Unconditional Love

Here's a controversial thought, for you...

Actually, before I launch into that, I read an interesting thought about controversy that I want to share. I'll be exploring this idea further in a future blog. The gist of it is this: controversial ideas are ones that people are afraid might be true. Basically, if I say "the moon is made of green cheese", that's not particularly controversial, because nobody really believes it and nobody really cares -- it's "whacky", but not "controversial." On the other hand, if I say "there is [an/no -- choose one] all-powerful God who created the heavens and Earth", folks will get all crazy and line up on either side, ignoring each other, shouting their positions and sometimes even going to war over their fear that somebody might believe the other side of the argument. That's controversial!

Tangent: We all knew that guy in high school whose idea of a "gorgeous girl" was one with two eyes and a nose (and, really, both eyes were optional), right? Most of us would chide him for his constant claim of "oh, my god -- I think I love that girl..." with some variation on "but you love every girl -- and some of ambiguous girl-ness...!" and, of course, he'd always claim "oh, that was yesterday -- this one's different!" I think it's fair to characterize this guy as fairly-universally scorned for his lack of discernment, yes? Even folks who weren't in close contact with this guy know of him and, even if they have some level of forgiveness (probably related to his other redeeming potential) for him, can understand the idea, here. In other words, not a whole lot of controversy around the idea that this guy -- swell pal though he may have been -- was a bit of a wanker when it comes to relationship-building.

I was reminded about this reading a few of my favorite blogs (luckily, most of them didn't do this) when they announced to the entire internet (and these are blogs with REAL readerships!) (I'm paraphrasing wildly, here): "Today [Thanksgiving day] I am thankful for each and every one of you, my readers. You are each my very bestest friend in the entire world and I love you more than any of the others."

But that's not really very controversial. A bit thick on the saccharine, maybe, but hardly a hanging offense.

Ok, anyway... here's my controversial thought for the day (the weekend, actually): "Unconditional love is meaningless."

This insight came up -- at all times -- during grace over Thanksgiving dinner. Of course we're all thankful for all of the wonderful things that we have: a warm home, plenty of food, a nice job, luxuries up the wahzoo, the best family and friends of anyone, ever, etc. But it was either during grace or shortly after that someone said something about giving unconditional love (I keep thinking it was during the prayer -- as one most-often hears that phrase in the context of something coming from God -- but it might have actually been in conversation, immediately following), and I got to thinking that descriptive words that cover everything just aren't very useful.

I mean, if I tell you that something is "blodjot" and you say "what the heck is 'blodjot'?!" and I explain that it's this sort of ineffable quality that everything has, and you ask how you can tell if something is blodjot and I explain that everything is blodjot well, then saying "look at that blodjot thing over there" just doesn't really give you any information, right?

And it gets even weirder with vague notions like "love." If I say I love you and you, knowing that I sometimes use words in non-standard ways, ask what I mean by that, and I explain that I love everybody -- ok, I haven't really told you anything. But then, if I go on to tell you that, not only do I love everybody, but that my love for all of mankind is without bounds, and unconditional -- there is nothing you or anyone else can do to either procure my love (since you already have it) or to lose it -- well, then it sort of becomes a no-op, right? I mean, your most logical reaction might be "<shrug>, ok, whatever..." And, in fact, you might think it rather odd if I were to suggest that you should get really excited and happy about the fact that I have this loving feeling for you -- the same one I have for your mom, my mom, our dog and Sadaam Hussein -- and that there's really nothing you can do about it, it's neither earned nor losable, well, you might think I'm being a bit crazy.

And yet this is exactly what we're (us Americans, raised on some Christian variation -- "my people") have drilled into us from the time we were little kids: some invisible, unknowable, unresponsive "being" has great love for you, and it's unconditional -- you can neither earn it (it's just yours, like it or not) nor lose it -- and it's the same for everyone (mom, dad, sis, bro, G.W. Bush, Sadaam and Oprah), and you should just be about as excited as a kitten with a new ball of string to know about it.

I don't get it.

I mean, the fact that I should be over-the-top excited about it sort of implies that, were this big-deal-thing not-true -- or if the opposite were true -- I should likely feel a big loss or be sad. And, yet, it seems that everything about this whole situation is unknowable and, really, has very little impact on my day to day life and, for all I know, it reverses itself when the sun rises and sets.

I'm assured by folks who claim to be in the know that it does not, in fact, reverse itself, ever -- and that's the big deal! -- but that's not the point...

The point is: yeah ...so? I mean, ok -- The Almighty God, himself loves me without bounds and unconditionally -- I suppose there's a bit of feel-good, there. But it just doesn't really impact my life, does it? I mean, as far as I can understand, he felt pretty much the same way about Hitler (oop, did my blog just get Goodwinized?!) -- so it's not like I'm super special or anything -- and he's not going to stop loving me if I become an axe murderer or drown a few babies, so it's not like I have any pride in having earned this uber-gift.

So I'm stuck in a sort of "yeah <shrug>, ok ...whatever" kind of mode about it.

Ok, no big. But the weird part, to me, is that this line of thinking is somehow controversial. I mean, I realize that my blog isn't exactly the NY Times, but I can imagine that a good half or more of the people who learn that I think this way would find it at least mildly offensive, and that anyone with whom I talk about it would probably tend to polarize on one end of the spectrum or the other, with the majority almost immediately jumping to the conclusion that I was some sort of heartless monster with no romance in my soul at all.

(For whatever it's worth, this would make the people who know me laugh out loud. Not so much that I'm such a syrupy sweet guy, but I do tend to love many things, and am a bit of a hopeless romantic...)

Anyhow... this is a time of year (and, in particular, this weekend) when it's traditional to reflect on all of the things for which one is thankful and certainly up toward the top of my list has to be all of the wonderful people in my life (yes, even the ones who abandoned us to move to Oregon! ;) I'm always amazed to learn how many people would happily consider some sort of "upgrade" for their spouse (mine is perfect, in every way! :), or who do not have several friends who they can count on in times of need, or to whom they would willingly lend $5000 without worry about whether or not it would ever come back to them or whatever. My daughter -- though I tease her about being a bit of a slacker -- is pretty much about as wonderful as anyone's kid I know, and has been since the day she was born (I can only assume that genetics played a large role, here :)) I've been pretty lucky in my career, thanks in large part to the support of family and friends, and I regularly get together with between a dozen and 40 of them for some of the best times of my life. I am extremely thankful for each and every one of them and love them all, dearly.

But my love is conditional: if any of you turn axe-murder-y or drown babies, I'm going to have to review your file...!

And even though I'm sure you're all very nice people, I don't really know the rest of the folks who surf the internet well enough to pass along any particularly strong sentiment. I do, of course, wish you a very happy holiday season, continuing through the next year and all the rest of your days. You get that one for free, just for being human. Heck, I even hope Sadaam has a nice Christmas, whatever that means for him...

[P.S. Isn't there some game people play where they try to enter something into Google and get exactly one hit? Anyway, in looking for images for this entry, I went to images.google.com and put in (no quotes) "the.creation adam god finger" and got exactly the picture I wanted as the one and only hit. Hardly cosmic, or anything, but I don't think I've ever had a 1-perfect-hit on the 1st try, before...]

Idea Trackers

Yesterday was my last day at Palm, inc. It was an interesting time and I learned some things, but this entry isn't so much about my time/work there, although it will overlap some with Palm products.

I've never been much of a cell-phone guy -- the phone they gave me to test with was "my" first ever cell phone. It was a "smart-phone" -- a Treo 650 (I later got a 680, I think it was. I was never very good at marketing names, although I know the internal code name for it) -- so that means it's both a cell phone and a PDA, an organizer that can do email, surf the web, chat/IM/SMS, camera, take notes, etc.

Being "not much of a cell phone guy", I tried to get the hang of it -- I carried it almost everywhere, and tried to integrate it into my life. The cell phone part was somewhat convenient, but it seemed that more than 95% of my calls were to 911 to report accidents or roadside brush fires. Actually, I think the first "real" call I ever made (not counting calling my wife to tell her "write down this number, since I can't remember it") was to call the fire department to report a chimney fire we witnessed while out on an after-dinner walk. That was a pretty nice feeling! (NOTE: if you see flames shooting out of the top of someone's chimney, that's A Problem. If it's not wrestled under control in a matter of seconds, the entire house can be lost rather easily.)

But the fact is, I never really saw much non-emergency use for having instant access to a cell phone. I guess I'm one of those guys who likes to put some thought into the near future, and who enjoys dealing with people who can make commitments and actually keep them, and I've too much experience with people using their cell phones as a way to be sloppy (read: "discourteous, disrespectful and/or down right malicious") in their interpersonal relationships (heh, there's a two-dollar phrase for you!) and, given the prevalence of highway call-boxes (every mile on the interstate!), I guess I just don't have anything in my life that requires that I get in touch with someone in the next hour or two, and I can typically plan to be near a phone, if necessary, sometime between now and the next time I either eat or go to the bathroom (conveniently, places to eat and restrooms often have a nearby phone!)

Some folks ask "well, what if I want to get ahold of you?!" and, I have to say, this is perhaps the worst possible argument for carrying a cell phone. In fact, it's a pretty strong argument against carrying one, if you ask me. These folks offer a plethora of examples as to why my carrying a device that allows them to summon me at any moment they find convenient is "necessary", ranging from "what if I'm going to be late to meet you?" (clue: don't do that. Do it again, and it will weigh in my ability to make appointments with you) to "what if a close relative dies?" (clue: close relatives have been dying for long before the late '90s, and everyone managed pretty well.)

It's not that I don't want to be social -- in fact, I like being social! -- I guess it's just that I don't see the need to carry a social-spam-conduit on my person and, to be honest, if whatever message it is that we have to tell each other isn't worth the effort to actually get ahold of the other one, then it can probably be safely dropped, or at least wait until we see each other, next. "Hey, I wanted to let you know that I have a new, insightful blog entry up" is something that can probably safely wait a week without severe negative impact on the planet.

Before anyone gets it into their heads that I hate cell phone users: I don't. I do have a dislike for rude or unreliable people, but it doesn't matter much to me whether the medium for their annoyingness is cell phones, toy drums, email or their own voice. So, if you own a cell phone, but somehow manage to remain polite, pleasant and reliable, then hurrah for you! I just don't think I need one, is all.

I also tried to use my mobile email device and, despite being up to version 3.5 (and I occasionally used pre-release version-next) of the email software and a "full" qwerty keyboard, I just couldn't manage to do anything "real" with it. I managed to get out a few "hey, I'm sending this via Treo!" mails, and reply with one-liners to a few work mails but, by and large, I didn't find the ability to send mail from anywhere too useful. My friends thought it was neat that I had pocket-google/imdb/etc. and, the first few times, that was fun but, after the novelty wore off, I have to admit that it was a bit of a pain. Reading mail on a handheld was pretty cool, I liked that! But, of course, using it to formulate any sort of thoughtful reply was a pain, so half of the reads ended in frustration, anyway.

So that brings us to "notepad." I really wanted my handheld to be a way-cool electronic notepad -- I've wanted one of these for years (decades!). And it was "ok." I mean, lists & reminders are the kind of a-few-words things that are pretty easy to thumb-type, so I kept grocery lists, gifts-to-buy, ideas-to-pursue, etc., in the little memos program, and that was pretty cool. Sort-a. It was a bit of a hassle, though. I don't know if I was expecting too much (thinking about how cool it would be to have some technology or another for decades can do that), or if I could just never get the hang of the thumb-typing (I was pretty good, though!) or, really, editing (while initial-typing, even <delete>ing, was pretty easy, going back and selecting text, then copy/pasteing was pretty painful) or what -- but I never got to the point where I was fully comfortable using my handheld as a notepad.

I often wondered if it would've been easier if the current units supported Graffiti, Palm's stylus-scribble-recognition system[1]. It seemed to me that if I could write on the screen with a sytlus & scratch-out text & drag a pen across it like a mouse to drag&drop things here & there, it might've clicked in my head. But I guess I can only speculate, there.

Back in the early '90s, when I was still at Apple, some friends & I came up with the "Nut'n", a bit of plastic with a form-factor similar to the Newton (Apple's pocket-sized PDA) but, where the screen would normally be, there was, instead, a cut-out into which you could insert a pad of paper. Then we wrote-up all sorts of humorous (to us) "ad-copy" for it explaining how the Nut'n was fully programmable, high resolution, full-color ("colored pens not included") pen-based computing with wireless data transfer (crumple a sheet & toss it to a friend), encryption (tear up your sheet), full undo/redo support, etc., all at "a fraction of the price of a conventional PDA." "...And hilarity ensued."

As I grew dissatisfied with my handheld note-keeper, I tried other solutions. Carrying a pen & half-sized pad worked pretty well -- I certainly managed to fill several sheets of half-sized yellow paper with ideas & to-do lists -- but even that had flaws: it was sometimes inconvenient, especially if you wanted to use both your hands for something; sometimes the pen would get lost or otherwise become inconvenient, etc.

Finally, I settled on a pocket-sized pad-holder. I think it's made by Mead, or one of those school/office supply aisle companies, is hard-bound (stiffened cardboard), durable (leather-bound), small (just larget than the 2.5x4.25" pad it holds) AND I found the coolest pen to rubber band onto it. The pen collapses to be normal-pen-diameter, but only about 3.5" long -- about like a mini-golf pencil -- but you "pull it apart" to open it for writing, and it becomes a full-sized (i.e., comfortable for writing) ball-point pen!

I've been using it for several weeks now; it's smaller & lighter than a smart-phone, and gets far more use, largely because of its simplicity -- it just does what I want without any hassles. (Well, ok -- I have to somehow manage to read my writing, days or weeks later -- but that's not significantly worse than deciphering thumb-typing-in-a-hurry...) AND the whole thing cost less than eight bucks, including the way-cool collapsable pen with spare ink cartridge.

So that's what I've been using to track my ideas for blog topics as they come to me, which is way-faster than how often I blog them, which is a good thing because, eventually, I'll be able to sort through my 100s of ideas and pick a "top-10" list of actually good, interesting ones. This means that my low-tech solution should, over time, improve the quality of this blog.

(Heh, it can't get much worse, right? ;)

"I'm not a real luddite, I just play one on the internet..."


But the really cool thing about all of this is: I recently started using an idea-keeper pad, and I'm totally loving it! Over the years, I've jotted down this or that idea here and there, or started a small notebook to collect ideas on some project or another (i.e., Ted Lord) but, by and large, my fleeting "deep thoughts" have been lost to the ether.

When I was younger and had substantially more spare time (or is it just fewer thoughts? :), I could explore most of my ideas until either they turned out to be dead ends and I could safely discard them or I could mull them around, develop and evolve them until they got pretty well burned into my brain. But, lately, it seems that a lot of my passing "I should think about <whatever>, some" type thoughts have resulted in me, several hours later, thinking "what was it I was going to try to think more about, again?" It was actually in blogspace that I was reminded by several authors, businessmen and in-general-smart-people that I have come to respect how simple and useful it is to have a small pad to jot down instantaneous ideas for later mulling. Of course, this idea isn't new -- I've heard it repeated throughout my life -- I guess it was just the combination of realizing that I felt I'd lost some important ideas along with the reminder of how well this simple & inexpensive system works and my finally giving up on the idea (at least for now) of trying to find a techie/geeky solution has led me to finally keeping an idea-keeper.

<Don Adams voice> "...And loving it!"</Don Adams>


[1] I may have the ownership/attribution incorrect, but the idea is the same.)

Ted Lord

Ever since the first time I ever saw an MMORPG, I've been fascinated by the whole idea of on-line communities. Not so much for their commercial impact but just for the way that they allow people from widely varying backgrounds from all across the planet interact in a common framework; it was staggering to me.

I've been in various on-line "communities" before -- usenet groups, BBSs, etc., but Clan Lord was different. First, it was a game, in a genre that I enjoy (fantasy RPG, a sort of Dungeons & Dragons-esque thing, but interactive and live, on-line) but, more importantly, Clan Lord was designed from the git-go to foster community. In fact, the game-part was almost secondary -- really a back-drop for the community of cyber-citizens that inhabit the imaginary island of Puddleby. By today's standards, this 1995 game is hopelessly dated with its isometric-view sprite-based graphics but, despite WoW and all the triple-A titles out there, I still think it's one of the best games available. Heck, there are people who've been active accounts for coming-up on ten years! Now, WoW is fun -- I was totally crack-like addicted -- but I'm not still playing like the 1st week, now [almost] 2 years later, and I doubt I'll still have an account in 5, let alone 10 years. But CL is captivating, that way.

But it's also far from perfect so, of course, I often fantasize about making my own variation: Ted Lord. Actually, I play a character named Chum on CL, so I refer to it in those circles, when it comes up, as Chum Lord (has a certain ring to it, don't you think...? :)

Of course, Chum Lord will correct every failing of Clan Lord (not to mention any found in WoW, EQ and all the others), as well as implementing all of my own new, brilliant ideas -- that much goes without saying. But, even ignoring the technological hurdles (and those are shrinking every day), it's an amazing amount of effort to design an on-line community, regardless of whether or not you wrap a game around it.

To begin with -- the ideal, of course, would be that the Island Of Ted [Chum] would be completely free of annoying people. Hmm. I wonder if that includes me, on the days I find myself being annoying. This could turn out to be the world's smallest Massively Multiplayer anything.

Actually, I've got some ideas about a niche I hope to one day fill -- I think I can probably lock it in. This niche, while plenty big enough to support a small group (like, say, me and the handful of people who form the company to bring it into being), is no where near the size needed to pay the bills on a triple-A title, so I don't have to worry about Blizzard or Sony or Microsoft or anyone else throwing an army of people at the idea. Heh -- I don't mean to be coy, but I'd rather not talk about my niche and how I plan to satiate them until I'm a bit further along in development. Mostly because (a) I am a bit slow to get going and (b) because it'd be a fairly simple matter for a small group of interested folk to beat me to the punch. Anyway, I'm certain that you can dream-up your own niche for your own island where there are no people who annoy you.

But I didn't want to talk about Ted Lord [Chum Lord], per se, so much as the idea that a large portion of people who enjoy these games also enjoy the idea of dreaming up their own variation. There's World of Fred and SallyQuest and Skirwan Lord and a host of other pipe-dreams -- it seems everyone's got an idea for how to make these great things just a little bit better. Heh, there's a [rather substantial] niche for you: create a game where the game-part is that the players get to create a game to foist onto others. Actually, that's pretty much what the folks over at Project DarkStar are doing. If you're not into the techie-geek part of creating the game engine, and just want to make content, then maybe you'd rather play Second Life, which is all about player/user content creation.

It's funny, don't you think, that so many people who really-really enjoy cyber-communities in their various forms simultaneously have a desire to hole-up and spend oodles of time creating an "even better" cyber-community which, let's face it, they're not going to compete with WoW or AIM or even There, so we're really talking about a much tinier community and it sort of rings a little like "wouldn't it be cool if I could create a world that was, in essence, Cult Of Me?"

Except I don't think that's quite it; there's more to it than just fleeting fame from being the Big Fish in a rather tiny pond. Maybe. Or maybe it really is just the idea that many of us would like to create a world where we set the rules and then merrily watch as others thrive in our Utopia. Hmmm...

Actually, I think a very large bit of it is that whatever it is that makes this phenomanon -- the one where people swarm to an online community and become totally addicted to it -- happen is an interesting thing to think about. On the one hand, there's the "what is it about this program that makes it call to me, practically control my actions?" angle, which can easily evolve into "if I could write a program like that, could I control other people?" which, even if you're not an evil-overlord-wannabe, is sort of an interesthing thing to think about. But I think it's even more abstract than that. The whole "why are we like this? Why do we do the things we do?" angle of it is pretty interesting and, by playing with programs which embody algorithms that we can analyse (so goes the illusion which ignores the impact of a group of participants and their emergent behaviour), we can learn more about ourselves, our inner-gerwürkkens and, somehow, that makes us happy.

Hmmm... that's not quite it, either, but I think I'm getting close.

I'm going to have to stew on this one for a while. But there's definitely something there...

Biker Babes!

Last weekend, my wife completed the CHP motorcycle safety course -- her first-ever time in the driver's seat of a motorcycle. I stayed for about an hour after I dropped her off and watched the beginning of the range-exercises, then went about an hour early on the 2nd day to pick her up, and was amazed at how well folks progressed. It's interesting to watch people go from having trouble getting on & off the bikes in the 1st 10 minutes to racing around the parking lot at 30mph and making emergency stops at the end. I was pretty impressed by the course instructors, and Vicki and I had a good time talking about rules & safety procedures & motorcycle theory and "stuff like that."

I've been a motorcycle rider for as long as I can remember. Probably about since I was 18 or 19 and, for most of the time since then, a motorcycle has been my main commute vehicle (yes, even in Wisconsin, in the winter :) In addition, I enjoy it for just tooling around and the occasional cross-country trip. (For the past dozen or more years, I've been riding an old, beat-up Gold Wing 1500, the "Honda-bego.")

So we're both pretty excited about the idea of her becoming a motorcycle rider, both from the pleasure-riding angle and also because our 2001 Jetta wagon has got 170,000 miles on it, and will probably need to be upgraded, soon. Because we're a high-milage family, the idea of buying a used motorcycle instead of a new car for our high milage tasks (Vicki works ~50mi from home, I'm about 35) is quite appealing.

Then, yesterday, Vicki picked up a nice (she says -- I've not seen it, yet) used "trainer" bike (a Nighthawk 450.) Our thought is that she'd get something small-medium sized to ride at first, spend the Winter months putzing around on it until she was comfortable then, sometime in Spring, we'd get her a "real" motorcycle (basically, whatever she decides is right for her riding situation, which will probably be somewhat different from the one she got for the purpose of learning.)

So we're both pretty excited about that, too -- new [used] motorcycle, woot!

But I'm a bit nervous, at the same time. On the one hand, Vicki is a very capable and strong person, and can handle herself just fine. On the other hand, she sometimes forgets to pay attention to details, and I worry that one of them might be something important, like cross-traffic, or not locking up the front brake.

But she's also got a low tolerance for pain so, hopefully, a small bit of fear will keep her sharp until she gets fluent with her new motorcycling skills.

Actually, she's pretty skilled, already. I watched her do the "road test" at the end of class last weekend, and she's "all over" it. But that was in a parking lot with no other traffic (I was a bit surprised that they didn't have the whole class ride in a big figure-8, using each other as cross-traffic, actually. I'd-a thought that'd be standard part of beginner-training. Anyway...), and now she's going to be out on real streets with real other cars, some of which are driven by people talking on cell phones, applying make-up and reading the morning paper (yes, I've seen folks do all three at once!)

So that's a bit less-exciting... But I'm still kind-of jazzed at the idea that she'll probably survive her first venture into traffic, and we'll get to ride around together on some upcoming nice-weather weekend. (It's been in the 70s, lately! It's November! :)

Anyway... no Earth-shattering thoughts, today -- just something that's been on my mind, and I know I'm behind in blogging, so I wanted to bang out a few words, this morning.

Drive courteously...

The Key To Success

NOTE: At least for the forseeable future, I seem to be starting each blog entry with a sort of note-to-self about how I'm trying to evolve the blog. I have a pocket-pad full of pretty-big topics that I'd like to try to cover, eventually. Rather than worry about setting aside time to "do it up right", I think I'm going to just tackle them, as the muse strikes, and you get what you get. I've decided to not-edit past posts, except to correct spelling or grammatical problems if I think of it, or to correct gross factual errors (in which case I'll add the edit in [square brackets], so you can see both versions.) Instead, if I decide I have something more or better to say on a subject, or think it needs a major revision/update, I'll just do a Subject v2.0 type of thing. Ok, enough of that -- on with the show!

There are 10,000 paths to failure.
The key to success is to avoid walking any of them.

I accepted a job offer at a different company, Friday/Monday (verbally on Friday; formally, Monday.) It's sort of exciting, starting a new job -- the opportunities are wide open, and there are just a million things one can do. This is somewhat true at an existing job, but one tends to "rut", no matter how hard one tries not to and, it seems, management and corporate culture seem to encourage that, even if one tries to break-out.

Several times in the past couple of days, people have asked me "why do you want to leave <current company>?" It's funny, but they ask it as if there were one, possibly two, reasons and, if I would only speak up, maybe they could fix those things, and then everyone would be happy.

It's funny that no one seems to have noticed that I've never had much of a problem letting everyone around me know just what I think the company is doing wrong and how I suggest they fix it. Pretty much, anyone who can't immediately think of 3 big reasons why I might want to leave, and then follow up with a dozen more after a minute's thought, well, I guess I'm not sure what I can conclude other than maybe that they either are the kind of person who doesn't listen to people like me, or maybe they just don't care. Either way, it struck me as ironic that they'd ask.

<rant, rant, rant> Heh.

The funny thing is, I like most of the people I currently work with. By and large, they're nice, friendly, easy-going people. The other funny thing is: while these are great qualities that one looks for in a dinner companion, they aren't the most important qualities of a co-worker in a cutting-edge product-development work environment. Of course it's nice to work with nice, friendly people but, in order to actually produce great products, there needs a bit of criticality, a bit of bull-headedness, a bit of argumentativeness, a bit of "I'm sorry, Ted, but that's just not good enough! Please try again" attitude. Best if you can wrap all that up in a friendly and easy-going package but, if not, better to have the critical thinker than someone who just says nice things all the time.

There's one; 9,999 to go :)

I think that if I had a genie who would grant me one work-improvemet-related wish (or pick your favorite mechanism for dictating exactly one change-by-fiat to make work better), it'd be that any time anyone could call-out one of the decision makers as engaging in wishful-thinking, the decision under consideration would be tabled until they could demonstrate a thorough risk analysis and that their idea contains more fail-safe consideration than the likely-to-bite-you-in-the-ass kind. If I could figure out a way to word it so that people who attempted to massage the metrics to give a better impression than indicated by reality felt pain according to the level of dishonesty, I'd stick that in there, too.

I understand that it can be just as dangerous to over-plan or be overly conservative as to under-plan or overly ...uh... "adventurous" -- but my current employer is so far off the scale toward "winging it" that I don't think that any possible harm could come from running, full-tilt, toward the other end of the spectrum for several months.

The Silver Bullet is another one (don't genies typically grant three wishes?!) TSB takes many forms, but they all boil down to some variation on either searching frantically for or trying to apply overly simplistic solutions to rather complex problems. Of course, the whole "is there anything we can do to convince you not leave?" thing is just the ultimate version of that -- no one leaves a job because of some thing that they think can be changed; that wouldn't make any sense! Finding a new job is hard -- especially so if you're narrowing your search to "jobs that suck less than my current one"! It'd be way easier to just let your boss know "hey, I'm not happy about <blah>", and let them fix it. Of course, what to do when they don't, right? I suppose you can let on "hey, I'm really unhappy about this thing, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have to tolerate it elsewhere..." It helps, when doing such negotiations, if you're right about that latter part. But the Silver Bullet Thinking thing is to look at one of your good people leaving for a dozen or more reasons that have been articulated over the past year and ask "is there anything we can do to change your mind?" It's almost insulting in that it carries an implication of "...but make it something not too hard, ok? Like, maybe we could paint your cubicle a different color, get you a bigger keyboard or change your phone extention so it spells out a cool acronym -- something like that."

Oh, sorry, was I ranting, again?

But seriously -- what the...???

Silver Bullet thinking doesn't just apply to this question; the folks who engage in it typically apply it to a myriad of situations, all of them, by definition, inappropriate. The classic example is trying to add more people in the mad scramble at the end of a project, but it wouldn't take much effort to think of twenty others.

I often make the analogy of using a cash-advance from one's MasterCard to pay one's Visa bill, and vice versa. While it's crazy, of course, one can see the allure -- I mean, it gives the immediate appearance that one can "buy" all sorts of nice things that one really couldn't otherwise afford, and never have to "pay the piper", so to speak. What I don't get is how otherwise very-smart, very-together people can not see how this sort of behaviour is something to be avoided at all costs, used only in an extreme emergency, as it comes with a tremendous "next month's bill" overhead. Heh, well, I suppose I do get it -- because these otherwise smart and together people spend so much of their lives in a state of emergency that it has become their "normal routine" to apply weird, extreme, emergency procedures to just about everything they encounter.

On the one hand, I suppose I kind of admire them -- I mean, it's a pretty impressive feat, when you consider how much fire these people can juggle, while standing on a barrel of gasoline, drenched in the stuff, themselves.

On the other hand... how do people live like that?!?! I guess I just don't get it, after all.

Which I suppose, in the end, is why I'm moving on: because I don't get it. It sometimes feels as if I grew up in one civilization, where we have our customary foods, greetings, rituals and taboos, and my job is filled with people who grew up in a different civilization, where their customary foods, greetings and rituals have a large overlap with my taboos, and many of their taboos are things that I consider important foundations of ethical behaviour.

"...Or something like that." But in nicer words, because I do like most of them. In a "dinner companion" sort of way...

---

P.S. Heh, this started as a discussion of some of the 10,000 paths to be avoided, but I guess I got distracted by personal current events. This topic is definitely a candidate for a "version-next", as described at the top of this post.