Harry's Ruminations

I posted this to Facebook in October 2017 after the Las Vegas shooting.  It remains valid after a weekend of carnage, and no end in sight.  FWIW, I am for constitutional gun ownership.   I am not for the capability of killing 30-50 people (not feral hogs) in under a minute.  After today, I'm struggling to see the use in an AR-15 with a binary trigger and a 100 round drum magazine. I've been next to a guy with a setup like that at the range. While not strictly speaking an automatic weapon, the purpose is clear: Sling as much lead as fast as possible downrange. Look, I'm a proud and safe gun owner. I support the right to bear arms, per our Constitution. But, if an event like today never happened again, I'd happily support outlawing semiautomatic weapons of any kind. In all candor, any legitimate use you have for a firearm works fine with a bolt action rifle, pump shotgun, or revolver. Can you really not keep someone out of your house wi...

Disclaimer: There's probably a term for this, but I've this pattern in teams and I'd like to discuss it. Scenario You have a high functioning team of 6-10 individuals.  Team culture is great.  Everyone is pulling in the same direction, and lots is getting done.  Yet, in under 4 months half the team will be gone and the rest will be considering it.  As a manager, you'll realize you can't deliver anything and it all seemed to crumble overnight.  What happened? Team Cascade failure happened Definition I'm applying Cascading Failure from engineering to teams because I propose the same causes apply. Taking the definition from Wikipedia the failure of one or few parts can trigger the failure of other parts and so on Teams get paid to produce.  At my current employer, they're paid to both produce and operate the things they produce.  As time goes on, a given team will produce up to its natural carrying capacity , when the cognitive and schedul...

Traffic in Austin seems almost reasonable during Summer. I live in Georgetown, Texas, and I work in The Domain, just off MoPac @ Burnett Rd.  For the uninitiated, that means I have a commute of about 25 miles down one of the worst highways in America .  It costs me about $2.50 in tolls to roundtrip to work, but often the toll section of MoPac is a parking lot between 8 and 10 am, and 5-7 pm.  A full work-month means I'm putting about $70 depreciation, $100 in gas, and $50 in tolls out of my pocket.  Call it $220 all-up. During the summer, this looks like me leaving the house around 8 and getting to work around 8:45 to 9.  Sixty minutes to go twenty-five miles. Believe it or not, that's a GOOD day.  Once the school year starts, the hour can easily be 90 minutes, meaning I'm on the road for 3 hours every day.  What to do? The most obvious thing is work-from-home regularly.  Nothing about my job requires my physical presence on Alterra Park...