Blogging at work and at home...

I keep getting caught by the trap of thinking that I have to think and plan a really good blog entry and that I have to research all my points and "do them up right" and that I don't have time to do any of that and, hence, my blog doesn't get written to when really the whole point is to just write whatever, but to get in the habit of writing multiple times a week. I hate that it seems that every blog entry starts with a little self-chastizing on this same theme, but it's driving me nuts that I continue to fall for the same "trick" every week -- gotta stop that!

I think I'm going to see if I can set up a machine at work to serve up both a blog and a better wiki. We have a wiki at work, but I think its cumbersome and, hence, we aren't getting full value out of it.

If I do that, I wonder how it'll impact my "public" blogging. Hmmm, I wonder how much I'd be able to blog about things that happen in the company publicly. I have this general idea that I'd like to do some software-philosophy blogging (heh, me and every other programmer with an opinion...) so, I suppose to the extent that my blogs are abstract, I can make them public, then perhaps reference them from the work-blog, perhaps adding "for example, in this situation..." type stuff.

So that could be pretty cool...

I can't believe that there are software shops in companies that depend on software development for their core livelihood (as opposed to just whatever company that happens to do some internal software, too) where there isn't a developer blog.

For that matter, I'm amazed at how hard it has been at my last two jobs to get a group together for weekly lunches out! When I suggest that it's a key communications tool, I often hear "hey, we communicate! Why, just last week, I was over asking Bob a question, and he gave me the answer!"

Folks, that is NOT communicating! I mean, yes, of course it's communicating, but it's not how one stays sharp, how one pushes computer science forward, how one drives one's company to huge successes which will be massively rewarded to those who were instrumental in catalyzing the changes!

Oh, sorry -- I got a little carried away, there.

But still! Don't people get excited about the idea of developing some new idea, new concept, new procedure or innovation that maybe -- just maybe -- no one's ever done before, and makes you and your team "smarter than everyone else"?! Surely I'm not the only developer on the planet who's that egotistical! Yet everywhere I turn I see/hear people who are "just trying to get through this latest fire drill" without any thought to, for example, how they might avoid having more fire drills just like this one in the future.

I suppose a lot of it comes from a sense of hopelessness, that there's nothing us grunts can do to make significant change. Come to think of it, that was the main reason for my leaving my previous company -- while my boss & boss's boss seemed pretty happy that I was making the right kinds of changes, it seemed to me that the big things, the important things, never really changed. It's a little like finally getting the correct measurements of flour and sugar into your bread recipe, but not being able to get anyone with budget-authority to allow correction of the fact that the mixing bowl is chipping lead-paint into every loaf. "Wow, kudos, Ted -- that's some of the best bread we've seen around here in years!" "Yeah, thanks. Uh... don't eat it, it'll kill you." And then I feel guilty for seeming ungrateful for my accolades... <sigh>

Ah well, I'm at a smaller company, now, and slightly higher on the food chain -- a slightly bigger fish in a substantially smaller pond, as it were -- so maybe I'll be able to effect "more important" changes, and feel a deeper sense of satisfaction around that. I certainly hope so -- I'd hate to go through the rest of my career being grumpy all the time...

(That's funnier if you know me; I have a tendency to enjoy pretending to be grumpy and/or bitching about things. I never quite grokked how some people don't understand that imagining how things could be better doesn't mean you're unhappy...)

So, I guess I'll work on starting a company blog. And I'll make sure to make the time to not ignore THIS blog. Maybe combining the two. But not next week -- my daughter's visiting from college, so I'm going to be goofing off with her.

But AFTER that!

[Edit July 25, 2009]

Now I work at home, so at least the conflict part is gone. Yet working at home leaves even LESS time for things like blogs. Maybe I'll get inspired and have something worthwhile to say. In the mean time, I'm growing a business for iPhone development, and have created a wiki to hep new clients through the process of getting their apps developed. It's at http://www.manyfriends.com/wiki/iphone/

You Just Have To Be Smarter Than A Pumpkin...

A few random thoughts.

First, a cyber-poke-in-the-shins to myself. I have a gazillion topics that I want to tackle in this blog; many of them are quite large and it will be a struggle for me not to use that as an excuse to keep working on drafts and writing and revising or just daydreaming about them and never getting anything "done." One of the points of starting a blog, for me, was to develop some discipline and whack-out a handful of thousand words each week, spread over a few posts. In addition to gaining that discipline, I hope it will help me develop a writing style and, after things start to flow more freely, I'll be able to do more word-smyth-y things with it. But I've been slacking, and it's almost 2 weeks since my last post. Bad, bad, me.

So, the way to keep writing when you either don't have anything of particular import to say, or the things that are important are SO important that you don't just want to brain-dump them onto a blog without "doing them up right", is to just blather on about this or that -- pick a not-particularly-important topic, but one that's topical for you, and write on it. That's why there are so many rant blogs -- "the thing that's really pissing me off today is..." type things.

So here's my minor rant for the day:

It seems that I'm not quite smart enough to go grocery shopping in These Modern Times. Oh, I gave it a fair shot, and I've always thought of myself as a pretty sharp guy but, armed with a detailed list from my wife, I found this morning's trip to the local Safeway frought with peril.

First, I spent about 6 minutes totally mind-boggled, because I didn't realize I was looking at "organic" milk, and I couldn't figure out just when-in-hell milk went to $7 a gallon! I was aghast -- is Exxon making this stuff, now?! Ok, so after I pulled my jaw off the floor, I found the regular-priced milk (still 50% higher than I remember the government-fixed price, but I figure there may be complicated economic factors involved, so ... "ok, whatever.")

Milk: check.

I noticed that my list also contained sour cream, butter & cheese. Now, I don't want to pull any of this "back when I was your age, everything was better" things, but it used to be that milk, butter, sour cream & cheese were all within arm's reach of each other (a) because they all benefit from refrigeration and (b) because they're all the same thing! Of course, back in the day, eggs were nearby, too because, well, milk & eggs somehow were both "home-farm" products that you could maybe imagine the neighbor handing out on weekends (if you live far enough from city-center), and somehow it just made sense.

Well, it turns out that in a modern grocery store (as I presumed this one to be from the track-lighting, and movie-production grade props to make things appear what they were not), cheese is on the "snacks" isle. Ok, you know, I can almost see that -- I mean, cheese is good snack food! Especially if you have things like cheese-sticks/string-cheese. But, oddly enough, the "snacks" isle also contained sour cream, bricks of cheddar and, I guess because they all go in a cooler-unit, jell-o pudding cups. <shrug> Ok, all snack-food, I suppose. But then where are the cheetos? Ah! Cheetos, if I would've given it any thought at all, are obviously beer food! Duh. Ok, I can go along with that one. And once you put Cheetos near the beer, chips of all sorts go there, too, as well as the fig newtons and related products. Ok, I was getting back into the swing of things, here...

But I still had this nagging memory that, back when cheese was with the milk [, butter, etc.], luncheon meat was nearby. I figured that this was because it was easier to install one wall-length cooler unit, and also folks have milk with lunch, too, so it sort of adds up. Then, once you had bologna, salami, sliced roast beeft, etc., the next logical thing was the rest of the meats. Tied together by the web of "goes in a cooler" and "is meat", these things just flowed logically.

I guess that's Old School thinking. The New Way has about 80 different kinds of bologna (how many of you would misspell that word, if it weren't for that cute kid and his Oscar-Mayer song?) and all the other lunch meats (but no sliced cheese!, that's on the "snack" food aisle), then bread -- which kinda makes sense, for making sandwiches, except it blocks your view of the rest of the meats, so you can't stand at the milk-door, look down the row and see meat, then also see things like bacon, steaks and pot roasts; those are hidden by the bread-display.

Oh! And I guess they have to dedicate so much shelf space to every conceivable brand of everything that the aisles are no longer big enough for 2 carts to pass in a straight line. Now, you have to pass about 2/3 of the way then, when the back of my cart is almost up to the back of your cart, we both have to turn slightly to the left (toward the other driver), to pivot the whole affair so that our cart-handles pass each other on a diagonal -- because they don't fit side-by-side! Actually, as assinine as that is, I sort of like the brain-teaser aspect of it...

Anyway, the other reason aisle width is important is because you can't back away from the milk-door far enough to see around the bread display to notice that there's more meat. So you stand there saying "I realize this is Santa Cruz and all, but we can't have abolished steak, for crying out loud...?!", but then you're not really sure. I mean, organic milk is going for $7 a gallon...

By the way, good news: egg nog is out. In gallons. It's cheaper than organic milk, too! Probably better for you. It is if you add enough rum, anyway...

Ok, I finally find the packaged shrimp & sausages, now I need a couple of cans of diced tomatoes. No problem! I remembered seeing "Canned Fruits" aisle-sign a bit back, canned vegetables are probably same aisle or one aisle over, right?

Well, sort-of. Actually, I looked at the canned fruits aisle, and saw no mention on the sign of canned vegetables, so I checked the aisles to either side -- no luck. Then I figured "well, maybe they're being smarty-pants, because tomatoes are a fruit, right?" (even though I'd expect it to be more near canned corn & beans than peaches & pears; but whatever.) So I go check, and the little mid-aisle signs don't have a canned fruits -- but they do have a canned vegetables! <sigh> "Ok, whatever..." So I walk to the far end of the aisle to discover... canned corn & beans. Well, hmmm... (a) where's the canned peaches & pears?! And (b) how about my tomatoes?

Turns out, as any small child could tell you, that tomatoes are "pasta" (small sign), which is "International and Ethnic Foods" (big sign.) You know, given the fact that the shelf-space dedicated to different sizes of chopped, diced, stewed, sauced, pasted and otherwise processed tomatoes is bigger than that dedicated to pastas (although it's close!), you'd think that "canned tomato products" would get its own sign. Nope. Oh well...

Ok, so it's Oct 29, the weekend before Halloween, and we haven't carved a pumpkin, yet. I'm to get two for my wife, and whatever I want to carve. But then I'm thinking... I've been in this store for about 25 minutes, so far, and haven't seen a single pumpkin! And I walked through the produce section twice! (Once on the way to milk, once because I thought maybe canned tomatoes would be near ketchup, which is in condiments which, as everbody knows, is in the produce aisle! (It's probably just the stores I grew up with, but that last bit actually makes sense to me, too. I guess olives & pickles are like produce, sort-of, and mustard & mayo just sort of go near there, too.)

So I go back to produce, thinking that maybe I just didn't see the 8000 pumpkins that were decoratively placed all around the bins of apple, oranges, potatoes, pineapples, etc., because they were so tastefully subdued.

Nope, that wasn't it. Pumpkins, it turns out, are not produce. Ok, Ted, let's think about this... Maybe they're seasonal -- that makes sense, sort-of. I say "sort-of" because coolers & lawn chairs are "seasonal", and get the "on top of the freezers" space when they're "in." Christmas ornaments and Pumpkins are (or should be, in my opinion), scattered throughout the store and, while for sale, make a sort of seaonal decoration for everything else.

Doesn't matter -- pumpkins aren't in the seasonal section, either. Good thing, because I didn't want to try to jiggle a few down from on top of the freezer units! Ok, I'm not that way, so I ask a helpful Safeway employee. "In front of the store", he says, "do you want me to show you?"

Uh, no thanks -- I think I can find the front of the store without much help. And I even recognize that I'm now looking for one of those pallets with the big pumpkin-decor boxes on top full of pumpkins out near where the carts are. Except I came in through the front, and didn't see any such pallets/boxes. Hmmm...

Turns out the pumpkins are in and amongst the carts. So, there's the middle of the store, where nobody parks, with some pumpkins, then 3 huge rows of carts on either side which totally dwarf (and block the view of) the pumpkins, then the doors to the store, in the spot furthest from the pumpkins. Oh, and a sign saying how it's illegal to shoplift. I can't help but wonder how many of those pumpkins are paid for, and if I'm being a chump by bringing mine up to the cashier. That's ok, I can be a chump in that way, if that's what it means...

Anyway... I finally got all the groceries. Wine didn't move (across from liquor, one aisle from beer, easily found by the end-caps of Doritos & related products), nor did roasted chickens (deli) or whatever else was on my list. But those first few items made it seem like this was going to be a serious ordeal!

While I'm gripping about grocery stores, I hate that they make the cashiers read my receipt and tell me to have a good day addressing me by name! (a) While my name isn't that difficult, hardly anyone pronounces it correctly, (b) the make-believe that the cashier is my "corner-grocer/friend" is inappropriate and cheeky and (c) (this is the real killer) to pointedly view my financial documents to pull personal information off of them and then use that information for your own purposes is invasive and rude in the extreme. For anyone whose mother didn't tell them this when they were kids, the proper way to address a stranger -- and this is true in all cases, but especially if you're in the service sector addressing a customer or potential customer -- is "sir" or "madam", as in "thank you, and have a nice day, sir." It's enough to make me want to try to remember to get cash when I go to the grocery store, just so I don't have to watch someone dumpster-dive my name off of my receipt and then use it to get fresh with me.

Day-em! that really pisses me off.

...But, other than that, it's been a pretty good day. The weather is great (70s), the dogs are happy, wife is napping peacefully, and we're going out to a nice dinner, later. (Groceries were for during the week meals.) Plus, I was able to outsmart the pumpkins.

I hope your day is at least that good.

And remember: you just have to be smarter than a pumpkin!

Me First, Then You

This blog entry isn't for you; it's for me. I'll explain that in a bit.

I'm what the folks over at NaNoWriMo call a "one day novelist." It sounds kind-a fancy – like maybe someone who can whip out a novel in a day – but it's really their shorthand to characterize all the people who frequently have the thought "one day, I think it'd be cool to write a novel." So, last year, after several of my friends participated in NaNoWriMo's "write a novel" challenge, I thought "that sounds kind of fun; I should do that, next year", and I went over to their site and entered an email address to be reminded when this year's 50,000-word challenge came around. Both before that time and since, I've taken a few dabbles at "my novel", and written a few scenes.

Yesterday, I got the reminder mail. I went to their site, started poking around, and started getting excited about the idea of getting going.

Then I started thinking about what was involved. 50,000 words in a month is ~2000 words a day, with the occasional day-off (I know, you're supposed to write EVERY day – but there are very few things that I do that I don't occasionally skip a day, and I know myself too well to think I wouldn't take a break) and maybe a few days where you don't quite hit 2000. So then I went to look at a few example entries in blogs that I enjoy, to get a sense of how much 2000 words was and saw that they were in the 2000-word range, and THAT didn't seem so terribly hard, so then I opened up my novel, on which I've been dabbling for over a year, and did a word-count.

I'm embarrassed to publish the actual number, but let's just say that the realization of how small my little pride & joy was left me feeling a bit disappointed. Ok, fine: it was just over sixteen-hundred words. In just over a year.

Ouch.

Ok, fine – so I'm a bit of a procrastinator; I knew that about myself. Plus, I'm a tad nit-picky, and that makes me procrastinate more, as I haven't yet internalized the Nano-concept of "write ANYTHING, even if it's junk. Worry about quality later; for now, you need to just work-out your writing muscle." Then I got to thinking about these other cool blogs, and decided maybe I could do that as a sort of "pre-warm-up" exercise. I've always thought about blogging anyway so, while the 10s of 1000s of other Nano-writers are slaving away staying up until all hours of the night trying to bash out 50k-words in 30 days, I'm going to try to kick-off a blog and stick to it.

I actually DO have some kind-of neat ideas, I think, so it may actually turn into something worthwhile.

But that's not THIS post. THIS post is for me. It's my "statement of intent." If I just tell myself "I should start a blog", I'll never get around to it. But, somehow, having posted a billboard where everyone can see it (and the fact that nobody probably read it doesn't actually matter so much as that the post is published), then I'll actually "have to" make time & do it. That's THIS post.

Initially, my goal is to just bang-out 300-1000 words one to three times per week on whatever suits my fancy. In these initial posts, my main goals will be (a) to write regularly (b) to "find my voice" (including pick a format, develop a style, etc.) (c) diddle around with various blogging software, which will probably be used as an excuse to procrastinate on the actual writing and (d) write about my procrastination enough times that it becomes a matter of pride for me to actually DO goals a-c. Later, after a-d settle-in, I hope to be able to explore various relevant topics in greater detail, probably something in the ~2500 words 2-3x/week range. We'll see how that goes, after this first part.

So, if you're interested in watching me document my struggles with laziness and yet-another-net-idiot's stream-of-consciousness blog, feel free to read these first few entries. But they're not for you, they're for me. When I decide to post my first "real" entry, I'll label it something like "Grand Opening!", or some such. From that point on, the posts will be "for you", in the sense that I hope to be sharing some useful insight that helps others see some relevant issue in some new way that makes Everything Better For Everybody.

"...Or something like that."

Hey, almost 800 words in about 15 minutes, just talking about how hard it is to bang out words – piece o' cake!