Technical Advise Week #9 - Focused Intensity

Hi! As we lay on the bed contemplating the day and enjoying a bit of mindless entertainment in the form of Buba the Elephant we started to think about our topic for the week. I must admit that Max wasn't concentrating too hard as he was reveling in Dad's late night arrival. Then all of a suddenly it come to me.... focus, attention, intense, and study. It was then that I realized that although my mind was in several places that my visual focuses was acutely attuned to several things around me. I then started to think of ways that I could experiment with all of this. So I told Max to do various distracting things in totally a random fashion. We all know that this wasn't a hard job for him. As the rush of random experiences bombarded me I started to make a note of what things influenced by focus. It wasn't the distraction or the antics, but rather it was the forces caused by audio variances. Whether low and subdued, or loud and crazy it had virtually the same effect on my ability to be acutely aware of a number of things going on around me. These ranged from the actual act of watch/observing, to those surrounding events that were perceivable in a attentive way.

We realize that the world is one big source of information. In our quest for answers, the answers may actually be right in front of us, but the distractions (noise) numb our ability to pick up on these things. Projects require allot of things to occur and yet failures, despite pragmatic process, involve the act of focused intensity in order to reduce occurrence likelihood. So... listen beyond the noise of events and revel in what you become keenly aware to.

Technical Advise Week #8- Parametric polymorphism

Don't you think that this is a big mouthful to come from such small mouths? Aside from large words having big meaning we have also seen the continued influx of abbreviations hitting our desk as of late. Many coming from emerging processes that profess the virtues of simplicity, minimization, and purity. On one hand the theme and on the other hand the truth. BTW... Parametric Polymorphism is code with connection to type but allowed to operate transparently with a large variety of types. Max just giggled and said that it's somewhat like being neutered... still have the life without the impact on other!

Dad told us about an interesting trip back home and how he and some colleagues discussed memory content manipulation, long passed technologies, compressed programming and lots and lots of stuff that frankly is a bit beyond what we can fully understand. He made it pretty simple, there was a time when everything you did had to be conservative, and the relationship was intimate with the hardware and software components. Today, these things are reserved for real-time processes and embedded applications. Everyone else is simply satisfied to know enough to work with the software and not probe to get inside what it is doing. From our little corner of the world.... we have found that a wealth of surprises and interesting things hide within. So unless anyone else gives a hoot, we are quite happy to enjoy these gems for ourselves.

Technical Advise Week #7 - In Search of the Holy Grail (Details)

A constant cry from the world of technology is for details. Details, details, details. What people are really looking for is specific, explicit and exact answers. One would probably say, "is that asking too much"? Neither Max or I think so, but what we are most disturbed about is that isn't what they are really asking for. What they are asking for is for someone to do the work for them. We have even seen cases where they purposefully hide behind 'the details' as a way of saying we don't know exactly what we want, we haven't heard an answer that rings right enough for us to proceed, and ultimately we don't know what we want/need/or whether we have already got it. All too often this level of craziness is the direct result of excess complexity and trying to do too much at one time. We like to think of this as giving someone the cookbook and having them throw the choices back in our face and say that nothing that was prepared tastes good. Each and everyone has an obligation to do their part by first of all establishing what they wish to do, or what they need in order to proceed to the next step. Secondly, the authority (aka SME) is obligated to synchronize this understanding and to provide input, sometimes in a fashion that will foster further dialog, leading to a series of answers of mutual agreement. There are those occasions when 'we' never have seen eye-to-eye. Often it's not for a lack of interest on our part, but because a lack of skepticism on the part of the requester. One must reconcile or at least reach a point of neutrality before engaging in the pursuit. Otherwise wasteful energy is spent trying to convince rather than to solve. For us... we remain intense upon service but we can only do half the lifting (even with our little strong paws), the rest has to be up to the requester (and they have much bigger paws).

Technical Advise Week #6 - Label

Hi, this is Max... and now it's my turn to give my two kibbles and one bit of advise. Mabel is such a fashion Pug (I would have said hound but she would have been upset with my labeling of her as such). Everything she buys, and in some sense everything she does professionally involves a label. Whether it's food, a new collar, or even a piece of consulting advise she seeks out and buys the 'big name' label. Recently we had a massive debate over whether the 'big name' bought anything of value. It is her contention that with name comes credibility, and although you pay more, you get the added comfort knowing that there is a chance that the results will live up to the expectations. As I pointed out, she has had on more than one occasion, the unfortunate experience of paying a high price with expectations and not having them fulfilled. Sure, in the long run she got satisfaction but what she isn't seeing is the time and effort that she is expending to make the wrong right. I probably would be stupid enough to point this out at some point, but I am half anticipating that she will say the same could hold true for more mainstream offerings, and when this happens the ratio of cost to remediation effort will be higher. For that reason, I will be a nice little pug and keep my black furry lips tightly closed. The only point that I can share with you that 'buying safe' isn't really safe, and that this narrow approach comes with a narrowing of options and opportunities. On the same hand, buying cheap isn't the way to go either. As I remember dad saying on more than one occasion, "too much of anything is not good". Since we as a family (and as professional technologists) delivery quality services, we have in many cases served the label companies in training their employees, setting the tone in the industry, and constantly pursuing improvements to the things we do. Label or not, we may face opportunities that we are not going win (and possibly don't have the bandwidth to support), but there will be those opportunities where we will win and be successful on behalf of our customers. Until next week... I bid you peace! - Max (and Mabel)