Dog Blog

Some movies of the dog being all doggish while out for a walk and in the neighbor's back yard. Do you know how you keep Luna busy and stock still for an hour? You put a squirrel in a tree where he can eat a nut. She doesn't move until the squirrel moves.

Holidazzle

Pooteewheet, Eryn and I took Ming's advice and went downtown over the weekend to see the Holidazzle parade on Nicollet Avenue.  We'd never been before and, I can honestly say after having been once, I will never go again.  I don't mind standing outside in the cold.  I used to do it at Bockfest each year.  That was fine (although having a beer, like at Bockfest, would have been a boon).  The corner near Macy's was a perfect place to hear the tunes coming off the floats, and the temperature wasn't bad at all - sneaker temps, not snowboot temps.  And I didn't have to listen to Pooteewheet or Eryn complain, because they could stay in the skyway, warm and snuggly, and still me standing on the street below.

What I didn't enjoy was that the parade was less than a dozen floats long, and they didn't make an effort to shut down traffic, so each float was separated by several minutes of NOTHING before the next float, delayed by red lights, finally went past.  Standing in the cold watching a parade is great.  Standing in the cold watching an empty street is annoying.

But here are some pictures, taken many minutes apart.  Pinocchio!  He's friends with the Target dog.


The little kids dressed as giraffes were cute.


Eryn and Pooteewheet in the skyway.  Note the huge space around this particular member of the parade.


With music...

I've Been Profiled!

I was at the Holidazzle Parade in Minneapolis last night and just before it started we went to the food court at Gavidae Commons to eat.  I went to the bathroom and, as I was finishing up, the mall cop came in to check the place out.  He grabbed a can off the counter and announced, "Malt liquor!"  Then added, after scrutinizing me, "It's obviously not yours."  And threw it in the trash and walked out.

I'm going to drink a lot more malt liquor now that I know I can get away with it.

For My Sister-in-law's Next "What Celebrity Do You Look Like?" on Facebook

The next time there's one of those "Post a Picture of Someone Famous You Look Like" events on Facebook, I would suggest my sister go with this picture of Charisma Carpenter.  Damn close.

It's a Nice Day for a Spock Wedding...

If targeted marketing really worked, this would have shown up on my front step with a bill from Hallmark, because they would have known I'd buy it, even at a semi-ridiculous cost. What do Spock and Kirk fighting have to do with Christmas? Absolutely nothing...but it makes me happy and it will find a place of honor on our tree next to Eryn's Harry Potter pensieve ornament.

As a bonus, if you've never heard this before, I'm offering it up for everyone's enjoyment. I don't know who made it because I can't find it anywhere on the web and, according to the file date, I downloaded it in 2000. It may have actually been before that - 2000 could just have been the day on which I moved it to the "new" computer when we lived in Richfield.
Spock Wedding

Scooter's new Hallmark ornament:

Camping

I learned a new phrase today, along the lines of learning that using rocket and grenade launchers were called noob tubes.  I was unfamiliar with the phrase "camping", despite doing it all day while playing Call of Duty, Black Ops.  On some of the maps, I've found favorite spots (I'm not saying where - Ming can't know), and I tend to hide there with a trip wire explosive covering my back.  My kill ratio has been in the 2-4 range in most of my recent games, so my spots are generally good ones by that indicator.  So... camping... which I should have understood from watching The Guild, is just staking out an area and waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to show up so you can kill them (or collect a bonus).  Per wikipedia:

"In most games, camping is a legitimate style of play. It often proves frustrating, particularly to newer players, as it rewards those who invest a considerable amount of time in the game (which allows them to know the layout of the maps and the best defensive positions); as well as those with accurate aim. Among some players, camping is considered tantamount to cheating, especially in deathmatch-type games.[2] The most common reason for this is that if every player camps, there will be no opportunities for players to come into conflict, and thus there will be no game at all. Those players choosing to camp are playing on the lack of patience in other players, counting on them to come after them first. In most deathmatch-type games that have both a time limit and a kill limit, Camping is a strategy centered around taking advantage of the time limit instead of the kill limit."

I also learned that there are types of camping.  For example, I don't mind basic camping, because you can work around it.  If you know the camping spots, you can learn ways to invade them. I do mind spawn camping, which is sitting around spawning locations waiting for someone to respawn (come back from the dead).  In the old Call of Duty you'd run up against teams that were experts at this and you'd end up dying 5-6 times in quick succession.  No fun at all.  And I'm ambivalent about "body camping", which is hiding next to a dead body lying on the ground.  According to wikipedia, some clans (groups of players) prohibit it.  But you see it happening all the time.  It's annoying when you're on the receiving end, but I just tell myself, "they probably shot a guy that was close to them and it's not their fault."  You have to look on the positive side sometimes.  And I don't have to worry much about base camping, or turtling, because I don't play Realtime Strategy or MMPORG's.  It's the idea that you fortify your base area so that you create the optimal situation for a counterattack, or just drag things out, perhaps until a new ringer shows up on your team.  But looking at it critically, perhaps base camping is the right term for capture the flag games and, again, you sort of expect it and you learn to deal with it by using new offensive strategies.

I'm not sure what kind of camping was going on in The Guild per the above descriptions.  It seems closest to spawn camping, but it looks like wikipedia calls it "corpse camping".  Sticking close to an area where you know someone will show up with reduced hit points and spell points, and then killing them over and over.  I remember when that used to happen in Telearena back in the BBS days.  So it obviously has a long history.  Buckwheat coded a call and response stream into his macro for Telearena just to account for corpse camping, although I think macro-ing your MMPORG nowadays would get you banned.

Thanksgiving

A pleasant day.  We had two turkeys for only one turkey's worth of visitors.  One uncle, one father in law, one mother in law, a sister in law and family, one grandma-in-law, my sister and her family, and Cookie Queen and family much later.  So fifteen eaters, nineteen people total.  Twenty if you include the dog.

I'm currently eating leftovers in the form of little whole grain bread open-faced sandwiches with turkey and cheddar.

We had the usual Texas Hold 'Em games, $3 a game.  I won the first two, largely in part to three of my first four hands being A-A, A-A, K-K.  But I ended the day only $3 up.  I always donate my winnings to the Eagan food shelf, so at least they made something off my early luck.

Otherwise, I'm thankful for the Black Ops Call of Duty game Ming gave me for my birthday.  I played quite a bit of it today, and I like the greatly expanded challenges, the medals, and the larger maps.  At first, I thought I was a horrible player, because I kept dying so much, but when I was able to by myself an assault weapon upgrade, I became much more skilled.  I don't understand the whole exploding RC car thing at all. I try to drive it toward someone, and all I manage to do is drive in a straight line while someone sneaks up behind me and caps me.

And I'm thankful Mark taught me about some new apps for the iPad.  However, every time I look at Felicia Day in the RSS reader, the app crashes.  That's no good.  I only get as far as picture 10 out of 27.  I'm not thankful for that at all.

New Blog - Snrky.com

Perhaps worth checking out.  Remains to be seen.  Snrky.com.

Quote

Professor: "Oh no, it's the albino humping worm!"
Fry: "Why do they call it that?"
Worm: Thump thump thump...
Professor: "It lacks pigment!"

10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm

The TED talks on the iPad (or web, I prefer to watch them on the iPad) are one of my favorite features to use on the iPad. I can queue up a dozen ten to twenty minute talks on the iPad's storage and watch them at my convenience.  When Pooteewheet flew to Washington, D.C. to see the Rally for Sanity, she watched them on the plane (gotta love the iPad battery life).  Mary Roach's 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm is a hilarious example, with bits about Danes sexually stimulating pigs and nine other anecdotes.  I'm now halfway through her book Bonk as a result of the TED talk, although there are plenty of other talks on the social web, astronomy, and a variety of other topics.  You can even look for those specifically comedic or irreverent if you dig through the topology of themes. If you like short chunks of science, give TED a tour.

Photo of Mary by David Paul Morris.

Furry Walls

Kyle, Erik...you two should both watch Get Him to the Greek if you haven't already seen it.

Mysterious Stranger

After the last post, I need a bit of humor.

You can imagine my surprise when I caught this guy sneaking around my back yard. But then I thought back to this threat I received, and it all made sense.  I would have thought he could have managed a better disguise.

Layoff of a Friend

I was on the elevator with a friend from work today - not one most of my other friends know, but one from outside my normal developer circles - and he looked sad.  So I asked how he was doing and he started tearing up on the elevator.  Turns out he was laid off today after 14 years as part of a bit of offshoring.  He and his partner were just getting around to adopting, and being laid off may have an impact due to not getting the adoption help the corporation provides, not having a job, and not having health insurance (he carried the insurance in the relationship).  It was his intention to resign at some point - he's been negotiating to open a candy shop in St. Paul - but when the decision to leave the company turned out not to be on his terms, and he can't count on the two weeks per year of severance (it didn't come up in the lay off meeting), and it interferes with the adoption, it scared him, regardless of his eventual plans.  Plain up.  That sucks.  Particularly as he just worked with me porting data into a dashboard for another affiliate that got a big thank you from several VPs.  I suspect when they come back in a few months and ask "can we add more data?" I'm going to have to say, "The data and apps behind my app went overseas. You'll have to move this one there as well as I can't work at 5:00 a.m. for free and you don't have a time bucket. I did it before because I was asked by a friend.  But I don't have friends in your group."

Corporations don't seem to understand the personal connection that makes a lot of work happen behind the scenes.  Now that I've managed for a while, I suspect the official line would be, "You should have tracked the time officially so we could account for it and understand whether or not we were making the right work decisions and/or the right layoff decisions."  But there's never enough time for all the little things that need to be done, never enough money, and putting them under the microscope subjects them to the certainty principle...that is, any project that is examined by the corporation is certain to cost way more than it needs to.  They probably wouldn't think that's funny, but when you consider adding a PMO, Data Expert, Testing (oh...the testing), and Manager to your project, as well as time accounting, et al, you can't help but add a pile of expense.  Streamlining small projects makes the world go round as long as it's not expected of the employee.  There was a kudos in our internal communications to a developer who had worked off the clock to create an app for the corporation.  No one should be expected to work off the clock, and you shouldn't engender the belief in other employees that they're less for not working all hours of the day to achieve corporate ends.  You do it because you see a need that isn't being covered by traditional work, and because you have a connection to the individuals whose lives are made easier by the work.  Sometimes that's you that sees the benefit.  Sometimes it's others.  But if you're doing it for glory, you should be figuring out how to staff that start up.

I'm rambling a bit, but seeing someone sad on the elevator makes me think of all the things related to layoffs I've read recently, and all the sadness and uncertainty layoffs foster in employees.  It reminds me of an article Ming sent me that I was going to use for the internal department blog that I was told not to publish.  In defense of my management, I suspected that publishing the article might make people nervous that layoffs were coming (for my department) when they weren't, so I asked.  But I'm still disappointed I didn't get to put it out there, and being part of a speaking up initiative that censors itself seems ironic.............

An interesting article by Mark Sheffert called Breaching Psychological Contracts was recently forwarded to me by a coworker.  It's a facscinating read, particularly as it's something of a foil to the "golden handcuffs" idea (you can find that by searching an earlier post on Iterate!) and, in addressing "invisible psychological contract that grows between an employer and its employees", covers some of the same issues that engage us and help us to create change (our VP recommended John P. Kotter's The Heart of Change to her managers prior to some of our initiative discovery and reorganization to account for changing development priorities).  Some of the human qualities that cause us to embrace change and be engaged with our work day-to-day, are the same qualities - emotions - that make change in our roles and employment, and our perception of the unwritten agreements involved, so painful.

As a Generation Xer, although I don't believe that category ever fully encapsulates anyone, I see individuals my age reacting to the changes in employment in our traditional manner, adding as many skills as possible so there's always a fall-back, and looking for opportunities to start our own businesses.  The number of groups and conferences devoted to just how to do that has greatly expanded in the last several years with Start Up weekends, TIE, Meet Up groups based on tech/venture capital intersections, events hosted at Best Buy in the tech start up space, and working code demos with more of a sales flavor than a code review flavor.  To me, there's no doubt that the economy and changes in the workforce created incredible unease for my peers.

Sheffert points out that the weakening of the unwritten contract, or the perception that it's weakened as may be evidenced by all the local venture events, can have a negative impact even if there aren't lay offs.  "Why are so many people leaving their jobs, even with unemployment so high? A recent study by Florida-headquartered consulting firm AchieveGlobal revealed that the top three reasons are a lack of growth opportunities, dissatisfaction with compensation, and a perceived lack of recognition for their contributions. These are all preventable diseases..."

Dissatisfaction with compensation is a difficult issue to address, as all companies are constrained by the bottom line.  But growth opportunities and recognition are facets that demand constant focus and which can be addressed even during a recession, albeit perhaps without a significant monetary focus. [After this, I put a positive spin on it, as we have a department initiative aimed at enabling individuals to speak up, speak out, and understand the importance of their roles].

.....

So, bad contracts.  Sad coworkers.  Sad friends.  I'm hoping it all works out for him.

Dear Logan

Dear Logan, I'm pretty sure this was the dad, as he had the biggest snowballs. Which I'm kicking.

Dawes

Last night Erik and I went downtown to see Dawes at First Avenue.  I think you'd have to measure the time since I was last at First Ave in decades.  And I do mean to include the trailing s.  It was a great show.  I had heard some of their music before on 89.3, but it wasn't until I did a group event with my team at work where we tried to guess what each team member listened to, that I was reminded exactly how much I enjoyed them.  Karma was on my side, because the tickets at First Avenue went on sale right after I finished the work event.

The most exciting part of the evening, other than Dawes and the Moondoggies and Peter Wolf Crier (all excellent), was when this guy and his boyfriend sort of edged their way in front of Erik and I.  One of them left to get a beer or go to the bathroom, and the other one did this sort of dance with his hand extended at a little over a 45 degree angle from his body trying to reserve the spot they'd pilfered.  Erik messed with him a little and then got in his face and told him maybe he shouldn't shove his way in front of others.  The guy was too drunk to respond coherently (or so it seemed), but that wasn't the amusing part.  After the guy's boyfriend came back, and the music was going, he sidled up next to the guy in front of him and put his hand on his shoulder.  The other guy - who had a girlfriend next to him - looked confused, and calmly removed the hand.  So the drunk guy put it back.  And it was again politely removed.  Then he sort of tried to dance with the other guy.  Tried to put a hand around his waist (at least that's what it looked like).  And then some more dancing.  All the while the guy with the girlfriend was getting more and more irritated. Finally, the girlfriend, sensing a fight was brewing, left toward the bar.  A minute or so later, the drunk frottaginest was rapidly yanked backward by a bouncer.  Almost end of story.

The boyfriend, who didn't seem at all phased that his boyfriend was too drunk to put his arm around the right person, didn't leave to support him but, according to Erik, texted him that the show "Just isn't the same without you here."

Check out Dawes.  They packed First Avenue, and for good reason. Some actual video from last night from Eric Bass at Catching Sounds. Photos from last night at Reviler.

I've Become Jaded

I've always been a bit snarky and sarcastic, although not as much as Klund or Mean Mr. Mustard. I try to make sure that I don't get into the habit of projecting my negative thoughts and presumptions on others because I know it can become a habit, and it's not a good habit if you're a manager (although I'm well aware of managers who got in the habit). But today I was on the elevator and a woman started talking about how it was daylight savings time and she found herself frantically reaching for her alarm.

A little voice inside my head was screaming, "Cat lady! CAT LADY!"

And she followed up with, "Poor little guy..."

At which point I was hoping she'd tumbled a child onto the floor.

"He went mew,mew, mewwwwww..."

F***.

Gross

It's bad enough that I'm aware that the door to the bathroom at work might be covered will all manner of cooties. After all, you can see the finger oil all over it, which is why I often push it open from about a height of six feet where others are unlikely to touch, and even then, I try to do it with my elbow. But today, I was on the sixth floor and the door had blood smears staring about two inches above the metal push plate and extending about an inch or two below the plate.

a.) I don't want to know where that blood came from. I hope you cut your finger on the sink and that it's not the result of wiping.
b.) Regardless of where it came from, Ish.
c.) Ish ish.

I used my foot to open the door.

Spiderman

I ran across this page today. I don't think it's exactly appropriate for work.

Spiderman fails.

The Hammer

I was in a traffic jam on 35-E after Senad's going away party at Old Chicago today (he's headed to Amazon.com) and ended up next to a truck for Girtz Construction. Their logo is "Golden Hammer Man". Goldenhammerman.com is even their URL.

All I could think of was Captain Hammer. I wonder if there is really a construction company or if it's some sort of roving porn production company.

New Job

I didn't change levels, but I did recently change roles at work. For all of a week and a half I've been the new manager for a group at work that lost its manager 3-4 months ago. I kept 1/3 of my previous group as well, so I went from 15 reports to 21 reports, 15 of them new. That means I'm doing what the previous manager was doing, plus 25% of my previous role. That would be a stretch all by itself, but the fact that it's the first few weeks and I'm learning the org structure and politics, have scheduled 21 one on ones as well as numerous face-to-face recurring meetings with the PMO, both product managers, and operations, HR tried to mandate I take two and a half days of management training (I'm the only manager in my group without it - not for lack of trying - they just turned me down the three or four times prior to being a manager when I applied), there's a project that's in bad shape (had my most uncomfortable meeting since I first became a manager 2 years ago), another project that was in bad shape and is under VP scrutiny, the job is the same one Apong applied for and didn't get, and now he's gone, the resourcing doesn't seem to have been updated since the last manager left, there are no midyear reviews and year-end reviews are sneaking up on me, it's not a low-pressure no-real-income position like migration was, but a semi-customer-facing, at the beck and call of many firms, sort of role, and it has an overseas aspect that moves up my mornings, means that it's a bit of work. I like work - my manager in my last role was the one who really clued me into that and more than doubled my load one day by adding our Japan project when she noticed I did better with a bit of pressure to keep me busy, even if it meant an extra hour or two a day - so this has actually perked me up a bit by giving me an overload of things to do, rather than allowing me to fiddle around looking for my own busywork. But I do worry that the initial breaking in period is a bit rough with all the late evening email, prior to 7 a.m. email, 7:30 a.m. meetings, and trying to shed anything from my old role that isn't a good fit (I had quite a few department initiatives to fill the hours).

It did help that I told the MDP (management training) trainer I wouldn't be showing up for the rest of class. I missed 2.5 of the first 4 hours (I had 16.5 hours of meetings scheduled yesterday in an 8 hour period), and today was shaping up to be in and out all day (ditto for Thursday). I assume that means HR will tell me I have to attend it again, but they can't fault me for needing to do my job when I was signed up for training prior to the transition (well...they can...but I suspect they won't), and hopefully that will push it out six to twelve months.

Exciting. But a something of a nailbiter at the moment until I find my stride and can worry about where the gaps are and how to get ahead of the curve.

My Favorite IPad Apps

• Flipboard - for twitter feeds and blog like newpaperishness.
• Netflix - for movies, although I wish the iPad was about 30% louder, more ergonomic, and easier to see in the sunlight.
• Twitter - because Twitter didn't make any sense on my pc or blackberry, but it does on an iPad. The app is easier to use for posting and looking at friends than Flipboard is, and I use it to retweet things I like to the right hand side of the blog.
• Dropbox - I even carry work files around so I can show diagrams and I can edit them from most of my machines.
• TED - we've queued up lectures on the Future of UI, 12 Pairs of Legs, The World's Oldest Living Things, Optical Illusions, How Bacteria Talk, The Design of the Universe, 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm, The Hunt for a Supermassive Black Hole, Militant Atheism, I Am My Connectome, and All Things are Moleeds. If it's tagged with the adjective "obnoxious", I'm likely to watch it.
• Good Reader - because it handles zips from Dropbox that I'm likely to get at Code Camp.
• Stack the States - state trivia for Eryn.
• Cut the Rope - brain teasers involving cutting ropes
• Angry Birds - silly, but fun - blow up pig castles with various sorts of birds. New as of today.
• Star Walk - ultimately useless, but enjoyable for looking at the night sky.
• Shredder - Eryn's, for learning Chess.

We have Kindle, and some other games, and Pandora loaded up as well, but so far the above apps are my favorites, with Flipbook and TED outstripping the rest. I suspect I can find a good guitar chord app somewhere and some math cards to round out what Eryn plays around with in the morning, although lately she's teaching herself to type on the Mac using a typing program she ordered and paid for herself.