Harry's Ruminations

Perhaps I came out of the womb worrying. Pehaps it's learned behavior. Luke 12:25 says: 5  And which of you by worrying can add a  single   [ a ] ( C ) hour to his  [ b ] life’s span?   26  If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters? What does this have to do with 2011, anyway? I worried alot this year.  I worried about myself, my wife, my kids, my parents, my job, my church obligations.  And, frankly, I freaked-out.  Often.  So often, that yesterday and today, I talked myself through "this is usually the part where I freak out," because the triggers were all there. Self-awareness is all that I have sometimes whenever I see fear, rage, selfishness, hate, guilt, jealousy, betrayal, disappointment, anger, etc. building.  I finally can see it coming  and I believe I can choose something different. In summary, in 2011, I stopped believing life was fair.  The church-...

Some things are stories. Some things are not.  There are facts I remember about my idiosynracies and ticks, and those of my fellow humans that just don't go anywhere.  They're kinda just...there. These are those: I once roomed with a guy D.E.F.  D had this curious Pavlovian response to riding in a car for any length of time > 2 minutes.  He'd go to sleep.  My other roomie once took him on a road trip from Georgetown, Kentucky, to Jackson, TN.  D slept the entire way there and the entire way back. I hate the blue ring optometrists use for glaucoma checks.  Basically it goes like this: They dilate your eyes, you can't open them for love or money, and then you need to open like a droog from Clockwork Orange so the optometrist can move this DEATH MACHINE towards your eyeball.  Really, it looks like a scene out of a Bond Movie, complete with bad dialog.  Only here the thing--it's not Sean Connery's penis they're going to ginsu, it's YO...

When I was about 5 years old, my mom decided to drop me off with my aunt at her office while she did business in town. As my aunt worked in the District 10 Department of Highways in Jackson, Kentucky, her job was utterly regular and somewhat dull unless something extraordinary happened-->lots of overtime, somebody got fired, that sort of thing. View Larger Map  As it was the middle of summer, nothing like that happened. Anyway, my mom rented a VHS video of Pound Puppies  and dropped me off.  My Aunt took me to the big conference room in the middle of the cinder-block building and plopped me in front of the television, daring me to move. Of course, I moved.  I was a fat, indolent kid, but curious as hell.  The room was fascinating--there was a huge map on the wall showing the toll plaza at Slade, Kentucky, an IBM PC/XT with a Daisy Wheel printer in the corner, and the TV itself.  The TV was a pretty big jobber for back then--probably 25", and a...

I'm rolling off a 16 month stint as the sole proprietor of a Java library used internally where I work.  Yep, it was an almost unheard-of situation within corporate America: I had no project manager, no marketing rep, no support staff, no unique testers.  I was responsible for API design, test plan, interfacing with multiple teams, delivery, support, infrastructure.  The works. In short, I loved it. I loved getting to code 6 to 12 hours a day, every work day, working through design decisions, collaborating with other teams.  I'd go to bed noodling on design problems, I'd often get insight into them over coffee, then I'd have them implemented by that next night.  Most of the people I worked with were colleagues of mine from way back.  My only mandate was "make them happy," and take care of my own stuff.  I had a project manager for the first month or so; once he was satisfied I had my stuff together, the reigns were off. (Insert maniacal laughter ...

Wow, the blogger.com interface sure has changed since the last time I posted! Well, to catch-up a few things: My job title is now 'Software Architect'.  This is avowed to be one of the most despised roles in all Software, since Developers resent architects' unrealistic, out-of-date ideas, and managers resent anyone besides them directing their teams.  Yay, me. I had a motorcycle residing at my house for ~1 week in late June.  This was one of the worst episodes in  my life, and rocked me to my very core.  In a true case of 'be careful what you wish for', I lied and manipulated my way to take advantage of a tragic situation (my uncle's motorcycle accident) to come by a bike that I didn't really want.  My inner King Baby came to the fore in many ways.  I hurt everybody.  The bike left a week later, and relations with my parents haven't been the same since. Joey is now a Webelos II, the last stage of Cub Scouts before becoming a Boy Scout. ...

Definition: Dutch Disease After reading Alan Greenspan's book last year, one concept that's remained with me is Dutch Disease, which I (over-)simplify to mean: When you have one huge cash cow industry/revenue stream, then all your other industries suffer. Combine that with this article on tech crunch . I see a similarity there, in that tech companies that were formerly innovative latch onto a current upper-bound revenue source (Let's say MS Office) and short-change other opportunities, or (worse yet) view them in terms of the current technology. It's interesting to look at one company that hasn't fallen prey to this: Amazon.  Amazon survived the dot-com bubble, and looks to survive and thrive through the Great Recession, too.  Why?  To me, the answer is counter intuitive:  They do the opposite of "focusing on [their] core competencies]".  They do off-the-wall stuff. Remember the first Kindle?  Totally ahead of the market, and totally against thei...

I attended the Central Ohio Software Symposium in Columbus, Ohio this past weekend.  What follows are my reviews of the event overall and the individual sessions I attended. Overview Most conferences suck, frankly.  They're usually put on by a single company, and are a combination of too much marketing pitch, too little content & reality.  As it's name would suggest, a No Fluff/Just Stuff conference is none of that.  No vendors.  No showy crap.  Just industry-leading experts presenting what they're doing and how they're doing it. This conference was at the Embassy Suites Airport .  I found the rooms and venue nice (It's a Hilton Hotel!), though the conference rooms themselves were too cramped for the # of attendees.   This conference was sold-out, and it showed.  Day 1 Executable Specifications: Automating Your Requirements Document with Geb and Spock by Matt Stine This session was a passionate examination of how specs/requirements...