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Saturday, March 29, 2003 |
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President Hicks
Tom Hicks has been added to the Job/Roles chart. Good idea Rp.
"It's scary, okay?"
Maybe this was "the Rumsfeld thing...." that caused Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf to say:
"It's scary, okay?"
"He almost sometimes seems to be enjoying it."
"When he makes his comments, it appears that he disregards the Army,"
"Let's face it: There are guys at the Pentagon who have been involved in operational planning for their entire lives, okay? . . . And for this wisdom, acquired during many operations, wars, schools, for that just to be ignored, and in its place have somebody who doesn't have any of that training, is of concern."
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Updates:
Documentary by Times Columnist Thomas Friedman
If you who missed Thomas Friedman's new documentary "Searching for the Roots of 9/11", it will be rebroadcast this Tuesday, April 1 on the Discovery Times Channel. I recommend it highly.
Winning strategy?
I wish I wrote this before the fighting began because it is what I thought at the time. When I first heard of plans to begin the invasion with a "rolling start", I thought of a football game.
It sounded like a football game where the visiting team had only a compact car to transport their players accross town to the other team's stadium. The car would have to make several trips, so it would drop off 4 players then turn around and pick up the next 4. The first players to arrive would have to begin the game without their teammates, because kickoff was scheduled for 1:30 regardless of who was ready.
So I am clearly missing something, there is no way this invasion had to begin at a prescheduled time. I know that neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia were interested in our troops assembling on their turf. But having not enough land space to assemble all of the units before the fighting began could not have been the reason for this strategy, right?
Understanding the Rolling Start
Trying to understand the use of a "Rolling Start" strategy, consider: turf battles between the State and Defense Departments are common. It's been said Rumsfeld "really wants to be Vice President" should Cheney's health prevent him from joining the Bush ticket in 2004 . In the first four days of George W's presidency, Rumsfeld said four days "felt like four years" when you are upstaged by "super star" Colin Powell.
Sources:
Chronicle Technology Reporter Suspended
Maybe suspending technology reporter Henry Norr for his anti-war participation was a dumb thing for the San Francisco Chronicle to do. My guess: it was probably a tough call (they only suspended him two days and he had played hooky to be at the demonstration). When people learn you are from San Francisco (or just from California) they tend to write you off as a hippie liberal. The Chronicle is supposed to show partiality; it is a newspaper. The fact that Norr covers technology just means that had the Chronicle done nothing, they might've gotten away with it (doubtful). More likely: Limbaugh and Savige will refer to it as the paper whose reporters get arrested in protests.
Diplomacy a la Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld on change. Donald Rumsfeld: If you don't like change, you'll like being irrelevant even less....[java.blogs Day's Entries]
New projects are more fun that old, here's why
This explains a few things. This article on devx explains why some (most) programmers are happier working on new projects rather than maintenance projects. "When creative people work on making something new, they often enter a mental state where things just flow." It gives suggestions for achieving and maintaining the fragile "flow" state.
I am guilty of this. Too bad the article gives no tips for making old projects (maintenance projects) less unappealing. So far the only technique that works for me is trying to remember the rewards of tenacity and really internalizing the path, beginning to end. I often think of a friend who started his own company:
- Did it spring up overnight? No, but people who met him only after he became successful are unaware of this. I often forget this myself.
- Was it always glamorous, or were there dull tedious patches along the way? Did they have to do boring paperwork? Were there awkward or embarrassing experiences? The software was not always perfect. Think of the rewards for staying the course and stacking the unglamorous bricks on top of each other.
- Did the person ever want to give up? When the project was completed, did the awkward stages fade away or were they remembered with glaring clarity? They faded quickly.
Learning to Program
[The Scobleizer Weblog]: "Is there anyone in Silicon Valley who would like to teach me to program?"
(Scoble isn't a programmer?) I recently started teaching myself to write unit tests, which is sort of like teaching yourself to program. This experience and the other advice offered to Mr. Scoble compels me to add my $.02:
- You are off to a good start by saying it will take two years. It may not take two years, but it may take a little time. Teaching myself Test-Driven-Development is not necessaily hard, but it is awkward. If things seem awkward at first, don't stop because of some reason like "maybe I don't think algorithmically" - if it seems awkward you are probably getting somewhere!
- You already have all of the software you need. You have Visual Studio and MSDN Universal. MSDN is a great resource!! And I imagine your computer is nice and speedy if you are so ahead of the game with Windows 2003. Reflector sounds really neat, maybe something to look at after you write a couple of Hello World apps. Installing more software at this point may make you feel like your stalling.
- The advise about sticking with console apps sounds good - good to keep it simple. Maybe your first program should be Hello World using the Visual Studio app wizard (assuming VS .NET has an app wizard) with a popup window. Then your second program could be a Hello World console program.
- Don't worry too much about writing "good code" yet. Just write some code to tinker. Name your program "sandbox" to remind yourself it does not have to be perfect, you are exploring things and messiness is ok.
You already have Visual Studio .NET. You already have reference material, MSDN. You already know what you want your first program to do (you've written out the steps). The next thing to do is to fire up Visual Studio, select menu item File->New Project and see what happens.
