September 2011 Archives

My wife was an elementary school teacher prior to having our children. She said that she considered starting a new career instead of going back into education; she thought of nursing as a profession, preferring to deal with blood over dealing with the parents.

She sent me this opinion piece about "what teachers really want to tell parents" today and indicated that it was spot on. After reading it over, I can say that I have seen a lot of these behaviors and issues in my interactions around the school.

One big omission from this list is to separate your identity from your child's performance. I think this is what underlies so many of the other negative behaviors enumerated in that article. From my vantage point, half the time these parental flareups look like "I'm not the type of person who would have a child that turns in a half-assed science project" or "My child must be gifted because I am gifted." Kids fail or are of normal intelligence—even your unique snowflake—and you're just driving your kid's teacher crazy.

I'm not a perfect father, but I feel the best about my parenting when I'm letting them sort things out for themselves. It is very hard to not intervene when they're struggling, but that struggle is necessary for them to truly own their knowledge or wisdom.

Concerts suck. I go to them to support the obscure musicians I enjoy but I don't relish the event like many do. The music often overpowers the singing, it's all too loud, and it's a crapshoot whether they'll play your favorites.

I'll take a recorded, constructed—hell, produced—track from a studio over the same any day of the week. That's why live albums absolutely mystify me.

I belong to a lot of social networks. Pretty much any time I hear about a new one, I sign up for the "bbrown" username. I have learned my lesson about waiting to register for these things: having a common first name and surname, the late bird gets the "bbrown217" or other such contortions. (I almost had bbrown.com, after Burr-Brown was acquired by Texas Instruments in 2000. I checked every day waiting for the expiration hold to come off. Every. Single. Day. Except on my birthday, that is, because I was busy. Guess when the hold came off. I still bristle at that loss.)

But I have to say that I don't have much passion for any of them. I like Twitter a lot—mostly because there's a high signal to noise ratio on the people I follow and the 140-character short form makes it drop-dead easy to write something. But mostly I don't care for them because your content is locked away, subject to the whim of the provider to allow you to export it out of its cage.

I may be biased, but owning your own domain and hosting your own content is the best and safest form of expression. As long as you pay your bills, no one can really silence you and you—mostly—get to decide what the public can see. On the social networks, other people can decide that your views are "hateful" or "spam" or "worthless tripe" and get it taken down.

Over here, though, I get to say whatever I want however I want. This is my soap box.

In my time on the Internet, I've seen many sites come and fade into obscurity. I've seen social networks actively worked and then slide into disuse—fallen prey to passing whims both personal and corporate. This Web site's been active for the better part of 9 years now and there's no reason to suspect that it won't be around for another decade or two.

Pascal's Wager of Social Networking: setting up integrations so that posts on one social network automatically get cross-posted to every other social network.

GAH! If you can't pick one place for me to read your content, I will pick one place where I will follow you and hide all of the others.

MC Frontalot just released Solved, his fifth album (CD? Set of downloads?), and it's an excellent piece of work. (If you're in Phoenix, you simply must attend his concert on September 10th. I've been to all of his other shows in town over the years and they're wonderful.)

Here's how I'd rank his CDs:

1. Nerdcore Rising
2. Solved
3. Final Boss
4. Secrets from the Future
5. Zero Day

Solved is just that good! Now, there's great songs on every one of the previous albums, so this is just a perspective on them as an aggregate. I've listened to it about a dozen times since I got it—like many of Frontalot's works, you have to ease into them.

Here's my rundown of the best of Solved:

1. I'll Form the Head: I watched Voltron every morning as a child and this song just cracks me up. Money line: "I think it's time that we combine and rip this thing to shreds / but only if you promise me that I can form the head!"
2. Captains of Industry: I'm also a fan of MC Lars, so this collaboration worked really well for me. I really like when Frontalot begs for his audience to actually compensate him for his work. Money part:

   Try to sell music, they look at you funny.
   Not a transaction that necessitates money,
   not with the true cunning of the kids in the know.
   But you look at them cheering -- notice what? They don't sew.
   Don't go to the print shop and silkscreen their own,
   yet they're always needing something to cover the torso.

3. Stoop Sale: very catchy tune. Frontalot doesn't often journey into the storytelling genre, but he's a master at it when he does. Money line: "And that's when you have to endure / the regret that accompanies said decision-making: / all the other wishes in the world that you've forsaken."
4. Just Once: this track is a crackup—could this be a problem he'd like to have? Money line: "Just once, I don't want to hump tonight. / Why can't we hang out and talk?"
5. Front the Least: a track of modesty. Money line: "And the worst thing about my mistakes is they're all reruns."
6. Nerd versus Jock: playing to the audience, to be sure. Solid effort. Money line: "Look at now: demand for nerds. Old jocks: stock on clearance."
7. The Sketches: this is the first album of his where I don't generally skip through the interstitial sketches. They're funny and I'm glad to have been introduced to Wyatt Cenac.

I'd recommend this CD to anyone intrigued by nerdcore hiphop, the genre of rap that MC Frontalot created in 2000. He's an amazing wordsmith and produces some really funky beats as well.

I am very excited by Gary Johnson—he's the best candidate I've come across since Steve Forbes. Moreover, he has all the pedigree you'd want in a presidential candidate: two-term popular governor, successful businessman, outdoorsman, and no hint of scandal.

Everything I've heard from suggests that he's the best of Ron Paul without all the crazy. He wants a self-interested foreign policy; supports abortion rights; wants to abolish HUD, the TSA, and the Department of Education; and thinks the government has no business in traditional social conservative issues.

Unfortunately, he's been routinely ignored by the media. That doesn't bode well: it seems like the media wants the Tea Party portrayed as being represented by the likes of Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Sarah Palin. The thinking seems to be that independents will recoil (rightly so) at those candidates and end up selecting Mitt Romney during the primary.

That would be a travesty, as Johnson is the best choice for Tea Party types. He doesn't want to enforce any religion or morality, and he seems to understand the role of individual rights in government. Also, he has an actual plan for balancing the budget and a track record in New Mexico for cutting spending.

In moving my blog from Quick Blogcast to MovableType, I had a chance to revisit my decision to enable comments. Comments are always a mixed bag: the price of good discussion is eliminating comment spam—the blog's version of "broken windows." We've had decent success at it over at The New Clarion, but it took a long time to tweak the blacklist to get where it is today.

In the meantime, I had also started using Twitter quite aggressively. That is, essentially, a broadcast medium: you say things and people listen to them. There is some interaction but the key difference is that it's not exactly public.

That's the part about comments that I don't like. If you want to discuss some of my work, send me an email. If you want everyone to see your thoughts about what I've said, get your own forum. I don't care to host the opinions of those that disagree with me.

I have no regrets about turning off comments—I even did it over at Found on the Web. I spend zero time doing moderation and the extra work to send an email (while also not getting to vent in public) has severely limited the vitriol and bile.

I read Michael Lopp's book Managing Humans shortly after being promoted to development manager back in February 2011. At the time, I was really excited at the opportunity but also nervous about the unknown.

His chapter on one on ones (also available online at his blog) was an inspiration to me. In all my work life, I'd never really had a one on one—much less a regular one. I had rationalized it that I didn't need the regular feedback and that I would just go to my manager with any problems as soon as they happened. But Lopp was adamant about their value so I gave it a whirl.

Six months later and I am completely enamored of my weekly visits with the six developers reporting to me. Four of those work at two different locations from me so I drive down there to meet face to face. I think it's absolutely vital for addressing things as they come up but also to be that presence in their lives that's lost by not working at HQ.

I have tried a few variations on the theme to see what works best. I originally had them scheduled on Mondays, but found that that took me out of the office when a lot of decisions needed to be made to start the week out right. I have since moved them to Friday afternoons; that freeing up of my Mondays was a godsend. Plus, talking about the week in retrospect on a Friday stirs up some of the vividness that a relaxing weekend can dull.

Today I conducted what I regard as my first significant contribution over what Lopp said in that chapter: a performance review. Yes, he indicated that one format a one on one can take is the mini-performance review but that was just stylistic. I actually conducted a performance review using the same template as our annual one. I went over each category and discussed the good, the great, and the could be betters using concrete examples from the month.

I really like this idea because it allows us to note areas of concern long before the annual review and work on them month to month. Ideally, they either never make it on to the annual review or they're used as a reference point to indicate growth. Either way, it felt really proactive to say, "Keep doing that and you'll get an Excellent rating!" or "Let's work on this behavior for the next month and see if things improve."

It is more work, to be sure. But management is about growing your team and getting them to produce the best within themselves. If you wait until the annual review to give them this sort of feedback, you're doing everyone a disservice—heck, even quarterly seems like forever at Internet speed.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

Modern, massive-scale manufacturing is a sight to behold. When you go to a grocery store or a retailer like Wal-Mart, there's such an incredible diversity of product that it's easy to take it for granted. But then think that there's 36,148 other grocery stores just like this one or 4,400 other Wal-Marts in the United States. The scale of it is mind-boggling.

I was reminded of this recently when I listened to an episode of the podcast EconTalk where the host interviewed someone from Frito-Lay. The guest described operations at the Modesto, California factory and I couldn't tear myself away!

Images of chips whizzing by at 60 MPH while a computer scanned for defective ones flooded by consciousness. Luckily, I found some video that approximated several of the processes he discussed. What an operation to behold!