Take stock in stock?

Well, that would depend on the company you keep ... or the company you work for.
Never, have I seen an industry (or company more specifically) where your CEO announces to the street that "Oh yes. We have made our numbers, but we did it in an unexceptional way." Oh yeah, the street loves to hear that.

So we all bust our humps for a quarter at a time. Make our numbers through cuts and hard work. Then our CEO comes out with a statement like that. Our whimpering little (once very large) company takes it in the shorts again along with all of our investors. But I bet the CEO's retirement plan is uneffected. Probably gets that in cash not stock.

Bitter you say? No not me. Not at all. There are some far worse off than I.

Its amazing to see some writers with online services hit the nail on the head siting unexciting or nonexistant strategic vision.
That's it. That's the ticket.

Oh well, take stock in stock, but not ours.

Well, at least Monday only comes once a week.

Twosday

So, here I am sitting in a mall, sucking a connection from a Dell store on an Apple. There's some kind of twisted justice in there somewhere.

I work for a rather large telecomunications equipment company. My group does not however make equipment. No we develop software. The soft forgotten underbelly of the internet. Its not just routers and bandwidth. Its software driving those devices and providing the underlying services. Such as the DNS server that probably pointed you to this site.

Yeah, I know. You keyed in Blog on google and eventually you selected this site. How do you think you found google site? DNS, that's right.

How did you get your IP address from your ISP? Probably DHCP, right? What's an IP address? Well for those who don't know it is simply your address on the internet. It provide routing information to the sites you contact so that they know how to reach you online. Kind of like a return address. (Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying it.)

So, where was I, that's right. DNS, DHCP, IP Addresses and more. That's what team develops. I'm sure this isn't the thread that I had intended.

I know I was going to go off about the injustice that the larger organization forces upon my little software team. But the above, may have been more infromative. (And probably served to calm me down just a bit....)

Afterall, its all just 1's and 0's.

PMSR

So, I mentioned PMSR before. I think that stands for Project Management Statistic Report. I think. I honestly don't think anyone really knows except the person that cam up with it. What was that report from Office Space, the TPA report? Well this one beats that out. Its not done in triplicate, but it probably takes 2 or 3 people to put it together twice a month.

This report attempts to summarize a software project into a single spreadsheet. Everything from estimated effort to number of "planned" defects is contained in the report. Well its true that defects are expected to be found in any software project. But expecting something and planning for it are two different things, right? My hope springs eternal with every project that it will have 0 defects.

The other factor that drives me crazy with these is the color coding:
Green - Good. On target
Yellow - Not so good. Something is being missed.
Red - You've been bad.

Now the teams not wanting to go all the way to Yellow or Red, start coming up with their own colors. Yellow-Red, Green-Yellow, etc. Gets to be like the National Threat level. And that applies to the general reaction to the colors in the review meetings.

PMSR, the 4 little letters that drive fear into the engineers working on the product. Counting defects, counting lines of code, counting test cases, count everything all the time.

Ok, I have seen a glimmer of meaning in some of these metrics when looked at as trends. But they can never tell the true status of a project. Or measure the dedication of the staff working on the project and the likelihood that we will make it on time.

My best measure of the projected status of a project is how often my quality leads show up in my office in a week.
Maybe I should add that metric to the report.

Oh well, done venting for now. Next maybe I'll need to focus on the process of purchase approvals.

Live 8 (just one of the countless masses)

I'm sure all over the world, on web servers everywhere, posts on live 8 will be popping up. Some, at least 1 million around Philly, may not pop up until much later. Me, I'm at home, watching what's available on the music video channels.

My daughter is in the midst of the 1 million strong in Philadelphia. Having recently moved into the no-travel zone, she had easy access. I'm sure she'd be there anyway.

The One Campaign is not necissarily new to me. I've heard about it before and support the direct aid approach.
The one thing that impressed me, I'd have to say, Is that on the Live 8 and One websites, it was nearly impossible to find a link where you could actually donate. This give a lot of credence to the theme, we don't want your money, we want you name.

The message is clear concise and well presented.
The music, well that's the motivator to get people to listen.
Pray to God that they do.

So if you haven't gotten your name on the list, what are you waiting for.

Yeah but No

So, what exactly does "Yeah but No" really mean? We all have our own little quirks when we speak, right? Little mannerisms that sneak into our every day speech. Insidious little phrases.

Mine, I'm told is "aswell". He's going to lunch, as well. We need to review that PMSR report, as well. (PMSR we'll get into later, as well.)

Well another co-worker tends to use "Yeah but No" a great deal, as well. Now, I've tried to determine what exactly this means. But to no avail. Sometimes, "Yeah but No" means Yeah. And, you guessed it. Sometimes it means "No".

And surprisingly, sometimes it means Yeah but No. In other words, I agree with you, but you are wrong. Which is a clever way of telling someone you to go to ... well you get the idea. But at the same time you're saying, "Hey, save me a nice warm seat when you get there."

Then again, it could just be the most milk-toast, politically correct, non-committal, insecure expression that I have ever heard.

My First Blog (I'm so proud ... hehehe)

So, it has finally come to this. Blogging !
Who would have thought it possible !

Anyway, I have been an early adopter for a long time now. Not always on the bleeding edge of technology, but usually, at least, on the leading edge.

Not really sure why I haven't up until now. So, I started to review some blogs of some technical corporate leaders and figured, why not.

Better late than never!

Although, this will be posted anonymously ( for now ), I'm sure the techno babble that finds it way into his blog will undoubtedly strike a cord with anyone involved with large corporate America.

Happy reading!

p.s. Like some "other" things, I'm hoping this gets better and better with time.