Here are some of the more interesting reads I’ve come across the the last few weeks. Let me know if any of these stand out for you. And if you have interesting reads of your own to recommend, please drop them in the comments. After “hearing” many of our kids’ classes while they were remote…
There is a meme I have seen floating around the flotsam and jetsam of the Internet that goes like this: For an American on vacation, I did pretty good. I didn’t check my email or Teams messages for the entire 10 days of my vacation. Of course, I was not “away camping for the summer,”…
Four years ago I wrote about my dread of answering the question “what do you do?” when asked by someone about my vocation. I used to tell people “I work with computers” but that was vague. I don’t like saying that I am a project manager because it sounds to me like a made-up job.…
ARLINGTON, VA. This is just in: having successfully rolled out the big software system I’ve been working on for the last 441 days, I have the weekend off. These are my first days off in a month. I worked 126 hours in the last 2 weeks alone. I am tired, worn out, elated, relieved, and…
A friend of mine is retiring on Friday. He is about 10 years ahead of me in the career life cycle. He started at the company about 2 years after I did, and he is now retiring after 25 years. It has been a long time coming for him. His wife retired about a year…
Working scientists use logbooks to record their work so that they can (a) reproduce results, and (b) establish priority in discoveries. As a working developer, I use a logbook, too, which also serves two primary purposes: (a) capture what I did during the day (sometimes in order to reproduce things), and (b) as an index…
On Monday we will roll out a software system that my team has been building for the last thirteen months. In nearly 27 years with the company, this is the software that I am most proud of. It is a system that coordinates new hires, people who are changing jobs or transferring locations, and people…
There ought to be a measurement, like the temperature, that we can use to easily indicate to family, friends, and colleagues how busy we are. It would be nice to be able to say, “Sorry, I can’t meet for lunch, my busy-ness number is at 8 today.” There are all kinds of tools and gadgets…
25 years ago today, I started my first job out of college. I’d graduated about three months earlier, and spent the summer after my graduation continuing to work in the dorm cafeteria office, where I did some computer work. Meanwhile, I looked for full-time job. I graduated with a degree in political science and journalism,…
All of the slides I need to create for the training presentations are done. The total count of presentation slides for the 3-day training session now stands at 501! I have also now gotten so good with PowerPoint that I could probably produce a full-length feature film with it. Still have lots to do. Next up is…
I’m hoping to have the last of the training slides done by 9 pm, at which time I’ll take a break for an hour or so. But I’m coming up on twelve hours for my day so far. If all goes well overnight, twelve hours from now most of the work will be done and…
Still going. I’m more than 2/3rds of the way done with Day 3 slides and I expect to be complete done with the slides by 7 pm. I left the office at about 1:30 and took a 2 hour break. Sarah came over and Kelly and I went with her and her dog, Oliver, up to the dog…