Harry's Ruminations

So, a colleague brought in an espresso machine, a burr grinder, and some beans. So, now I know how to make espresso. Brilliant Idea: I need to setup an espresso bar beside a cardiologist's office and take 10% of their profits.  My EYEBALLS ARE VIBRATING.

So, I've left Twitter and Facebook .  I had a flirtation with Blind  that I've also given-up. Detox has been weird.  I was used to having a hardwired line into the pulse of the internet.  Between my 4 (!) twitter lists updating constantly and watching Tweetdeck incessantly, I was a straight-up information junkie. So....what's the methadone for this heroin? Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/miniharryc/ Thus far, Instagram has a much different personality than either Twitter or Facebook. Twitter: Unvarnished snark, though blessedly brief. Facebook: ALL THE DRAMA.  Political ranting.  Divorces in progress.  Passive Aggressive, Aggressive, Martyrs.   After a week off of it, looking at it is unbearable. Google+: A nightmare that's the perfect example of why Google doesn't get human beings. At all. Then, what about Instagram?  Basically, it's a trifling place, devoid of politics.  It's default-public (like Twit...

Well, as I sit here in 2018, it seems social media is an utter failure.  Given that I've been on internet chatrooms since 1993, this frustrates me. This was basically the moment I knew I needed to get off twitter Don't lie and say you care about the school shooting today. It's been 1,866 days since Sandy Hook. Since then: 1,576 Mass Shootings, including Las Vegas. https://t.co/LCwT6fLedK Restate: You *may* care. WE THE PEOPLE don't. — Harold Combs (@miniharryc) January 23, 2018 Yeah, that was the school shooting after  Las Vegas, but before  the one in Florida.  I'd had it. Having Tweetdeck open every waking minute I was at my desk was making me genuinely crazy. Then, the next week, Florida happened.  I posted the same screen on Facebook, and it was the same fricking arguments we all had after Las Vegas.  Same banal polarized arguments. I'm done. No more twitter. No more Facebook. I'll keep accounts there, but I'm going dark. ...

I say this after 19 years making software:  There's always a date.  Get over it. I've lived through the Agile Revolution, and various schemes to sell consulting named: Spiral, Rational Unified Process, eXtreme Programming , Scrum, Kanban, and the Scaled Agile Framework. Through it all, there's always some sort of date.  Words like: Milestone Need by date Deadline Start of Production Promise Date Customer Promise Statement of Work Honestly, if they're not  there, you should probably be worried.  Projects of significance require planning and planning requires dates.  If you haven't seen a date in quite sometime, you might want to join the rest of us getting paid oodles of money to ship features to customers who'll pay us. Let's stipulate to one thing right now:  You may abhor this concept.  The people writing your paycheck  live with both the concept of dates and the concept of missing them.    People exist who...