Tag: Ownership

Ticking Away The Moments

Ticking Away The Moments

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Nine years ago today I started this blog with a post that laid out my intentions in creating it. It’s cliché, but true, that a lot has changed in the intervening (near) decade, but for the most part, I think I’ve hewn pretty closely to the original idea, even if my underlying motivations have shifted.

Like many things worth doing, it took some time to find a good rhythm. After two initial posts I went almost 2 years without writing anything. Had a great streak going in 2017, but sputtered out in 2018 and didn’t get going again until early 2020. Since then, though, I’ve been on a roll. Maybe it was turning 40? Maybe it was COVID? Can’t say for sure, but I’ve been happy with my consistency since then (and a growing readership is nice too).

In other wistful, “how time flies!” type subject matter, my youngest kid left for college this past weekend and my oldest starts her junior year with a new location and major. They’re both gonna crush it, I have no doubt.

Time Traveling

Time Traveling

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A common rhythm of my career is to catch-up on emails over the weekend. I’ve been appreciative of scheduled send, so that folks don’t get an email from me during non-working hours and assume they need to respond immediately.

However, this might be a new record: 14 emails queued up to go out first thing Monday.

That total may go up depending on how much progress I make on one additional task, which subsequently depends on what Olympic events are on TV this afternoon.

I get that weekend work isn’t for everyone, but I don’t mind it. It’s quiet. Usually no new tasks come up, so I can meaningfully shorten the queue. And finally, it helps alleviate pressure during the week. I’m much more comfortable signing off for the day come Friday afternoon knowing I can knock out a few lingering tasks before Monday ramps up.

Not An Option

Not An Option

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A big oops happened this weekend, and it has me thinking about failure. It’s a topic I’ve talked about before, but there’s plenty more that can be said.

Common leadership advice is to avoid making failure out to be a bad thing. “Failure is good,” well meaning folks will say. They’re not completely wrong, but they’re not absolutely right either.

Failure can only be good in moderation. Of course repeated failure of the same kind is bad. Absolutely learn from mistakes so they’re not repeated. But continually making new kinds of failure isn’t great either. No endeavor, professional or personal, can sustain that.

Eventually there need to be successes to offset the setbacks. So I’m not keen on over-celebrating failures, or treating failure as something that ought not have consequences. Maybe in the case of this CrowdStrike fiasco no one deserves to take the blame? But I doubt it.

Confessional

Confessional

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What they say: “I want to be respectful of your time.”

What they mean: “I’m tired of this conversation and want it to end.”

And by “they” I mean “me”.

One Day Closer

One Day Closer

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My dad died ten years ago today. Hard to believe it’s been a decade, but time marches on no matter our feelings.

I’ve written about him before: how his early investment in a home computer forever altered the course of my future, how his prodding to my shy teenage self got me my first job (and a wealth of early life lessons), and how his constant encouragement became the bedrock of my sense of self.

But today I was reminded of something else he modeled: the value of just showing up. The man bent over backwards to be at every little league game, every band concert, every academic awards banquet, and so much more, usually with video camera in hand.

I’m not as good at it as he was, if I’m honest. But it’s an ideal I strive for, both personally and professionally. Do what you say you’ll do, be where you say you’ll be, pay attention, be engaged. There are no small things.

(Oh, and yes, I am wearing a Star Wars tie at my high school graduation, thanks for noticing!)

Artifactory

Artifactory

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The other day I scanned and posted a gift I’d gotten from some co-workers. When leafing through the folder it was in, I found a few other fun artifacts I thought I’d share:

First, a certificate I got from my fourth grade teacher. It’s an objective I still aim for:

And second, an invite I got for helping support the underlying voting platform:

I’ve tried to do a better job recently of documenting my career experiences, not just the work-related items, but the fun stuff too. This week wasn’t so bad, even if the town isn’t my favorite:

Two Things True

Two Things True

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On the same day I wrote about radical responsiveness, I came upon this post that seems to contradict it. I really respect Ethan Evans and enjoy his writing (especially this bit about why you fail to get promoted). And I understand the point he’s making about fragmented attention. The temptation to conflate interruptions with importance is real, and amplified by modern communication technologies. But I’m not prepared to say he’s right and I’m wrong.

For one, I believe it’s possible to be both radically responsive while remaining reasonably non-fragmented. Some degree of interruption is inevitable, but using techniques such as pomodoro can help protect focus while still ensuring important messages don’t get missed for long. Good old-fashioned discipline is required to stick to a plan, but it can be done.

The discipline gets easier with a well-configured set of tools, which is where many folks fail. Learn your tools! And not just the basic features, but the myriad of options for managing notifications, filtering messages, scheduling reminders, etc. It’s not a badge of honor to be “bad at email” or “not understand Slack” if you’re a professional in 2024.

(If any of my coworkers are reading this, they may quickly point out that as recently as last month I didn’t know how to join cell phone calls into a conference. Which… is true. But I learned! And now I know for next time).

Finally, Evans makes an assumption about communication that I don’t believe holds true. It comes through most obviously in this statement:

“Allow chaos to build up within the trivial (the inbox) to accomplish the meaningful.”

Did you see it? The assumption that messages in an inbox are trivial? Tell that to your customer who is informing you of a serious issue with your latest release, or your team member whose employment status is in jeopardy if you don’t respond to their immigration lawyer. Yes, we all get spam, but sometimes interruptions truly are critical and need attention. To lump all of that into the category of “trivial” for the sake of personal flow is a leadership fail. Communication is part of the job; sometimes it’s all of the job.

Of course, I could be wrong. Read the posts and decide for yourself.

To The Point

To The Point

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Today I finally came up with a layperson’s descriptor of the CTO role that I’m happy with:

Responsible for making sure we build things right, but more importantly, that we build the right things.

Yup, that sums it up nicely.

Remote Learning

Remote Learning

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Ohio in the early 90s had few educational options for a middle schooler interested in computers. But when there’s a will (and willing parents, thank you) there’s a way. Somehow I got signed up for a correspondence course in Pascal in 8th grade. Yes, an actual class where I never met in person (and only rarely spoke to the teacher on the phone). Where the majority of exchanges were via the good old fashion United States Postal Service. Where code had to be printed out, mailed, marked up, and mailed back (how’s that for slowing down rapid iteration!)

Despite it seeming painful to modern ideas of remote learning, the material was quite useful in my overall development. Up until then I was completely self-taught; reasonably good in BASIC and some rudimentary C. Learning Pascal, however, really opened up a new world. And luckily for you all, I still have a number of my Pascal programs, which I recently uploaded to Github for your browsing pleasure. Here’s the good stuff that awaits you:

  • MARKET.PAS – This one’s special for two reasons. First, it’s the oldest of all these files, with a last modified date of Dec 6, 1992, making it the earliest example of code I wrote that I still have in digital form (the absolute oldest being this handwritten BASIC program from 1987). And second, it was my attempt to implement the Stock Market Game, a board game from the 1970s that my mom and I played together when I was a kid. No one else in the family ever wanted to join; it was kinda “our thing” (as was Scrabble).
  • GRADE.PAS – A simple gradebook app for teachers. I believe this was the final project for my correspondence course.
  • CYBER.PAS & CYBORG.PAS – Today you couldn’t pay me enough to get into video game development, but as a youngling I had a thing for trying to build them. This code is a tiny step towards what looks like a side-scrolling shooter involving robots and lasers.
  • KARATE.PAS & KGRAPHIC.PAS – Another game effort, this one a fighter like Mortal Kombat, but with stick figures, because I am terrible at visual art. Pretty sure I got it to a reasonably playable state, though the mechanics were terrible and it required two people because there was no AI to speak of.
  • JDNCRYPT.PAS – Built this encryption tool to protect DIARY.TXT, which I still have (but no, I’m not gonna share it). Basically I reinvented a simple rotation cipher using an insecurely predictable pseudo-random number generator, with an easily bypassed magic parameter kill-switch on the executable. How cute. Rule one of cryptography: never ever write your own.
  • GAME133.PAS – In college a mathy friend of mine and I got really into the Number Jumbler. I wrote this solver to do research into combinations that had no solutions. Two years later when I started my first real job, I was tasked to learn Ada, and as part of that effort I ported this solver.

FYI, in upcoming posts I intend to expand on my personal tech history; including a visual history of my computer setups. Will it be of interest? Maybe! But I’m going to do it regardless.

Buckle Up

Buckle Up

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There’s nothing like an effort to make sure all my years of accumulated data is backed up to kick up some nostalgia (not to mention an impending birthday). I doubt anyone else much cares, but this is my website and I’ll fill it up with digital relics from my past if I want to. Consider this fair warning.

We’ll get things started with this beauty, which I wrote September 24, 1992, if the file’s timestamp can be believed. Over 31 years old, it’s the oldest digital document I can find that I wrote myself.

I do not like to go to school. All the teachers do is teach you things you already were taught in 5th grade. That is, except for math and computer class. In math, we learn all about neat things, like 3y2+4(2x3+4). Mr. Farley is a great teacher, and the other teachers should teach like he does.

In computer class we learn about computers, such as this one, and about different computer programs. That is really neat for me because I enjoy working with computers, although some kids are really dumb when it comes to computers. But it is not like English, which is the same every single year. BORING!!!!!

I suppose that Science is O.K. Mr. Freese is pretty cool, and we learn some new stuff, and some old stuff. Like the scientific method. We learned it in 7th grade, and we learn it again now. It doesn’t make any sense.

This is my story about school. I hope that someday teachers will be able to read this and learn from it. Although they won’t listen to the small ideas from a thirteen year old boy, maybe they might get ideas anyway.

For the tech nerds, the file was in WordPerfect format (which definitely squares with the technology I was using in 8th grade), and opened perfectly on my Mac using LibreOffice.

More to come!