Category: Speculation

Wild, and not so wild, guess about the future of things going on around us.

Why Managers Hate MS-Project

Managers ditch project management tools when they start getting unexpected behaviors. Here’s some things that cause unexpected behaviors and what you can do about them.

Did you hear the Microsoft was making a new Office bundle available? It is designed for specifically for software development planning, including only PowerPoint, Excel, and Project; it’s called MS-Fiction for Managers.



Almost every manager I’ve known shakes their fist at project management tools. And while pretty Gantt charts, views of progress reports, and tasks lists appear in presentations, most of it is trickery. That is, all the real work is done by hand on paper or in a spreadsheet, and once figured out, is transcribed to a project tool to product the pretty charts.

What gives?

Project isn’t a drawing tool; it’s supposed to give and track useful information, not get in the way.

Isn’t project management software supposed to let you enter in your task list, assign resources, and produce an optimal schedule?

Well, yes. And, frankly, most people can get past that part. The problems kick in after that point.

Leveling Issues

Managers ditch project management tools when they start getting unexpected behaviors.

I’ve identified several problems that crop up frequently. Here’s some things to be aware of to help reign in the gremlins that like to scramble your projects.

Loss of Historical Information


If your project tool moves a completed task to a new point in the timeline, then it’s broken. You’ve found a bug. Completing a task anchors it in time.

Mysterious Chronological Task Reordering


When you list tasks, unless you explicitly state otherwise with a direct dependency, the software is allowed to reorder when a task begins. The software you’re using may have a different take on what makes sense.

I often see this problem happen when a time estimate is replaced with a more discrete breakdown of the task. For instance, deleting a 3 day task and replacing it with three 1 day tasks. Because project tools often assume you plan today and do tomorrow, you can sometimes end up with a hole in the schedule you want backfilled and that’s when the trouble starts.

In some cases, the software may decide to move one task from the end of the task list up to the front to fill in the hole; the justification is that it’s better to move one task than shuffle the whole schedule back. This may, or may not, be what you want.

More realistically, if you find tasks being shuffled out of order, the problem has more to do with when a task starts. Some software will force a task to start at a particular date in order to coerce the schedule; the problem is, if you’re unaware it’s done that, and you change some tasks, it might have imposed a schedule requirement upon you that isn’t real. You need to be diligent about such conditions.

Very intelligent schedulers will recognize the difference between a start constraint that you mandated, versus one that it derived.

Around the trouble spots, make sure that the tasks are set to be scheduled as soon as possible, depending on their assigned resources, and not an arbitrary date.

Never Trust Undo


While undo is supposed to put things back the way they were, it can be tricky to get right. Some operations may affect the properties of the tasks on your schedule. When you undo, it might undo what you’ve done, but keep the changes and constraints that it made.

A mature product will implement undo perfectly, but it never hurts to save a historical copy.

Put another way, just because the tasks return to their original positions after an undo, does not mean that new dependencies and criteria were properly cleared from the task properties.

Too Many User Supplied Dependencies


A dependency should only reflect inter-task dependencies, and that means you should use only the minimum required.

If you are using dependencies to force an ordered sequence to tasks that have no relationship, just to get them done in a certain order, you’re doing it wrong.

If you are using dependencies to coerce the software into producing a schedule ordering you want, you’re doing it wrong.

The problem with these two hack-it-til-it-works approaches is that when the schedule changes and you need to re-level it again, some dependencies are real and others are bogus. The software will account for all of them, and that will cause the scheduling algorithms to make bad decisions.

Any others spring to mind? Please write me.

Comments on: Leopard is the New Vista

PC Magazine’s Oliver Rist has a harsh observation: Leopard is the New Vista. And what’s worse, he may be right. Here’s the Waltomatic take on each of his five points. Who’s the winner?

Today I was forwarded a review of OS X entitled: Leopard is the New Vista, and It’s Pissing Me Off.

LUV OS XI think it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of Apple, in general, as I find their hardware, environment, and tools far more productive for my development, office, and home needs than I ever did using Microsoft or its products.

I think it’s also fair to say that I’m willing to also point out when things don’t work:

Oliver Rist, raises some very good points in his treaty on Leopard’s recent similarities to Vista’s screw ups.

Here’s my take on his five points.

Vista Similarity 1: Wait for a Service Pack—Perpetually


Rist is right in saying that “[With Tiger] Everything. Just. Worked. Period.” I’m also quite in agreement that with Vista, even “a year after its shrink-wrapped release” it still has problems, driver issues, and “doesn’t work with 50 percent of new software.”

But I wonder how far back he’s actually recalling. Historically, I recall that each early version of Apple’s OS had serious kinks. Is comparing Tiger 10.4.9 with Leopard 10.5.1 actually a valid Apple to Apple comparison? (excuse the pun)

I’m with Rist if he thinks it should be, but accept the reality it isn’t. In my mind, Apple changed a number of things about the OS that they didn’t have to. Stability, size reduction, and additional hardware support will always earn high marks on my reviews. Unless the new glitz is functional, it doesn’t do much for me; but more on this in a moment.

At the moment, I’m tolerant because historically Apple has made right in reasonable time. By 10.4.3 and 10.4.4, I was quite happy. Given that I suspect Apple’s real purpose was not to make GUI fluff, but to pave the way for resolution independent graphics and new Core Animation, I’m surprised how well things held up.

Microsoft, Direct X improvements aside, gets no such pass, because as a whole, I still have problems with the OS, and it’s been around longer, and had more people working on it.

That said, I’m also aware that a good number of the Microsoft blue screens of death aren’t Microsoft’s fault — directly. When drivers do bad things, it can topple an OS. Of course, this leads me to wonder why Microsoft didn’t manage their kernel layers a bit better.

Knowing this actually provides some insight for Leopard as well. Everyone understood how Tiger worked. Too well, perhaps. There were quite a number of OS resource tweaks that delivered amazing integration and features. I was certainly one of the advanced users.

However, Apple assumes, and I think rightly so, that if you intend to do an upgrade in place, then if you’ve changed the operating system out from underneath them, you roll the dice. A number of people were bit by Unsanity’s Application Enhancer that didn’t upgrade at the last moment before installing Leopard.

Keeping up to date with OS X third-party applications is just as hard as it is on Windows. That’s why I eventually plopped down the money for Version Tracker Pro. Had I not, I would have been one of those that the new install would have taken out. Diligence is king.

Even so, my problems with an Upgrade was slightly broken features, like the password working after a screen save (despite the settings to the contrary), and performance. I later learned that the former was a permission problem on the preference, and the latter was a library extension that didn’t work with Leopard and just tried to keep reloading itself.

My solution was to do an Archive and Install. All of my options were preserved, just like an Upgrade in place, but because the OS was virgin fresh, my system behaved wonderfully.

I give Apple this round, simply because a “fresh install” with Microsoft is so destructive.

Oh, and yes, once you’ve touted something as a “new” feature, like 64 bit, you can’t do it again for the next release. That’s cheating.

Vista Similarity 2: Needless Graphics Glitz


Leah, my iPhone girl.I love eye candy as much as the next guy, and in my operating systems too.

However, I question the real value one gets out of it. As long as it doesn’t get in the way, that’s great. If it communicates more information subtly, that’s great too. Incidentally, what I mean by that is effects, like Genie, which show where your Window is going when you minimize it, is useful.

All these different preview modes, sliding covers, and non-sense, I could really care less about.

Though, I have to admit I’m a closet user of them. Sometimes it easier to quickly view an image to make sure I’ve got the right one, or scan the contents of a document because a poorly chosen filename was used. I’d like to think Apple could have done this without the big production.

What really gets my goat, however is that Tiger had transparent Windows. Then it went away! That really made me mad, because I was using them since I had a small desktop.

So, that made me go find Virtue, in order to have multiple desktops. My gosh, I loved that product. Where else could you have different backgrounds, on a 3D cube, and get to them by keystrokes, mouse maneuvers, or tilting or laptop or waving your hand over it and triggering the ambient light sensors!

But then Apple went and created Spaces. With no real future, Virtue is going away – – and killing off a fantastic sales tool for me. With no competition, I don’t see Apple adding these things back.

And, only now, are we starting to talk about the transparency I had before. Argh!!!

So, while Vista is pretty, and Apple is pretty, Apple got by for having slightly more than fluff for fluff’s sake. Apple gets to take this round, begrudgingly.

Vista Similarity 3: Pointless User Interface “Fixes”


I’ve got to say, again, I agree with Oliver. The new dock may look pretty, but Apple had an uncanny way of letting me know what was going on with those nice, readable from a distance, black, unobtrusive triangles.

Do I have a way to get them back?

Can I switch an put the dock on the side and get something more acceptable looking? Yes, but then again I don’t want it on the side.

It’s crappy decisions like this that cause people to write utilities to hack the operating system which cause the initial instability problems in the first place.

Using Vista as the example, just because something is pretty doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable to use.

Having said all of the above, I have to admit that many of the things I initially didn’t like, I quickly grew to use. They bother me less.

Let’s just say in this round, the bell rang, and there was no winner.

Vista Similarity 4: Nuked Networking


I groan when I see Microsoft operating systems splinter over stupid artificial limitations like how many network connections can be concurrently inbound or outbound. I shake my finger at any operating system which can’t handle jumbo packet sizes or let me switch between 10/100/1000 ethernet speeds.

But I do accept that Windows shares, using Samba, can be difficult with Microsoft deliberately sabotaging protocols to force a homogeneous network with them being the vendor. Embrace and Extend. Anti-Trust. Bogus interoperability. Halloween Memos. I just can’t take the message that Microsoft is out to help me seriously anymore; too much bad history; too little progress. DRM, WGA, poison pill updates, spying – that’s the reason I left Microsoft.

While I recognize that Apple and Microsoft are in a cat’n’mouse game for accessing Windows resources, I do have a complaint to put on Apple’s shoulders.

And that is: just because I have a network, doesn’t mean I want to network. Unless I’m trying to comb my network’s machines, don’t bring them all to my Finder. I don’t need that. I know what kind of network traffic Microsoft generates.

On the other side of the coin, VNC is now built in. And, well, wow. Apple, you did well there. It’s almost as if Apple knows I’m slowly expelling Microsoft and replacing it with Unix systems.

But that doesn’t change the fact that when I do need access to a Windows box, and I’m using my Mac, I want it to be just as seamless. Just the other day, I tried to copy a file from a Windows share to my local desktop to work with a local copy. Locally. (Sense a theme?)

The Windows box said “that file is in use” (because someone had the network Excel file open) and wanted to know if I wanted a read-only copy. The Mac, however, simply said Permission Error and never told me why.

Apple: I need error messages to not be so abstract. Give me a way to Option-Click on them or something and dump the error.h code; in short, if I’m smart enough to fend for myself, let me. Or, just make it work.

I assume people have already heard that if you Move (not copy) a file from one resource to the other, if the destination is full and aborts the copy, the source file still gets deleted (the other half of the move). I hope that’s fixed.

Now, the sheer fact that Microsoft has a horrible time with other OS’s (and depends on them playing by their rules), the final score for this one goes to Apple. Though Apple got lucky.

Vista Similarity 5: Bundled Apps as New Features That Suck


Oliver and I may start to part ways at this one, although not that far.

All the standard home and media applications Apple bundles with their OS are really top notch in my opinion. In fact, I buy iWork in addition to iLife. It’s Apple’s Pro applications that use a interface that I find very dated. And ugly.

But the feature we all seem to gripe on is Time Machine.

My first experiences with Time Machine were horrible. The system would seize up, and, well to be fair, I have to admit that this all went away after I did an Archive and Install, rather than the Upgrade in place over my existing patched OS Tiger.

And, while I applaud the concept of Time Machine, I don’t like that I can’t force it to kick off when I want. Or that I can’t easily point it at a common server. Or use it wirelessly.

But my biggest beef is why in the world Apple just didn’t hold off, wait until ZFS was working the way they wanted, and delivered something that managed things directly with the filesystem itself.

In addition to Time Machine, I find myself using SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner to make quick, efficient backups, that are also bootable.

What I think Oliver might have missed is a subtle difference.
– With Time Machine, everything is backed up.
– Not that Time Machine backs up everything.

Let’s cover that a little closer. Time Machine does do a full backup, but then everything from then on out is incremental. And intelligently so. In fact, you can even go wandering around the files on the backup disk directly, should you choose to.

The way I’m reading things is that the review gives the impression everything is always backed up. That’s just not so.

Would I like to be able to tell Time Machine to only back up what I want it to? Yes. Please.

Would I like to only delete the things I intend to? Of course. But, realistically, it’s when I delete an important system file, and Time Machine has a copy, that I’ll suddenly become more forgiving of why it does what it does.

All his GUI gripes with Time Machine are dead on. However, when you get Time Machine working (via a clean Archive and Install – which keeps your preferences, data, and applications, btw), it does work as advertised.

It’s close. Time Machine’s integration is trivial. But over all, I think Vista’s backup, is better in the long run. Vista wins this round.

Oliver, I think, in this case was guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To be ticked off at the first version of a new application that could have been better, is justified. To extend that assessment to all bundled apps, as he does in his title, is not.

What the world hates is that after buying the OS, you still can’t do much with it. With Apple you can. And, with most Window machine purchases, you get a lot of crapware. Apple, you don’t.

In fact, I think Apple misses the mark. QuickTime Pro should be bundled with the OS, and if they were really on top of things, iWork as well. I’d gladly even pay the full retail price rolled into the cost of the machine. Why? Because can you image if everyone’s machine out of the box shipped with software that could do Office related stuff? You’d have a killer do-all platform from time the machine was powered up. There’s no way Microsoft could do that.

So, while Vista won this round, I’m gonna give Apple half-credit, since I think it was an unfair contests.

Walt’s Final Score


Apple 3.5 / 5; Vista 1 / 5.

I’d still rather use OS X Leopard than Vista any day of the week.

Walt gives OS X Leopard a thumbs up, even though it still needs some work.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor – I held it in my hands…

Actually had a copy of Battlestar Galactica Razor DVD in my hands today.

Cylon HeadToday I went to Target, and there in the DVD section was Battlestar Galactica: Razor.

I picked it up and held it in my hands. In fact, I did better than that. I went to the check out register.

That’s when the device beeped. I was quick to learn that the product could not be sold to me until December 4th.

I understand Target’s contractual obligations, and I respect that. But it’s also very unlikely that I will be in Target that day, having plenty of time to price compare. These kind of delayed releases actually cost stores sales, especially those impulse buys.

As a consumer, I’m not at all thrilled with waiting, whether it be for Harry Potter book seven or the latest movie release. When delay is introduced, I believe we all lose. The consumer learns they can live without the product, and to wait a little more causes no harm. The store is aware the consumer is willing to pay the most when they first see the product.

So, rather than groaning about the movie industry inflicting self-wounds and collateral damage, here’s what I read on the DVD.

First, it was the Extended Widescreen Unrated “What They Couldn’t Show You On Television” Edition.

It had Battlestar Galactica facts, and what looked to be a really neat directors commentary.

It was unclear if the unrated was for more brutality, sexuality explicit scenes, or just because the new content wasn’t passed by anyone who would take the time to rate it.

Based on what previewed on the SCIFI channel, I speculate that this DVD is gonna get a Thumbs Up.

Warning: iPhone AMEX refund isn’t dead yet

There was a blip of people who got AMEX to refund the difference, but that bubble is over. Or is it? I just got off the phone with AMEX and…

Let me clarify my position that I do not feel that I have an entitlement to a $200 refund.

That said, if I were running a company (like Apple or AMEX) where customer service is vital to my bottom line, I’d do everything in my power to build a burst of good will right before a holiday season.

For fun, let’s see of the sure fire headlines work.

Last night I went to the Apple Store in Tysons with a friend who bought his phone one week after me, putting him within the 14 day window. Apple credited him $200 on the spot.

I perhaps have one of the worse case situations, in that while early adopters have had their phone for a long time, I’m just outside of the 14 day window, meaning I don’t qualify for the price guarantee match, nor can I return my phone, nor did I get $200 of fanboy usage from the device.

Apple, however, was helpful and friendly. They looked up on my account and indicated that American Express was used to purchase the phone, and that I should call them. They even printed out a fresh copy of the invoice for me.

In the Jerry Seinfield and Superman commercial shorts by American Express, Jerry tells how, by using American Express, he’s protected from theft, damage, and so forth. Could it be true?

I looked at my American Express card, and found out I was a Platinum Member via Costco. Nice!

After looking up AMEX Best Value Guarantee with Google, seeing that a Gold Card Page mentioned BVG, and discovering Return Protection on Platinum Benefits, I felt it was worth a call to AMEX – given the Apple Store made the same suggestions as this newsworthy blog, this tech news article, and this tidbit.

I called 1-800-297-8019, and after a fairly long time on hold due to an enormous “unexpected” call volume, I reached a human who confirmed I had the right number. He explained that the Best Value Guarantee was discontinued in November 2006 (ah, the BVG article above was from 2003).

Turns out, the non-existent Best Value Guarantee would have meant AMEX would have had to pay $200. However, the “Apple won’t take my phone back [so I can purchase a new one at a cheaper rater] which is in affect puts them out $300 – though there’s the possibly you may have to send in your iPhone.

Follow along, cause this gets weird. Even if you paid $600 for the phone, a $300 credit from AMEX and a $100 from Jobs, gets you pretty darn close to the cost of getting a new phone (say if you’ve damaged yours dropping it or such); in fact, it might be just enough to make a point if you’re mad enough.

If you bought the cheaper phone, you very well could be beyond the break even point.

AMEX knows this, and they are well aware of the iPhone situation.

Because AMEX is getting hammered, they are looking for a compromise. Apparently there are enough people who are willing to return them iPhones that have been bricked in order to get $300 that AMEX doesn’t want to deal with that.

As such, they are looking at simply refunding the price difference (which is actually cheaper), especially if that means they don’t have to refund a larger amount and get stuck with a bunch of damaged phones with nothing in the file system and missing a SIMM card.

American Express took the date of purchase, the kind of iPhone, there price (with tax) of the iPhone, and the total cost of charges for the purchase and opened a case for me.

They claim they will review them individually, but the rep was fairly certain they’d be handled in bulk.

By bulk, I assume that means putting them in groups. Speculating here, I believe one group, will be the whining early adopters who will get nothing, another group will be those that are in the 14 day period and should be dealing with Apple, another group of questionable pro-rated matching, and a group that meets the intent of the policy (which is where I fall in), in that I’m just shy of being able to resolve it with Apple but haven’t had the long usage.

If AMEX comes though for me, then great, I will be using their card a lot more often.

If AMEX does anything, and I mean, anything at all, they come out looking like the heros, and have just secured themselves the holiday season as the card to purchase everything with.
Steve Jobs has one chance left to steal the thunder back, however. Tell people they are getting $100 back, but give a certain portion in the purchasing window $200 instead. Suddenly Apple looks beyond fair, but customer centric again.

I will note, however, that there were more people in line with iPhone receipts at Tysons than there were people buying the new iPods, while I was there. The early adopters are clearly gun shy.

iPhone – Price Drop: Early Adopters Screwed?

Are early adopters of the iPhone going to get screwed out of $200? I don’t think so.

To provide some context here, I actually ended up purchasing an iPhone. The SSH problem I had concerns with was resolved by the new set of software that’s come out by third parties. The iPhone legal rant was adequately rebutted by my friend, Phil.

But that’s not the big news. The big news is that Steve Jobs just announced the iPhone price was being dropped by $200. And, we knew in our heart of hearts that was going to happen sometime, but early adopters who wanted the iPhone to be a success, paid the expensive price.

Now that Apple’s benefited, the real question on the table is: Are the early adopters going to get screwed.

My take is no.

On the surface, I’m not too happy about having a 3-week old phone, which is less than a month old, yet one week past the return point.

Yes, I made the decision to buy it then, so I do take responsibility for that. But, on the other side, Apple also didn’t provide me with data that could have made me make a more discriminating purchase plan. (And, one can argue, why should they?)

Apple now has an interesting choice. Because of all these early adopters, their phone is a success. However, pissing them off would do some serious damage. One, those people are never going to buy into an early adopter program again and are going to spread negative comments. Two, non-early adopters are going to view this as a model of how Apple treats its customers.

THAT SAID, -twice- in the past, when I have purchased expensive software (about the same cost as the iPhone or more), Apple has dropped the price, and upon doing so, wrote me a Snail Mail telling me they appreciated my business and enclosed was a check for the difference. Unprompted.

I’d like to think that Apple will have the foresight to do that now, and the amount of good will this would result in would more than make it up.

At the moment, I have -one- iPhone. My wife is on the fence. If I get a refund from Apple, she’ll be having an iPhone too (and being realistic, if Apple produces a better version with more memory, I’ll be buying the higher end model for myself).

If I’m to eat the difference because of a single week, I don’t have the right to complain, but I’m going to take it out of Apple’s future sales by not upgrading, not early adopting, not evangelizing, and not buy multiple machines. And, let’s be honest, Apple knows this.

Apple’s Top Secret Feature?

Could Apple’s release of Safari for Windows actually be a hint to one of the Top Secret Features in the forthcoming OS X?

According to WebWare, Apple is releasing its browser, Safari, for the Windows platform.

The initial question from the community is: Why? (Though this may be the wrong question..!)

Clearly the region of the browser application space has been filled by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and a handful of others.

Wouldn’t releasing Safari simply make the Windows environment more compelling to stay? This got me thinking…

What if multi-platform Safari wasn’t the point at all, but it was actually a proof of concept of something greater?

A while back, Apple made the stunning announcement that it had been secretly working on a way to take the same source code and produce a PowerPC version and a Intel (Mac) version, and have them look identical. Combined together, they make the Universal Binary, which is a program that can be run on either system architecture. This was no small feat of clever engineering.

What if the Top Secret feature is that they’ve added Windows as a target for the same source code? Already RealBASIC is doing it, but that’s BASIC, not the mixed language richness of XCode.

As a developer, if I can use Apple’s amazing environment to produce Windows code, I’m all for it.

As a business owner, if I can produce applications and have them work on Apple’s customers as well, I’m all for the additional marketspace.

And, …if I’m a home user… if I’m wanting to switch to Mac, but I’m tied to the Windows platform because of application lock-in, this is a breath of freedom if my applications and data work elsewhere.

Could it be that Apple has taken Safari and simply “recompiled” it? That this is merely the test run to give applications independence of Windows, allowing users to switch over to a kinder, friendlier environment?

I’d like to think so.

Seven Girlfriends To The Perfect Spouse

What do walking sticks, card shuffling, and movie stars have to do with finding the perfect mate? They seem to support that you can find your spouse by seriously dating seven people.

When one goes to a technical conference on Java, perhaps the last thing you’d expect the a speakers’ lunch conversation turn to is mathematical selection of a mate.

I suppose it started simply because we had been talking about change. The topic started with source code change, changes at the office, and moved into changes in people. I offered up the classic observation that women get frustrated at their men because they don’t change, but that men get frustrated at their women because they do.

One gentleman was lamenting on his situation and admiring the subtle manipulation by his wife prior to his flight:
“Honey, ” he relates she began, “you should probably lose some weight, though I’d still love you if you were fat as a house.” And, after a momentary pause, she inquires, “Do you think I need to lose weight?”

Apparently his response of “I always love you, too” wasn’t quite what she was looking for.

Another speaker spoke up and added, “Well, I don’t have that problem at all. We’ve come to an agreement. I can be either fat or bald, but not both.”

Absolutely curious, I asked how that arrangement was sought. That just isn’t the kind of thing that normally just comes up as the finer points of marital negotiation.

He pondered and explained it started by as an ultimatum by her — unfortunately for her, she was engaging with one of the brighter logical minds…

“Honey, I’ve thought about it, and you can’t grow up to be fat and bald.”
“Really? Well, I have no control over being bald.”
“Oh. Well then you can grow up to be bald, but not fat.”
“Well, if I can be bald and not fat, then it’s only fair that I can also be fat and not bald.”
“makes sense, that sounds fair.”
“Then it’s settled, I can either be bald, or fat, but not both.”
“Agreed.”

And at that point, he took another bite of cake, stroking his head of hair with the other hand.

But this started a fantastic digression about how one knows when you have the right person in your life. We’d all just come out of meetings pertaining to measuring, quantifying, trend analysis, and metrics.

Based on rough calculations, to calibrate the scale and distribution of a sample size population, to do the best you could do, in a short period of time, it was concluded that you really needed to examine at least seven samples. At that point, you have a reasonable approximation for making a reasonable judgment call, and it was just a matter of how many standard deviations you were discriminating for.

A simple example is called for.

You’re walking in the woods and you’ve been given the task to pick up the best walking stick you can find. But the rule is, once you set it down, you can’t pick it up again.

So, you pick up the first stick you come to. However, you don’t know if this is the largest, or smallest. You have nothing to compare it to. With no basis for comparison, you set it down.

So, you pick up the next stick you come to. And you start to note more attributes, such as weight, shape, type of wood, etc. And again, you drop it.

So, you pick up the next stick you come to. As the attributes that interest you start to prioritize, you find yourself become more aware of the quality. You start looking at things like balance, general utility, wear, and things that come along with the stick, such as moss or termites. Some things are alterable, others are not.

As your go from stick to stick, each time you’re refining your assessment abilities and have gained more knowledge about what you’re looking at, as well as determining what you want.

After your six stick, depending on the breadth of the distribution you’ve encountered, you’ve started to formulate an accurate picture of of what you can reasonably expect. At this point you simply decide what criteria must be met, and the next stick that meets that criteria, you take. Permanently.

Oh sure, there might be something else better out there, but the effort, cost, time, dangers, and availability will more than likely offset the value you’d currently have. Trading your walking stick for something new, only trades existing faults with new unforeseen ones.

The same mathematical application applies to the dating scene.

Young couples find themselves inexperienced for selecting long term candidates and determining personal discriminators: there are unforeseen personality clashes, other options suddenly look more attractive, and if one settles too prematurely, it usually means being treated like a doormat or being taken advantage of financially.

Who among us didn’t stumble upon infatuation and think it was true love at sixteen? Or, find an exciting girlfriend only to discover character flaws that were obvious to our friends, family, and even our own 20/20 hindsight? Or, have everything wonderful and stable only to have it all turned on its ear for not explicable reason just as she turned twenty.

Unfortunately, for many, desperation or loneliness causes some people to settle well before their calibration process is complete; these people usually learn the hard lesson that being trapped in a bad relationship is worse than being lonely.

Alternatively, there are those that spend too much time in the calibration phase, and totally miss out on the longer term joys that are more rewarding.

It’s also interesting to note that we see microcosms of discriminating selection occur around when context and locality are ignored and we forget the more global nature of the chase.

One example may be the cruise ship filled with old geezers, of which in that context, some middle-aged person who’d never catch your eye looks fairly darn attractive in light of the situation. Same goes for co-workers, people met in bars, or even at parties — the limited selection forces expectations to be lowered.

This is why online dating services that give the illusion of many candidates keeps people seeking for perfection, while speed dating narrows the options and forces a compromised choice or none at all.

Of course, one might also say that it’s the reasoning behind things being in the last place you look, for once you make the find, the search is over.

Seven, however, lets you home in on a very acceptable choice that you can be genuinely be happy with, rather than waiting forever. For you too have a shelf life, and by the time you find the ideal through an exhaustive search, you may be too old to do anything about it.

I ponder, though, if there’s something more special going on.

For example, we’ve all heard of six degrees to Kevin Bacon, at that point you’ve traversed enough paths to get where you want.

Additionally, and I think this was in a story by Wired Magazine, a number of years ago, there was a mathematician who was going on a long horseback cattle drive. To amuse himself, he brought along a deck of cards, and spent the time shuffling it. At the end of his trip, he had mathematically deduced that for a deck to be sufficiently randomized (that is any card could be assured to physically be in any position), it required the deck to be shuffled seven times.

In both cases, we see that seven got us a good sampling — and with a good sample, an intelligent choice can be made.

iPhone will you have SSH?

Will the iPhone have SSH? Certainly it’s got everything that’s needed to do it — internet connection, virtual keyboard, a wide enough display. Question is, will Apple recognize that their geek audience is looking for network connectivity, not just access to their music collection?

I’m waiting for the article confirming that the “iPhone has SSH”, because that’s what’s going to push me over the edge. Yes, the iPhone is cool, and if it has a larger display, better interface, and all my iTunes stuff, I’m thrilled. But until I can sit on the beach and fire off remote jobs on my server via a command line, I won’t be as happy as I am now with my current phone.

Currently I’m using a T-Mobile SideKick, and I do few things with it: eMail and ssh to my servers. Web browsing, instant messaging, text messaging, photos, games, then phone come next — and in that order.

Oh, I don’t need super speed either.

In fact, if the iPhone had SSH and didn’t do voice telecommunications, I’d still be thrilled. Then again, we knew I was a geek.

UPDATE 27-JUN-2007: Here’s a list of things confirmed features the iPhone does not have. Songs as rings tones would be nice (or will it!), although I’d want to use my own .mp3 creations. No games; that’s a must as my iPhone may very well become a substitute for my iPod. No instant messaging is a show stopper to me. Not listed, but would be a killer app, would by Skype on the iPhone. GPS would be sweet, especially as it could tie into web apps; imagine pressing the “I’m lost” button. I need a removable battery, for places that insist the phone be physically off. And I don’t want a “real” keyboard, I think Apple got this one right. All the other stuff, I could give or take.

The good news is, according to another source, is that there will be 3rd party Cocoa apps on the iPhone. I think Steve Jobs did a disservice trying to pass off AJAX as the development API, and if the answer was simply that they needed to get some kinks out, work on some more security, and placate the phone providers, that would have been the better, more honest, and up front answer that would have gotten some serious respect.

Comp Time: Your Company’s Secret Weapon

Comp Time is your company’s secret weapon to boost productivity, make employees happy, and make the bottom line larger. See it in action – do you work for Company A or Company B. Pretty graphs included.

Comp Time is your company’s secret weapon, not just to employee happiness, but to productivity.

Some companies define comp time as earning 1.5hrs for every overtime hour worked. This article assumes a 1:1 ratio to make its points. Our focus is directed at human behavior when comp time is (and isn’t) available and the side effects of being able to borrow from past and future reserves.

We’ll examine two companies. A, which does not implement comp time. And, B, which does implement comp time.

Let’s start with the assumption that the normal work week is five days long and eight hours each.

Work-To-The-Rule vs. Simple Flex Time


Company A’s Average Is Lower Than They Realize!
Company B’s Average Is Above 100%
Productivity!

It’s a well known fact that if one imposes strict clock watching on employees, they spend far more time watching the clock and complying with it than they do actually working. Yes, you’ll get those forty hours, but while the chair may be occupied, productivity isn’t what it could be. This is often called “Work to the Rule” or “Malicious Compliance.” Above we see Company A mandating strict attendance policies, but the reality is that they’re really following the techniques in the White Collar Slacker’s Handbook.

Conversely, if you’ve hired professionals and treat them like professionals, they tend to act like professionals. Company B also has the same 40 hour work week, but its policy is such that employees are free to jiggle their time around via flex hours.

If an employee doesn’t feel well, he leaves, without infecting the rest of the office, making it up later. If an employee takes a long weekend, he can beat traffic, yet still make up that time without burning himself out. If he’s being unproductive, and knows it, he can just stop — suddenly company B isn’t paying for unproductive hours. Even better, when the employee gets a burst of inspiration and is in “the zone” creatively, he’ll naturally work as long as it takes; people enjoy feeling productive. This amount is often well above what’s asked. Finally, the employee can use the extra accumulated time to reward himself; company B doesn’t have to shove out as many bonuses.

Management at Company is confusing attendance with productivity (the stuff that actually gets done), but all they really have is a bunch of disgruntled clock-watchers. Company B is a different story, because the actual productivity often exceeds 100%, plus its people are happy (and happy people don’t jump ship).

Large Blocks of Comp Time


Let’s try to even out the playing field by improving Company A’s corporate policies. Let’s say that Companies A and B are both in the same line of business, doing identical work, with identical talent. Both have simple flex time, and both even have comp time. The difference being, that while both bill their customer on a monthly cycle, Company A ties its comp time policies to a two week pay period, just because. Company B, also with a two week pay cycle, allows comp time within the one month billing cycle.

All you really need to be looking for what actually happens in a company when a real-life event bumps up an artificial boundary. The conclusion, as we’ll see, is that the broader the comp time window is, the more benefits befall to the company.

Employee Illness


Let’s look at the case where an employee gets sick at the end of a pay cycle in Company A.

Company A’s Productivity Is Lower Due To Missed Time
AND They Are Now Behind Schedule!
Company B’s Average Is Unaffected By The Absence!

Inside Company A, if a person gets sick at the end of cycle, they’re unable to make up the time. As such, this time deficit usually comes out of a benefit pool of personal time off (such as combined vacation and sick time).

Employees do not like touching this reserve, primarily because it is a safety buffer that accounts for emergencies. Additionally, there’s the perfectly valid conception that vacation time should be fun time, and that one might want to use it in large sized blocks.

Company A has two rationalizations for making the employee consume vacation time. One, forcing them to draw against it is a disincentive to stay home. Two, not having any left means the employee won’t be out for an extended period, keeping him around. Both are self defeating in the long run.

First, it’s true, the sick employee may drag himself into work, simply to be there. However, someone who’s sick often doesn’t perform well, and in the case of software development, coding in a mental fog can actually do a project serious damage. Meanwhile, the rest of the office gets sick, which cycles back around to making recovery difficult. Now you know why flu season affects some companies and not others.

Second, people function better after breaks. Having an employee continually working on a project non-stop tends to induce burn-out, often leading not to continued productivity, but to the employee leaving for another job, presumably with better working conditions.

Either way you look at it though, Company A has lost time on the project due to the employee being out.

Company B, however, has a different perspective. Because their policy allows the time to be recovered, the employee has a strong incentive not to consume his vacation pool. As such, he works longer in the days that follow, recovering his time. From a project standpoint, it regains the ground that was previously thought lost.

Additionally, because the project isn’t behind schedule, planning becomes easier and more accurate, allowing Company B to let the employee take a long vacation, scheduling around it so that it has no impact. When the employee returns, he’s refreshed and back to producing at peek performance.

The Schedule Crunch


Comp Time also provides enormous benefits when an extra effort is needed. Let’s look at the case of a forth coming demo, preceded by an extra surge of pre-demo preparation activity.

Company A’s People Put In Less Extra Effort, And Are Unhappy.
Company B’s People Go Above And Beyond, Willingly.

Due to circumstances, the demo day is at the start of the next cycle. That means, for Company A, any extra time put in before the demo won’t be recovered, it’s just lost. Human behavior dictates under such conditions any push will be met with passive resistance, and while Company A may get overtime in crunch mode, it won’t be all it could be. Slow burnout is on the horizon. in the short term they pay for a week of attendance and poor productivity.

Meanwhile, Company B’s staff is willing to go beyond the extra mile, primarily because they know that what follows the demo is a significant block of downtime. Company B gets the time when they need it, and the employee doesn’t feel taken advantage of. They return rested and ready, sooner.

The lesson is clear: the larger the block of allowable comp time, the more value the company gets. The effect does not appear to be linear, either. A company with monthly cycles gains more than having two back-to-back bi-weekly cycles of time reconciliation.

Making Comp Time Work


Company A’s fear is that the employee will borrow from the future and not work it back. There’s are several easy ways to deal with this.

Should an employee cross a comp time boundary with a negative amount, it simply get drawn from vacation, and if no vacation, then salary. The primary risk to cover is the case of the employee borrows time and then quits, the solution is just to set policy so that no comp time can be borrowed more than the employee has resources to cover.

Another way to allow borrowing forward is to actually draw from vacation, though allowing comp time to return back time to the vacation pool.

Ideally, though, the best solution is to allow banking of time to fill in gaps. You’re no longer borrowing from future time, but normalizing from reserves. Turns out, employees will settle in on this optimum strategy without having to be shown, anyhow.

Benefits of Comp Time


Concluding, note that the longer the comp time period extends, the more the company itself actually benefits — its workers are more productive, they’re happier, they’re able to go the extra mile, people are healthier over all, etc. The employee feels more freedom, as the job integrates with life instead of dictating it. Yet still, on average, the employee willingly spends more time for the company (which is also happens to be the better quality time), and still gets to enjoy long vacations (that now don’t disrupt schedule).

It’s a benefit that’s very easy to provide, and it makes Company B have the competitive edge over Company A, all things equal.

Behind the Blue Screen of Death, Is Microsoft Vunerable?

XP suffered a Blue Screen of Death due to a very simple cause, but this got the gears going — are phone-home-on-error systems vulnerable and not getting the attention they deserve?

This morning I came in to work and discovered my Windows XP desktop in a crashed state, you know the one, the Blue Screen of Death; the same one you see billboard sized at Times Square.

Given that I’m meticulous about patches, clean registry settings, and an army of spyware, malware, and anti-virus detectors, not to mention the machine is used for very limited purposes, it’s very likely this isn’t some bad 3rd party Windows driver. Oh, no, the error message squarely put the blame on the USB driver.

Knowing that, I can think back to what my very last activities were at the end of the day. I saved a file in a simple editor, that file was on my Dell USB stick, and after it saved, I initiated a Windows Reboot, and pulled my USB stick (whose activity light was well extinguished) and walked at the door as Windows was still shutting down.

I’m going to simply conclude that Windows was so “busy” with its shutdown that it didn’t “see” the USB device get removed, and it was left in some horrified state that it had to die (something that does not happen with my Mac, ever). This is further confirmed by the fact that, after a hard power reset, XP came up fine, and all of my diagnostic utilities passed. Windows had just, plain and simply, died.

Sometime after booting, however, I got a message that Windows had detected it had shutdown in a bad manner, and it wanted to know if it was okay to send the report to Microsoft. I’m all for making things better, but I thought it might be interesting to look into the post-Blue Screen of Death activities.

The Blue Screen of Death did a crash dump and some files were written to disk in a directory called C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Local Settings\Temp\WEReeed.dir00.

The file manifest.txt consisted of name/value pairs separated by an equal sign, in much the same way as the contents of an .ini file might be done, sans section headers.

The more curious contents of this file revealed the server, a url, and some values, what data files were being sent, and a very obscure reference to what might be a “blue” screen report.

Server=watson.microsoft.com
Stage2URL=/dw/bluetwo.asp?BCCode=1000007e&BCP1=C0000005&
BCP2=BA2C4371&BCP3=BA503AF4&BCP4=BA5037F0&
OSVer=5_1_2600&SP=2_0&Product=256_1
DataFiles=C:\DOCUME~1\{username}\LOCALS~1\Temp\
WEReeed.dir00\Mini022207-01.dmp|C:\DOCUME~1\{username}\
LOCALS~1\Temp\WEReeed.dir00\sysdata.xml
ErrorSubPath=blue

The sysdata.xml file consisted of an XML file that listed every device, its description, hardware id, service, and driver, often the version and file size as well. Sure enough, the usehub.sys file was there, buried in the batch. It simply appears this file is trying to collect the configuration of the machine, perhaps to recreate it in the lab for some regression testing and battery of comprehensively abusive test suites. At least that’s what I would hope happens.

The Mini022207-01.dump is clearly the month/day/year-sequence_number of when the dump was made. When the Blue Screen of Death happened, it claimed it was dumping all of physical memory. Given this Mini-Dump is only 92K, some post-processing has clearly taken place.

In my case, the file was clearly a page dump of a section of memory, with what looked like uninitialized memory labeled with the bytes literally reading “PAGE”. Inside, this binary blob it was very easy to make out pgfilter.sys, USBSTOR.SYS, and kmixer.sys. Other device driver names and binary glop followed.

Actually submitting the report showed that watson.microsoft.com (as in the product Dr. Watson) was queried and an IP of 65.54.206.43 came back. An https: exchange was made, and moments later oca.partners.extranet.microsoft.com (131.107.112.111) was ask of the DNS server; more content was sent to that server. wwwbaytest5.microsoft.com (207.46.18.30) was then asked for a certificate, via GET /pki/mscorp/Microsoft%20Secure%20Sever%20Authority(3).crt; a few more of these went back and forth, and wer.microsoft.com (131.107.115.67) got involved, that when my browser reported the human readable response to the report. Compounding matters, no tracking number or email address is provided, so even if I wanted to provide Microsoft with more information to help them fix the problem, I can’t.

After all this happened another thought struck me… Microsoft doesn’t really have a good track record with security, especially when it comes to error checking and services that aren’t used that much. I ponder what would have happened if the information had been tampered with before being sent? Is there invalid input that could send the error reporting systems into a tizzy? Could some bogus changes make their debugger or tool execute malicious code? Would some false data send some poor analysis team chasing fictional ghosts? What would happen if an automated script kiddie generated millions of bogus machine crash reports; how would they get sorted out?

I ask the question because there are quite a number of phone-home-if-you-see-a-problem systems out there in popular open source projects. Seems to me that there should be solid secure conventions to detect if error report data has been tampered with, or is bogus, and to prevent the same kinds of attacks regular systems suffer from. This is something worth spending some design time on, even if it isn’t part of the main product functionality.

Update: Suffered another crash, this time in the ATI driver as the system was doing nothing and changing focus from one window to another. Oddly enough, again, all the diagnostics say the system is fine — I’m going to do a very intensive sweep.

For the curious, the new directory was WERdb4a.dir00 with similar manifest, dump, and sysdata files. WER is the Windows Error Report, and the stuff after it appears to be hex glop. This time it is blaming the video driver, so I’ll be checking if there are any updates with both Dell and ATI.