Alan Gutierrez

Michael Arrington publishes an email from a college student distraught because his Facebook account was revoked. He then goes on to say. “And frankly, I don’t care all that much, ’cause the last thing I want is for everyone with a Facebook customer service issue to start emailing me.” That whiff of self-importance was too pungent. He made an article of this kid’s email, but then has to make a backhanded statement. Honestly, who really needs to read TechCrunch anyway? Update: Same post at TechCrunch; what a bunch of idiot comments. Both Arrington and his readers miss the point entirely.

From a suggestion by Merlin Mann in Reviving a moribund project with Doodle, I’m using doodle.ch to schedule conference calls. It strikes me as a good tool for scheduling even one on one meetings. It is presents a nice grid from which a people can select a time to meet. Much easier than emailing back and forth.

In in a lackadaze, as I am every weekend. I didn’t make big plans to work this weekend, but I don’t have any money, so I can’t go out as I usually do. I’ve got it in my head that I’m going to do some programming, but I don’t see that happening. In the future, I’m going to have to have my weekends much better specified if I expect to get anything done during them.

And ever. They drag. Last weekend, I promised myself that I wouldn’t worry assign myself tasks this weekend. It’s one thing to feel melancholic, it’s another thing to have your melancholy interfere with your work. No such interference, because there is no work for me this weekend.

My MacBook is becoming dangerously slow. It is cutting into my productivity. With Eclipse and Firefox open, I am unable to really do anything. Programming requires taking notes as I go along. I keep my notes in Backpack. If switching from Eclipse to Firefox takes 30 or more seconds, I lose my train of thought. It is ridiculous.

Do you think that’s petty? A minor inconvenience? I don’t think so. If I were writing a book at a typewriter and something occurred to me, I could reach for a pad of paper and scribble a note, and move on.

Imagine though, I had to ask my dog to run to the other room and fetch my pen and paper. I sit and repeat the note in my head, so I don’t forget. Meanwhile, I track the progress indicator of canine claws on hardwood.

Nothing like that spinning beach ball, or hour glass, or watch, to mesmerize you while you repeat your tiny brainstorm like a mantra.

You switch the focus of a powerful machine to a menial task. Storage. You may have been running full bore on your writing, spreadsheet, programming, and now you’re sitting there repeating to yourself, tell Paul about the lunch, tell Paul about the lunch, tell Paul about the lunch.

Of course, by the time Firefox comes up, I’m thinking neither about work or lunch. Whatever fancy bauble is on the Google start page commands my attention.

Instead of walking up to you with your pen and paper, the dog has returned with a brass band, everyone you forgot to stay in touch with since high-school, and what he claims is a perpetual motion machine.

This is a real productivity killer.

A great many people and things that beg your attention, sprung upon you after a wait just long enough to muddle your train of thought.

Update: I ordered 2GB of memory for my MacBook from crucial.com. At $82.00 it seems like a bargain, down from the $205.00 that it once was. Let’s see how much faster the MacBook becomes.

I have purchased the No Asshole Rule. I read some of it. It is a good book with a good point. At the heart, when an organization builds itself around prima donnas, the net effect is bad for the organization. I’ve found the blog of the author, Bob Sutton. In his blog, he is recommending Made To Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. I am developing an RSS discipline. I do not want to add Bob’s blog to my list of feeds, and make myself unhappy. Instead, I am going to take the time to write about his blog and the post that caught my attention, while it has my attention.

One thing that I’ve come to allow myself in recent days, is this; Strata is designed to support the objectives of Memento.

No longer will I tell the reader to suppose, for example, that a Strata B+Tree is used to implement multi-version concurrency control, when offering up examples.

No. This implies that there are many other imagined uses.

Rather, I will ask the reader to keep in mind that Strata was designed to implement multi-version concurrency control. I will then offer up an example from Memento.

Other applications for this B+Tree data structure will be apparent to other people when it has been released, deployed, and proven.

An Honest Question

> How does your project compare to project X’s feature Y?

It is an honest question, people are looking for a point of reference. Answer the question. You do not need to provide an answer in the form of an implementation of feature Y.

When asked honestly, answer honestly in terms of problem statements and computing concepts, rather than feature comparisons. I’m not marketing a product, but making an open source contribution. Still, if were to consider my market, talking in terms of the code and concepts is going to appeal to the demographic of programmers who think about problems and implementations.

Someone else may come to understand the workings of Strata. They may suggest an implementation of some desirable functionality toward the goal of implementing a different application. That is open source.

More simply, someone may attempt to use Strata in their application, and come forward with a clearly defined problem, a request for feature that they will test and deploy, if a solution is available. That is open source.

A Dishonest Question

> How does your project compare to project X’s feature Y?

It can be a dishonest question.

There are times when I’ve encountered the feature matrix killjoy. They want to engage you in a comparison to a more mature project, or one that has at least published a feature matrix.

These conversations are combative, not collaborative. Implicit the question, what makes you think your project is better than project Y?

The answer is, I don’t know about project X. I have no use for feature Y. I have generously provided the source code under an OSI approved license. You have the source. Please feel free to investigate this question for yourself.

Picture Infinity

It is a pity, a failure point, that when I’ve encountered this attitude, I’ve let it guide me.

I childishly follow every tangent. It has felt compulsive when I so follow. I childishly approach every trade-off as if there were some as of yet undiscovered algorithm that would eliminate compromise. It has felt obsessive when I so approach. It makes me worry about myself.

How refreshing to realize that pathology is not necessary. (For this I owe you, my fellow New Orleanians, for consistently perceiving weaknesses as human.)

It is my sometimes charming (though more often not) character defect, to seek universal approval. It is yet another manifestation. One of many.

Software cannot have universal approval. Software is discrete. Trade-offs are inherent.

It is such a hard truth, that even I will have to come to accept it.

Software may yet save me from myself, once again.

In my new world, the one that I cling to desperately, where every morning I write, the writing begins to feel like physical exercise. I push myself on a topic until my mind starts to turn to jelly. I feel an emotional exhaustion set in. Then I push myself futher. At that point the writing drops off, becomes rambling.

Right now, I’m switching topics. I’m wondering if my mind will not be so gelatinous as the new topic sets in. Indeed, as I begin to think about this new topic, my mind sharpens.

On that last topic, did I push myself to the point where my mind needs to take the topic away from me, back into it’s recesses? Is it now that the process begins, by which the answers will later surface, as they do?

I carry a voice recorder now. Answers come to me when I’m away. When out walking in New Orleans. After I murmur into the device, a decision is taken. My chest rises and and I can feel my lungs fill with air.

I am cultivating the mechanics of creativity. Allowing nature to take it’s course. I am learning to live a life of delayed gratification. The trick is to make sure you are prepared to revel in the gratification when it arrives.