About My Father's Business

So here I am sitting in my hotel room in San Francisco on Day 4 of a business trip.  Just me, myself and I.  And boy am I bored.  It's fairly ironic.  As a parent I often find myself wishing for even a moment of privacy.  I've found myself contemplating driving to the nearest gas station so that I can use the restroom in peace.  And now I've hit the jackpot.  An entire week to myself! and I just realized that this is not what I wanted. There are so many things that are made better by being with someone else.  I've ran into numerous situations this week where I've missed having someone to share them with.  For example, I went to a local burger joint, got my order and went to sit down at a table by myself.  The dining experience is not meant for one person. For starters, even the smallest table has two chairs.  Then, a few minutes into my meal I had to use the men's room and as I stood up I found myself wondering how the bus boy would know that I'm coming ba

First off, let me apologize.  It's been almost 2 months since my last post.  Second off, let me apologize again.  It's pretty egocentric of me to feel like I need to apologize to you for not gracing you with my wisdom and insight more frequently.  So sorry for the lag in posts, and sorry again for the slight egomania.  There.  Now that we have that all cleared up let's get down to business. Most people in the business world are familiar with something called a black box.  This is a different black box than the one found in the cockpit of an airplane (which is actually bright orange).  For those of you that haven't encountered that term in this context, it's really nothing more than a generic description of any process where there is an input and an output, but nobody knows what happens in between.  For example my auto mechanic is a black box.  I take the car to him, he does some things that I don't understand and he gives the car back.  I'm never even real

Walking into the office the other day I noticed something.  We have a spot on the main floor just inside the employees-only-beyond-this-point doors where a poster is frequently displayed.  The poster rotates from time to time as it advertises things like upcoming employee events, training classes and other assorted items.  On this particular occasion the poster was a teaser for some announcements that were going to be made. Once a year every employee is asked to participate in an employee satisfaction survey.  I'm sure many, if not all, of my fellow Corporate Americans have participated in a similar survey.  What I've noticed throughout the years is that the larger a corporation, the longer it takes to digest the results of the survey and come up with a plan based on that feedback.  It turned out to be no different in this case as we had taken the survey several months ago and only now were we about to find out the results.  The creators of the poster no doubt understood the

I recently had the chance to take my 7 year old daughter on a date to a Jazz game.  Basketball isn't her favorite sport, but she loves spending time with her dad.  She's loves to learn and is very excited about math in school so she spent most of the game trying to figure out which team was winning and by how much.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the Jazz. In a game where they had to win to have a shot at making they playoffs, they fell flat.  It was a hard game to watch for a die-hard fun such as myself because we just couldn't seem to make a shot. My daughter noticed this too.  I remember listening to the talking heads on the radio the next morning break down the game and analyze every detail to find out what went wrong, but my daughter provided the best analysis I'd heard.  We were watching the Jazz warm up at halftime and she said to me "Dad, how come they [the Jazz] can make these three pointers, but not the other ones?"  She had noticed during the gam

March is a magical time of year.  A time when Winter begins the give way to Spring.  A time when flowers begin to bloom and the morning air is filled with the songs of birds.  But more important, it's time for March Madness.  Time for filling out brackets and all-you-can-eat college basketball.  (In my opinion Selection Sunday should be declared a National Holiday). All over the nation people everywhere take time out of their busy lives to fill out brackets.  Even people that don't gamble fill one out.  Even my wife, who sort of hates basketball, fills one out.  Everyone has their own method.  Some people spend hours breaking down match-ups and analyzing teams strengths and weaknesses.  Some people pick based on which mascot would win in a fight.  I know one person who picked for/against colleges that accepted/denied her husband's application.  And everyone is in it to win it. Its interesting to me how much satisfaction we get when a team we picked wins a game, or

There is a saying common among software developers.  "If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail."  It means that you have to figure out which tool is right for the task at hand.  If you need to set a nail, or severely bruise your thumb then a hammer is the perfect tool.  If, however, you are trying to cut a board, or paint a wall you will discover there are other tools bettter suited for the job.  The job becomes much easier if you know what tools are available and how to use them. In Matthew 25 there is a parable taught by the Savior known as the parable of the talents.  In this parable a man prepares to go on a trip.  As part of his preparations he calls in his servants who will be responsible for taking care of his goods while he is away.  To one servant he gives 5 talents.  To a second servant he gives 2 talents and to a third servant he gives 1 talent.  It is widely believed that this scripture is the first instance of the word talent imply

A woman who was married to a computer programmer sent her husband out one day to the grocery store to buy bread.  As he was leaving she added: "If they have eggs, grab a dozen."  It will come as no surprise to the computer programmers reading this that he came back from the store with 12 loaves of bread.  In response to his wife questioning his mental state in bringing home that much bread he simply said "They had eggs." You can't always trust a computer programmer to make great decisions.  We tend to operate the same way a computer does, which is to follow each instruction literally.  If we examine the above case we can see that the husband was given a program to run; Buy Bread.  After starting the Buy Bread program his wife altered the parameters and told him to check for eggs.  The husband did this, but because he was still running the Buy Bread program it never even occurred to him to buy eggs.  The only thing he cared about was buying was bread and his wi

Nobody is perfect.  Read that last sentence again, but this time imagine that Nobody is the name of a person.  Now with that in mind read the following paraphrased version of a poem by Charles Osgood: Everybody,  Somebody,  Anybody and Nobody were at work one day when an important task came up.  This task was something that Everybody should have done, but Everybody assumed Somebody would do it.  Anybody could have done it, but he also assumed that Somebody would do it.  That made Somebody mad because it was Everyone's job, and in the end Nobody ended up doing what Everybody should have done. This fable is usually used to illustrate the importance of taking responsibility, but it also illustrates an important trait about Nobody.  Nobody is perfect.   He is always willing to do the tasks that we leave undone.  But we on the other hand are far from perfect.   So why is it that we are unwilling to allow others to be imperfect? Why do we get frustrated when we uncover an impe

As a software engineer I have come to understand the importance of asking the right questions.  When you build software it's important that you build something useful.  Most of the time you are building software for someone else, known in inner circles as the "user".  This user's job is to give you something called "requirements".  Your job as a software engineer is to take these requirements and turn them into "software".  But this process can break down fairly quickly if you don't ask the right questions.  From the perspective of a user, in order to get software that's useful to me, I need to keep the focus on what I truly want the software to do.  Software engineers are notorious for starting to build the software and getting sidetracked with the phrase "You know what would be really cool....".  Too many of those conversations and you end up with Windows ME.  Looks cool, has a lot of features, but ends up virtually unusable.

In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that just yesterday, barely week since my last post, I was called on to say the opening prayer in Sunday School and I bet you'll never guess what I caught myself starting to say.  That's right.  The infamous "daily lives".  I caught myself in time to omit the word "daily", so it wasn't a total loss, but I guess I still have some room for improvement. In the business world we often hear the word  innovation .  Being creative and able to adapt the changing world is critical for the survival of any business. Refusing to change simply because "that's the way we've always done things" is equivalent to giving up.  Tom Callahan, Fictional CEO of Callahan Auto Parts, said "If you're not growin' you're dyin!'".  We can't afford to be idle.  The challenge for us is finding out how we can be innovative in our own lives. So what does that have to do with sliced b

Let me start by giving you some background about me.  If you are planning on reading this blog you should know what you are getting into.     I am a husband and father of two wonderful girls.   I am a Database Developer by trade.   I am in my mid 30s, which I suppose could mean this blog is an attempt to deal with some sort of mid-life crisis, and by all definitions of the word I couldn't be more ordinary.  Now please don't misunderstand me.  I love ordinary.  I have a wonderful, fulfilling life.  It's just not what most would call exceptional.  Now, with that out of the way allow me to describe my credentials.  It won't take long because I don't have any.  In case you missed it earlier,  I'm just an average guy. I don't have any formal writing experience.  I don't have any fancy degrees or certifications.  But what I do have are ideas.  I am constantly trying to figure out how things work and how I can improve myself.  I love to learn and am always s