Professional

Time 'cheating' tips

icelava — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:28:49 GMT

or more professional referred to by book authors as "Time Management Skills" to better sell their titles. Anyway, as a rehash of my working philosophy, I recently shared an article with my colleagues on how to seriously lie and cheat one's way to buy more time. Here's a reprint of it:

Best Bang for Your Buck Time

Hail comrades!

Our Warchief is on the campaign to increase our tactical effectiveness across all theaters of operations we are currently deployed. Being the idle sleepy unit deep and safe in friendly territory, I have been assigned the mission to write up some short operational manuals and doctrines for quick dissemination to our frontline units.

Briefing

In this session we’re going to delve into this skill of “time bargaining”. Everybody knows that it takes time to learn anything. And even more time to master it. We also know we pour a lot of time and energy into our project work and really have very little remaining at the end of the day (or night) to put into acquiring new knowledge. How’s a poor bloke ever going to find time to learn and progress? Today I am going to share a few simple practices on how to “cheat” time.

Transmute your commute into a library

Some of you may already know this habit of mine. I was slapped with this blazingly simple lesson from a time management book (which I cannot recall) back when I was in university. Those who take public transport, observe the passengers. Those walking in the streets, observe their actions. What are they doing? Mostly nothing. Until we acquire teleportation technology or master the art of ninjitsu, we are going to spend a significant amount of our daily time on commuting. Add up the hours each day and it becomes a scary amount. As much as possible I try to carry at least one book with me wherever I go, and as long as nobody’s talking to me, or I dislike that individual, I will be flipping the pages.

Of course those who drive are not advised to do so, but I swear if I had four eyes and four arms, I’d be reading while I ride my motor bike!

I’ll be there… an hour or two later…

This is a story of a friend’s friend who, back in his school days, followed a rigid routine that hardly required any real discipline. You know those good old days, when social obligations were always more important than finishing and handing in your tutorial assignment or thesis. There is always a circle somewhere partying or having fun outside. The dreadful consequences of refusing the invitation are oh so pressurizing. Here’s the neat deal: unlike morning reveille for soldier Physical Training, one seldom gets punished for arriving late at a party (in fact, arriving late always equates fashion, or so the movies tell me). My friend’s friend dealt with the social magnets with a cheery, “sure I’ll be there! But I can only come by a little later!”

And then he spent that one or two hours studying feverishly before relaxing at the party. But please don’t try this on somebody’s wedding dinner!

Establish your own knowledge base

Search technology is probably the next best thing after the Internet itself. It is just getting easier and easier to find relevant information and answers out there on the Internet. But there are still some portions that don’t get picked up by radar very effectively, and web content is changing every day; a great deal of deep and useful discussions and childish quarrels still take place in newsgroups and mailing lists, and ringing the doorbell of each and every interesting site or blog requires hiring a dedicated servant.

Searching these places where you know lies pearls of knowledge is possible today with a web search engine (if they have exposed a web interface), but still not as simple as it should be. And what if I want to search for a single thing across all these dimensions? Some programs to build my own archive:

1. Outlook with Windows Desktop Search

Technology mailing lists deliver 300-400 emails a day to my mailbox. Filtering rules put them in their correct category.

2. Omea Reader

Free aggregator from JetBrains stores and indexes discussions from private MVP newsgroups, and RSS feeds from a wide variety of interesting blogs.

3. Keep a blog of sorts to document your own lessons

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it ~ George Santayana

We will forget our own mistakes and lessons. Period. A blog need not always be PR-oriented, and you get to remain anonymous if you want to be so. Just put it there so you can retrace your own history without having to visit an exorbitant shrink to put you into a trance to make you remember that bitmask value you used to encode that character string.

With these, I also get to eavesdrop on more gossip than I can possibly do by my physical self all my life, and get to remember what a spanking I deserve in my younger days. It is all about recalling things faster. Yes it is gigabytes of storage we’re looking at here, but that takes years to swell up to such a size. Disk is cheap, time is not.

Alternatively Scott Mitchell (an author for ASP.NET) uses Gmail as his KB stash, which is probably the fastest kick-start method to KB building.

http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/posts/3006.aspx

http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/posts/3595.aspx

Well, hopefully these can help you find that “extra” time you’ve always wanted. Even better, if you practice neat tricks to deceive the Time Warden into giving you more time, be sure to share them with us! Enjoy your trip home!

Consultancy Heritage

icelava — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:21:39 GMT

Mark Twain:
It all began with Adam. He was the first man to tell a joke--or a lie. How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before. Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.

As one who works in the IT consultancy business, I quite regrettably cannot help but chuckle at the weight of the truth in this assertion.

Undeniable gem.

Your profession is to follow somebody else's instruction booklet, blindly

icelava — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:47:31 GMT

At a present project we are delivering for a customer, the infrastructure includes a fairly simple set of stand-by servers to be situated at a disaster-recovery site. It is a scaled-down mirror of production environment, with the application database being backed up from the production database server over to the DR database server via means of SQL Server 2005's Log Shipping. Naturally, part of the UAT plans was to carry out DR fail over procedures to prove the viability and readiness of the DR setup.

The entire system we developed is pretty elaborate:

A main web application for users. The main setup is load-balanced between two web servers.
A couple of web service applications as well as Windows services spread across the servers. They process their own information and carry out inter-server communication as part of the system's workflow.
Several SQL Server Agent batch jobs for additional data processing. This includes fetching data from external database servers.

Because of the wide distribution of so many system components on different server types, DR scenarios and fail-over plans can become a complex sequence of actions. As the application developers, we understand the need to document information and steps to help administrators (who are from the IS department of the customer) carry out proper fail-over and recovery of all the application components. Ensuring users have minimum disruption with their use of the system is utmost. Again, let me emphasize that helping the administrators understand the design and nature of the application system is our job. So that they can do their job of supporting the system when disaster strikes. When we have long disengaged.

Now comes the real point of this post. In the documentation of the DR failover guide, I listed down steps of what needs to be done on each server. Like services to stop, SQL Server agent jobs to disable, files to copy or edit. There are even description notes explaning why those need to be done. Some of the administrators commented the guide is not detailed enough. They wanted it down to instructions on how to open up SQL Server Management Studio or Windows Services MMC, drill down to which graphical nodes, click on which menu item or button. To paraphrase them,

A good DR document will list explicit steps A to Z so that any person can carry out the fail-over procedure without knowing what is happening. Just follow the steps and see the expected results. No need for any explanation.

For starters, I absolutely know what their concern is and can understand that. It is important to jot down as much information as possible so that a possibly unskilled staff who may be called in to carry out the job can still have some chance of deflecting disastrous consequences to a future date. I don't know about you, but my first impression was that I may enter an operation theatre to be serviced by a "surgeon" reading an instruction guidebook step by step while cutting into my body and arteries, removing my organs, and patching it up. All without knowing what he was really doing. Now that is a great surgical guidebook.

The thing that put me into discomfort is that they can actually consider getting an individual unqualified at administration duties to handle a dire situation of such magnitude. Of course, it will be unfair to label the whole group as clueless, pretentious liars who got their jobs by smoking an equally clueless boss. That is not certainly true for their case; in fact most of them exhibit good competency and sound technical knowledge. However, the key point I am highlighting here is that I am, unfortunately, totally familiar with the mentality of individuals who possess the concept of professional jobs equating to that of reading and executing step by step. as per documentation. That were not prepared by themselves.

They have neither the motivation to know and understand what they are doing, nor why they are doing it. They just want a guide book.

I have seen this type of attitude with past colleagues; I have seen it with many customer engagements. Supposed professional personnel engaged to take care and manage a sufficiently significant environment. Yet having absolutely no interest in learning about the items under their charge.

It is my opinion that hiring such people is a highly dangerous affair. You cannot afford to entrust critical matters like disaster recovery to individuals who have zero awareness of the systems they need to touch. One has to have a damn good grasp of human anatomy and physiology before attempting surgery, so jolly well engage one who has a good understanding of the Windows operating system and Active Directory. System disasters happen out of a great variety of reasons; if you think you can get away without adequate system knowledge and diagnostic skills and referring to just a DR guide, you couldn't be further from the truth. If you want a job where all the documentation and step-by-step guides are pre-written for you to follow blindly, then you are seeking a position of User, not System Administrator or Engineer.

I have witnessed this kind of "risk ventures" get their due deserves before. And undoubtedly will see more in the future. Why? Because they still get hired anyway. Who would have known better? Since the people with the hiring authority rarely has the knowledge and experience to truly grade the competency of their subordinates. This is why the IT industry is so messed up. Folks who refuse to realize their jobs require a whole lot more dedication and responsibility, ultimately sow the seeds of destruction that cause others ultra hurt. Guess who gets called in to clear up the mess.

The other side is always blind

icelava — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 06:22:52 GMT

Kit Kai recently had an "encounter" with the marketing force from the other side. The "other side" being a generic term for camps that are not Microsoft. He comments on the bemusement and FUD efforts on their part to curb down Microsoft and .NET, exposing their extreme ill-researched nature to the laughter of those who live the technology and the truth. While it might be indeed a little entertaining to see ignorant people swim their way into the mouths of sharks, from the Microsoft-practitioner angle, I will come forward and state, that Microsoft does the same thing in a good number of their talks. Not even Microsoft' CEO is spared this kind of shortfall.

The problem is not which technology camp you have affinity with. The problem is the corporate human desire to disbelieve somebody else can be better than you (your company), and you will do all sorts of things to convince yourself that you are ahead. And then, sell that picture to your customers. It is your business and livelihood that is under threat after all, and you must do what it takes to retain your revenue. Usually these types of efforts are fast and fault-finding, without a genuine concern about slowly researching for sure what is good and what is bad about your competitors. This is hampered given the fact that you are living and breathing your own technology, and since you are pouring in funds to improving your own, little time can be taken to seriously use and study other offerings in the market.

That is why I seldom engage into "A vs B" discussions and debates. Simply because I am spending a great deal of time learning the entire suite of Microsoft products and technologies, I have evaporating knowledge and experience with the other side. The last time I touched Linux and Apache was in 2002. Knowing how technology changes and improves over time, it is hard for me to base my opinions on the state of five years ago. Yet, I can assure you there are many people who cement their views with partiality based on experience with technology twenty years ago. All that I am truly engaged in, is the technical stuff; learning how to use technology to deliver as marvelous as possible a solution for other people. Sure, I have affinity with Microsoft for that job, but it is the underlying principle and not the technology. Those using Java or LAMP have got equal opportunities to deliver something beautiful. It is not the tools, it is how you use them.

And then again, I don't do sales.

Settling in the multi-monitor league

icelava — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 12:45:38 GMT

I have previously recorded my successful search for a suitable spacy desk (look how neat it was back then) to position my room computers. A year on, I am ready to make complete use of that real estate.

Prior to retiring my five-year-old Dell Inspiron 4150, I attached to it an unused LCD monitor (the one next to the laptop on the left) as a secondary screen. I then realised, for my own self, why others have been enthusiastically promoting the use of multiple screen layouts. The reduction in window switching, which seems like a petty little matter, actually becomes a big thing; suddenly I was not suffering from claustrophobia with the laptop's mere 1024x768 measurement of a coolie's cubicle.

My decision then, was to go multi-monitor with my succeeding machine (the desktop on the right). As a developer, I'd prefer to have three monitors so an Outlook-Visual Studio-browser layout would be possible. However, looking for hardware that supports three video outputs has been a challenge here in Singapore, so I settled for the next best thing - two wide-screens.

There have been extra issues to deal with though. First, the video adapter I am using is an nVidia GeForce 6150 integrated into the motherboard, the only model around that has both VGA db-15 + DVI ports. The colours are lush and rich in the monitor connected via the DVI port, but the legacy db-15 port is giving out pale, washed-out colours in the low and high-tone areas. I have been playing around with the video settings a lot, but cannot come close to recreating the brilliance of the DVI display. I concluded from the reports of others that there is simply no way a db-15 can have enough bandwidth for a rich-colour display.

Second, I actually work more at the office than from home. :-) So remote desktop connection is a very important technology for me. The combined resolution of the twin screens equals 2880x900, but physically they are recognised as separate by the system. But when I connect remotely with the same resolution setting, it becomes a single ultra-wide display monitor. My desktop habit is to pull the Windows taskbar vertically to the side, and with this case, to the "middle" of the screen so that I do not have to move the mouse far from either screen. When remote desktop takes over as a unified screen, the taskbar in the middle actually stretches the entire length of one monitor making for a really prominent taskbar 1440 pixels long. Yes, so I that I have 0.00% chance of not being able to find the taskbar. The solution? ~~I have to make the remote desktop connect at less than 2880 pixels wide. 2879 makes the grade.~~ UPDATE: wrong; it appears it works some times, and some times not.

Thirdly, whatever productivity I was seeking to gain from this setup probably gets cancelled out due to a variety of problems. It looks like 64-bit drivers for Windows Vista, and I mean stable drivers, are far and few. For most people 64-bit computing is still a far future. But for developers who are currently aiming at 4GB RAM and beyond like I do, be warned. Pain likely ensues.

Still, there is no way I will go back to single-monitor machines.

NOTE: for those who are asking, the centre PC - connecting the middle two monitors - is my entertainment machine. I use that to play games, but hardly do that now so it's serving as a very expensive television for my cable TV line. Yes, there is a TV tuner card connected to the set-top device, which got masked behind the left wide-screen LCD monitor.

Good boy! Here's your meat!

icelava — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 00:13:21 GMT

While reading one of Joel Spolsky's old entries about what strategies not to decide on when producing software, I came across another reference:

For Best Results, Forget the Bonus

Absolutely interesting. While I have never really placed a finger on this issue hard enough to give it considerable contemplation, it does ring various bells of truth within my own system - material and financial rewards are very seldom the object of my desires when it comes to working and accomplishing tasks.

It may also be interesting to note that Dale Carnegie encourages rewards over punishment when it comes to making people like you better (and in effect working for you better). Of course, not to say that showing sincere appreciation for the efforts of others is to be discouraged. Please don't be an ingrate.

The point that is highlighted very clearly in the article is that true motivation to perform excellently in jobs is rarely a monetary concern. Yes, you may ask whether David Beckham would still play football if his salary was not rated at PPM (pounds per minute), and I can safely say "yes" (but no guarantee since I am not him). It is first and foremost a rudimentary love for playing football that brings him up to that level in the first place. Ask him to play basketball or cricket with equally high rewards and you are likely to get a rejection.

Indeed, it is the content of the work. I drive alot of satisfication being able to achieve objectives and goals in the longer run, and more so if done with a group of capable peers who contributed equally to the effort. My work has to be satisfying in itself, not the end-remuneration. High monetary returns are really just that - a bonus. Otherwise, I would simply be a drug dealer.

What are your motivations?

Review: Warriors, Workers, Whiners, & Weasels: Understanding and Using The Four Personality Types To Your Advantage

icelava — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:37:06 GMT

I have never known of Tim O'Leary before. But after this book, I wished I had learnt of this wisened individual earlier. This enterprising man has been an incredibly ambitious warrior since the days of his youth, bravely moving from venture to venture. In the course of his business dealings through the years he has met a vast variety of personalities and has in time learnt to generalise them into those four types:

Warriors - individuals possessing passion, energy, charge, motivation to drive towards.
Workers - the main workhorse who steadily and reliably carry out the work to achieve the goals set out. (this is not group of lemmings stupidly ploughing the fields at the will of their masters; they are a crucial population of the workforce doing the good work for the benefit of all)
Whiners - losers who blame all the failures around them on everything except themselves. And never do any real thing to improve situations.
Weasels - scum who lie, cheat, steal, initiate harm and destruction in order to reach their goals. Have zero compassion and consideration for their neighbours.

From his expressions it seems Tim O'Leary was largely compelled to write this book due to his belief that USA as a society and nation is rotting in personal standards and quality. I do not know whether to be happy or sad, for the issues he highlights are equally applicable anywhere in the world. He dares to dive deep into the ugly and slimy pools and expose that which few people can point out accurately - the realm of dishonest weasels and irresponsible whiners. He does this with forceful condemnation and rejection of behaviour he finds negative, but his language never comes close to crude baseless insults. In fact, the style of critique is one filled with humour, and makes for a very entertaining read. This is not your doctor's psychology thesis.

While Tim's descriptions and suggestions would definitely serve as a base lesson for anybody who has whiner or weasel tendencies, I found the chapter that was entirely dedicated to lamenting the cost of "Weasel Tax" to be excessive. Yes, the point is there, but it would have better to provide more anecdotes or weasel-handling tactics, which I felt still wasn't enough.

That is not to say the book is simply full of lamentations of the sorry state of society. The first half of the book mainly discusses what makes a warrior, how different s/he is from a worker, and the types of "tools" he should have at his disposal to carry out a high standard of work and living. Tim puts forth compelling arguments based on his own life experience; numerous anecdotes of many people's past mistakes and successes, including his own. Make no mistake - this is not a man blowing his trumpet. This is a man who has gone through life learning, observing, and remembering clearly the lessons the hard way, and he wants to share it with us.

Insightful and engaging at many levels, one will be hard pressed to find this book worthless. Useful to anybody, from CEO to young children; yes, because parents are warned time and again in the book to have a firm hand in raising their kids, ensuring they grow up to be responsible adults who will hold themselves accountable for their own actions and work to benefitting society instead of waste everybody's time, energy, and money. The same lesson goes for managers and business owners in leading their staff.

I knew way before hand I was a mixture of warrior/worker/whiner (and probably a great number of people are too), so it was a good exercise to learn just what about me attributes to each category. True enough I can recognise certain descriptions that fit myself, and know my self assessment is correct. Now is the first small step of responsibility on my part to stop procrastinating and write a quick review. ;-)

Overall rating: 8/10
Engaging written style; candid; thought provoking; reality check for many
Not enough "tactics" against Weasels; whole chapter lamenting losses about them

Have bad news to tell?

icelava — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 09:40:23 GMT

It has happened to all of us throughout points in our lives, I am sure. When things do not turn out as expected or desired, and we have to (very carefully) explain the ugly situation to people higher up the organisational or social ladder. Especially those with the power of lightning to strike you dead.

Well, Microsoft understands its customers. Thus have prepared a special template just for this sort of occasion.

Enjoy. I mean.... godspeed......

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

icelava — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:30:27 GMT

Phil Winstanley laments over the very true very real disatisfactory working conditions young people around the world go through as they work alongside colleagues much more senior in age. And presumably, possessing more experience. Which presumably, equates to valuable knowledge.

What I want to highlight is that this "ageism" and "experience" are not symptons found only in software programmers. This is an inherent human mis-behaviour that happens in all walks of life, all sorts of industries, every single thing that we do. Humans by lazy nature detest the chore of learning a new way to accomplish an old task. Unless there are significant motivational factors that can push for more improvement, people tend to remain content once they have found a way to achieve their objectives.

Ever seen people who have been driving well over 10 years and yet display horribly worse understanding about the mechanics of vehicles than you do after less than a year of obtaining your driving license?

Ever seen a marine engineering attachment student try to convince a veteran sailor that standing directly over a super-tanker's anchor chain to clean it is exceedingly dangerous should the chain start bolting downwards?

"Shut up kid, I've been doing this for 20 years and nothing's happened to me."

Ever tried to convince your mother how to cook better?

Ever had deadwood employees in <whatever> company taking <way too long> to accomplish <whatever task>, when the laughingly efficient solution is just an arm's reach away?

This even happens in gameplay, when players find a working method to clear a puzzle or slay a boss, their flow of thought gets written in stone.

The more one does something without negative consequential incidents, the more one thinks s/he is doing things the right way.

Happens with all things in life.

This is a poisonous way to live life, I reckon. Whatever thing you do, there will almost always be a better way of doing it. Do not remain convinced what you know is always right (or best) and let it become law. I remain convinced that I myself cannot come up with every solution to everything; I amongst the billions of people who stay on this planet can only think of a few; the rest of the population should come up with some of their own given their own unique life experiences and angles of perception.

I believe the way to better life is to remain open, and listen to those who sincerely have ideas to offer. Everything should undergo thoughtful discourse, pros and cons contemplated. Never ever blindingly dismiss the opinions of "youngsters" or "newbies" without ever contemplating and providing proper justification.

I sincerely hope a person's disability to adapt and change (improve) is not a biologically-induced matter of age. For if it is so, I'd rather die early than old and stubborn.

Desktop liberation!

icelava — Fri, 26 May 2006 09:43:07 GMT

For too long I have been cowering under my study bunk bed working on that narrow wooden ledge that has room only for my laptop. With no good space for paper notes or books, and having another desk for the other desktop PC, it is a pain to walk to and fro for even the simplest of tasks sometimes.

Today, I can say goodbye to those irritating times forever.

Finally after approximately a year's worth of search, I found a reasonable design (albeit not exactly cheap) with just the right dimensions to fit into my room. Being able to situate my computers together in such a manner really boosts the speed at which I do/reference many things now.

L-shape work desks rule totally.

Pulling the neural hamstring

icelava — Thu, 11 May 2006 18:03:48 GMT

For the first time in my career, I burst the tyre.

Sure, there have been countless times when I had to push hard, wearing off the threads faster than usual. I could not get a good grip, slipping and sliding precariously round the hard corners, losing valuable time, but still I always made the laps.

This time however, it was spectacular. Like Kimi Raikkonen in so many unfortunate cases of driving flat out, I spun out of control with debris flying all over. Halted in the gravel, the checkered flag permanently unreachable. The race is over.

What am I talking about? I now know what, not fatigue, but complete and utter burn-out in the brain means.

Back in February, I was air-dropped into a project in crisis. The core of the problem being an outright design flaw, there is essentially no technical solution to accomplish the job that way in a stable and performant fashion. No bloody way. The most unfortunate thing is, a violation of Software Development 101, the technical solution was hard-written in the very requirements. Meaning, there is no way to back out other than to deliver.

To confound the situation with a formula of exponential product, all these were by and large only happening in the production environment. Heavy 4-processor (hyperthreaded) servers and a variety of other fast services, compared to the main-con's development environment featuring a Pentium3 (really !!!) server with a pale reflection of the remaining network services necessary to complete the entire project setup.

This being the customer's production zone, their security policies and procedures weigh in at elephantine scales that makes one feel like one of those imperial physicians of old trying to diagnose the empress' illness via a red string connected across the room. The level of access we got promised us what I consider the most severe levels of deproductivity I have ever seen.

And did I mention I was introduced into the project 2 days before project sign-off?

Yes, the approximate past three months have been extremely eventful with new problem after new problem sprouting nearly every time we put up a formal application to deploy a copy of the programs that was "guaranteed" to be working and stable, and hopefully fast too. I guess I need not describe the expressions and sentiments of the customer, main-con, and our own bosses on each occassion.

These were, almost needless to say given the environmental circumstances, results of efforts that lasted way beyond the normal 8 hours of a working day. 7 days a week. Dinner (and possibly supper) in non-ideal locations. My developer colleague chalked up I think S$200 worth of taxi fares a month. You do the math and consider the time we usually left.

And yet again, to worsen the situation, I had been scheduled for reservist. I managed to obtain a partial-deferment due to another schedule for training in Seattle occurring around the same time. That resulted in a hectic stretch of 3 days spent in the Police Coast Guard, followed by an afternoon back in the project to fix an defect before packing my luggage that night to rush to the airport the next day. 24 hours worth of flight transitions found me in Seattle, of which I probably barely clocked 24 hours sleep time for the whole week I was in USA, before another 24-hour back-trip. No, I do not think 24 is a lucky number. In-flight entertainment have no redeeming qualities of interest.

On hindsight I should have planned a light snowboarding trip right away the training. But, oh but, my anxious self could not tear myself away from what the rest of my colleagues were trying to support with shaking knees. Even with taking a day off to rest from that spinning journey, I went back to office the next day feeling absolutely no sense of recovery. Not a bit. And the news awaiting me? More issues, in other parts of the project, need to be addressed.

At this stage we have practically re-touched every aspect of the project. In other words, everything that was previously written and constructed had to be fixed one way or another. Was there anything that actually worked prior to my arrival?, I really had to ask that. Is there anything resembling a normal working life? Rejecting four separate social invitations, and even that of my mother's birthday dinner, I'd have to say "nope".

It should come as no surprise then, that all these "last push" efforts only resulted in more situations that prevent us from ever obtaining agreement from the customer that the project is a working deal. What was the direction given to us? Push on.

Until that fateful Saturday (yes, another weekend) when my chest ached unrelentingly. This is a problem I have been putting up with since last year, but never in a manner I felt as threatening. That time however, it would not go away. So I decided to drop work and head for the hospital. While the diagnosis that day did not conclude me having any cardiac danger, my family has a history of heart disease, so I was motioned to spend the following days going through the series of medical tests to reveal my level of coronary risk.

While the tests utimately put me in a very good medical picture, those days of supposed "rest" I had actually brought out another problem of mine; that beyond the bio-medical jurisdiction; the state of sleep and the world of dreams. What do I mean? I suffer from insomnia. My mind likes going hyper when I attempt to sleep. Or even if I do fall asleep, I may still be solving the real-world problems in my dreams, or sometimes pseudo/dreamy problems. Regardless, I would wake up feeling I had transitioned from one workplace to another. Mental rest: nil. The dreams during that period were not nightmares but undoubtedly unpleasant and distrubing, and exhausting.

And I think that was the last straw that did me in. Back at work in the morning, I experienced for the first time in my life the inability to comprehend a single word my colleagues were discussing. I could hear the words they spoke, but I couldn't process any useful information.

"What the heck is happening to me???"

In the frustration and agitation I blew it, and went breathless, choking in the mucus and tears I was generating with reckless abundant. A second trip to the hospital was in order.

Now, I have seen an initial psychiatric consultation, and put on prescription for some mild type of anti-depressant. (actually it's way past my bed time as i write this, but I have to record this else I'd never get it done.) I am "out" of the project (partially, for obvious reasons), with my company planning for me to take an extended time away from work to recuperate.

I was originally intending to write an assessment and evaluation of this incident, but my body tells me I save this for a later post. So be it.

We need more people to present like this

icelava — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 13:54:33 GMT

Even if you are not particularly interested in Internet technologies, do check out this fabulously succinct presentation style that hits straight to the point.

http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

and save us all those boring slides of clutter that don't tell us a useful thing.

Need I say more?

icelava — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 19:50:01 GMT

The overview of Anti Patterns (John Wiley and Sons) wrote

This book will help you identify and overcome prevalent, recurring roadblocks to successful software development. AntiPatterns clearly define software mistakes that most of us make frequently. In fact, most of us could achieve ISO 9001 with our consistency!

I really do not know whether to laugh or cry at the sheer weight of the truth.

How would you deal with this?

Gibby — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:14:07 GMT

You have a small company where clients are very important to keep the company going. You have a project due in 4 week and you ask someone to do it. Then 4 weeks later, your employee hands the project in a 50% completed state and you can't deliver the stuff to your customer thus sowing a little bad blood between you and the customer. So how would you handle your employee in this way?

To share or not to share?

Gibby — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:00:30 GMT

I was browsing through the J2ME forums today and replying to a few posts asking some technical questions(such as my MIDI file won't play,how to play it using J2ME etc etc) when my colleague popped over and asked why do i bother to help them with their work as it's commercial work for their company and that i gain nothing from it, and that i am depriving someone of their livelihood by preventing someone from doing work which comes from answering such technical questions. What would your reply be?

Ever heard of this book?

Gibby — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 19:19:56 GMT

"The Art of Project Management" by Scott Berkun, seem highly rated at Amazon.com

His website at http://www.scottberkun.com is quite interesting too.

Don't like your job?

icelava — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:15:56 GMT

Then compare against the worst jobs in the past 2000 years.

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/W/worstjobs/index.html

I know it is supposed to be empathising, but I couldn't help laughing.

Politics-Oriented Software Development

icelava — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 04:54:21 GMT

Some crucial advice to fresh students and graduates about the sad nature of politics that revolve around software development IT projects, which most of us are all too painfully aware of.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/1/28/32622/4244

Still a good read nonetheless.

Perhaps the most crucial practice, which I learnt long before beginning a career as an IT professional, is to document your own cache of all instances of communication that ever transpired. Sounds like common sense, but an easily forgotten one when you get busy trying to keep up with the amount of mess flooding in. This is key to why I preferred written communication over verbal channels - writing everything in black and white (either paper memo or email). People (myself included) do forget, innocently or deliberately.

Singapore's corporate leaders uninspiring

icelava — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 21:28:51 GMT

Today's Today reported that Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) together with The Gallup Organisation and The Gallup Leadership Institute spent the past three years in extensive study to conclude that the typical inspirational and motivational value offered by corporate leaders is as good as zero.

All I can say: It took them that long and that much effort to figure this out?

My dad's response: Just to be sure.

Congratulations.

the Ideal job

icelava — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:52:17 GMT

Moving through some very useful entries in MicroISV many days ago, I came across this series of weblog entries describing what the ideal job should be.
http://ripples.typepad.com/ripples/2004/12/the_ideal_job.html
http://ripples.typepad.com/ripples/2004/12/the_ideal_job_p.html

I won't say it here, because I hardly have time to think, contemplate, clarify, and formulate my exact opinions on this matter. All I can say for now is it reverberates very near to my heart because I am being pushed into such scenario much earlier than I am prepared for. I highly recommend reading his ideals and reflecting on your own current situation, and more importantly, your direction.

Noteworthy Quotes

icelava — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 22:26:55 GMT

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
~ Lao Tzu

Making sense is a deep human motivator, but making sense is not the same as being correct
~ Howard Gardner, [Changing Minds]

Taking and Giving credit

icelava — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:56:12 GMT

Note: I'm sick of gluing gender-specific references together all the time, so I will refer to gender-agnostic persons as "it".

An interesting (but perhaps unnecessary) discussion has arisen in a private mailing list of a technical community i belong to. The thread starter was looking for ways to protect "intellectual property" between colleagues in a software development team.

Source code produced by Developer A (DevA) and checked-in (saved) to Source Control and be read and modified by Developer B (DevB) if necessary, and has the right permissions to do so. If DevB finds some useful code that DevA put in great effort and time to produce, and just copies over into its own work, DevB reduces its own development time to great effect. Come worse, if DevB blows its trumpet and steals credit, it makes it appear to be a better developer than DevA, who may have remained slient or ignorant over the issue. DevA could appear to be a slow developer when in reality was the one producing the components saving others' time. Yes, this is called "plagiarism" back in the school days.

From the responses of some members, it certainly is happening in this world. Sad enough. Let me stand firm and say that DevB is scum. That's the nicest I can put it. Might as well claim to have painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (this is just an extreme example). I have always believed in giving others credit when I make use of their code. There is value is mentioning how you picked up code from various sources and merged them into workable logic for your own case.

However, as many others have pointed out (and my agreement goes with them), the root of the problem is really at the institutional level. All source code is ultimately the property of the company or organisation, not the individual developers. To have developers snooping around and copying, and thereby duplicating, code is just plain bad practice. There is a lack of coordination at the team level of pile such code into highly reusable Application Blocks or Patterns that everybody can benefit from.

This suggests a failure on the Team Lead's, Architect's, Manager's, or even Management's part. I sincerely believe culture always starts from the top - leaving it to evolve by itself from the bottom is deliberately asking for trouble - just ask management committees of prisons.

The boss (whoever is in-charge at whichever level) should preach and enforce, not encourage, the practice of forming these type of copiable, repeatable code into libraries of reusable components. Developers should be appointed and empowered to develop different aspects that contribute to application development. Everybody can be the explicitly clear who is repsonsible for which component/library. One's accountability and credit is then clearly visible and measurable.

The above paragraph, of course, assumes the boss is knowledgable in software engineering practices. If your boss cannot perceive this... what can I say.... the number of under-qualified bosses in this field alone is simply staggering. Godspeed. If you happen to find yourself in, or close to, DevA's shoes, and are concerned with your career progression, my advice is to

Always report to everybody what you have been working on, or completed

I do not mean trying to be snort and boastful about it. No. Never engage your pride in that manner. You should approach in a way so others will no longer be ignorant to what you work on. This eliminates any doubts or suspicions they may have. But more importantly,

They can see for themselves what they can make good use of, and have them reference your library, saving them time.
Provided they are interested, they can give valuable feedback on how to improve your component, especially in abstracting it if it still isn't good enough to be used across different modules or applications.

When such a strong culture of active code identification and consolidation flows within the group, the fundamental issue of plagiarism effectively becomes a non-issue.

Always plan for the scale of your operation

icelava — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 02:15:08 GMT

http://zattevrienden.realroot.be/depanneren.htm

MS Master?

Gibby — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 15:12:39 GMT

ARE YOU READY TO BECOME A MICROSOFT MASTER?

UNIVERSITY OR INDUSTRY CERTIFICATION - WHY NOT BOTH? YOU MAY HAVE STARTED YOUR MASTERS!
Microsoft has partnered with Australia's Charles Sturt University to develop a range of industry-relevant, cutting-edge Masters Programs for IT professionals and developers. After the success of the program in Australia we are proud to bring this program to Singapore and you are cordially invited to the launch event of IT Masters Program in Singapore (details below).

Avantus Training Pte Ltd, Microsoft Certified Partner for Learning Solutions of the Year 2004 and Microsoft Partner of the Year 2004, is proud to be the exclusive training partner appointed to deliver this program in Singapore.

Charles Sturt University currently offers the following post-graduate programmes:
Master of Networking and Systems Administration
Master of Information Systems Security
Master of Systems Development
Master of Management (Information Technology)

As well as including relevant and challenging tertiary content, these fully-accredited Masters degrees include Microsoft certifications such as the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE 2000, 2003 or 2003: Security) or Microsoft Certified Systems Developer (.NET MCSD).
And any relevant Microsoft exams already sat can count as credit; so you may have already started your Masters!! Students wishing to find out which courses they will get exemptions for are welcome to bring along a photocopy of their relevant transcripts and Prometric / Vue score sheets. Appointments with the representatives from Charles Sturt University can me made on Wednesday 20th October by emailing itmasters@Avantustraining.com

For more information and to register for the launch event, please click thru via http://www.microsoft.com/ingapore/technet or go directly to Avantus Training website today! http://www.AvantusTraining.com/itmasters or call (65) 6416 3078

Event Details:
Date: 19th October 2004
Time: 6.30 pm.
Venue: Lobby Terrace, Conrad Centennial Singapore, Two Temasek Boulevard, Singapore 038982

Agenda:
The 60 minutes session will cover all facets of the Masters including:
. admission requirements
. structure
. fees & payment options
. enrolments trends
The Masters targeted at Systems Engineers, Developers, Security Specialists and IT Managers. Representatives from Charles Sturt University and Avantus Training will be available to answer your questions after the event.
http://www.AvantusTraining.com/itmasters
*********************************************************************

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Programming and crunch mode

Gibby — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 08:48:21 GMT

http://enginesofmischief.com/blogs/ramblings/archives/2004/11/11/643

Pretty relevant to the software project management topic too.