Miscalculated

This morning, the leftover hamburger (I'd sautéed it with onions the other day) looked forlornly at me from its container in the ’fridge. I said to the lovely Carol, "If I scrambled some eggs with this, would you have some?"

She would, so I pulled out a skillet, tossed the burger in with some olive oil, and set the burner on medium heat. I beat three eggs and stirred the burger around a bit more. When it looked ready, I added the eggs and in a minute or two we had a breakfast scramble.

I put two plates on the stove and shoveled the egg/burger mix onto them. There was a bit too much -- two eggs probably would have been enough, I thought.

Then it hit me: our dog was no longer here to share this with us.

I know we should think about the good times we had with him, rather than focus only on the grief of missing him. But sometimes we just do.

15 hours later

The lovely Carol just heard a high-pitched whistling noise outside. "It reminds me of Duke's whine," she said.

I wonder how long it will be 'til it won't hurt when we remember him?

Culture, schmulture (part deux)A thinly disguised conversation

The other day I had an interesting conversation with someone from Bangalore. When I described it to the lovely Carol (along with my comments on the cross-cultural aspects), she suggested I write it up. The names have been changed so as to make it not too obvious... especially since I'm sure I got the order and some details wrong.

I showed most of the below to "Mahesh" (he's still here in Sunnyvale) and told him my idea of using it to illustrate cross-cultural communications, and he was OK with it. He asked me again if I had any plans to visit Bangalore.

For your reading pleasure, then, here is...

The thinly disguised conversation

Bill was trying to code a lookahead regex in Perl when he heard a knock on his office door. It was Mahesh, who he met yesterday. Mahesh manages the team in Bangalore, and was visiting headquarters in Sunnyvale for the first time.

Bill turned his chair around to face the door. "Come in, come in!" he said.

"I wanted to drop this by." Mahesh produced a small paper bag, which Bill accepted. Opening it, he saw it was a very thin vase, wrapped in cellophane. He tried to stand it up on his table.

Mahesh encouraged him to take the cellophane off, then explained that the vase was made of gunmetal. The pattern was engraved and covered in silver. "Very pretty," Bill said.

"If you come to Bangalore, you will see many shops, including this one." Mahesh indicated the store's name on the paper bag.

I wonder what else he had in mind, Bill thought.

After a moment, Mahesh sat down in the big armchair and suddenly looked abashed. "I hope I didn't offend you by sitting here when you didn't..."

Idiot! Why didn't you offer him a seat? Bill mentally kicked himself. "No, no, no," he said. But now what? Mahesh wasn't the usual fast-paced conversationalist.

After a moment, Bill asked, "How long will you be in Sunnyvale?"

"Just this week," said Mahesh.

"And what are your objectives for this visit?"

"To meet people. To attend the meetings that this part of the team has." He smiled and made an open gesture with his hands. "That's all."

Taking that at face value, Bill tried, "How long have you been with the company?"

Six months. Bill and Mahesh had both worked at HP before, and so they were able to compare their impressions of their current company in light of their former employer.

Bill cast about for something else. "How do you feel about the collaboration between Bangalore and Sunnyvale?"

A brief pause. Mahesh smiled again (somewhat awkwardly, Bill thought). "Pretty OK. Well, we have a young team, not much experience -- neither here in the company nor elsewhere. I was hoping to set up a meeting with you, once every 15 days or so. It would be a phone conference -- you could do it from home -- and you could get to know what we are working on, get to know the team, and so on. Maybe you could mentor some of them. Does that sound all right?"

"Perfect," Bill replied. Does he mean every three weeks (15 working days) or twice a month (15 calendar days)? he wondered. Those details can wait, though; I'd say "yes" either way. Arrgh -- I forgot I have to set something up like that myself -- for next week, when Pete is out here.

"What time would work for you?" Mahesh asked.

The time difference could hardly be worse: 11½ hours, or maybe 12½. People in Bangalore usually come to the office "late" in the morning and stay late in the evening.

"How about 6:30 AM my time?" Bill tried. "Would that work?" Is that 7pm in Bangalore, he wondered, or is it 6pm now that we're on daylight savings?

Mahesh looked surprised. "Isn't that too early for you?"

"Well, I'm usually up by about six anyway," said Bill. "And if it was going to be evening here, it would have to be quite late." Later than I probably want to be awake, he thought.

"You know, offering to have a phone conference with the team at 6:30AM your time is no joke; they will really appreciate that," Mahesh said.

"Well, anyway, if it was like 6:30 then we could talk maybe half an hour and I could still ride my bicycle over to the train station," Bill explained.

The conversation then switched to less work-related things: where Bill lived, commuting, each man's children, etc.

Bill thought of something else. "Is there anything else we could do at this end to improve collaboration? Offer to help or something like this?"

Mahesh talked about the need to build some sort of wrapper first.

Bill nodded, while frnatically thinking, what kind of wrapper? He was usually pretty good with accents, but it took him a while to figure out that the word was "rapport." He turned his attention back to Mahesh.

"Unless the rapport is built," he was saying, "then offers of help could be misunderstood."

Drat it, Bill thought. I've blown that more than once, then.

"But once that rapport is there," Mahesh continued, "then we could get the kind of mentoring my team needs. There are tremendous mentoring resources available here in Sunnyvale and it would be a waste not to use them."

"Right," Bill said.

"After one or two meetings," Mahesh said, "some of the guys might send you email, 1-on-1, or maybe call you in your office in regular hours."

"Perfect." Bill was pretty sure that this was what Mahesh had wanted to talk about.

After a while, Mahesh thanked Bill for his time, and left.

Bill reflected on the conversation afterwards. That was pretty important, he thought. We both learned something, and built bridges.

How did Bill do?

Here's what I came up with:

1. Though he was working on a technical task, he took time with his visitor.
   
2. He acknowledged the gift verbally and appreciated it.
   
3. When he saw Mahesh standing there, he probably should have offered him a seat!
   
4. At least he figured out that Mahesh wanted something. Could he have asked him about it more directly? Probably not. ("What do you want from me?" probably isn't quite what you want to say. "Can I help you?" may have the problem of offering help before rapport is established.)
   
5. The collaboration question was probably a good one. I also give Bill points for not asking too many questions right away. (Americans often ask too many questions, though in this case "Did you mean every two weeks?" would probably have been OK.)
   
6. When Bill didn't understand "rapport," he probably could have interrupted Mahesh immediately and asked him what he meant. I don't fault Bill too much here, though; his style seems to work for him
   
7. Bill never did get around to finding out whether Mahesh meant every 2 weeks vs. every 3 weeks, but I don't fault him too much for that, either; the two of them can figure that out later.

Why do you sing?

Our former (not "old") teaching pastor, now pastoring in Seattle, was approached one day by an earnest young woman. "I'm supposed to shadow someone with an unusual career," she said. She's a student, and this was a sociology or psychology assignment. She could think of no career stranger than "pastor of a church."

So she followed him around one day, and she was full of questions. "Why do you sing?" for example. She had never been to church, and this first experience was astonishing to her, like stepping into an alternate universe.

But why do we sing? I can think of about three answers.

1. Tradition!
   Perhaps easiest to understand. It's a habit. I mean, it's what you do in church. It makes people feel good.
   
2. Remembrance
   You don't have to be a churchgoer to understand that the media bombard us with messages about who we are (you're a loser unless you wear these clothes) and what we need (like "You need this car!"). To help us remember the reasons for our hope -- the key word here being "remember."
   
3. To get spiritual help
   This will probably strike the unchurched as really weird. The Bible says that God inhabits the praises of his people (Psalm 22). The Bible tells of times when God does great things, as his people praise him. The walls of Jericho came down, for example, when trumpets were sounded. These were blown by priests, and it's no stretch to say this was an act of worship and praise.

Let me clarify this bit about God doing great works and showing his power. Jordan Seng talks about how works of power in the Bible (and in his own experience) seem to be related to these four factors:

• authority. When we're obeying God, we have authority.
• gifting. Some people have gifts in greater measure than others do.
• faith. This does not mean, "if you didn't get healed, it's because you didn't have enough faith." No! What it does seem to mean, though, is that if everybody for 5-10 yards around thinks in his heart "nothing's gonna happen," then probably nothing will happen.
• unction. Jordan doesn't like this word either, but he couldn't think of a better one. He also suggested "anointing" -- but the point here is that sacrifice brings power.

A little more on faith: First, it's environmental. Mark tells us that even the Lord Jesus Christ "could not do any miracles" (except heal a few sick people) in his hometown because of their lack of faith (Mark 6:1-6). And then consider the daughter of Jairus. Two points here: First, notice how Jesus threw them all out (Mark 5:40) before he raised her from the dead. They were scoffing and he wanted them out of the immediate area. For another example, Jesus sees a crowd approaching (Mark 9:25-27) and acts before they arrive, probably because they were an unbelieving crowd too (Mark 9:19).

Second, whether someone gets healed does not necessarily depend on how much faith the subject has. Back to Jairus's daughter: how much faith do you suppose she had? Not much -- she was dead! Or how about Eutychus (Acts 20:7-12)? He was dead, too. Same deal with Dorcas/Tabitha (Acts 9:36-42). She was dead but Peter raised her back to life. Note that he cleared the room first (Acts 9:40). These people were dead so they didn't have much faith. You don't have to have a lot of faith to be healed. Now, if you're certain that prayer won't cure anything, and others around you feel the same way, then, well, why are you even getting prayed for? Lack of faith inhibited miracles from the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and whoever is praying for you won't be able to do much better.

Now Jordan also told us that these factors seem to be sort of additive. Someone who's got all four factors (or "terms") working in his/her favor can see a lot of stuff happen. But if you're strong in some, you can be weak in others and things still might happen. For example, Moses had gifting and unction and faith, so even when he was disobedient (i.e., he had no authority -- when he struck the rock a second time rather than speaking to it (Numbers 20:7-12) -- it still "worked." By the way, you can tell they were disobedient by the Lord's reaction.

The disciples couldn't drive the demon out of the (apparently) epileptic boy in Mark 9:17-29; according to Jesus, prayer (some manuscripts say "and fasting") was required. The disciples were high in authority, probably OK in gifting, but they were lacking in unction. They had plenty of faith, too; you can tell because they were surprised they couldn't cast the demon out.

So that's the outline, sort of. Now, we cannot maneuver, manipulate, or bulldoze God into doing things. But we can observe the way he seems to act, and this business of faith, unction, authority, gifting -- this seems to fit pretty well.

How does singing help? The remembrance can help me in terms of faith, because I become more likely to remember the reason for hope. And when a lot of us in the same room are remembering why we can have hope, that increases our faith.

And when we remember in our daily lives -- as we go through the week and remember to have the right perspective -- because of those songs, then we are more likely to obey and therefore to have more authority -- because we're more likely to act in a way that pleases God.

Songs of praise to God seem to increase our unction, too. The book of Hebrews talks about a "sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that give thanks to God."

Well, I hope that helps.

Culture, shmulture

The lovely Carol is at a writers' conference, where one of yesterday's sessions discussed writing about other cultures, or writing for one (North American) culture about another (Japanese, Greek, ...).

One of the participants wanted to write stories set in China, but she had never been there. When the instructor asked about culture, this prospective author compared culture to the raisins or olives in your bread.

Sorry if you just sprayed coffee on your computer screen, but I don't make these things up; I only report them -- with details changed to protect the privacy of the, ah, naive.

But it amused me to think how people from various cultures might react to this statement. Here are a few that came to mind, in no particular order:

• Press (not clench) teeth together, open lips slightly, inhale orally. "Chotto chigaimasu ne," uh, I mean, "That's slightly, uh..."
  
• Tilt head slightly, put on a thoughtful expression. Then: "Interesting. Other viewpoints?"
  
• A condescending chuckle, then, "You haven't actually lived on any other continent, have you?"
  
• "Arrgh! Do you realize that half the world doesn't even eat bread?"
  
• "I'm sorry, but the acoustics in this room must be a little strange. It sounds like you said something about bread."
  
• "Could I differ with you on that?"
  
• "Class, stop laughing please! We are not here to ridicule ignorance, but rather to eliminate it."
  
• "There are volumes, I mean I could name literally a half-dozen of them right off the top of my head, about how people of cultures misunderstand each other just because of those cultural differences:
  • Tannen's You Just Don't Understand, subtitled "Men and Women in Conversation"
  • Understanding Cultural Differences, by the Halls I believe, about French, Germans, and Americans
  • Managing Intercultural Negotiations, written I believe by some diplomatic task force
  • Japan's Cultural Code Words, a not entirely charitable attempt to explain the mysteries of Japan to foreigners
  • Different Games, Different Rules, by Haru Yamada. She explains why you don't get a job description in Japan.
  • Polite Fictions - Why Japanese and Ameridans seem rude to each other by Nancy Sakamoto; and of course
  • John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
  • Crossing Cultures, which describes some of the pitfalls of cross-cultural communication.
  The authors/titles might not be quite right, but I'm working entirely from memory here.
• A patient sigh, then: "Yes, well, it can be tempting to think that way, particularly for those of us who haven't actually lived among people of another culture."
  

I'm sure you could think of other possible responses, more or less polite than the above.

But culture is tremendously important. What does it mean when someone rotates his head back and forth about a vertical axis? In North America, it usually means "I disagree," but in other parts of the world it can mean, "Keep going; I'm with you; I love what you're saying!" What does it mean when someone walks into your house with his shoes on? Depends on where. How close to someone is it polite to stand or sit? What does it mean when someone comes into your house and starts opening the shades that you have drawn shut against the heat?

Sorry, this is getting too long, so I'll stop here.

school→industry transition

A few weeks ago, actually a couple of months ago, Laurie put the arm on me to teach "new college grads" who are becoming new employees at the office. I was to teach them about our development tools and workflow, but rather than cramming a ton of how-to stuff into their already-full heads (my part is coming about ¾ of the way through their indoctrination), I decided to start with introductions and so on.

The "school to industry transition" came to mind as a topic that might be useful to them, and nobody else was addressing it, so I came up with "the four Cs" -- a different set than you've probably heard before. Here they are:

Collaboration

When I interviewed at HP, now over 3 decades back, Peter asked me what I'd do when faced with a task I couldn't figure out. I had no clue, so I suggested I'd go back to my manager and tell him it didn't look feasible. Well, he didn't call me a moron, but he did correct me. "Ask your colleagues for help!"

D'oh! In school I thought mostly in terms of independent work. One of my profs actually said that "there is only one acceptable way to do homework: alone."

In school, we're often in competition with each other. There are only so many "A"s to be given out, right? This is less of an issue with group projects, but even a team-written research paper has only one primary author.

It's true that some companies rank their employees against each other. This is rather a nasty deal and can't be helped, but I hope you work in a company that rewards team players over prima donnas.

Because at least in most technological organizations, one person alone can hardly accomplish anything! No one person understands the entire operating system, or these days even the kernel. (Linus Torvalds himself doesn't know everything about Linux.) So we have to work together... which brings me to:

Contribution

There are some things that only you can do to help your team, some other colleague, or the company. That would be a unique contribution and perhaps you should do it!

Then there are things that nobody else will do, even though they could:

• Take minutes at meetings!
  People seem happy to let you do this. When you send notes out, people can refer to them later and don't have to rely upon their memory. Along those lines,
• Be kind to future generations in your prose (and your code)
  So when you take minutes at a meeting, write them in a way that will be convenient to refer to later on. The headache you save may be your own! Put "action items" at the very top or very bottom, or maybe set them off like this:
  
  ==>Joe: verify marketing has seen the design spec by next Tuesday
  
  That makes them easy to see...

  Analogous comments could be made about code (if you write code), even if they're just short scripts.

• When you like something, tell them!
  If Joe or Jane does something you like, something nontrivial I mean, send 'em a short email saying basically "thanks for your help on X; that will speed up the next phase of design" (or whatever). Use "bcc:" to let their manager know, too. Or send their boss a separate note. These are always appreciated, especially when their boss has to write their review!
• My current employer has a "wiki" that's full of info on how to do various needful things, and anyone (inside the company of course) can edit it. If you have one, and find something in there that's wrong, fix it! Your employer may require reviews or something, and there may be guidelines for how much time you spend on that kind of stuff. Follow all those. But every question you answer (assuming that your answer is in a section of the wiki that people will look early on) will save people however much time you spent figuring it out. (Yes, I assume you're "average"; if you're faster than average, your answer will save others more time than you spent figuring it out!)

Completion

Ph.D students don't generally suffer from this malady, but undergraduates will sometimes say, "Bah, it's good enough; I'll just turn it in like this and take a lower grade on this one" -- because their other assignments give them enough points to get their desired grade, or they already have an admission for grad school or a job offer, or whatever.

If code is inadequately thought through or inadequately tested, there may be a phone call from the customer to your CEO. Test now or escalations later!

The other thing, though, is this: "completed" is defined by the customer. Reliability may be very important, but every whiz-bang feature you want to put in? Maybe not.

CSFs (Critical Success Factors)

Sorry for the jargon, but basically this means: What does it take?

What it takes, in a word, is character: Not "laziness, hubris, impatience" -- at least that's not the usual list. Instead, things like

• conflict resolution and cooperation
• being conscientious (not contentious); very often haste→waste, if not in technology then in interpersonal relationships
• self-control and work/life balance. You can cram for a final and you can push hard for a short while, but you can't do that for thirty years. Believe it or not, someday you'll be as old as I am and you won't be able to do that.
  
  And when you have a family and children, you really shouldn't be doing that. Don't let your job cost your marriage or your relationship with the kids; it's not worth that!
• Humility -- a willingness to learn and take feedback. How many people, when you give them a suggestion, tell you why they thought what they did was OK? They might want to learn, but they care more about thinking themselves right.
  
  Don't be like them! Instead, copy Einstein, who supposedly said that he'd rather know whether he was right than that that he was right about something.

Conclusion

That's my list; if you're starting a job right out of college, I hope it's useful to you. Given average talent but above-average pursuit of those four things, you'll beat out the "genius" who can't work with others most of the time. You'll be a superstar.

postscript: a book recommendation

Drucker's The Effective Executive (amazon.com link) which may have influenced my work world as much as any other book

happy 4th!

We had a great time. Constance (I cannot figure out why she is still single, unless all the single men around her are idiots) and her mom came over. The lovely Carol made apricot pie (page 99 in the Betty Crocker cookbook, except we used ½ cup of sugar instead of their suggested 2/3 cup), and a salad.

I made burnt caramel ice cream, using a recipe mostly taken from the Atlantic, and barbecued chicken. Both turned out really well so I thought I'd tell you about them.

Burnt caramel ice cream

1. Combine:
   • 1½ cups heavy cream
   • 3 cups whole milk
   . Put about half of it in the fridge or something, and the other half in a big measuring cup or pitcher or something.
   
   
2. In a 2-3 quart saucepan (Corby Kummer says: don't use your best one), put:
   • 1 cup sugar
   • ¼ tsp salt. Make that a rounded ¼, more like 3/8 tsp.
   and turn heat to the higher end of the "medium" range. Tip the pan, slide it around, whatever, so that everything melts and begins to brown.
   
   
3. When the first black spots appear, you'll notice a slight smoky smell. When this happens, pour in half the milk-cream mixture set aside in step#1. It's very interesting to note what happens to the caramel mixture.
   
   
4. Leaving the heat as it is, stir the pot occasionally until the caramel dissolves.
   
   
5. The original recipe said to simmer it for 20 minutes until it thickens and darkens; you're supposed to be able to leave a line on the bottom of the pan when you stir it, but it never got that thick for me -- either that or I'm too impatient.
   
   
6. The recipe also said there would be "strings" which you'll want to strain out. I never saw them, but if you do, strain the mixture from the pot into the other half of the milk-cream mixture that you had sitting in the fridge.
   
   
7. Let the whole works chill thoroughly, a few hours.
   
   
8. Put into the ice cream freezer, following manufacturer's directions. Be sure you have enough rock salt and ice!
   
   
9. Once your ice-cream maker stops, put your ice cream into the freezer to harden a bit. I recommend letting it sit at least 4 hours before eating.

Barbecued chicken

Basically, put about 40 briquets into your Weber® 22-inch kettle barbecue, light them, and then separate them into two piles at opposite sides of the kettle. Take as much of the fat off the chicken pieces as you easily can -- skin the legs/thighs (and the breasts too if you dare) and place them between the coals. We're talking indirect heat here.

After about 25-35 minutes (less if your coals are too hot) it's time to turn the pieces and brush sauce on the sides that are now facing up. There's probably a nice tangy barbecue sauce recipe out there somewhere, but we just use stuff from a bottle. (I guess that comes from affluence and laziness.)

In about 10-15 minutes, turn 'em again and brush the sauce on the sides that are now facing up. A few more minutes and you're good to go.

You probably think I'm a pervert, but we had steamed rice with all this. It's a free country though; it won't offend me if you prefer potatoes, bread, quinoa, triticale, beans, or whatever...

She's leaving home

I hope not in the manner of the Beatles' song of that name....

But she is leaving. I just made a flight reservation outbound, two tickets SFO-JFK one-way. I'm thinking about my (one) return flight, JFK back to SFO. I could leave about ten, arriving here about 1:30 or so. Or should I leave in the evening, returning here rather late at night, for the chance to go to church one last time with my "baby" before she begins her first year of college? Heh, who am I kidding with this "baby" stuff? She's a national merit scholar, world traveler, polyglot (French, Latin, Japanese, plus her native American English sounds "poly" enough...)

The ideal thing would be a flight leaving about 3pm but it's more like 7. How could I stand it, moping around the airport with nothing to do for hours on end?

Yes, she'll be back in just a few months -- maybe Thanksgiving I hope but certainly at Christmas. Yes, she has been gone longer -- 5 months in France in 2005 -- back then we knew she was coming back. But this -- this is the beginning of the end of her time with us; from now on she'll be more away than here.

It's what we've been preparing her for all these years, I guess. Perhaps we've not been preparing ourselves for it as much as we coulda/shoulda though.

Well, one foot in front of the other. I have to make hotel reservations in any case.