Missives from the 6th Floor

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March 27, 2005

Responsibility without Authority

I don't remember when, exactly, I realized it - but some time, a handful of years ago, I realized that a necessary but insufficient condition for being successful in any position is having authority over the things one has responsibility for.

It was hammered home this week, when a direct report gave notice that he's leaving the company.

I always considered this individual my peer, not my subordinate - he really shouldn't have been reporting to me, but it just worked out that way. I've really enjoyed working with him, and I'll miss his enthusiasm and optimism. And I hate to see smart people leave.

But what's really eating me up is the feeling that I let him down.

The grievances that led to his resignation were well known and legitimate. He and I had discussed them a number of times over the past 6 months, and I'd escalated a number of them to my manager and to the CTO. I'd talked to HR to try and work out some creative solutions - but ultimately, I failed to fix the problem, and an excellent engineer, and a damn good person, decided his best option was to abandon ship.

I think I know, in my logical mind, that I did everything I could - everything I had authority over; but it wasn't enough. I was responsible for getting roadblocks out of his way so he could succeed, and I wasn't able to.

What's even more disturbing is I can't say his complaints were baseless - or even wrong-headed - and he was complaining about some fairly fundamental dysfunctions in the organization. Not sure what that means, yet. But I have a sneaking suspicion when I figure it out, I'm not going to like it.

Posted by dberger at 10:03 PM | Comments (3)

March 21, 2005

Guarded optimism...

Had a chat with Comcast today (specifically, Gerald Biggs, the network engineer in the Bremerton office who's been working on getting cable installed to the house).

When I asked if this was still going to happen, or if he was going to cry 'uncle' and tell me he couldn't do it, he said (I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly) "uncle's only in my vocabulary at family reunions - I'm happy to take your money every month, just gotta work through he logistics..."

The subcontractor and he are going to be out at the house tomorrow some time to survey the scene and come up with a plan.

I'm not holding my breath, but my fingers are crossed (and cramping up).

Posted by dberger at 4:52 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2005

The play's the thing

We did our taxes today.

Taxes suck.

We ended up owing the fed and California - to the tune of $2500 all told.

After that joyous experience, we went to a dramatic reading of Lawrece Casler's A Night in the Theatre, put on by the Bainbridge Island theatre group (called, oddly enough, island theatre).

It was a great play for a reading format - and what the actors lacked in polish they made up for in enthusiasm and effort. It was part of the "Shakespeare on the Island" festival being sponsored by the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council.

Much better than taxes...

Posted by dberger at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

Strike Two...

I should have known that the Comcast install wouldn't be painless. A crew from a Comcast subcontractor showed up to install cable, and left nearly as quickly - having decided that they couldn't do it. Apparently the "site drawings" they were given consisted of a rough sketch of the surrounding roads, a box representing our house, and indications of "heavy brush" where our blackberry brambles are.

Their mission was to trench a cable from the public road, across our property, to the house, then run it around the house and hook it into the existing interior wiring.

No one told them there are trees on our property. And that it's not flat.

In theory they're supposed to come back next week with the network engineer from Comcast to have a pow-wow and see what, if anything, can actually be done.

I guess when Comcast told me they'd done a site survey what they meant was they had driven past at 40 mph and caught a glimpse of the house as they passed.

I'm anticipating an eventual "sorry, we can't do anything for you" sort of answer.

Which seems to suggest that if we want TV (something I'm not really attached to, but do find handy on occasion) it's either rabbit ears, or deforestation...

Posted by dberger at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2005

A rose by any other name

I'm having this recurring issue with folks at work - there are at least two names associated with any given relevant concept - and the names chosen have incompatible semantics.

One guy in particular likes to try to side-step the issue by suggesting we call everything a "foob" (or some other meaningless name).

It's starting to really get on my nerves.

Language exists to communicate - and vocabulary exists, in a sense, to compress communication. Using the right word facilitates communication - it draws on common context and understanding to eliminate the need for a more detailed explanation.

By contrast, using the wrong word (or, equivalently, overloading the common-use meaning of a word) does the opposite - it sends different listeners off in different directions - impeding communication.

English is, to some degree, inherently imprecise. Often significant context required to disambiguate meaning, and even with context, it's not guaranteed that everyone draws the intended meaning from a statement. That means we're fighting an up-hill battle to begin with, there's no need to make it worse.

I don't quite know how I'm going to combat this - but I have to try, it's really getting under my skin. Most annoying of all is when two groups that are ostensibly working to solve the same or related problems use the same word to mean different things, and neither usage is consistant with the norm.

Posted by dberger at 6:48 PM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2005

Ten "atta-boy's..."

Dawnise and I, as I type, are sitting in the ferry station on the Seattle side waiting for the 10pm ferry home. We had dinner at Ipanema - the Brazilian BBQ restaurant - with a friend of ours (thanks Ed!).

I've mentioned Ipanema before - the first time when we went the day after they opened, and most recently when we convinced a group of 11 people to go and had horrible service.

Tonight was a return to the food and service that got us excited about the place to begin with - the food was excellent, and the variety and rate of deliver was near perfect.

Our waiter overheard us relating the less-than-stellar experience we'd had the last time, and apparently our reputation had preceded us. He mentioned that the restaurant rethought their serving process after because of our group - and he apologized that we had to be the ones to help them see the flaw in their original plan.

It was nice to know that they've fixed the bug, so to speak, though I think it'll take a few more visits of tonight's quality to put them fully back into my good graces. And I'm going to think hard before I recommend the place to a large group again.

My dad had a saying when I was growing up - "it takes ten atta-boy's to get rid of one aw-shit" - as I grow older I realize my dad was a veritable fountain of wisdom. Glad I occasionally tuned in long enough to absorb some...

Posted by dberger at 9:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2005

Now with three times the yummy ogg goodness

I've had a Neuros jukebox since they released firmware with Ogg Vorbis support. It was a 20G model, and lately I've been running out of space. (I've got the vast majority of my cd collection encoded.)

So I bought a 60GB notebook hard drive, popped open the backpack (needed a Torx driver, but no big deal) and upgraded it.

Can your ipod do that?

Now that I had a bit of space, I encoded Tina Dico's album "Far" which I'm really enjoying. She's got samples on her site - check 'em out.

I also got copies of Granian's "other" two albums - Hang Around and Live Sessions. I saw Granian play a live solo acoustic set, and Live Sessions does a great job of capturing that sound and feel. Well worth a listen.

Posted by dberger at 5:05 PM | Comments (0)

Some days it's not worth getting out of bed...

Got home this morning at 2:30am and collapsed into bed. DirecTV was supposed to be here between 8 and noon today to install service, and our bedroom furniture was scheduled to be delivered between 9:30 and 10:30.

Got up at 8, took care of a few things, and set to work pulling apart the bedroom to accept the new furniture.

At 9 I called Comcast to see if they had installed cable as promised. They apparently had some big job come up last week that delayed them, so they hope to get out today or tomorrow. I knew I wasn't imagining it when I saw their temporary paint marks still on the ground...

At 10:45 I got a call from the receiving dock at work telling me "I had a bunch of furniture being delivered."

WTF?!?

Continue reading "Some days it's not worth getting out of bed..."

Posted by dberger at 9:59 AM | Comments (4)

March 12, 2005

First Stop, BevMo

My flight was delayed about an hour last night - Dawnise picked me up from Ontario airport just before midnight. Kathye and Caitlyn (the 4 month old) were still up - and we chatted a bit before I decided to call it a night.

We woke up this morning to Derrick and Alyssa coming into our room to say "good morning." The ladies and kids had breakfast while I spent some quality time with a cranky baby, and we chatted and hung out 'till it was time for them to go retrieve Geoff from LAX.

Dawnise and I borrowed Geoff's car and went over to the Beverages and More in Chino Hills. It's pathetic, but I miss that place. Washington has state run liquor stores (and blue laws) - so wandering up and down isles of alcohol was somehow soothing :)

Bought a few bottles - some scotch, a maple liquor, a gin from the Anchor distillery in San Francisco, and some kind of raspberry honey concoction that looked interesting to Dawnise.

On the way back we stopped at the local Mexican market and picked up 8 pounds of their home-made carne asada - have I mentioned that finding good Mexican food in Seattle is a bit tricky?

Posted by dberger at 4:15 PM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2005

So much for the soggy northwest...

Must be all the Californians being imported - we're bringing the desert with us.

Washington has declared a drought.

Posted by dberger at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

Big Brother is watching (and taking pictures)

Someone sent a link to terraserver today - it's been around for a while, but everytime I see it I'm filled with a mix of "cool" and "scary" with a little "Orwell" thrown in.

The old house...

The new house (before there was a house - notice the total lack of anything resembling one)...

My office.

Posted by dberger at 12:06 PM | Comments (2)

You can check out any time you like...

I have an 8:30 flight tonight out of SEATAC to Ontario, CA. I'll be in CA for three days - returning with Dawnise late Monday.

The weekend hasn't really been sorted out yet - which is why I haven't contacted folks to make plans.

I'll be staying @ Geoff and Kathye's place in Chino tonight. Geoff gets home from a business trip overseas tomorrow afternoon. We need to go see Dawnise's folks while we're both down there, and we'd love to see as many friends as possible short of making the weekend completely insane.

Oh, and we don't have a car.

We may head to dinner Saturday night, and company would be welcome - I'm thinking of the Blue Agave in Yorba Linda ("Southwestern" food is hard to come buy this far north).

Sunday morning we'll likely go to B.C. Cafe for breakfast/brunch.

And I'm set on going to The Hat one day - either in Brea or Upland.

Aside from that, if you're in the area we'd love to see you (ok, assuming we know you...). If one of the aforementioned eateries sounds up your alley, give me a call on my cel, or drop me email, and we'll work out details.

Extra points to those who get the title reference...

Posted by dberger at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

Aye, Avast!

Ok, it's goofy, but what the hell...

Posted by dberger at 8:24 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2005

The Re-Emergent Roadster Market (and, on the folly of buying "really fast" cars)

For a couple years now, I've had a jonesing for a convertible. I know - I've got a motorcycle (ok, two, but who's counting) so a convertible seems sorta redundant - but "logic" "motorcycle" and "convertible" don't seem to really associate well.

So I've been following the convertible market for a while, and it's gotten more interesting lately.

In the under $25k set, there are two newcomers - the Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky. If they look similar to you, you're not imaginging it they're built on a common platform. They both look cool (the Pontiac gets my nod for aesthetics) but being a new platform the jury is out on reliability and TCO.

They join the reigning champ - the Mazda Miata udpated for '05 (but still sorta stuck in blandville compared to the two newcomers).

If you've got more money to spend, there's the $33k Honda S2000, the $34k Porsche Boxter (anyone else know the joke about the mouse with the Porsche?) and the $46k Mercedes SLK.

On a related topic - I overheard a couple of auto enthusiasts talking on the ferry the other day - drooling over a Porsche 911 and raving about it's 0-60 time (a little over 4 seconds). That car starts at $70k. My $9k Sprint RS has a claimed 3.4 second 0-60 time - and it's hardly the top kid on the block (it's probably the Suzuki Hayabusa - also a $10k bike - at under 3.0s).

If you're not driving a Formula 1 racer, and you're trying to show off against a modern street bike, you've probably already lost.

Posted by dberger at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

March 7, 2005

Oops...

I realized I've (once again) been forgetting to send email updates when I post an entry. (The software doesn't do it automagically, which is pretty much my only standing complaint with MT.)

So if you've been waiting for an email to come back and see what's new, I guess this is it :)

Posted by dberger at 7:50 PM | Comments (0)

Reasonable behavior in an unreasonable situation

Reuters is carrying an article that reports some rather disturbing behavior by some Florida National Guards in Iraq.

Once I got past my immediate righteous indignation I started to think about it a bit more - from a safe distance, sitting on a ferry with no one shooting at me or otherwise trying to end my life in a violent and abrupt fashion.

That really makes all the difference in determining rational behavior, not being in a combat zone and all.

I've never been shot at - but I can only imagine I'd take it quite personally.

Continue reading "Reasonable behavior in an unreasonable situation"

Posted by dberger at 7:16 PM | Comments (0)

March 6, 2005

Fun with Touch Typing...

I've been using the same keyboard since 1996; it's a genuine IBM 42H1292 - known for being loud, near indestructible, and for having removable keycaps.

I looked down today while typing and realized it was time to clean the keyboard - so rather than grabbing the rubbing alcohol, I started popping the keycaps off. I took 'em upstairs and washed them in hot water with a toothbrush, then came down and cleaned up the rest of the keyboard with a toothbrush and Shower Shine (hey, it's what was handy).

I realized while sitting here typing on a "blank" keyboard that the poor fellow who tried in vein to teach me touch-typing in High School completely missed out. These keyboards are the best tool imaginable for teaching touch-typing.

Oh, and for the record - typing this didn't take me any longer without the keycaps than it would have with. ;)

Posted by dberger at 4:17 PM | Comments (0)

This is the operator, how may I annoy you?

Sometime yesterday we lost dial-tone in the house. I called Qwest and they came out at some point to fix it. They discovered (they claim, and I have no reason to disbelieve them) two bad pair in the house - which they disconnected to restore service. They also charged me $85 for the house-call - and left two dead jacks in the house.

Naturally, those were the master bedroom and my office, where the DSL comes in.

So I called the builder to talk about getting it fixed (and reimbursed for the $85 service call) and then went out to the NI (network interface, for all you telco-impared types, it's the box on your house where the phone services comes in from the pole or street) and switched the carrier pair to those two jacks to see if the entire cable run was bad, or just the blue pair. Both jacks worked on the secondary pair, so I'm back in the phone and broadband business, and $85 poorer.

Speaking of broadband, on the 28th of February Comcast left a hanger on the door saying they'd be burying my cable in the next 14 days. The various utilities have been coming 'round painting cable paths on the ground. If I cared enough, and if Dawnise hadn't taken the camera, I'd go take pictures - just in case I ever need to know where the power runs under the street and into the house.

With any luck, by the time I get back from CA, I'll be in the cable modem business, and I can tell Qwest to take their P.O.S. ActionTec DSL modem back. (Gotta reboot the damn thing nearly daily, and it takes a good 5 minutes to sync up and authenticate - it already gotten annoying.)

Posted by dberger at 2:39 PM | Comments (0)

My Kingdom for a Seat?

In a bit of irony that I'm sure says something deep about, well, something - our hand-crafted Amish made table and bed arrived yesterday - well in advance of the rest of the (mass-market) stuff we ordered.

The bed looks great - we'd never seen one assembled before we bought it. The only trouble is that due to the thickness of the mattress and box-spring (and we got the low profile box-spring) *I* (at 6'2") have to jump a bit to sit on the bed. Jumping *on* the bed is right out (unless you enjoy whacking your head on the ceiling).

The table is a work of art, and is nicely sized to the dining room. I'm sitting at it typing this, it's everything I like about design; simple, elegant, clean and well made.

Posted by dberger at 2:17 PM | Comments (1)

March 3, 2005

Gestalt

Corey Doctorow has a new short story i, robot that's been published on The Infinite Matrix. It's a good story - as many of Corey's are. I'm not going to give away the ending directly, but you might want to read it before you continue.

Go ahead, I'll wait...

The story got me thinking about a subject, fairly common to science fiction, that occasionally confounds me - that of "consciousness transfer."

A number of science fiction authors have used this idea - Greg Egan uses it to good effect in a few novels, as does Richard Morgan in Altered Carbon.

Continue reading "Gestalt"

Posted by dberger at 10:32 PM | Comments (1)

March 2, 2005

Scylla, meet Charybdis

I just got a sneak peak at our D610 and D810 eval units from one of the guys in IS. Gosh, do they suck.

Maybe I'm just being a whiny bitch (entirely possible) or an overly harsh judge of design (highly likely), but what's up with notebooks that look and feel like they were designed by Mary Shelley?

The 610 isn't bad - provided you don't need screen space. If you're using Office you'll be fine - if you're using Eclipse, well, you'll be less fine (or, again, maybe I'm just whining).

The 810, on the other hand, is an abomination. It weighs a ton (and they claim it's a half pound lighter than the 800 it's replacing), and it's gratutiously thick and clunky. The screen is marginally larger than the screen on my powerbook, and the overall form factor is way lots larger. For all that weight, you don't get anything significantly better than (for example) a Hypersonic Aviator CQ6.

Standards - insuring we all suck the same...

Posted by dberger at 2:42 PM | Comments (0)

Dell, The Harrison Bergeron of Corporate Computing

I mentioned I'm replacing my Powerbook with a Dell - the "corporate standard." There are three options available, the X300 - an executive sub-notebook, good for email and powerpoint, but not much else, the D610 - a light reasonable performer with a small (14") screen, and the D810 - a "desktop replacement."

I've concluded that Dell is the Harrison Bergeron of corporate computing. They trade stand-out engineering and performance in the name of "compatibility."

The HP Compaq nc8200 looks like a nice notebook - similar spec to the D810 and nearly a pound lighter - but it's not "the standard" and I've already played my "break the rules" card.

Bloody hell.

Posted by dberger at 9:01 AM | Comments (3)

March 1, 2005

Yo Ho Yo Ho A Bachelor's Life For Me

Dawnise is sitting on a plane, about to wing her way to soggy southern California from the sunny pacific northwest (ponder that for a moment). I'm going down to meet her on Friday the 11th, and we're returning together Monday the 14th.

In the mean time, I'm a bachelor. I can look forward to days filled with, um, work - and evenings of, um, more work. Or, I can leave the office and go home to ... boxes.

Let the revels begin... :-/

Posted by dberger at 11:48 AM | Comments (1)