Yesterday on Congress Avenue

Along the sidewalk leading up to the Congress Avenue bridge yesterday, there were a half-dozen or so people in red and blue T-shirts holding up red and blue signs. They were waving their signs in the air and shouting at the rush-hour traffic as it slowly flowed out of town.

Woo hoo! they shouted. WOO HOO! And the red and blue signs went up and down and side to side.

Not many runners take that 5 mile route now. (It gets too dark too early for most.) But there were a few of us yesterday running around the clockwise loop or running the other way. As we rounded the turn and ran up the sidewalk to where the red- and white-shirted woo-hooers were shouting their shouts and waving their signs, they didn't even acknowledge us. As we ran by, they stepped to the curb with their backs to us and shouted again to the drivers in the cars, failing mostly to look at us, failing each one to say hello. We were together under a clear autumn sky on a three foot wide patch of concrete, and they chose to look away and shout.

That is what happened to the Democrats yesterday. They act as if it's enough to shout Woo hoo! and wave slick signs with bright-colored slogans. But I don't know what woo hoo means, and the slogans they chose didn't mean much to me.

I wonder if they got it.

7:08:22 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

What Needs to be Done

In an interview with Bill Venners, Ken Arnold talks about design:

I think that comes from focusing on what the user needs to do, rather than what the user might want to do.

See also, Extreme Programming.

Resist that impulse [...] implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you need them.

4:13:19 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []