salt to taste
5. pepper to taste
4. Add tempeh
5. Let tempeh get heated all the way through in the mixture, stirring frequently
6. Add chopped celery and tomatoes (you can chop them while the tempeh is cooking)
7. Sometime during this process the water for the rice starts to boil – toss the rice in
8. Once you are satisfied that the tempeh is fairly well heated through, pour in the can of curry soup
9. The curry soup goodness is ready to go once it’s all heated through, this seems to be around or shortly after the rice gets done cooking.

If I’ve never noted it, I should now. The asian market off 13th street and 23rd ave rocks.