Archive
All About The Plunge!
Damn, I did it! At 11 AM, on January 1, 2015, here’s what went down: “Forty-two participants brave icy waters of Cayuga Lake for annual Polar Bear Plunge”. W00t!
When are YOU gonna take the plunge????
The Big Rebuttal
I’ve heard lots of political speech rebuttals, blog post rebuttals, book review rebuttals, interview rebuttals, and editorial rebuttals, but I can’t remember the last time I stumbled upon a full blown book rebuttal – until recently.
About a year ago, I read Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt“. Mr. Lewis, a former Salomon Brothers bond trader, is a major league author who has penned a gaggle of incendiary best-sellers such as “Liar’s Poker”, “The Money Culture”, “Moneyball”, and “The Big Short”. Coupled with my utter disdain of Wall Street’s “risk management” practices and its apathetic “let them eat cake” attitude toward Main Street, I seem to always end up wanting to take up arms and go “occupy Wall St.” after reading one of Mr. Lewis’s books. But of course, I never do.
“Flash Boys” so enraged former high-frequency trader Peter Kovac that he felt compelled to write a full blown, point for point, rebuttal book titled “Flash Boys: Not So Fast“.
Out of curiosity, I downloaded and read the free kindle sample of “Not So Fast“. Although Mr. Kovac makes a very valid point in that Mr. Lewis never spoke to any inside high frequency traders during the research phase of “Flash Boys“, I declined to buy and read the full book. I didn’t buy it because, just as Mr. Lewis (and BD00) is biased against Wall St. psychopathy, Mr. Kovac is biased for Wall St. and our so-called free markets (which are really hostage markets rigged for the rich and powerful to leave Main St. in the dust).
Every person, with very, very, very, few exceptions (the Buddha, Jesus, Echart Tolle, J. Krishnamurti, Sri Ramana Maharshi?), feels strongly about certain man-made values and principles. Since I’m not one of those exceptions, I say “Nice Try!” to Peter Kovac. Thanks, but no thnks.
Cheers Charlie!
Charlie Alfred is a highly intelligent and eloquent writer on the topic of software architecture. He is the first (and still, only) internet friend that I’ve met in real life; face-to-face. We hooked up for lunch to shoot the shit twice when he was visiting a client of his located in my neighborhood.
Charlie is the second person to affirm my deeply held belief that “context is king” in software architecture. He also taught me about the concept of “the architecture of the problem“. But like all good relationships, ours isn’t all about mushy love, kisses, and total agreement. Charlie often provides valuable counter-intelligence to my blustery blogging BS that causes me to step back, reconsider, and often soften my beliefs.
Since my friend Charlie hasn’t been feeling well lately and I haven’t interacted with him in a while, I’d like to wish Charlie and his family a very special, very merry, Christmas.
A heartfelt thanks to Ruth Malan for suggesting the idea of this post.
The Feat On Foot
Looky at what I got:
It took me a little over 2 years to perform this tremendous feat on foot.
With the circumference of the earth taping in at 24,901 miles, it will take approximately 14 more years for me to hike around the world. I’m considering changing my handle to ForrestChump00.
Just Touch Me Once More!!!
I keep finding myself being drawn more and more into circular Twitter debates with self-proclaimed software development gurus, many of whom who write books and give speeches for a living. On the upside, I’m thrilled that Twitter gives me the opportunity to interact in near-real-time with people I never thought I’d have the chance to otherwise communicate with. On the downside, I do not enjoy the increasing amounts of time and energy it takes to steer these oft head-banging conversations toward a graceful closure where neither side feels dissed.
The topic of software development is simply too context-dependent to arrive at a sweeping consensus on almost anything of non-trivial importance. Trying to get someone who develops software in the context of the aerospace & defense industry to fully agree with someone who develops IT web sites or mobile game apps for a living is like trying to get republicans and democrats to agree on… anything.
But alas, I’m such a sucker for instigating and perpetuating incendiary, no-win, arguments. Like this famously hilarious scene in OFOTCN between Taber and Harding, I’m genetically inclined to frequently behave online (and offline) as an obnoxious “poker“:
If you’re a natural born “poker“, deploy your poking skills at work only on peers. My experience has been that the practice of “poking” management, at any level in the hierarchy, never works – ever. It doesn’t matter what your message is. The fact that you’re delivering it with the tip of your poker is the only thing that matters. So, when it comes to management, keep your poker in your pants.
Nice Tatt!
It’s official! I’m the 4,829th member of the “Alice In Wonderland Tattoo Chain“.
Several months ago, I signed up for a kool Kickstarter project whose goal is to create and photograph the world’s largest tattoo chain. The completed project, brilliantly conceived of by Litograph’s Danny Fein, will be comprised of over 5,000 temporary tattoos. Each tattoo is one sentence from Lewis Carroll’s classic book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland“.
I received and applied my tattoo last week. I then uploaded a picture of my tatt to the collection site:
After one week of distribution, over 500 tatt pics have been uploaded. When all 5,000+ tattoos (over 55,000 words) have been uploaded, anyone will be able to read the entire book as one long sequence of online tattoos. Pretty creative, huh?
At Litograph.com, besides tattoos, you can buy T-shirts and other items with the entire text of one of many classic works of literature delicately imprinted on them. I purchased the most appropriate T-shirt I could find for BD00, Machiavelli’s “The Prince” 🙂
The Bastid Jailer
One would be insane to argue that legendary sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov was not a prolifically creative person. That’s why I rushed to read this essay he wrote waaay back in 1959 on the subject of creativity: Published for the First Time: a 1959 Essay by Isaac Asimov on Creativity.
As expected, Mr. Asimov did not disappoint. Check out his keen insights on some necessary conditions for tricking the bastid jailer of creativity into unlocking the shackles that keep it out of sight:
Creativity arises from an individual constructing mental connections between two or more ideas which might not ordinarily seem connected. This ability to make cross-associations often comes from eccentric individuals (those willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense) with a good background in a particular field, and with a keen interest in solving a specific problem in that field.
My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it. The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.
Besides the shackles, our bastid jailer controls a powerful anti-creativity force field baked into our minds:
Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues. To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either.
But we’re not done yet. Our bastid jailer is not alone! He has cleverly deputized the entire human race to be on guard against jailbreaks :
The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome.
Heroes And Admiration
Every person has at least one hero whose work they admire. If you’ve glanced at my “about” page, you may have correctly assumed that one of my heroes is writer/speaker Scott Berkun. I’ve followed Scott and read all of his books since he made the scary leap long ago from a safe job at Microsoft into the unforgiving jungle of self-sufficiency.
I like Scott’s work so much because I think he’s genuine, transparent, sincere, and down-to-earth. In short, his ideas and insights are helpful to his readers. That’s why I got a kick out of this twitter exchange:
Scott’s brand new, kickstarter-funded, book is titled “The Ghost Of My Father“. It’s a radical departure from his other books in that it’s a deeply personal treatise on growing up with an absentee father. Go out and buy it, pronto!
If I ever get my lazy ass out of “blog only” mode and hunker down to write some kind of unsellable book for my own personal satisfaction, Scott will have been a huge influence on the transition.
Tuna Quagmire
Although I prolly shoulda kept the ingredients secret, here’s my tuna quagmire before the big mix:
And voila, here’s the tuna quagmire after the mix:
Of course, the very best ingredient, by a wide margin, is the BD00 GIANT MARTINI.
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
My BTC Address
Bulldozer00's Blog 