Tech???? What Tech????

2006-06-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

The first three years of my career's new phase are almost over. It's been an amazing ride, capped by an amazing denouement.

2005-09-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

Holy cow.

I just had to record this somewhere. Today I saw my first example of del.icio.us spam.

2005-09-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Been a while, snickerdoodles.

So I'm minding my own business yesterday at lunch, heading to the driving range for some practice and listening to NPR. They're covering the John Roberts confirmation hearings in DC and they have a Republican senator from Kansas, Senator Sam Brownback, talking about the hearings. He proceeds to make a complete douchebag of himself.

The conversation got around to Roe v. Wade and the interviewer, Nina Totenberg, asks him if he sees the right to privacy as a constitutional right. He says he doesn't and he's always amazed that people find a right to privacy in the constitution and don't find a right to life in the constitution.

This is so asinine that I can hardly believe it. It's a straw man (my new fave term) that makes for such an idiotic argument when light is shined on it. The idea of someone not being able to find a right to life in the constitution is the dumbest thing I have heard in a long time. It's the classic so-called "pro-life" argument that if you're not so-called "pro-life" you believe in murder. Well, I call bullshit. It's a manipulative argument that relies on the listener to surrender all judgement and simply follow along a line of reasoning as it derails.

When I think about it, the so-called "pro-life" argument is essentially that life begins at conception. Can you find anything in the constitution that says life begins at conception? Not only does that line of reasoning derail, it dissipates in a puff of compassionate comprehension.

Senator Brownback went on to say that people are assuming there is a right to privacy and it doesn't really exist in the constitution. So his recommendation to people who think a right to privacy is important, pass a constitutional amendment to that affect. Hey, that's a great idea. We'll work on that and you start working on a constitutional amendment that says life begins at conception. (tongue bursting through cheek.)

Here's my take on the constitution. It has great meaning when it's seen as descriptive. It loses meaning when it's seen as prescriptive. It simply describes what our country is about, it's guiding principles. It does not prescribe specific behavior.

Look at me. I expect my nomination to the Supreme Court in the mail.

2005-08-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

I love my Lovely Wife. I'm currently listening to a CD she made for me and the song "Jack Ass" by Beck is playing.

2005-08-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty excited about sports coming up here! Football season is starting soon, with preseason games going on now. Lovely Wife and I watched a bit of a Vikings (vs. Chiefs) game last night and it was like a breath of fresh air! We are both very excited about the season starting. Also, hockey is coming up soon, which is welcome after the year off they took. Heck, if they wanted a vacation, they could have just asked!

Played golf with my awesome father-in-law yesterday. I shot a 108 and played pretty horribly. Not a horrible score, though. I hadn't practiced the entire previous week, so not so bad a score with that in mind. I'm going to do some practice this week, though!

2005-08-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

Heard from a good friend when he was describing the way he used to live that never worked for him: "Ready! Fire! Aim!"

I've heard this idea in the past. This time it hit me and I've had it rolling through my brain ever since I heard it on Wednesday evening. There's a slogan that I like to use in my life that is the three A's: Awareness, Acceptance, Action. It relates to my friend's idea, where it would look like the following: Awareness, Action, Acceptance. How backward is that?

I work on practicing the principle of acceptance before action in many areas of my life: my work, my marriage, my kids, myself, and golf (!).

2005-08-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnesquared/31313798/

Here's the quote:

"It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractiveness of the next world."
-Oscar Wilde

2005-08-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Oh my mornings coming back
The whole world’s waking up
In the city buses are swimming past
I’m happy just because
I found out I’m really no one
-"At the Bottom of Everything", Bright Eyes

2005-07-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Here's my reactions to the 2001 analysis I posted about earlier today.

Who says it's Africa? It kind of looks like Africa. I'm not sure it must be Africa. I always liked that it's ambiguous.
It's kind of strange to show the monolith growing out of the earth, when it is described as "deliberately planted." Was it planted like a tree? In the movie, you can hear the tools being used to install it, although you never see it. It just appears in one moment and I would guess, from how it looks, that it's well anchored.
Here's another question for you: where did the monolith go? Why don't you hear about it in the next part of the movie? Did the aliens come back to get it? If so, when?

"Kubrick doesn't explain its [the monolith's] 'meaning'"? Its meaning is explained visually, not verbally. It is order within chaos. There are no straight lines in the apes' world. There is no perfect black. There is nothing unfamiliar. That is,until the monolith comes.
One of the apes' characteristics is "courage"? What about the first watering hole scene? The apes basically get all the water they need, get screamed at by the other tribe, scream back, and move away so the other tribe can drink. Not a courageous act. The apes are not courageous until they gain their tools. Then they are courageous. Heck, one of them (Starwatcher) kills another ape in the second watering hole scene. Come to think of it, is that really a courageous act? More like a violent act than a courageous one.
Who is this "sinister new character"?
These are some very interesting points about man being a child in space. I hadn't explicitly noticed it before. I saw it visually without identifying it verbally.
I also hadn't explicitly noticed the human form of some of the spaceships. That's interesting. I'm not sure it's consistent, though. the Pan Am shuttle isn't particularly human-looking, it looks more like a sleek 747. Neither is the space station.
At the Tycho site, there is one human who shows awe and wonder, Floyd. Although he also participates in the awe-less and wonder-free activities of the other humans.

Why did they make Discovery's exterior grey instead of white? I like it white!
Seeing humans through HAL's eyes is an interesting approach. It would have been very interesting if they contrasted it with HAL's statements in the interview, where he is asked about his relationships with humans and defines them as "stimulating." That's a loaded word. If I were interviewing HAL, I'd ask him to say more about how his relationships with humans are "stimulating." Maybe I'd cross-examine HAL on this point. "What exactly do they stimulate in you?"
"HAL makes a mistake"? This is a significant problem with this analysis of the movie. HAL doesn't make a mistake. (Of course, this Buddhist says there are no mistakes.) HAL deliberately says the AE-35 is bad when he knows it's not. He wants Bowman and Poole cut off from Earth so he can launch his plan to take over the mission. It doesn't matter what he has to do to accomplish this goal.
The breathing part is interesting and it misses one more thing that drives home its point. It misses the sound effect of the air pumps working inside the space suit. This is one of my favorite points in the movie.
The humans think HAL is in error (about the AE-35 being bad), but he really isn't and he knows it. This is the humans' error. This is why they underestimate HAL. They think he's benevolent and made a mistake, whereas he has his own motives they can't see or accept. Once Bowman sees HAL's motives clearly, then he accepts and believes what is really going on and what HAL really is. His eyes are opened and his heroic acts ensue.
What about the video that's uncovered when Bowman deactivates HAL? This is a crucial plot point that is completely missed in this analysis. This shows why HAL was confused. It also may be HAL's final peace offering to Bowman. Something like saying, "Sorry, but it wasn't my fault. Look at this and you'll see what I mean." Or maybe it just comes on automatically because they have reached Jupiter.

"The fourth dimension"? What the hell does that mean? Why get into this dimensional stuff? It's a real place, it's just been created by the aliens for Bowman.
I'm not sure about the wine/wine glass analogy. Seems a little flimsy.
I like the depiction of the Starchild. The music during this part is horrendous!

So there you go. 2001 fanboy signing off.

2005-07-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

I'm preparing an extensive commentary to be posted here on this explanation of 2001. I'm a huge fanatic, so expect some serious fanboy weirdness.

2005-07-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Just got back from vacation with the family and had a wonderful time!

We did a bunch of fun things, like a water slide, boating on the lake, hanging out in the hot tub, making and eating yummy dinners, and talking with family. It was amazing.

Played nine holes of golf while I was there, with my brother-in-law, and we had a great time. I shot a 54, which wasn't so bad when you see that I hadn't practiced the whole week beforehand.

2005-07-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

The episode of The Gillmor Gang that I'm currently listening to is one of the worst I've heard. I've been listening since last year and this one is dreadful. People talking about "users remixing content on the fly" ad nauseum. I've heard talk about this crap for years and years now and it's never gotten anywhere near the level of usefulness that anyone describes. And no one challenges these talking heads about why we've been talking about the same thing over and over and over and over again and it never happens like they say it does and will.

Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Steve, you dropped the ball on this one.

2005-07-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

Bloglines asplode this morning! I got on after my shower and Bloglines showed one tree item: "Feeds." Nothing else. So, what do you do in that case? Click on it, of course! Then, I waited and waited and waited while Bloglines tried to download every single feed that I have, all 281 of them. My Safari went bezerk.

So, just what the heck was going on with Bloglines this morning?

2005-07-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

Lovely Wife and I are going to the Billy Corgan concert in the city tomorrow night. I'm really looking forward to it! It will sure be an interesting experience!

I really love the Smashing Pumpkins and Billy has been a very interesting person to follow. The new CD is good. I didn't like it too much initially, but I like it a lot more now. I never got to see the Smashing Pumpkins live, even though I was a huge fan. I know I'm not going to see Smashing Pumpkins tomorrow night, but it will be a thrill to see Billy in person.

The show is at the Fillmore, so it'll be pretty intimate.

It'll be a great date for me and Lovely Wife. I'm really looking forward to it!

2005-07-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Went and played 18 holes with some co-workers yesterday. We had a really great time. I shot two pars, the first two since I've been back at playing golf again! One was on a par 4 and one was on a par 5.

I noticed that when I played yesterday, my putting was much better than the last time I played. I've been practicing it a lot this week. Also, I wasn't keeping score that much while I was on the hole. When I was done, I would tally up my score and in both cases I was surprised that I shot a par. I wonder if that helped me to relax and shoot better since I wasn't worrying about screwing up my opportunity for par or the like. That's really gotten in my head and screwed up a lot of my scores in the past.

I also noticed that I hit the ball better than usual. Usually, I get up there and do my practice swings that go well, then when I hit the ball, I get very nervous and flub it up. I end up swinging my practice swings much better than my real swings. This time, I was able to treat my real swings a bit differently. I saw them as just another swing, like a practice swing is. I realized that in the past I have gotten nervous because I start thinking about things like, "what if the ball doesn't go where I want it to go? What if I'm aiming in the wrong direction? What if I didn't prepare correctly?" I was better able to let those things go and concentrate on the swing. An example of practice, practice, practice and things start to go better and better.

Oh, yeah, and I don't remember my score. I know I shot a 51 on the back nine. On the front nine, I had something like a 57 or a 59. I don't remember.

2005-07-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

We have a summer vacation coming up next week. We're leaving on Wednesday and we'll be back the following Wednesday. It's going to be a long drive and we'll be hanging out with my sister's family and my mom. It's a celebration of my mom's 60th birthday as well as family time together. We're especially looking forward to having our little ones hanging out with my sister's little one. Should be fun!

2005-07-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

I'm in the market for a sand wedge. I went and tried some out at the driving range yesterday and was very impressed. I can't remember all the kinds I tried out, but I'm pretty sure I tried out five. One was a Tour Edge, one was a Titleist, and one was a Cleveland CG10. I don't remember the models of the Tour Edge or Titleist wedges. I was very impressed by the Tour Edge and the Titleist, and there was one more that I really liked and I don't remember what it was. Maybe it was a Callaway, but I'm not sure. I'm going back there today to see them again.

I've been doing some research on used clubs on eBay and there are plenty of good deals, especially on the Titleist wedges.

I discovered something I didn't know before, that rust on a sand wedge is a good thing because it provides a surface that will make more backspin on the ball. Good to know!

So, I'm looking at buying a sand wedge with a raw finish, not chrome. I'm looking around on eBay and I can't tell the difference between a Titleist Vokey Raw and a Titleist Vokey Oil Can. Anyone out there know the difference? Post a comment, please. I have no idea how I will find out. Maybe the pro at the driving range will know.

2005-07-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

Lovely Wife and I watched "Closer" on Friday night. I thought it was pretty good. I was a bit tired when we watched it, so I faded out here and there.

An image that I remember very clearly was the first scene, where Jude Law and Natalie Portman are walking in slow motion towards each other and there's a song with some lyrics like "I only see you". That was a magical moment for me and I just couldn't help smiling. Turns out their characters didn't even know each other at that point and the connection between them was even more interesting at that point.

It was really interesting to see the dynamic between the two couples and how it changed given the circumstances. I love watching stuff like that.

One thing I really liked about the movie was its use of music. I'm not sure what else to say about that.

I'd recommend it.

2005-07-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

I've entered a new phase in the weight loss arena. I haven't done much exercise. I have been pretty successful in not eating after 7:30 at night and keeping portion size down. The hunger is an interesting thing.

A question that comes up for me: "Am I starving myself?" This is an interesting one. I don't feel unable to do my day-to-day activities. I don't feel weak. It would be interesting to note how many calories I'm taking in now as opposed to before. Add to that grams of carbs, grams of protein and grams of fat. Those would be very interesting to know.

I've been staying away from sweet treats as well. On Thursday evening, I had a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream at home at about 7:40. It was close enough to 7:30 that I went for it. It was very good and much less than the normal three scoops. Also, I tend to eat the ice cream right before bed. 7:40 was a huge improvement.

I am definitely hungry more often than I have ever been in my life. It's not really debilitating, though. When my feelings start to go a bit sideways on me, I come back to the sensations in my body and it's comforting. There's a definite sensation in my belly that's connected to hunger. It always seems my feelings and thoughts are more energetic and desperate than my body is. This is an interesting dynamic to keep my eyes on.

2005-07-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

I got to play 18 holes yesterday with my father-in-law and one of his friends. I sure had a great time! I shot a 108. I really enjoyed it and I see a lot of potential in my playing. I see some areas that I really need to improve in, so many that it's hard to know where to start.

1) Remembering that a swing is just a shoulder turn!

This is a hard one and I'm a little disappointed that I always forget it. Once I remember it, I start hitting the ball straighter and farther and my body doesn't hurt so much. Both the last 18 I played and this one, I remembered around the 13th hole.

2) Putting

I had a couple of chances for par with makeable putts and one chance for birdie that wasn't very makeable. Then my putting failed me. I need to do a lot of work in this area. Practice, practice, practice!

3) Nerves on the course

Sometimes, my practice swings are ace and then I get up to the ball and the swing is nothing like my practice swing. I see my fear rise up as I get to the ball. I don't have this problem with my driver, probably because I've spent a lot of time on that one and it's always in a good lie! I have this problem really badly in the fairway and the rough.

4) Course management

On a couple of the holes yesterday, I spent the whole time in the rough. I get impatient and forget that getting the ball into the fairway is a noble goal and it makes everything easier. I try to hit a hard shot and I end up in the rough again. Realizing this could improve my game a lot. Maybe something like when I'm in the rough, the first goal is to get back to the fairway. The second goal is to make some progress toward the green.

I had a couple of great shots here and there that I'm really proud of. Some great drives, some great pitches, and a couple of putts that were really good (unfortunately, not good enough to get in the hole).

2005-07-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a question.

When exactly is it that hunger changes from a sensation to a feeling?

In other words, there is a hunger that is the body. That's a sensation. There is an emotional reaction and a mental reaction. It's easy to get confused and think the emotional reaction is hunger or the mental reaction is hunger. Then, the eating behavior is justified. If the emotional reaction and the mental reaction are seen for what they truly are, then hunger remains a sensation in the body. Then we never have to leave the body to know what the body needs.

Holy cow, we might be onto something!

2005-07-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

I wanted to get my thoughts down on this topic before they're gone.

So, Lovely Wife and I decided to make some changes today. We're changing our eating habits, starting today. We're working on three things:

1. Exercise
2. No eating after 7:30 PM
3. Eating smaller portions

Now, Lovely Wife has a lead on me in the exercise department. She is committed to walking three times a week. I, on the other hand, have not made a specific commitment on that front.

The second and third items give me pause. We discussed it earlier this evening. For me, hunger has always been "I'm hungry, get some food." I mean, always. No, really, always. Any time I'm hungry, it's time to get food. Now, just looking at the second and third items makes me hungry. It's looking like this is going to be a very interesting journey. It's time to put some space between "I'm hungry" and "Eat." This is new behavior; untried territory for me.

We'll just have to see how it goes. I know that changing patterns like this is not just a walk in the park. I also know that it will not be as bad as it seems. And it seems pretty bad!

A friend of Lovely Wife had a few suggestions. If you're really hungry, chew some gum or brush your teeth. Those are pretty good suggestions! I might add drink a diet soda without caffeine, drink some water, play a game, kiss your wife, do some work around the house, and watch a good movie. Those are good alternatives that come to mind.

The thought that comes in next is that the list I just came up with is very, very interesting. It seems like one of the best ways I can think of to help with the second and third items in the list are distracting myself. That's interesting. We'll have to see how that goes. In my experience, distracting myself like that doesn't really work.

The next thought is that if the hunger actually goes away, is that distracting myself, or is that bringing myself back to reality? More and more interesting.

The next thought is I wonder if the eating that I do has something to do with keeping me from doing all the things like those I listed. I'm not sure that makes any sense to a reader. It sure makes sense in here. It's like in the evenings, I tend to eat and watch TV, pretty much numbed out from the rest of my life. I wonder if that's part of the plan. I wonder if I'll have more energy with less food. I think I'm getting further and further away from making sense with each sentence. I'll write more when more comes and hopefully it will be clearer!

Lovely Wife's friend said that eventually you're just not hungry anymore. I wonder how long it takes to get there. I get the shivers just thinking about it.

Golf Update

2005-07-05T11:13:00.000-07:00

So, I've been practicing quite a bit lately. Been hitting the range a lot. It's been very good, getting my swinging more and more relaxed and natural. I look forward to getting on a course sometime soon. My father-in-law was out of town over the weekend, so no golf on the course for me.

I was able to get to the range with a couple of my neighbors on Monday, which was very nice. I practiced swinging, chipping and putting and all went very well. It was a lot more fun with friends along!

The last time I played a full round of 18, I shot a 109. I'm really looking forward to topping that score. I've come a long way since then.

War of Words

2005-07-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

Oh, dear.

Brooke Shields gets in the New York Times with this drivel? I heard her on Fresh Air on NPR talking about her book and she says basically the exact same things, but now with yummy Tom Cruise goodness! I'm irked that she was only concerned with what Tom Cruise said about her and not his general wackiness. It's pretty apparent that he has no beef with her personally, but he's just severely off his rocker.

Here's what I would have loved to have heard from Brooke Shields on the matter:

"Hey, Blockhead. What the fuck gives you the right to speak for anyone when it comes to psychiatry? You use the good old standby excuse of 'I've done a lot of study on this topic and here is what I think' and expect us just to trust you? What a bunch of bullshit. Who would trust you with anything when you're willing to write off a huge portion of the population as just being misguided and putting themselves in danger? Produce the evidence. Show us what exactly it is that brings you to these conclusions. Let's have an honest debate about it. Not this Today Show bullshit. If something useful ever came from the Today Show or Tom Cruise, about half the world would die of shock. Yes, even those pygmies that live in the Amazon. Half of them. Dead. So take all your bullshit excuses and grandstanding and shove half of it up your ass and the other half up Matt Lauer's ass. And may all people dealing with psychiatric disorders see your comments for what they really are and move on to doing something useful to help themselves."

'Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

When it comes to medication for anything, psychiatric disorders included, I say go for it and remember to pay very close attention. Pay very close attention to what goes on before you take the medication, while you're taking the medication, and while you're at it, pay attention to everything. You're worth it.

In the interests of full disclosure, I've been in a therapist's care a few times in my life and I've pondered using medication to combat depression. I've never actually used it, though. It would be difficult to go on such a medication, but I could do it.

New iTunes, version 4.9, now with podcast aggregation! (part 2)

2005-06-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

So, after looking at the interface for a while longer, it looks like Apple has made a pretty interesting interface for listening to podcasts. I'm entertaining a couple of ideas in light of the Great Wall of China between my iPodder-aggregated podcasts and my iTunes-aggregated podcasts. Can iTunes come to where iPodder is, or can iPodder come to where iTunes is?

To be specific, I'm so used to the way that my iPodder-aggregated podcasts appear in iTunes that I was initially thinking that my iTunes-aggregated podcasts should appear where my iPodder-aggregated podcasts currently appear. After playing with the place where the iTunes-aggregated podcasts currently appear, it's an interesting interface. I started to wonder if it's open enough so that iPodder could add the podcasts it aggregates to that location.

A little opening of the mind with a crowbar. We'll see where it goes.

Great Story About a Friend

2005-06-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

A friend had a pretty terrible disease and is recovering well. She's had a few setbacks lately and her medical team said she needed to make some changes to her life to make sure her recovery continues. They looked at her diet and exercise and made a few changes, then they told her, "think of the three things that are most stressful in your life and get rid of them."

"And I got pissed!"

I couldn't stop laughing.

I can really identify with anger and righteous indignation at the thought of getting rid of things that are stressful in my life. How dare you tell me to get rid of them? Don't you realize how important they are to me? They define me, for God's sake!

What a bunch of bullshit.

New iTunes, version 4.9, now with podcast aggregation!

2005-06-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

I've downloaded iTunes 4.9 and checked out the podcast aggregation features.

I checked it out on my Mac last night and on my Windows laptop this morning. I'm a bit baffled by the directory, which takes on the iTunes Music Store interface. I'm very experienced with subscribing to and listening to the podcasts that I like and finding them in their interface is extremely difficult.

It would be great to be able to import my subscriptions from my other podcast aggregators.

Another strange thing about this implementation is how I can listen to the downloaded podcasts. I'm used to using iPodder and having the podcasts show up in iTunes as mp3 files in their normal directory ("Library") structure. The podcasts that are downloaded by iTunes directly appear only in the "Podcasts" portion of the structure and not in the "Library" part. This effectively puts a Great Wall of China between the Mongolian Hordes of my iPodder-aggregated podcasts and the Chinese Peace Lovers of my iTunes-aggregated podcasts. I'm rooting for the Hordes.

Daughter's Favorite Songs

2005-06-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

During the course of our lives together, my elder daughter lets us know what songs she loves. Here's her short list:

1. "I Can't Drive 55" - Sammy Hagar
2. "Hollaback Girl" - Gwen Stefani
3. "Theme to Spider Man" - The Ramones
4. "Pet" - A Perfect Circle

Do we have a cool daughter or what?

Karl Rove's Statements About 9/11

2005-06-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

Why, all of a sudden, does Karl Rove speak for anyone other than himself?

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding to our attackers."

Well, so what? So that's what he thinks, so let him! Let him say whatever he wants to say. And let everyone else stay true to what's really going on, that the haters hate conservatives and liberals alike. We are all Americans and we are all cheapened, conservatives and liberals alike, by his comments. I've heard lots of liberals disgusted at his comments, saying that Bush and Rove divided us, calling for Karl Rove to apologize, and I don't care. Bush and Rove can't divide us unless we allow it to happen. Whether Karl Rove apologizes or not, we are in the same boat. It invokes one of my favorite metaphors, "straightening deck chairs on the Titanic."

May we not get caught up in the minutia and keep our eyes on the real goal.

Fly on the Wall

2005-06-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Setting: Team meeting to discuss any and all issues concerning our current project.

My boss: There are going to be major changes in the requirements for the project. (Short discussion of changes)

Program manager: People realize these have impact on the schedule, right?

I guess you had to be there. Trust me, it was hilarious!

Another Wedding!

2005-06-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

A good friend sent pictures of her wedding to me and Lovely Wife. It was a simple affair, at City Hall, she looked beautiful, he looked handsome, and everyone looked happy.

Interesting similarities and contrasts with my own wedding and the wedding I just recently attended in Boston.

Been a While, My Babies!

2005-06-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Catch-ups: Went to a wedding in Boston and visited with my sister, brother-in-law and niece, all in the same trip. Wedding was an old college friend, so I got to see lots of other old college friends. Some I haven't seen since my own wedding and some longer than that! It sure was great, though.

I missed the family a lot while I was gone. There were a couple of days before I was leaving where I was a bit squirrely, nervous about leaving. There were also a couple of days after returning where I was reintegrating myself and everything is now back to normal. Well, as normal as things can be around here!

Other catch-ups: Been continuing with golf! Had my last lesson yesterday, where we reviewed hitting irons, hitting the big dog (driver), chipping, and got my first lesson on putting. That putting lesson sure was helpful! My father-in-law and I went out to play nine holes after my lesson and my putting was vastly improved!

"Paving the information footpaths"

2005-05-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

Once again, Jon Udell give me more food for thought than I can digest in one sitting. Would that my work saw and responded to what Jon writes in this article. Would that I did.

Idea Processing

2005-05-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

I listened to one of Dave Winer's recent podcasts (post here) and he asked for folks to blog about their experiences with idea processing.

I've used formal idea processing most when writing a requirements document. The best tool I've found for this process is Microsoft Word's outline view. I use it extensively when starting a document. I concentrate on getting the first level of detail down, so that I have everything I want to write about in a first level placeholder. Then, I move down to the next level of detail, repeating the process within each of the first level placeholders.

One important thing I used the last time I went through this process is I limited myself to a maximum of five placeholders at any given level. It turned out very well. It was a big stretch from what I'm used to, which is to just use as many placeholders as the ideas dictated. Limiting myself to a maximum of five was very helpful because it seems my mind, and perhaps others' as well, can't get around any group with more than five members. Three is probably optimal, but I thought five was a bit more do-able for me. Limiting to a maximum of five helped me to understand each group better as far as what the group was about, how to relate to the group and how the group relates to other groups. These are very critical to the idea process and the limit of five really helped the process.

So, using the phrases I write as an outline, I get down to a sufficient level of detail. How do you know what is a sufficient level of detail? I see it as getting to the point where my ideas are tapped out and they are all in the outline. More ideas will come as details are fleshed out. This is just the first stab at getting everything that's in my head in the document.

Then, I use the outline that I've made and write the actual document text under each heading. In my case, the document text is actual product requirements. One of the interesting things I noticed was that not only is the actual product requirement relevant to understanding the product, the location in the outline is also relevant. I'm so impressed when someone takes care to write good product requirements and also to organize them well. The organization can help so much. Of course, you can't get far with well-organized requirements that aren't written well. It's like a saying I know of, "Hope won't get you far, but you won't get far without it." Well, replace "hope" with "organization" and you have an idea of how I look at it.

So, for me, I guess what I'm saying is that idea processing is all about organization. It's all about making a bucket for each piece of information and when a new one comes in, placing it in the right bucket. Everything is easier to understand in itself and in relation to everything else.

Now, I'm not sure how this idea processing stuff could relate to other areas of life, but I'm willing to learn. So far, I've only used it for writing my product requirements documents at work.

"We are the Majority"

2005-04-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

Great article at The Progressive by Bernie Sanders.

Starting the New Phase

2005-04-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

Had a great meeting with my development management counterparts this morning. It's time for us to kick off the next phase of development on our project and that's what this meeting was all about. We need to be very careful as we go forward.

A change since I last met with these guys: I saw that this project is getting a lot of visibility all the way up the chain at our company. They are talking about how critical this project is to define the next 18 months here. That puts this burden squarely on the shoulders of this project and version we are working on now and the version immediately following. That's a lot for this project to shoulder! And that means a lot of communication is necessary.

Cringely Makes Me Chuckle

2005-04-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

Cringley:

"Getting CRM’d: Siebel has canned CEO J. Michael Lawrie after less than a year on the job and has replaced him with longtime board member George Shaheen. Gorgeous George is best known for taking Webvan, the best-funded dot-com in history, and driving it into a tree. Hey, what could they do? Bernie Ebbers and Kenneth Lay weren’t available."

"Escalation Chain"

2005-04-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

The chain from me to the CEO just got a little longer. My boss's boss is now my boss's boss's boss. As of now, it's a welcome change. I don't know my boss's new boss at all, but I look forward to getting to know her better. We had a meeting with my boss's new boss's boss this morning where he described to the team the changes he was making, including putting her in where she is. Looks like we're headed onward and upward, we're expected to hit some huge revenue targets a few years out, and we've got to get banging on all cylinders for it to happen.

Nothing like a bit of incentive to get the team to click together. What the heck, a little incentive deserves a lot more, huh? Give us a heapin' helpin' of incentive and you bet we'll hit the mark!

Lovely Wife, She Who Rocks Hard

2005-04-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

Lovely Wife and I have had a nice weekend so far. Good talks, good awarenesses, good new things coming up in our relationship and our lives together. This woman has depths of strength that I envy. We trudge this road of happy destiny together.

User Centered Design

2005-04-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

I took a class a couple of years ago on User Centered Design. It was a real eye-opener for me.

I've been working in software marketing for the last seven years of my career and one of the pillars of the job is taking requirements from customers and representing them in language that both customers and software developers can understand.

The two sides of the job, customers and developers, are interesting to compare and contrast. Developers are all employed by the same company that I am. They sit in cubicles near my cubicle. I can talk to them whenever I want. I don't have to see the developers anything. On the other hand, customers work far away from me. They are employed by their own company. Their job description often doesn't include talking to me. I have to convince a customer to buy my product to make my company successful. So, an imbalance is apparent. A good product requirement has a good balance of customer and developer interaction.

How to tip the balance more in favor of the customer (thereby tipping the balance more in my company's and my favor)? How to address this imbalance?

Father-in-Law

2005-04-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

I have the world's coolest father-in-law.

We take the family down to their house every Sunday for hanging out and dinner. Over the past couple of weeks, he's taken me out to hit some balls on the driving range with him. Now, he went ahead and bought me some golf lessons! They are scheduled for this Sunday! I'm so excited!

I've loved golf for a long time, but I've never been willing to spend much money or time on it. I used to play a lot in high school, but I haven't much at all since then. Like not at all.

He loves golf a lot, so this is a great way to get my golf fix and hang out too.

The only wrinkle could be that the forecasts are calling for rain this weekend. I'm not sure if the rain will extend down to their house or not, but we'll see.

Oprah Rules!

2005-04-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

Last night, Lovely Wife and I sat down and watched Oprah together. It was the episode that aired on Wednesday, with Ayelet Waldman discussing that article that I discussed yesterday.

It was a great episode. Pure Oprah goodness. The wives and mothers on the show to meet with Ayelet and Oprah were a very interesting group. The ones that got to me the most were the ones that were combative with Ayelet. A couple of them and their comments got me and Lovely Wife yelling at the TV and flipping them off in our living room. One of them talked about how she watches TV while her husband is having sex with her because she is so tired. Another one of them was so combative with Ayelet about her saying she loves her husband more than she loves her kids. Some of them backed Ayelet up and said they felt the same way and conducted their marriages and motherhood in a similar way.

I had a couple of thoughts as we were watching. First, all these women are children with parents as well. How would they feel if their parents said they loved each other more than they loved them? Would they have such a problem with it? I know that, for me, I would feel wonderful about that. Second, Ayelet wrote the article for other adults, not for children. It's pretty obvious that children can't understand such complex concepts as love between adults. One woman said she talked to her nine year old about it and the nine year old was very affected by it. No kidding! Any wonder this woman has some funky ideas about raising kids? Third, it's remarkable that this conversation was moderated by Oprah, a woman who is not married and has no children. Whether that makes her qualified or not qualified, I'm not sure. It's also remarkable that nowhere in the episode was this fact mentioned.

I see my role in my family differently today. I see my wife differently. I see my kids differently. Different is good.

Icky Times

2005-04-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

Sent an e-mail to Lovely Wife this morning about some things I said to her last night. We're going through a lot of changes at home, what with the new baby and our relationship maturing, and I said some things that I remembered this morning and knew I had to tell her more about. I had to tell her about why I said what I said and how that's not the person I want to be.

I wasn’t working from the place of "One Day at a Time." I had some grandiose ideas about telling the future that had been going through my brain. . . . I can’t tell the future and I don’t know how I will feel tomorrow; I never have been able to tell the future.

. . . You make a choice to be my wife and mother to our kids every day that I appreciate so much. I am so grateful for that. I will be grateful for that every moment of every day.

You are my lovely wife. I love you so much.

Passing a Milestone

2005-04-21T16:40:00.000-07:00

Well, we passed a significant milestone in the project I’m on at work. We made it to the next phase, where we move from concentrating on the marketing side of the project to the development side of the project. The milestone we just passed signified that the development team is committed to completing their documentation and starting to write some actual code! It also signifies that the higher-ups (VPs and such) buy into the project for now. We have another milestone to reach soon where the development team presents the plans for the project and gets them OK’ed by everyone involved.

The phase we have just entered has a lot to do with design documentation. There was a great article on Slashdot about design documentation recently. It was very helpful to read all the posts there, seeing many different perspectives.

What it comes to for me is a situation that happens often, where there is a handoff between groups. The phase transition we just had represented a handoff from marketing to development and the next phase transition represents a deeper agreement and handoff from marketing and development management to the actual developers, where the project really gets going and doesn’t get a formal checkup until right before it is released. So, these handoffs are very interesting. They have to be done at just the right time. If the handoff from the product requirements documents (marketing is responsible for) to the design documents (development management is responsible for) is done too soon or too late, there is much confusion and the project is impacted in the form of time, people or features. To do the handoff right, you have to pay attention to how the product requirements documents are maturing and the right time to start writing the design documents. Then, you have to place the milestone in the right place so you don’t spend so much time writing design documents that need to be rewritten if there is a new understanding and you don’t do it so early that the project isn’t understood well enough to pass the milestone.

It looks more and more complex the more I look at it.

We have a similar challenge in the phase we are presently in and transitioning to the next phase. The design documents are being written in anticipation of starting to write code. Now, you don’t want to start writing code right away, but you don’t want to wait too long to start writing code either. You need to find the sweet spot of the correct effort and timing of the design document writing, the correct effort and timing of the coding, and the correct timing of the milestone between phases.

This is very complex stuff and we really need to take it one day at a time to make sure we don’t make any silly, rash decisions that impact the project.

Thinking vs. Feeling (Part 2)

2005-04-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

On the MBTI, I'm an INFP. I can hear you saying, "What's that? You're an F instead of a T?" Yup, that's me.

It's not a detached, cold analysis that I'm interested in, it's primarily attached and subjective and secondarily analysis. If thinkers were to see my thoughts, they would not identify with them because they're not very logical or fact-based. My analysis is more storytelling than anything else. I think it seems very analytical because I grew up with a very analytical father. He was a huge thinker and not much of a feeler at all, and, as a friend said once, "Dad's are important to guys." No kidding.

Thinking vs. Feeling

2005-04-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

Lovely Wife says the previous post's content means that I'm a thinker. She says she's a feeler because at shows like the The Album Leaf show we saw, she's all about the feelings.

I call shenanigans.

Sure, there's a cerebral, analytical component to that last post. Did you notice that the theme of the post was how enjoyable the show was? That was a very powerful feeling for me. I enjoyed it so much and I was so happy being there! The cerebral, analytical part was surely there, while the emotional theme of the evening lept above all else.

What do you say to that?

The Album Leaf Show (Part 2)

2005-04-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

The Album Leaf show on Tuesday night was so good. I got to thinking about what made it so good to me. I always go back to my favorites: King Crimson, Rush and Yes when I think about these things. With those three bands, I love their shows so much because there is an amazing intersection of great composition and great performance. These two elements in such amounts make for an amazing show.

I look at the The Album Leaf show and I see amazing composition and performance that really doesn't do it for me. There was so much machinery, so many loops, and I just didn't see much performance joy coming from the performers. The amazing thing about it is that I had as much a great time at this show than I did at any show by the other three bands I mentioned. It was a supremely good time!

Wife of Great Loveliness

2005-04-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

I love my wife so much. Reading that Ayelet Waldman article made me think about it in a new way. I strongly identify with what Ayelet describes. I love my wife so much.

When I'm at work chatting with my friends, they talk about work stuff, they talk about hobbies, sometimes they talk about their kids, and I participate in these chats and stay on topic. No one talks about how much they love their wife or husband. No one even mentions their partner or their relationship. I've never heard those topics come up in the twelve years I've been working. Heck, let's go back over all 33 years. It just doesn't come up at any time. There are so many other things that we converse about, but never that topic.

When I look at my life, I have relationship priorities. First priority in my life: God. Second priority in my life: Me. Third priority in my life: my wife. Fourth priority in my life: my nuclear family (the two girls). Fifth priority in my life: my extended family. Sixth priority in my life: my friends. Seventh priority in my life: everyone else.

The conversations I get involved in with people throughout my life are by far mostly about the fifth and sixth priorities. It's like the priorities are reversed. The conversation topics go from lowest priority to next lowest, to next lowest, and so on. What would it be like if this were reversed? What would it be like if our conversation mirrored our priorities? What would it be like if we spent the most of our conversation on the first priority? Hard to think of anything bad that could come of that!

It's really great to see all these things about my life and my wife. She's so wonderful and our relationship is the most wonderful thing in my life. And I agree with Ayelet and in my case, it's expressed as I love my wife more than I love my children. And I love my children more than I can express.

My wife and I have been through the wringer more times than I can count. We've been in arguments that would turn you white as a sheet to witness. We don't yell, hit or anything like that; still, we have doozies. We have disagreements and we have misunderstandings and we have come through it all with such a deep love for each other. We have a mature love that's been through many stages and grown. This love has been around for a very long time, and our first child came when we had already been together for eight years, married for one. That's a lot of history, especially since we pack in a lot of living in a short period of time! So it seems like the most naturally occuring thing to love my wife more than I love my kids.

I've been through some deep stuff with my kids. Our oldest is three and she is such an amazing person. She is so loving and so worthy of love. The same goes with the baby. She's wonderful. And I love them more than I can say. The love is not as mature as other loves I have in my life. As we go forward in our lives, the love will mature and deepen. When I look at it, I see that my wife and I had a head start on my kids and I.

I remember, back in college, I took a class called "Theology of Marriage." We talked about children and discussed some interesting perspectives. One perspective I remember clearly (or so I think!) is that when two people are in love, the love between them becomes an entity unto itself that is not either person. Then, when a child comes, the child is an expression in human form of that love that is not either person and is so present to them. Do not read anything that does not appear in those two sentences. The child does not replace the love between the partners. The child is an expression in human form of that love.

It reminds me of a sculptor. A sculptor makes a piece of art as an expression of some idea in physical form. The sculpture does not become the idea, it becomes an expression of that idea and remains that. The relationship between the sculptor (any person, really) and the sculpture can change as time moves forward and the sculptor (person) changes and the relationship between the sculptor (person) and the idea can change as well. The same can be said of a musician, an idea, and a piece of music that is an expression of that idea in musical form.

When I read Ayelet's article, this is what I identified with. I identify with the idea of getting together with other dads and talking about our kids. No one talks about their wife. Sometimes I feel like if I don't talk about my kids in the same way, they'll look at me strange. I think it's a bit of a different degree, though. I think they might look at me strange and wonder if I'm a weird person. I think if the men were replaced with women and I was replaced with my wife, they might get a rope and a posse for a lynching, like Ayelet describes.

Your Favorite Movie

2005-04-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

Hey, Lovely Wife, my One True Love, my only reader (!), why don't you post about your favorite movie?

My Favorite Movie: "2001: A Space Odyssey"

2005-04-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a trip into my brain. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

So, 2001 is my favorite movie of all time. It's so well done in so many ways that it's superior to all other movies I've seen. The elements of movies are things like the script, the acting, the special effects, the sound, the production design, the editing, and it not only excels in every one of those areas, all those areas work together to establish the theme of the movie.

The movie's theme, to me, is transformation and growth. This topic means so much to me in my personal life and when I see this movie, I experience all the things that are so important to me represented so powerfully.

The cavemen at the beginning of the movie (the first of four parts) are transformed from being weak, timid and pathetic to strong, assertive and vital. The depiction of this transformation and growth is simply amazing.

The next three parts of the movie show transformation and growth from what looks like the highest of human endeavors to a new form of life. "One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind", anyone? That line came in 1969, when they first landed on the moon, after the movie was made in 1968! The second part of the movie is all about how the moon is now humans' playground, humans being so advanced. Then, in the third part of the movie, humans are sent to Jupiter by something they don't understand. The endeavor to go to Jupiter is an even higher human undertaking and it is successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Challenger disaster, anyone? Columbia disaster, anyone? Then, in the fourth part of the movie, David Bowman is taken on a trip (after he's taken a human's most unlikely trip from Earth to Jupiter) through the star gate. A trip where he is only required to hold on for the ride and another power takes him where he needs to go, and shows him what he needs to see. He is transformed and grows in ways that are almost more than a person can understand. He is pushed to the brink of insanity. At the end of the fourth part of the movie, we see David Bowman on the brink of death and then transformed into new life, coming back to Earth again.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. The central theme that gets me is that transformation and growth is something you won't do if you don't have another power interested in filling in the gaps in your limited awareness and understanding. That power's care simply takes over the process when it's needed and all you need to do is hang on for the ride.

"Buy the ticket, take the ride." -- "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", Hunter S. Thompson

It's letting go in its ultimate form. In movie form, it's rapture to me.

Dinosaur Jr

2005-04-21T09:34:00.001-07:00

I'm so glad that Dinosaur Jr is back together. Heck, anything so I get to see more of J Mascis. He's the best!

I remember a friend of mine, with whom I shared very similar musical taste, was a huge Dinosaur Jr fan back in our college days and I never got any of their stuff. Now I see where he was coming from. Great stuff! There's not a track on the Dinosaur Jr CDs that I have that I don't like and most that I absolutely love!

Truly, Madly, Guiltily

2005-04-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Alchemist (1907)

2005-04-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

More on the Show

2005-04-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

It was a really great evening. Lovely Wife and I really needed some time to ourselves to recharge our batteries. Endless parenting is very, very exhausting. It's wonderful when we are able to recharge together since we both need it. I think she needed it more than I did and I'm so glad it worked out so well.

It was like a little mini-vacation for each of us. The only difficulty was that we got home pretty late and are both pretty tired today.

The kids did great while we were gone! The babysitters (yes, that's plural!) did so well and I'm so grateful.

The Album Leaf Show

2005-04-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

Lovely Wife and I went to see a show by one of our favorite bands, The Album Leaf, last night. They played at a club called The Independent in the City, a great venue for them.

The last time we saw them, less than a year ago, it was much louder. It wasn't so bad last night and I didn't even have earplugs. They played lots of my favorite songs and started out with a great set of three songs, "Thule," "On Your Way" and "Another Day." That's a powerhouse start to a show! They played almost everything off of their "In a Safe Place" CD, which I love. They also played a great version of "Micro Melodies," a song he did for the soundtrack of a movie called "Moog." They also played some new songs from the EP that's only available on this tour. The new songs were OK, but not that great. I need to listen to them a bit more (yes, we did buy the CD!).

One thing that gets me about bands like The Album Leaf is that they use so many loops that I wonder how they decide what parts they will play live and what parts they will play using a loop. And then I get to thinking why play anything live at all, why not just play all the loops? What's the point?

For example, one of the guys, Matthew Resovich, was playing a glockenspiel during one of the songs. He played a short line that was repeated over and over and he played it live. Then, he switched to playing the violin, yet the glockenspiel part continued playing in a loop. Now, why even play a live glockenspiel part when there's a loop cued up and ready to go? What's the point? Do the guys on the stage need to look busy? Are they combatting boredom on their part or the audience's part? Are they just trying to have some fun? Do they just decide by random? This happened for all three of the frontline guys: Drew Andrews, Matthew Resovich and Jimmy LaValle (Mr. The Album Leaf). I can understand the need for live drums, so the drummer, Timothy Reece, is exempt from my suspicions.

I'm just a frustrated musician with a little bit of knowledge that makes me dangerous. Ignore everything I say.

The other bands we saw, Manuok and Aspects of Physics, were good. There was one band we missed at the very beginning.

Oh, and by the way, I see that full beards are now definitely in style. Greater than 50% of the guys playing last night had the full beard going on. I feel so 90's.

Bright Eyes

2005-04-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Bright Eyes is coming to San Francisco and Lovely Wife and I have to go! I got into Bright Eyes about 5-6 months ago after hearing them on "Indie Pop Rocks" on SomaFM. Great stuff. Then he came out with his two new CDs and he's on tour. We gotta go see him. He's at a venue I haven't been to before and I haven't even heard of! Should be a great time!

Sin City, Baby!

2005-04-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

Great movie! It's a visual feast.

Went to see it with Lovely Wife yesterday and it was really amazing. We worked on the plot for a while after the movie, comparing notes, trying to figure out some of the twists and turns we didn't completely understand. We eventually gave up. The movie is visually stunning and engrossing to a point that the story just fades away. It's not that the story is not important. It's that movies are primarily a visual medium. Sound is great, a story is great, and when a movie takes its visuals as seriously as this movie does, it goes to a new level of greatness.

It reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Barry Lyndon. The story is pretty boring and doesn't make much sense. The visuals of the movie are so amazing and stunning that it represented a revolution in movies. It's the original Hat Movie.

Anyway, back to Sin City. I thought Mickey Rourke stole the show. He was so good as Marv. Bruce Willis was good as Hartigan, who wasn't as interesting as Marv. I think I liked Marv more because he reminded me of me. Marv has thoughts like, "Why is this beautiful woman with me when I'm just an ugly lunk?" This thought drives his part of the story and I understand that. Loyalty means everything, even with someone you just met.

Lovely. Just Lovely.

Andy Summers vs. The Edge

2005-03-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

Being an amateur musician, I have lots and lots of opinions about music. Earlier this week, I was watching music videos and they showed two videos by The Police, "Synchronicity II" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger." I got to thinking. I really noticed the reverb that Andy Summers uses on his guitar. It is a huge part of the guitar sound on those two songs and it has a huge impact on them. I noticed that the reverb is very different on the two songs and very exactly used. I was impressed by his expertise with the reverb and the guitar together.

Then I got to thinking about The Edge and how much reverb is a huge part of his guitar sound as well. The vast majority of U2 songs have the exact same guitar sound and it's huge, huge reverb. It's like he took his reverb unit, set it once, and super glued all the knobs and buttons so it would stay the exact same. Once you find something you like, stick with it!

Very interesting that there seem to be two very different approaches to uniting reverb and guitar. Both are very, very successful. I suppose my tastes prefer Andy Summers over The Edge. So there you go.

Life Is Good

2005-03-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

Lovely Wife and I had a wonderful time together last night, her asking me movie trivia questions from the current issue of Entertainment Weekly while we laid in bed. We had a wonderful time together, reconnecting after a hectic day, with the whole family together, but not spending much time together as a couple. I love her dearly.

Gym

2005-03-25T09:24:00.000-08:00

Didn't make it this morning. Decided that this will be a whole week off from the gym. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to take a week off from the gym every now and then, but there you go. I'll have to pay close attention and report back.

Gym

2005-03-24T14:55:00.000-08:00

Haven't been to the gym since last Friday. Lovely Wife has been sick, I took Monday and Tuesday off work, and I'm still recovering from the jolt that it gave my routine. I'm hoping to get to the gym tomorrow morning.

I'm sure feeling lots of beneficial effects from going to the gym, along with losing a couple of pounds. Lovely Wife is thinking about starting at Weight Watchers too, so I'm thinking about learning better eating habits through osmosis from her!

Datablogging

2005-03-24T14:49:00.000-08:00

Looks like a very interesting way to blog. I would love to try one of these out.

Via

New CDs

2005-03-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Picked up two of my favorite all-time CDs a couple of weeks ago: Alice in Chains, "Facelift" and Alice in Chains, "Dirt". Two of the finest CDs to come out of the 90's, if you ask me.

Boundaries Between Documents (Different Take)

2005-03-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

Here's my model for specifying a product.

I'm a product manager, so I take customers' requirements and document them so the developers (the folks who actually build the thing / write the code) can understand. It's not that the developers are dumb, it's that the job of getting lots of different customers' requirements together in one product needs some integration effort and that's what I'm in charge of, as the product manager. If a customer has a problem with the product, they don't call the developer, they call me!

I work a lot with the developers to make sure they understand what I have written. We review things many, many times and track our review activities closely. The customer requirements document is primarily my responsibility and the developers help me make sure it is understandable for them and complete. If there's something that their perspective thinks of that isn't covered in my document, we work on making sure it gets covered, if we agree that my document is the right place to cover it.

Next comes the developers' documentation, where they take what I have written and write a specification of how they will design the product. They document the "How" in response to my documentation of the "What". (This is a pretty simplistic and sometimes inaccurate way of looking at it. It helps sometimes.)

When developers write their documentation, it is their primary responsibility and I am their helper to make sure it's understandable and complete. Again, if there's something that my perspective thinks of that isn't covered in their document, we work on making sure it gets covered, if we agree that their document is the right place to cover it.

The developers' document then is used to make the actual product itself. Everything that was in my document is covered in the developers' document and I have reviewed it to make sure of that. I also make sure that for each feature that appears in my document, the developers' document's coverage for it is correct. It not only needs to appear there, it also needs to be accurate and a viable design.

Sometimes it is very hard to make the decisions about what is supposed to appear in what document. Someone has an idea of what the product should do or how it should do it: what document should include that idea? How to we arrive at an agreement? What criteria do we use? This stuff is pretty difficult to codify and I've gotten in plenty of arguments over the years with people who think something should appear in one of my documents and I think it should appear in their document. These are good arguments to have, but it's important to come to an agreement. Sometimes these agreements are not prioritized and it becomes a problem either now or later, when the customer gets a product that isn't right.

Finishing Up My Document

2005-03-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

Now is the time for me to finish up my specification document for our new product. I've only got a few issues to go that were raised during the last review last week and I'll be done for now! It feels great to be on the precipice of completion. It's been a hard road to get this document into fighting shape and it feels pretty rock solid.

It's been a difficult time getting my document into shape within a galaxy of documents that describe the new product's requirements. It's hard to tell where my document ends and another begins sometimes. But we've worked out a lot of the kinks and it looks like we're on track to have a pretty strong set of documents. We initially did the split because the product is bigger than one person could describe all on their own. We needed multiple people to write the specifications, so we elected to use multiple documents. I keep running into issues where readers don't know that the information they are looking for is not supposed to appear in my document, but they are getting fewer. Hopefully that doesn't mean the readers are getting fewer, but that they are understanding the boundaries between all six documents better.

Here's to hoping!

Work Milestone Passed

2005-03-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

I had a review meeting for an important document at work this morning. It went very well! It's one of the final reviews the document is going to receive and it specifies a significant amount of all new functionality that will be developed and tested over the next 12 months and then released. The team all got together and reviewed my document and we had some good discussions about the content. Mine is only one portion of the entire content of the release, so there's a lot more to go, but it was good that we're all on track with at least this part.

Changes in the rest of the content could make me do some rewrites in certain areas of the document, but that's OK. At least it's here to give folks an idea of what things look like when they're relatively mature. A measuring stick, if you will. (A bit presumptuous of me? Surely. This is about how I see it.)

Gym Update

2005-03-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

It's been good times at the gym. Been going regularly, but not as often as I would like. I'd like to make it six times per week, but it just hasn't worked out that way yet.

Talked to a good friend of mine who used to be an athlete (well, more of an athlete than me anyway) and he suggested three times a week should be a maximum. The major issue was that muscles need rest to grow properly without tension. I'm really just experimenting with it all at this point. Maybe after a while I'll go down to three times per week and see how it goes.

The way I've structured my workouts is a combination of weight training and thirty minutes of cardio every day I go. The weight training is done with upper body workout one day, lower body the next day, repeat. This seems it would give reprieve from any problem with working out a muscle too often since it equates to doing weight training with that set of muscles only 2-3 times per week. The cardio is a question, though. I do that for 30 minutes every time I go. That would seem to break the "only three times per week" aspect of it.

So, more fuel to the fire. More things to try out.

Also, my friend has a running workout routine that he learned a while back that is really cool. We did it together once around 1999 or 2000 and it was really great. We're getting together again tomorrow morning so he can show it to me again. Maybe I can remember it this time and use it. I'm looking forward to doing an outdoor cardio workout and using it in my normal workout routine. I hope I could get it down to 30 minutes since that's all the time I have when I go. As I remember, it took a bit longer than that.

How's the Gym?

2005-03-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Good gym time yesterday morning and this morning. Things are going very well. All the Precor machines were taken when it was time for my cardio workout, so I did my cardio on a treadmill instead. It was nice to mix it up a bit. I'd like to do it more often so we'll see about that.

It's been better and better going with moving my attention away from the range of motion display. I feel a lot more connected with the exercise when my attention is in my body. Imagine that!

Not a single "gym babe" yesterday, but there were a couple of them this morning. An interesting species, for sure. What makes a "gym babe"? The way she dresses is essential to her classification. Let me reiterate that a "gym babe" is interesting only so far as a sociological study. They're not more interesting on a personal relationship basis than anyone else.

Sick and Tired Of: Today's Episode

2005-03-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

I'm sick and tired of articles about the woman, Temple Grandin, who has a mild form of autism and designs slaughterhouses. I see a story about her about once a month and no story every references any of the other ones I've seen and they are all the same article.

What makes it so interesting? First, autism is interesting to the general public and lots of people don't understand it well but are afraid of it. It is heartening to see that it's not debilitating. (Now, whether any of that is accurate or not, who knows? These articles surely don't help our understanding.) Second, people have a general like for animals and meat. There's some tension that comes from liking these two opposites and it helps alleviate the tension when they hear about someone making it easier for the animals to die so we can eat them.

I guess these things mean that we get to see an article about how amazing this woman is every now and then. And I'm sick and tired of hearing about her.

Another Gym Update

2005-03-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

Good morning at the gym. No "gym babe" around in today's early shift. Just a group of us pikers. At the gym I go to, the system they use is very nice and it helps you track the amount of weight you use, the reps you do, the weight and reps goals you have, and the range of motion you use when doing the exercises. I've worked on not paying too much attention to the graphical display that helps you with the range of motion and paying more attention to my body and how it feels on the inside. The thing beeps when you reach the ends of your range of motion, but it's rather soft, so sometimes I miss it. I really have to pay a lot of attention and that seems like a very good thing so far.

For the cardio workout, I felt really, really good. I kept it up at 13.5 calories per minute and felt very good throughout the whole 30 minutes. It seems like my cardio workout abilities are coming back to me pretty quickly after a long layoff. It felt so good.

More Rain Running

2005-03-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Made it through the rain to pick up the car. It was less rainy than this morning, but more windy! Met a lady at the train station near my work who wanted to know about getting to El Camino and Fair Oaks in Sunnyvale. I had no idea since I don't get up in that area and I don't take public transit much at all. Also, it was rather difficult to communicate with her, but I'm not really sure why. She couldn't talk very coherently, although her English was good, and I couldn't understand her very well.

Met a guy who stopped his car to ask me directions while I was walking from the train station to the mechanic's shop. I couldn't understand him either! I just couldn't grok the name of the place he was looking for. He was in the right area, but I had no idea what he was looking for. I don't know that area very well, anyway, so there you go.

Big Weekend Coming Up

2005-03-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

Should be a good weekend coming up. I'm going to a meeting tomorrow morning and then we're heading to a friend of mine's memorial service. She hasn't passed away, it's a memorial service for her 60th birthday. The idea is that when someone dies and you have a memorial service, everyone says such wonderful things and feels so guilty that they didn't say them while the person was still alive. So, this gives people the opportunity to cut out the middle part and say wonderful things about someone without all the guilt!

She's a very good friend, someone I admire in so many ways who has helped me a lot over the past few years. Now that I think about it, I met her in August of 1996. That's about 8.5 years ago! Wow. I didn't think it had been that long.

I think I'll sit down and write out something I would read at her memorial service (as if she were gone) and see how it comes out. That also reminds me I have to call and RSVP for us. All four of us are going.

Anyway, that's it for plans for Saturday. On Sunday, it's down to the in-law's house for our traditional Sunday hanging out and dinner. Hopefully I can make it to the gym once this weekend. I'd prefer to go on Saturday so the big girl can come with me and hang out with the rest of the kids at the day care. We'll see, though. Saturday is looking quite full.

Hockey League Buyout Offer

2005-03-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

What an interesting idea. Most interesting quote: "If accepted, the league would become a single entity, an ownership structure where most decisions are dictated by the central office and the teams have the autonomy of a fast food franchisee."

The implications are staggering.

Vikings News: Whoa

2005-03-04T10:57:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine if Bud Grant came back to coach the Vikings? The mind reels!

Oh, so true

2005-03-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

This is exactly how I feel about the media these days, whether traditional or not.

Great morning so far!

2005-03-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

Good workout at the gym. Lower body workout and cardio, came in very useful later in the morning! (Stay tuned!) Pretty good population at the gym right when it opened at 5:30, but when I was done at 6:30, the place was almost completely empty!

Y'know one thing about the gym I'm just realizing? You can spot the "gym babe" a mile away if you're paying attention. She's got the perfect Cosmo/Vogue body that we've all been trained to think is the best model out there and she's going to show it off. (The same probably holds true for guys, but who am I to know or notice?) Well, one of them was there this morning. Yeah, she's great to look at and all, but I felt like one of Pavlov's dogs, just mindlessly drooling when the man rings my bell. Well, I ain't about that, I'm about stickin' it to the man! Take that bell and shove it where the sun don't shine! So I "accidentally" tripped her on the treadmill.

I'm so much more into women who don't fit the mold that we see every day at the grocery checkout line. Women who are unique, interesting and bold. I thought Anna Nicole Smith was much more interesting when she was overweight than when she used to be thin and now that she's thin again. Do I concentrate on external appearance too much? Depends on who you ask.

Also, this was the first morning since I've started back to the gym, 11 days ago, that I went in thinking about how boring it was coming to the gym. This was one of the factors that I used to stop going to the gym back in August. We'll have to see about that one. I remember my Zen teacher answering questions about boredom with practice. She said to watch it very closely and find out who exactly it is that is bored. What does boredom mean to that part? What does it mean to other parts? This could be very, very interesting.

Traffic was a total bear this morning because it's raining and I needed to get in early to take my car to the mechanic for an oil change. Well, I didn't get to the mechanic until late and did I mention it was raining? And, oh yeah, I forgot my umbrella? So I got to run to the train station in the rain! Joy. Then I jumped on the train, rode up one stop to the closest station to my work and then I got to run in the rain again to make it to my building! Joy. Pure rapture. Well, at least it put some value into that lower body workout and cardio that I did this morning. I was able to keep up a pretty good pace through the rain with my laptop pack on. Now I am soaking wet and sweaty and I haven't even started working yet!

You know the best thing about it? I get to do the whole thing in reverse at lunch time to go pick up my car! Needless to say, I'm praying that the rain be done by lunch time!

Technorati Tags: workout, weightloss, gym, personal, bodyimage

Duran Duran Revisited

2005-03-03T14:14:00.000-08:00

So, Lovely Wife and FHGF went to see Duran Duran last night. They had a great time and I'm glad. They played some of Lovely Wife's favorite songs, including "The Chauffeur" ("Blow the Shofar"?), "Rio" and "The Reflex." She said the performance was a bit spotty, but that's to be expected.

We had a nice time at home, with the baby going to sleep pretty early and the big girl going to sleep well herself. I had to stay up a bit later than I would have liked to feed the baby, but that's also to be expected with a newborn!

Technorati Tags: duranduran, personal

Gym this morning

2005-03-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

Made it to the gym again this morning. Upper body workout. It went very well! I forgot my headphones in the car, so no TV watching for me! Instead, I picked up a copy of the New Yorker and read that. It was quite a nice change! I read articles about Israel, and other topics that I can't remember.

Technorati Tags: workingout, weightloss, personal

Duran Duran

2005-03-02T09:33:00.000-08:00

Lovely Wife may be going to see Duran Duran tonight at the San Jose Arena. It was a last-minute opportunity! I hope she gets to go! I know she would have such a great time!

I went to see Duran Duran at Concord Pavilion in 1993 and we had a great time! They put on a really good show! That was when Warren Cuccurullo (spelling courtesy of allmusic.com) was on his first tour with them.

I remember that Terence Trent D'Arby opened up and he put on a great show, too.

Gym Update

2005-03-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

Made it to the gym yesterday morning and this morning. It feels so good to do. I forgot how good it feels.

Lovely Wife has been so supportive of my going to bed early and getting up early. My gratitude knows no bounds!

I've gotten back to good form on all ten machines from when I used to go and on the Precor machine for cardio.

My Chores

2005-02-28T09:58:00.000-08:00

I have four chores that I concentrate on around the house: take out the garbage, take out the recycling, clean the kitty litter, and take out the diapers. I don't need to take out the diapers anymore, because we don't use the Diaper Genie anymore. We just throw them in the trash. I think I'll replace that chore with folding the laundry. Lovely Wife and I thought we would try it out for a while.

I'm not very good at doing my chores. This morning, there was garbage and recycling everywhere and the kitty litter smelled to high heaven and needed cleaning very badly. I took out the garbage and recycling, so things look a lot better. The kitty litter still needs attention badly. And I folded most of the laundry yesterday during the day. There's still a bit of laundry to be done as well (putting away some stuff, hanging up some stuff, folding the giant bed sheets and towels).

I'm thinking about making one of my chores my main project and the other three side projects. That could help a lot toward getting things done.

Getting Together with Old Friends

2005-02-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

On Friday, after work, Lovely Wife and I (along with da two little ones) got together with good friends for dinner. This dinner get-together was a very, very long time coming.

We met Good Friends towards the end of 2003 and we hung out all the time for a year. Good Friends are a couple who have a wonderful little boy who gets along with ours very well. Then, things went south very quickly and we no longer hung out with Good Friends. Lovely Wife and I have been working very hard on our relationship since then. (Man, we're always working on our relationship, 24/7, but there was definitely something different about the work we've done since we stopped hanging out with Good Friends.) Since about a month ago, Lovely Wife and Female Half of Good Friends have been hanging out and they have had a wonderful time talking about how things have changed since we used to hang out. Their relationship has gone very well since getting back together. Lovely Wife even hung out with Good Friends without me on a couple of occasions and had a great time.

Finally, on Friday evening, we all got together for dinner at Good Friends' house. Unfortunately, Male Half of Good Friends (MHGF?) was suddenly sick and couldn't hang out with us at all. Instead, it was just Lovely Wife, FHGF and me hanging out (with the kids, of course). It was a nice time. I realized that the year we all spent hanging out, I never got to know FHGF very well at all. I'd like to do it differently this time. I want me and FHGF to be pals. So, as you see, things turned out in a very good way. MHGF and I are pals and I can be pals with FHGF too. Plenty to go around.

I was reading somewhere (which shall remain nameless) to pay attention to your partner's friends. I am discovering the wisdom in this statement.

No Gym this Morning

2005-02-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

I didn't make it to the gym this weekend or this morning. I had grand designs that didn't make it to fruition. I planned on going to the gym on Saturday and this morning as well. I feel terrible that I've let it slide like that. I remember the moments when I realized I won't be going to the gym on Saturday and this morning and I didn't feel good about them at all. You can probably imagine.

I made it four times last week after starting my commitment Tuesday morning and it felt really, really great. Time to recommit.

My Job as a Teenager

2005-02-28T08:39:00.000-08:00

I worked as a carryout at a grocery store when I was a teenager. The term isn't generally known. The job was at a full-service grocery store. Gourmet items, lots of employees around to help, high-quality deli, the whole nine yards. The job responsibilities were to hang out at the cash registers and bag customers' groceries. We'd have to do janitorial stuff here and there and be a bit of a gopher/flunkie if anything needed doing.

It was a great, great job that I loved a lot. I still look back on it fondly. I got to work with a bunch of kids my age and we all had a great time. All the carryouts were lowest on the totem pole of all the employees at the grocery store, the best place for us to be. We would all have the greatest time together. I really looked forward to going to work! Imagine that!

We would have parties on the weekend that I also remember fondly. Some of my best teenage memories. There was always lots of booze, of which I never partook. Some people hooked up with each other although I never did. (And I'm not just saying that because my mom or my sister may be reading!) I would just hang out with my friends, chat about stupid shit, listen to music, and have a great time.

Blast from the Past!

2005-02-24T14:49:00.000-08:00

Wow. I found an old website I created and just took a bit of a trip down memory lane. Check it out.

Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell, and my wife

2005-02-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

My wife seems to have gotten the notion that I want to watch American Idol with her. It would probably be a lot of fun to watch it with her and have a great time laughing at everyone. And I'll probably do it from time to time. I fear becoming an "American Idol watcher."

Snarky American Idol comment follows: The contestants are as confused about finding the right key as a llama trying to use a deadbolt.

Citizen Journalism

2005-02-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

So, what about citizen journalism? I really like the idea and I would really like to be a citizen journalist.

How?

It seems silly to study how to be a citizen journalist because you become more of a journalist than a citizen. I guess for me, the term always meant a person who is primarily a citizen and likes to write about goings-on in their local community. It seems that learning anything about how to be a citizen journalist would probably concentrate on how to be a journalist rather than how to be a citizen journalist. Lord knows we don't need any more journalists!

What's happening in my local community? I dunno. Maybe I can do some entries on that topic and see where it goes.

More Gym

2005-02-23T09:04:00.000-08:00

Did the lower-body weights workout this morning. It felt good to be back at it! The muscles were definitely rusty, though.

I did the "weights first, then cardio" order and it worked out pretty well. I did 30 minutes of cardio.

I have a question about my cardio workout. My natural tendency on the Precor elliptical machine is to find the "Calories per minute" readout and keep it constant. (This morning I worked on keeping it constant at 12.0.) This means that, while the machine is going through the course, changing the incline and resistance by itself, I'm adjusting my speed to keep the exertion constant. I'm not sure if this is the most effective way to do it, though. Should I be keeping the speed constant and letting the exertion (calories per minute) change? This calls for some experimentation!

I like keeping the exertion constant because I always hate it when I exert myself too much at one point and I'm paying for it the rest of the workout. I could experiment and find an amount of strides per minute that doesn't make that happen. Of course, it would vary based on what program I chose when I started. That's half the fun, right?

I watched mainly SportsCenter and a bit of Monster House while doing my cardio. A nice way to pass the time. I may need to get an iPod to save my sanity. All the basketball on SportsCenter will make my head explode.

Another iTunes Feature Request

2005-02-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

In my iTunes, I would like the Party Shuffle to include portions of my favorite Internet radio stations. I'd love to be listening to my mp3's and then have 20 minutes of Indie Pop Rocks or The Current, and go back to my mp3's. That'd be awesome!

The Gym

2005-02-22T10:32:00.000-08:00

This morning, I got back to the gym for the first time since August 10, 2004. It was nice. The guy who helped me was a nice guy. We went around to all the machines that I used to use and we worked to get me a good amount of weight on each one so I’m challenged at the right level. It worked out pretty well.

I asked him about number of reps, number of sets and time between sets. He asked me what my goal was, if I wanted to gain strength or “tone” (whatever that is). I told him that I wanted to “lose inches” (something I read on a weight loss website over the weekend). He seemed to see that as gaining “tone.” So he said I should do three sets, 10-15 reps, and have a 35-45 second rest period between sets. This is entirely different from how that guy set me up before, but that’s OK. I need to experiment, I suppose.

He also told me that I should do 5 minutes of cardio to warm up, then do my weights, then do 20-25 minutes of cardio to finish. I’m not sure about that since I’ve always heard different things about how to organize the workout. I’ll have to experiment with that as well.

So, I went through my workout and tried to do the three sets, 10-15 reps with 35-45 seconds between sets on the upper-body machines only. (Oh, and by the way, I thought I was doing 8 machines before, but I was actually doing 10 machines, so it’s 5 upper body and 5 lower body.) Now my arms feel like rubber bands and my shoulders are throbbing! I discovered that I was a bit overzealous with establishing my weight targets this morning because I could hardly get through the first set, let alone three sets. I had to reduce the weight drastically in come cases.

It felt really good to be back in the gym. I remember how good it felt before and I want to have that again. Throughout my time there and after I got home this morning, I had pangs of guilt that I was spending too much time on myself and I should be spending it helping out with the kids. But that’s OK. Guilt is OK. It’s a feeling and feelings aren’t facts. (I learn more and more how important that is every day.)

Pantheism

2005-02-16T16:43:00.000-08:00

Am I a pantheist?

I never even knew it existed until I watched Jeopardy the other night!

New Arrival

2005-02-15T16:24:00.000-08:00

Our Joely Anne has arrived! She's three weeks old today and she's quite sick. Her big sister loves to share and has shared her cold and cough with her! Now, big sister Victoria has an ear infection as well. Lovely Wife and I have a bit of a bug as well. We're quarantining our house to protect the neighborhood.

Lovely Wife has done an amazing job today taking care of Joely Anne and Victoria with separate doctor visits and consultations with friends and family. I'm so grateful for all she's done today.

Clear and Concise

2005-01-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

Being a product manager, I need to describe things. That's my job at its most basic level. One of the best lessons I learned in communication is the value of being concise. I always wanted to be clear when communicating, but I never understood how being concise makes a huge difference. Often when I write something out (like a lot of things I write in this blog!) for the first time, it's bloated. I have to iterate through it to get it concise in an effort to communicate more effectively. This applies in my job and in many other areas of my life.

Sometimes, being concise is scary! It seems that folks find some pleasure in lofty words, circumlocution and opacity. I guess it's easier if things are opaque because then you can dismiss them more easily. If things are clear, clear and clear, then you have to come out of your shell and actually participate! You have to take some time and spend some energy because it shakes you out of your comfort zone. That's what I'm going for with communication.

Then I run into a familiar place, where I'm working to bring people over to my point of view on the world rather than meeting them at theirs. I struggle all the time with the fifth habit, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." It doesn't have to be one or the other, and that's a difficult place for me to operate from.

Baby News

2005-01-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

Watch this space for updates because the baby is coming soon! Went to the doctor and she gave us a "no later than" date of 1/24 even though our due date is 2/1. This baby is gi-normous! If we're not in labor naturally by 1/24, she'll have us come to the hospital to be induced.

That reminds me, we need to make sure the pediatrician knows we've got this one on the way and he'll have to come over to the hospital to check her out after she's born. Gotta tell wifey!

Robert Scoble: My thoughts on Gates talking to Gizmodo

2005-01-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

The title is a bit misleading. He goes into many, many different areas than just Gates talking to Gizmodo.

I really like this article because it talks about building a community of your customers. This is something that has interested me for quite a while now and, being a lowly peon in a large company, I haven't had a chance to practice. It makes so much sense to enter into community with your customers rather than just making the next product that comes to mind and hope. (I'm not saying that's what my company does, but using it to illustrate the other extreme side of the continuum.)

It's almost worse than being a lowly peon. I'm a lowly peon in an area of the company that is pretty far from its main focus. I was in that position in the previous company I was at as well. Makes it even harder. It kind of goes with the territory in the industry.

That being said, I am hopeful and I see things going very well at the company, both in my area and in general. I'm bullish! (Heck, I need to be with all the stock I have in this MF'er. Just kidding!!!)

Can they fire me for saying that? We'll just have to see.

/me poring over company manual, looking for references to calling company "this MF'er" even when kidding
/me hoping CEO is laughing

New Aggregators

2005-01-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

Just tried out Lektora and Onfolio. Not impressed with either.

Got Lektora installed and discovered that it can't import my subscriptions. No dice! No way I will ever use it until it gets that feature. Otherwise, it sure looks nice, but it won't ever get launched again until that feature is in there.

Didn't even install Onfolio because of the stupid message that asks to install the Microsoft .NET framework. Bzzt! Wrong! I have a fear of installing more Microsoft crap on this machine than there already is, especially the .NET framework. Never going to get installed with that. Maybe someday I'll get over my aversion, but not today.

I'm sticking with Bloglines!

Dave Winer: The solution to the Yahoo problem

2005-01-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

Very interesting, Dave. Very interesting. I will take your challenge and mull it over. I will post whatever comes, if anything.

2005-01-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

I've started listening to music while I work again. I've listened to music while I work for the last three years or so, then I got terribly (in the English meaning of the word) overwhelmed by podcasts and listened to them constantly at work. I enjoyed it very much! It started to creep into my productivity, though, so I stopped listening to them while I was working. It ended up being a choice between one or the other. I couldn't multitask them together. So, I just stopped listening to anything while working.

Now I've started up again with listening to music while working. With music, I can multitask much better. I can have music going and my productivity doesn't take a nose dive. It may actually increase slightly.

I'm currently listening to a sampler of a band called The Album Leaf that wifey made for me that I love.

On my list to listen to:

- Bright Eyes, Lifted . . .
- Stevie Wonder, Innervisions

Sleeping in Her Own Bed

2005-01-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

Last night was Victoria's second night of sleeping in her own bed. The first was a number of months ago. This one is the start of something new. She is now a sleeper-in-her-own-bed. Hooray!

Granted, her bed has been moved to right beside mommy and daddy's big bed, on the floor. It's made it a bit easier for everyone. I'm hoping the transition from that to sleeping in her own room moves quickly. I realize the quickness and smoothness of the transition has greatly to do with how wifey and I handle it and minimally how Victoria handles it. This is new and this is good.

Family Dynamics

2005-01-11T09:28:00.000-08:00

Had a great talk between me and wifey about our family's dynamics these days. I need to start pulling my weight more. I need to find out how to get myself in the game. When something comes up with the little one and wifey takes the lead in the situation with her, I need to find out how, even if the energy level is quite high, to stay engaged instead of heading off to blend into the woodwork. How do I do that? I'm looking, I'm looking.

It was very good to have this discussion and wifey is supportive. Thanks, honey-pie! Wifey had great suggestions for me. I have the willingness (sometimes it's just the willingness to be willing. Plenty.) and even a bit of excitement about it, if you can believe that!