Apache, who had suffered tissue damage (muscles), and had several inflamed internal organs, and had (possibly) a fracture in her pelvic bone, is recovering. The vet put her on steroids to help with the pain and inflamation. We’re now weening her off of the steroids (she’s now down to one every other day.) And after two more weeks we should be able to let her roam freely again. She’s been confined to a single room for, gosh, 3 weeks now? And she’s hating it. She’s an in/out cat and she really likes to roam the neighborhood. She’s also been eating a lot (because of the steroids) so she’s plumped a little bit. Apache is, however, back to her normal self with us (very effectionate, purring like a little kitty-motor-car) She’s a very good kitty, and I’m glad shes on the road to recovery. Poor thing
Archive for May 11th, 2006
Increasingly people are having less of a problem finding the information, and are now having more of a problem managing that information. Often times I find myself frustrated at people who cant find what they want via a search engine, and then a matter of seconds later (with the same search engine) I’ve pulled up a list of highly relevant information for them. The problem isnt that they dont know how to search… the problem is that they dont know how to apply relevance.
As an example… A dog lover who hits the internet for the first time might pop over to google and search for “training bitches” You can imagine what they might find. Any tech savvy person would have searched for “Dog training bitches” It’s amazing what a little bit of relevance will do when used properly! The problem is that most people arent tech savvy, and most people dont think in terms of relevance!
As an engineer, and as an ops guy I’m constantly aware of the relevance of what I’m doing as well as how it affects the neural network of aparati around whatever mode or framework that I am operating inside (be it reality, an application, or google.) My grandmother is not.
Of course when people think search and relevance they think spyware, and understandably so. But would it really be so difficult to build an application which was really able to exploit relevance in such a way as to be easy to even the worst novice? I could imagine several ways, all of which would get me booed off my soap box… and the ones that wouldnt wouldnt please the techophiles…
Maybe thats the problem. The divide between the eleetist users and the novice users is shrinking, causing the real eleetist folk to dig in their heels and resist anything which would help close that divide even faster (especially when privacy is mentioned). But until grandma can use the web just as well as I can… the job isnt done…
Web 2.0? hardly. Think 0.75
I’m a pretty lucky guy. Today, when I told my boss “I need to spend a sizeable chunk of time doing this right (that is re-doing it since we’ve solidified on concepts and semantics since the proof of concept version of this code)” he understood that it was important. He gave me the rest of the day to refactor that code.
It would play to my ego to think that since I’m such a wonderful engineer my word was taken as it should be — as the absolute unabashed unbiased truth. Unfortunately I’m not the golden child of engineers; and fortunately I don’t view myself in that way (nor do I wish to do so.) The reality is that Scott took my advice, weighed it, and gave me the chance to pay it forward.
So, four and a half hours of work today allows for a time savings of 75% any time we want to write a new feature for a particular (and important) area. The truth of the matter is that we may not put in more than one feature there before release, but the company that I work for has turned its mind to planning and true agility.
It’s sad to think that a large percentage of companies would have (at this point: pushing towards an initial release, and tantilizingly close) simply written it off as not immediately important. While it’s true that getting to the goal is hugely important, it’s also true that getting there with a torch that no longer supports a flame really defeats the purpose.
So even as tension mounts with personal and business life colliding (as is oft the case with startups), not to mention business relationships stressed by the sheer exhaustion of effort, Scott still seriously considers my advice and allows a fair amount of freedom in my momentum.
Maybe it’s because hes a macro, as opposed to micro, manager. Maybe it’s because we’ve worked together for so long. Maybe it’s because I’ve never let my employer (him or otherwise) down. Heh… Maybe it was just a good day on the other end of the IM session. Whatever it was… Thanks
DK
8. Never go to the dog park with an upset stomache! It’s near impossible to get out in a pinch!! Lucky for me I was there with my wife, and I could just take the truck and run to the nearest Panera for a restroom break!
Phew!
Sheesh… Kids…