Monday, March 18, 2002

3:43:46 PM   "And Maher, Mr. Unmentionable? Well, he's been lopped off, though no one apparently has told him the doomsday date." -  Late-night's silent victim: Politically Incorrect //  You mean because Dave decides he needs to stir things up to crank up the negotiations and cause some people are little too sensitive (Fedex), we get the short end of the stick ? Errrrrrr....... Let's can Conan the O'Brien and move Bill to his spot ?

1:18:06 PM   Busy morning, now back to the job search :-)

1:15:51 PM   //  Last week I had the blades out and was sweating the 60 degree weather in March.  It's a tad chilly 45 degrees in the Chicago today.  Who am I kidding ?  We could be with Phil in Alaska, better him than me. Click for more Snow Day images. [via Phil Ackley's Radio Thingumabob]

1:05:59 PM   Barbara Bush. "War is not nice." [via Quotes of the Day]

1:03:37 PM   Here is what I use as guidelines for posts to my weblog: 1) I treat the community of weblogs as a shared idea space.  Some ideas are better than others and debates occur. 2) Almost all of my posts, and I think the same is true of posts to most weblogs, are ideas in motion.  They evolve. 3) Every once and a while I edit the post to make it better.  I can do that, this is a body of work that reflects my thinking.  Typically, if it is more than a few days old, I let it stand and ammend my thinking with a new post. 4) Sometimes I struggle to get an idea down.  It often takes a couple attempts to make it reflect what I think.  It may take months to nail it. 5) I refrain from ad hominem attacks against an individual in my posts.  This is a shared idea space (point number #1). [via John Robb's Radio Weblog] //  This almost nails it, the thought's are John's, the highlighting is all mine.

12:18:21 PM   Now imagine an outliner that works on the Internet. In your bibliography, you cite a source. Link to it. When a reader double-clicks on the headline, the document expands, in place. Copy the citation into another outline, and you've got another link. Linking and outlining over the Internet. This is the start of something big. [Scripting News]  // Just the follow up to the last post in case you didn't visit there.  Dave is definitely up to something.

12:15:29 PM   But outlining is also about communication. Used by engineers, managers, marketers, teachers, students, librarians, consultants, accountants, speech writers, scholars; people who think for a living use outliners not only to communicate with others, they use outliners to process ideas, to sort out complex problems and find the hidden simplicity. For computer-based brainstorming, organizing and presenting, no tool can beat an outliner. [via Scripting News]  //  This is just food for thought and yes, I can't function without outlines.  Biggest problem is which tool to use to outline the problem and so far Radio has not solved this problem.

12:00:32 PM   What advice would you give to a Developer? Development Manager? Software Marketer? Developer - don't plan like the mission impossible team (i.e. ten things have to go perfect or you die); manager, listen to the developer; marketer, understand the customer's needs, really! Then understand the developer's perspective of the customer's needs and move second to first position. // This came from a Dave post (actually the same as the last one) with a link to a Q & A with his old boss who is apparently Mr. Symantec. The link is worth a quick read but this nugget stood out to me.  There are way too many software teams planning mission impossible projects.  The best here though is the last little bit about understanding the developer's perspective of the customer's needs and then concentrating on it.  All to often we get what the developer thinks the customer wants rather than what the customer wants.  When what the customer wants and what the developer thinks the customer wants are one and the same, we get great software. // Also it is truly amazing that many many (at ?) times the developer is able to succeed without direct customer input and/or exposure.  Unfortunately, it isn't likely. //  Oh and he forgot the marketer ?  This is not necessarily a bad thing and should happen much more often.

11:49:44 AM   Software for people with minds. $39.95. Click here.  [via Scripting News] //  I trimmed this out of one of Dave's posts.  A "daveism" as I have been calling them.  And really, it is.

11:21:32 AM   Train your cat //  Sher & the nephews saw these kitties at the pet show this weekend.  Motivates me to brush some cat teeth.  Here kitty, kitty....

2:40:01 AM   "So if you use shareware, pay for it. If you can't even do that, you have no business complaining about how record labels and movie studios are afraid to sell their content online." - From the Shareware Industry, Lessons on Keeping Downloaders Honest  //  The percentages in here are brutal.  I'll think of this every time a piece shareware nags me.  I have one on my desktop which I'm riding the fence on at the moment.