zanshin.net

• Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain
  (tags: johnmccain politics opinion 2008election vietnam toread)
• Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush? - CNN.com
  In a word - yes. Be afraid.
  (tags: cnn johnmccain politics opinion president 2008election toread)
• The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
  Violence begets more violence, and torture, it seems, begets more torture.
  (tags: history johnmccain vietnam hypocrisy torture bush)
• EE versus CS
  Once upon a time…
  (tags: engineering programming science funny humor geek)
• Automatically update your computer’s uptime on your website | wesg
  (tags: bash uptime script interesting)
• Default Logins and Passwords for Networked Devices
  For when you want to "borrow" your neighbor's router
  (tags: reference list wifi passwords default wireless useful hack)

A week or so ago I installed the Close Old Posts plugin to try and combat some of the comment spam zanshin.net receives.  The plugin closes comments on any posting older than 14 days by default “on the fly.” No database queries are used, the postings are updated as they are viewed.

The plugin is working fantastically, from my perspective.  Nearly all the comment spam I got was to older postings, and now that they are closed for comments, I’ve only had one spam make its way into the Akismet net.  

I almost miss my daily ritual of deleting all the comment spam.  Almost.

Tags: plugin, spam, this site, wordpress

• How I Explained REST to My Wife
  Now I get it…
  (tags: toread rest webservices restful programming web howto tutorial internet http)

The recent upheaval in my employment has knocked me off my emotional center; it is hard to think coherently about my upcoming choice.

Sometime this week, or early next I will be presented with one or more opportunities to accept a new position.  The choices as they stand today are, in no particular order:

* Software Engineer doing COBOL/JCL/DB2 development work
* WebSphere Administrator in a production support role
* Sr. Project Leader for a business unit (i.e., non-technical)
* Project Leader/Supervisor for a large established product

Like shopping for a new car, each of these seems like a good idea in isolation.  Fresh from the test drive of an interview, I’ve been satisfied that I could do the job, that I would like the job, and that I wanted the job.

With the passage of time, or another interview, doubts begin to creep in to my thoughts.  That job would have me working in a completely brand new area, technology would change.  I’d be in a different building. Adding to the doubt process is the selection process.

Any offers that these interviews generate will come to me on a first come, first served basis.  And I have to say yes or no, not knowing if there are others waiting in the wings.

Like a gambler who sits down at the table knowing exactly how much he can wager, and under what conditions he will withdraw from play, I need to have some yardstick, some set of parameters that will allow me to navigate the choices ahead of me.  And, like a cautious gambler, I need the resolve to stick to my parameters in the heat of the moment.

I’ve ordered the positions from choicest to least desired in my mind.  The ranking was a combination of emotional and intellectual, subjective and objective, factors.  But what I haven’t yet come to terms with is the tremendous roll of the dice, should I chose to pass on the first offer made if it is lower in my preferred ordering.

My preferred outcome is that choice number 1 makes the first offer, and that the compensation is within my range.  Then the decision is easy.  There really aren’t any clearly defined 2nd or 3rd choices as there are too many variables, variables well beyond my ability to control, to list all the combinations.

If my 2nd choice makes the first offer and their compensation is within my range, I think it’s a go.  If the compensation is outside of my range, then I don’t know.  What if no other offers are made?  If I say no, then I have well and truly let go of the bird in the hand for one in the bush - one that got away.  What if my least favorite option makes an offer that is in the right compensation range?  Even the least desirable position is better than unemployment.

Try as I might, I don’t think there is a strategy that leads me through this process without an element of emotional uncertainty.  Each choice has merit, each has some risk, and each has a potential downside.  In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks at length about the power of making a decision in an instant, relying on instinct and your subconscious, over spending lots of time weighing your options.  I think sometimes the best decisions are made with a combination of weighing and instinct.  By weighing my options I’ve given my subconscious the data it needs to decide.  Now I just need an offer to trigger that instantaneous yes or no reaction.

Tags: emotion, employment, process, strategy

For the past six weeks or so I have been participating in a placement program at my employer.  My position was eliminated and this program is designed to locate a new position for me within the company.  While I applaud the thinking behind the program - that it is better to retain employees than to release them only to hire others - there are some aspects of it that have been stressful for Sibylle and me.

The most difficult thing is how offers are presented.  Assuming that an interview results in an offer I have to accept that position or decline.  Should I decide to decline, the position is gone, removed from consideration permanently.  If more than one offer should be made, I will only know about the first one, as they are filtered through Human Resources.

In other words, we are playing a form of “Let’s Make A Deal” with my career.  At some point I may have a job offer in my hands.  And the internal dialog, with my doubts and curiosity playing the part of Monty Hall, will be saying, “Hm.  But I had that other interview that went really well, I wonder if they will make me an offer?”  If I let go of the first offer and take a chance on their being another one behind door number one, I may strike gold, or I may find myself unemployed come the end of the placement program.

This facet of the program has required that I do some serious evaluating about the merits of potential outcomes.  The positions that I am interviewing for are somewhat varied: IT project leader, non-IT project leader, server administration, and mainframe developer.  Two are at my present employer and two are at the much larger parent corporation.  There is simply no way to compare them, and in the end I think comparing and contrasting them is fruitless.  Having a favorite or favored position does me no good unless I receive an offer for that position first.  

Twenty years ago I went to work for a utility company, and in the course of the nearly nine years that followed I held a number of positions within that organization.  Some were more to my liking than others, but ultimately I was employed and liked my employer.  I feel some of the same affinity for my current employer.  I’d like to stay, and if that means my title and day-to-day responsibilities change occasionally to something new, then so be it.

No, I don’t care for the “Let’s Make A Deal” aspect of the offer process, but I do, very much, like that I am being given a change to make a deal at all.

Tags: career, employment

Throughout my career I have been fascinated with process.  At a certain level of abstraction my job is nothing but implementing processes, big and small, to achieve some goal.  After spending twenty-five years examining existing processes to understand them, and designing new automated processes to replace or augment them, I tend to see processes everywhere.  

The best processes are the ones that you don’t see, that fade into the background.  The worst are ones that constantly jar and batter you as they run counter to your goal.  Most fall in the middle ground somewhere; they work well enough to not require updating or change, but they are at times cumbersome or annoying.

One pitfall a number of processes seem to fall into is what I call the “two minute warning syndrome.”  American-style football is played for 60 minutes, and with just two minutes remaining on the game clock a warning is sounded.  Many teams shift gears into a hurry-up offense, or “two minute drill” at this point in the game, trying to catch up or win the game.

To my way of thinking this is wrong.  Why wait until the last two minutes to catch up and win?  Why not come out and play the first two minutes to win, and then the next two, and then the next, and so on? 

The most recent example of this “two minute warning” thinking I have seen is a placement program I’m in at work.  My position has been eliminated and the organization is searching for a new assignment for me that matches my experience and compensation level.  The program is six weeks in duration, with a possible extension should there be a placement pending when it expires.  The announcements sent out to over two dozen managers made no mention of the deadline involved.  Few, if any, response trickled in during the first four weeks.  Now, in the middle of the fifth week, HR has started calling managers to inform them that the opportunity to interview me ends next week.  Suddenly there have been several inquiries about me, and I have three interviews lined up, with one or two more potential interviews pending.

When HR sounded the “two minute warning” on the placement program everybody shifted gears and the placement process actually started to move.  Had that kind of motivation been brought to bear in the first week, I would have been placed weeks ago, and all this stress and confusion these last minute efforts would have been eliminated.

The two minute warning may make for good football games, but it is a lousy paradigm to model (consciously or unconsciously) your process after.

Tags: employment, process

After some poking around on Google, I found a Wordpress plugin that closes the comments on posts older than 14 days, automatically.  Since most of the comment spam I get is on older postings, I am hoping that Close Old Posts will reduce the amount of spam Askimet has to filter for me.

Tags: plugin, spam, wordpress

On our trip to Europe this year, Sibylle and I will be doing some travel by train.  Our flight to Europe lands in Zürich, and we are taking the train to Stuttgart from there.  Wanting to take advantage of some special rates for trains starting or ending in Germany we went ahead and booked our seats.  Today’s mail brought an overseas envelope containing our seat reservations and tickets.

We still need to reserve and by our tickets between Stuttgart and Bressanone Italy, where we are spending a week of our trip.  Once those tickets have been secured we’ll be largely set, transportation wise.

Tags: Europe, train, travel

On Sunday, Sibylle and I purchased two new Eddie Bauer backpacks to use during our trip to Europe this year. We gave them a “Dry run” yesterday during our trip to Chicago; one that they both passed with flying colors.

One of our concerns was their size when filled.  All the airlines publish the size limits of your carry on luggage, and they all restrict you to one carry on and one personal item.  Of course these restrictions and limits rarely seem to be enforced.

The outward size of some of the wheeled luggage on our flights was clearly beyond what would fit in the little sizing stands by the jetway doors.  And many people bring two or three pieces of luggage each onto the plane.  The problem isn’t the standard, but rather the expectation of the airline that the person or persons working the gate be the “bad guy.”

Unless the gate agent is willing to force each person to test the size of their bag, and to force each person to their one carry on plus personal item limit, then there is no hope for the rules to work.  The gate agent can’t easily single out the egregious offenders, as those people will then point to the less egregious, but still over the limit offenders.  Increased security, long lines, short connection times, weather and mechanical delays have already increased the stress level in the crowd of people waiting to board a plane.  A gate agent who tries to enforce the carry on policy risks getting an earful or worse.

I certainly don’t want a job that requires I be respectful and polite to a potential stressed or angry customer, much less a job that requires I do this for hour after hour, day after day.  My hat is off to those people who work in those customer facing positions; by and large they do so with courtesy, professionalism, and often a smile.  That the airline expects these people at the front line to bear the brunt of whatever ill-will policy enforcement may generate says a lot about the gap between management and employee.

What the airlines need to do is setup, between security and the first gates, a luggage check station where travelers can quickly and easily measure their carry on items for proper size, and check any that are over the limit.  Then the gate personnel can, and should, turn away any luggage that is outside the published limits.  Until the airlines enforce their requirements across the board and without fail, people will take advantage of the possibility of getting away with one extra bag, or a bag that is too large.  And until the requirements are enforced well before boarding time, the gate personnel will have to deal with the rudeness of people lashing out when caught doing something they new was in the wrong all along.

Tags: flying, process

Using the “Create a Map” feature over at Wayfaring.com, I made this map of our walking route through Chicago yesterday. All told we covered about four and a half miles on foot.

(You can hover your mouse over the waypoints to see what they are.)

Tags: Chicago, map, walking