Lilac-Breasted Roller

My boss gave me an unasked for book, User Story Mapping from O'Reilly.  I wasn't sure what to think about it, although only 45 pages in I can honestly say even as we're reading the book we're not exactly following the practices.  There's a very compressed version of Ben Horowitz's Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager on page xviii and xix.  The bits about reference customers versus competitors, (not) prioritizing, and prototypes every day are all obvious failures for us (at least in my projects).  

A bit evangelistic, or more accurately perhaps a bit motivational, but Agile books usually are.  I'll chat about it a bit more as I get further in, although the forwards go up to xliv, so I'm already 44 pages (a 1/5) in before the book even gets started.

But my first question for my manager was why did he give me a book with a Lilac-breasted Roller on the cover, known for it's life-long monogamy?  Was it a not so subtle hint that I (and my co-manager, who also received a copy) wasn't leaving the company until I retire or die?  That doesn't upset me, but it's disturbing to have your manager say it with a book.  He told me he was going to respond, and then just didn't know what to say to that and gave up, which he was pretty sure was what I was up to all along.  Look at that, he hasn't even cracked open his copy yet and we're already embracing the core tenant of mutual understanding.  Win!

Financial Freedom

This is depressing (How Much of Your Income Should You Save at Forbes).  And I say that as someone who's been contributing to retirement since he was 16, keeps enough savings to cover a lay off, pretends at all times - purchases and savings - like he's a single-income family, and has slowly increased his matching stock plan at work as a secondary source of savings in case there's a problem (aka college fund, new windows, and a new furnace currently being tracked as possible non-planned expenses if I can't cover them through normal budget).  I think....think...this is telling me I have 12 more years of work left before I retire with the same level of income as I have now.  So I get to step out 7 years early if I plan carefully.  I'm not sure how my pension plan (old school, eh?) fits into that economic plan.  But in general I believe it encourages me to work longer so that the plan maxes out my end income to max out my end pension.  But my expenses should be decreasing as well.  Inflation goes up, but my house will be paid for and I'll have half a rental business to dispose of unless the market totally fails again (interestingly, even though the market is recovering, the economics of millennials moving back into the core city and driving lower-income families into the first tier suburbs, impacting school funding, is driving down the value of one of the properties.  As a liberal, this creates a real tension for me.  I console myself by repeating the mantra that I'm not an absentee landlord and work to increase the overall health of my property and contribute to a better tax base).

Maybe I should be encouraged - I could be retiring by 58 instead of 65, and that's not really all that far off.  Then again, realizing 58 isn't all that far off is sort of a bummer as well (should I be wondering if I'll be having grandkids by then?)