Is it me or is "Tron: Legacy" a really clever title?

If you haven't seen the movie, don't read this blog entry.  It may constitute a spoiler.

On my longish drive in to work, this morning, I found myself listening to the soundtrack from Tron: Legacy.  It got me thinking... that's a really clever title.

I try not to superimpose meaning onto movies.  So many people fall into that trap and it gets a little obnoxious after awhile.  In this case, though, it's hard not to do that.  Think about it...

In the late eighties or early nineties, this guy has the genius idea that he can build the perfect system.  He sets his grand project in motion with no criteria for success beyond the vague requirement "create the perfect system."

Over time, this creation becomes increasingly powerful until, eventually, this guy loses control over it.  It traps him and begins the process of enslaving the system that hosts it.  Along the way, something of real value is discovered.  This value threatens the runaway system and so it is destroyed.

Eventually, through an act of great sacrifice, the man who created the cancerous system destroys it.  The new generation is left free of its grasp, left with bad memories and the tiny scrap of value that survived the process.  This value is the legacy of the Flynn.

Or is it?  Does that story sound familiar to anyone?

It's pretty much the back story for every legacy system, if you let the date of creation and who makes the sacrifice to destroy it.

The studio is Disney, after all, I wouldn't put it past them to hire a bunch of subject matter experts to create a real meaningful allegory.  The cost of doing so would be a drop in the bucket for them and, if it keeps people chattering on about the movie, it would be more than worth the cost and they're all about doing things that are more than worth the cost.

...and if all of that is so, them I'm really impressed.  That's some mighty fine double entendre, there, Lou.

An Introduction to Fault Arithmetic

When people collaborate to create a problem, that problem can become very difficult to fix.  One reason, I've recently realized, is that people have difficulty properly assigning blame.

Take a typical codependency problem.  Person A depends on person B.  Person B enables person A.

It seems to me that most people would say that each is half responsible for the situation but fault arithmetic doesn't work that way.  In fact, person A is 100% responsible for the situation and person B is also 100% responsible.  Here's why:

If person A decides to stop being dependent, the situation ends.  So person B's decision is not sufficient to the problem.  If person B decides to stop enabling, the situation ends.  So person A's decision is not sufficient to the problem either.  In fact, since either person can end the cycle with their decision alone, both of them are necessary.

If your participation in an activity is necessary for its continuation, you carry full responsibility for its consequences.  So division of blame doesn't work like division of, say, a bushel of apples.

(9.31 gallons) / (2 bags) = 4.65 gallons per bag

...but...

(100% blame) / (2 necessary participants) = 100% blame per necessary participant

Before You Freak out, Read the Executive Orders

I heard that Obama is going to disarm the people with an executive order or something like that.  I was mildly annoyed until I remembered one thing: people are fucking liars.

I think it's pretty well known that I am no fan of the current president.  I really haven't been a fan of any president since I was born.  However, he seems to me to have done this one right.

Great care appears to have been taken so as to create two effects:

1. Avoid violating the second amendment or, really, even treading near its protections.
2. Avoid fixating on guns as the problem and stay focused on gun violence.

I think that last bit is a little dumb.  There is no gun violence problem in america.  There are gun violence incidents and, everyone reasonable seems to agree, there's no way you are going to prevent every incident of gun violence.

Half the executive orders amount to simply declaring he will do his job.  Like nominating a director of the ATF.  Oh no.  Not a director!  Some of them are things like encouraging the states to share information with the federal government.  There's no violation there, of the second or ninth amendments.  If anything, it's more recognition of the latter than I've seen in years.

Some of them are just common sense, like reminding doctors that they are not federally obligated to keep in confidence their concern that a patient might harm themselves or others.  Three times.  Another common sense order is reminding gun stores that they are not obligated to sell guns to crazy people and offering them training on how to spot a nut.

Nestled in there are even a few good ideas.  I'm not going to tell you what they are, though, because I want you to read the orders for yourself.  If you do - if you actually read the orders and evaluate them against the text of the constitution - you probably will realize you should reserve your outrage for other problems...

...like when he tries to push an unconstitutional assault weapon ban through later this year.

Politicians and Leaders

I think I'm a pretty good leader.  I say that based on anecdotal evidence.  When I take up a charge, people tend to get behind me and we all work together to crush a problem.  That seems like leadership.

However, whenever I'm given any kind of management task, I tend to fail and I think I'm just now discovering why.

Management and leadership are perpendicular concepts.

Leadership is inspiring a bunch of people to do something, helping devise a strategy to do it, and participating in getting it done.  Leadership is about looking out for the people who are working with you toward a common end.  It is also about doing what needs to be done to make sure you and your team succeed.

By contrast, what we typically call "management" today, is none of those things.  That's not to say there aren't managers who are also leaders - there certainly are - but the tasks of management are about satisfying managers above you, tracking what's been done, and vying for resources on behalf of your team.

What we call "management" in America, today, is really "politics."  People who are successful managers are invariably good politicians and variably good at leadership.  It is a skill that is more about lobbying for the favor of "higher ups" than it is about getting those around you or beneath you to a goal.

My mind goes back to what my seventh grade French teacher said about math.  He said something along the lines of "Algebra is fine.  There's nothing wrong with it.  Well... I guess there is one thing wrong with it."  Then he hurled a handful of papers over his shoulder and shouted "You have to care what x is!"

That's how I feel about politics.  I don't care what people think of me.  To me, making people who can't do what I do or what the team I'm on could do feel warm and fuzzy about it seems like the biggest waste of time in the world.  Really, I think the evidence suggests I could give a flying fuck about making anyone feel warm and fuzzy if they haven't earned it.

So I'm coming to terms with the fact that the management path is not the one for me.  I may be a good leader - I think I am - but I am a terrible politician.

2012 Year in Review: Professional Life

One of the nicer things that happened this year was that things have started getting better at work.  A lot better.

2012 marks the year in which we stopped paying lip-service to making things better and we started doing it. I cannot go into the details of everything that was done for obvious reasons but we made some big strides in the quality of our product and how we target what is to be built and we made some real in-roads to tearing down long-standing impediments.  Those are both exciting developments.

As far as how we build things, we've made some major changes there.  Unit-test-driven development has all but completely infiltrated one office and is starting to take hold in others.  Resistance to acceptance-test-driven development is starting to falter; I imagine it will crumble in the next one to two years.

We've also become less resistant to rolling out process improvements in general as I imposed an "auto-rollback" system on the team and it did not rise up in revolt against it... or maybe they did but I and some other supporters were able to quell the rebellion.   Either way, things are getting better.  Most importantly: other members of the team are starting to impose their own process improvements.

Are things where they ought to be?  No.  They never are.

We're getting there but it's an act of supreme patience to allow things to unfold on their own schedule.

2012 Year in Review: Country Living

I wouldn't exactly say that I lived in the city before.  So, obviously, I was pretty damned shocked when my wife informed me that we had not been living in the country the first three years we were in Bend, Oregon.  The solution was to find a place in the country and secure her agreement that it was, in fact, in the middle of nowhere.

So now I live in the wilderness.  Am I happy with it?  I don't know.  I'm probably happier than I was in Bend but that's more a function of being in a nicer house with a little more privacy than I had in "the big city" and less a function of living in the middle of the desert.

The drive sucks but all the tolerance I built up for long commutes came rushing back as soon as I moved out here.  Even with the long drive, it's still incalculably better than living in a real city with a commute that takes the same amount of time.  In Seattle, a half-hour commute would have carried me about three or four miles at best.  Here, at least, my long drive covers a lot of ground and I'm not constantly slamming on the breaks.

None of those things compare to the affect this new house has on my wife and our cats.  All seven of whom love the place.  It's a little rough on the cats to be tempted by such untouched landscape and not be able to go play in it but it's better than just looking at our neighbors' bathroom window when they look outside.  There's a lot more "romping" room inside the house.  My wife, of course, loves this place because it is big enough for all our crap, it's private, and her commute didn't change at all.

All told, I'm still not sold on this being any better than living in a city - especially when compared to the suburb of a real city like Los Angeles or San Diego - but I'm no less happy than I was in Bend and my wife is much happier with it so it's an improvement.

2012 in Review: Test-Driven Database Development

One of the big things for me in 2012 was the completion of my book, Test-Driven Database Development: Unlocking Agility.  While, technically, the book is not done as of the end of 2012, my part of it is complete.  The only task I will need to complete is approval of the final pages.  It's done enough that, if I drop dead right after completing this post, the book would still be released.

Even with friends who had already been there before warning me, even with a smaller publication under my belt, I was unprepared for the amount of work this would entail.  I spent much of 2011 and 2012 writing the book and, after that, there were numerous review and revision phases in which I had to participate.

A lot of authors, at this point, say "I wouldn't recommend it."  I am not one of those people.  Was it hard?  Sure.  Does that mean I wouldn't have done it, if I knew how much work was involved?  No.  It was an invaluable experience and, I imagine, the next one will be easier just by knowing how much work it entails.

Furthermore, the topic is, I believe, an important one.  If I really can help developers start making database design less of an impediment and more of a participant in Lean or Agile processes, then the time was well spent.

Not to mention that having a real book under my belt so early in my career can only have a positive influence on my professional life.  Anyway, this was a big deal for me and I want to thank everyone involved in making it happen, from the folks at Net Objectives and Addison-Wesley who green lit the project to all my friends and colleagues who have contributed directly or indirectly to the development of the book and the ideas it contains.

2012 Year in Review: Sleight of Mind Series

I took the plunge.  After years of excuses and "having too much going on in my life," I finally decided to put something I wrote out there.  I'm not talking about a professional writing, of course.  I'm not talking about political prose either.

I'm talking about the Sleight of Mind series.  It's the first body of fiction that I've ever tried to actually sell, or even allowed someone outside my family to read.  Even though I generally don't worry too much about what other people think and I'm not known for being overly sensitive, I did have to overcome some trepidation in order to release this product.

Maybe it's good.  Maybe it's not.  Maybe it's good and the market will never realize it.  Maybe it's terrible and the market will reward it anyway.  Maybe something else entirely will happen.  One thing is certain: you can't win if you don't play.

A lot of people were involved in me getting off my butt and doing this.  Friends who reviewed early versions and gave me honest-ish feedback, for one.  Even more credit, however, must go to my elusive and secretive wife.

I won't mention her name on account of her elusiveness and secretiveness.  I will say that she is heavily involved in reviewing the works and keeps them mostly defect free almost single-handedly.  Without her eye for detail, I probably wouldn't get anywhere with anything at all.

Oh and, by the way, today is your last day to get episode 3 free for quite a while.