May 28 2012

The 80 Percent

I always give 110% to any task I set out to complete. If you ever give anything less than 100% then you get the following logic…

It’s okay if we do 80%, but the 80% needs to be done 100%… We can’t deliver 80% of the 80% we actually attempt of the 100% we are committed too.


May 16 2012

Retweet April 2012

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe.

Software Development

  • Too often I’ve seen code that made me lose my lunch.
  • Sometimes source code is like the sausage factory where you don’t want to look what goes into an application.
  • One developer’s corner case is another user’s daily workflow.
  • Application logs are like money, you can always use more… Unfortunately they are like pennies, the more you have the more difficult it is.
  • Fix the problem, not the symptom. Some developers prefer to fix the symptom because they don’t know how to find the root cause itself.

Team Leadership

  • It is important to lead the way and then immediately get out of the way.
  • If it doesn’t make sense to me it is because you are not explaining it correctly.
  • Everyone has a right to their opinions but not everyone’s opinion is right.
  • Great ideas don’t belong to any one person. Great ideas are not unique to anyone. Great ideas stand on their own.
  • If you are safe in your comfort zone you’ll never be in the zone.
  • Even when I think outside the box, I am still in the zone.
  • There are no easy answers without hard choices.
  • It’s one thing to make sense and a completely different thing to be clear.
  • There are some things in life that are not meant for you to understand but to accept.

Product Placement

  • Things Apple should buy: Evernote, app TLD, Square, and my blog.
  • The Notes app on the iPhone badly needs an to support the undo and redo feature.
  • The new Google+ is the new New Coke.
  • If Google would have invented Polaroid, the film would be free but full of ads and a copy would be uploaded to the cloud.
  • Some of Google’s UI often looks and feels like the uncanny valley of design, it has a plastic aspect to it.
  • My other Tumblr is a Moleskine.
  • So much of the content I see in Pinterest seems to come from Tumblr…
  • Instagram has no ads, only available on mobile, Android support just added, not profitable, no web presence… Obviously worth $1 billion.
  • Instead of paying a billion in cash and stock why didn’t Facebook just pay a billion in Facebook Credits and likes.
  • Silicon Valley back of the envelop valuation math: Tumblr + Camera+ > Instagram therefore Tumblr + Camera+ = $10,000,000,000++.
  • I don’t understand @McDonalds economics… A whole McChicken sandwich costs $1 but ask for an extra BBQ sauce and you get charged $0.50.

Silicon Angels

  • Is it possible for the whole of Silicon Valley to jump the shark? If and when it does there will be a large splash.
  • Silicon Valley valuations are relative to previous largest valuation.
  • The Internet is paved with high valuations.
  • Frothyness is the new truthyness.
  • Frothy does a body good.

Randumb

  • I want to see the world in HD.
  • What do we want? Our way. When do we want it. All the time.
  • If someone says something that is factually untrue, it doesn’t mean they lied… It means you lied to yourself by believing it. #truth
  • One persons guest house is a other persons mansion.
  • Some people build walls, others bridges, I build BS radar detection systems.
  • Retweet, reblog, repin, remix, rinse, and repeat!
  • I think in numbers.
  • All language is a metaphor.
  • Trolls shall inherit the earth.

Apr 7 2012

Retweet March 2012

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe.

Software Development

  • Say no to consultant code. No to complacent code. No to sloppy and crappy code. No to cut and past code.
  • Developing a machine learning algorithm so we don’t have to learn anymore.
  • Hacking, art or science!?
  • Great hacking weather… Well most weather is great hacking weather as long as your computer don’t overheat.
  • What would an autonomous algorithm do?
  • Sex, drugs, and hacking.
  • You don’t go on Hacker News to show off your project, act arrogant that it’s a closed network, and not expect someone to hack a clone.
  • Nothing worse than setting a test to run overnight only to have a Windows update restart your computer in the middle of the test/night.
  • Refactor with conviction.
  • Building on assumptions is like building on quicksand.
  • When in doubt, step through it in a debugger.

Team Leadership

  • Every problem is an opportunity in the rough.
  • Mo’ money, mo’ problems. Mo’ problems, mo’ opportunity.
  • Ask the right questions is better than making the wrong assumptions.
  • Everything is mental, even when it’s physical.
  • Being successful means you are only a mistake away from not.
  • Don’t use the fact you don’t know a fact as a reason for not knowing it.
  • Just because a team member knows one thing does not excuse the rest of the team from learning for themselves and knowing it too.
  • A team is composed of a group of individuals, but a group of individuals is not a team.

Product Placement

  • Google used to be a search engine and return search results now it wants to be an answer engine and return you the answer.
  • What do you call a Pinterest user? Pinner? Pinhead?
  • Facebook IPO: it’s complicated.
  • How hard is it to add filters to Flickr’s iPhone app?
  • These @calottery lotto ticket should have a QR code so that I can quickly scan to see if I’m a winner.
  • The Google of today is the sort of operation that Sergey and Larry originally set out to disrupt.
  • Somewhere some evil genius is building a super computer out of a cluster of The New iPad.
  • AT&T is in the phone business, so of course when you call customer support they will always have you call someone else who transfers you that gives you a different number that redials…

Quote

  • P.S. GitHub sorry, I was bored. — Egor Homakov, the guy that hacked GitHub
  • I have never seen someone try so hard for attention while looking so atrocious at the same time. -Anna Wintour on Nicki Minaj
  • I would give my life for her but she also wants me to do the dishes. – Hellboy

Questions

  • Are you killing time or is time killing you?
  • Do The Simpsons pay royalties for basing their episodes on popular movies?
  • Why do single people love cats?
  • Why is it that sometimes when you don’t do a thing people notice, but when you do they don’t?
  • Which would you prefer, an iPad with a keyboard or a net book?
  • If you could only attain one thing which would you choose, money, happiness, or longevity?

Randumb

  • Fear is free but it will cost you opportunities.
  • Ideas are cheap, but originality will cost you.
  • Hot sauce makes everything better.
  • The odds of you being a loser are better than you winning the lottery.
  • There are people I follow on Twitter that I would never follow in real life, who I would rather push of a cliff in real life.
  • Complainers are worse than haters.
  • College is not for the uber successful.
  • future obituary: died of chili cheese fries.
  • “Really? Really?” Is the new “Oh My God”
  • The term “gateway drug” doesn’t make sense, if you are already doing a drug, you are already past the gateway for drugs.
  • Power drinks are the new gateway drugs.
  • Power drinks are making me fat and jittery.
  • All advice is relative, especially advice from a relative.
  • Life is a journey not a destination, death in the other hand seems like the destination.

Mar 26 2012

The Code Rules

Rules to code by…

  • No consultant code.
  • No complacent code.
  • No crappy and sloppy code.
  • No cut and past code.

Oct 30 2011

Retweet September 2011

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe.

Software Development

  • Code. Money. Respect.
  • Software bugs don’t take anything personally.
  • Code more, sleep less.
  • DONT THREAD ON ME

Thought Leadership

  • Just having a goal is often times more important than the goal itself.
  • Word programming, i.e. writing TPS reports.
  • Code Complete = Tests + Implementation.

Product Placement

  • Google is the casino, or better yet the Goldman Sachs, of online identity, ads, and search. You don’t bet against the house.
  • What is cloud-accelerated web browser? Learning about Amazon Silk, the web browser in Amazon’s Kindle Fire.
  • The project code name for the iPhone’s auto correct is auto cucumber.
  • Spike TV should rename itself to Star Wars TV and the History Channel to Ancient Aliens Channel.

Money Angels

  • Dr Evil is starting a venture fund.
  • If Dr. Evil would have taken his Evil Corp. Public he would have made $1 billion on an IPO. And maybe Google would have bought his company.

Question

  • How many uses can you think of for a paper clip?
  • Where in the food pyramid is candy corn?
  • Is Meg Whitman the new Carol Bartz?
  • Are you changing the world or is the world changing you?
  • What is the person equivalent to having your car lifted up in the air and balancing its tires?

Randumb

  • The Internet made me do it.
  • It’s easy to earn money while you sleep, if you sleep on the job.
  • You are more likely to die due to medical error than a car accident. So if you are in a car accident, don’t go to the hospital, just walk it off.
  • If I could get a nickel every time someone gives me their two cents I would arbitrage people’s opinions.
  • Living the Internet lifestyle.
  • If you don’t want your naked picture hacked from your phone don’t take naked picture of yourself on your phone.
  • There are proposed bills that will make activities such as posting a lip sync video on YouTube a federal crime punishable with jail time.
  • Forget the war on drugs, in the future there will be a war on content.
  • History is not made, it is written, edited, scripted, and appropriated by Hollywood as a blockbuster movie about mutant super heroes.
  • I predict the past.
  • Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, behold yourself.
  • This is not Sparta!
  • Love me, hate me, but you thinking of me.
  • Love it or hate it, take it or leave it.
  • I love love and hate hate.

Overheard

  • OH: When you frown you look like a Klingon.
  • OH: Is everyone in the call on mute?
  • OH: My dress code is to try not to show my butt cheeks.

In Da Future

  • In the future, everyone will be a product guy.
  • In the future, Facebook will be your permanent record.
  • In the future, the revolution will start with a single tweet.
  • In the future, when people say they are going outside the grid, they will mean they aren’t logged into Facebook.
  • In the future, Android developers will need to program using the Android SDK and the phone maker’s proprietary SDK, and the carriers’s SDK.

Million Idea

  • Million Dollar Idea: A treadmill with a weight scale.
  • Million Dollar idea: there is so much artificial flavoring, color, and seasoning in food. Patent dinosaur meat flavoring.
  • Million Dollar Idea: Car alarm system that steams video of the surroundings of your car and scans for perps faces.
  • Million Dollar idea: wasabi guacamole
  • Million Dollar Idea: Carfax for people, including driving record, background check, work history, etc.
  • Million Dollar idea: pepperoni pizza flavored breath mints.

Oct 12 2011

The Four A’s of Email

I like to adhere to the AAAA rule of email. The four A’s of email reminds you to check you email for four items before you click the send button. Check and double check for correct Address, correct Attachments, correct Attitude and tone and state an Action you want from a recipient.

Recently, a developer in distress sent the following email to the whole company.

I can’t delete any data from any UI screen.

That test doesn’t read like an email, it doesn’t even make sense as a tweet, it’s like an unfortunate cookie message. The email should not have been sent to the whole team, which include sales people, it is to vague, does not have any clear action or request.

Communication is vital for any team and the teams running on full speed need the right level of communication in the right medium. If you are interested in learning how to effectively use email to communicate with your team I recommend the following posts.

There is a fifth A; don’t be an Ass.