elizabeth grigg - the other fourth meal

Boy, that last post was negative. I'll take Halley's advice, and just let it roll down the page. The blogosphere is so positive right now. It seems so bright and shiny. Everyone is so darn smart and brave. Here's a crazy list, in no particular order:

Rory is now taken, what a shocker.
Your product is so 1997 and that's a compliment. Sigh.
Calendar companies crawling all over themselves to interoperate. Really!
Yahoo doing everything to make me want to apply there except move to Kirkland. Sigh.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:05 PM | Permalink

Back during the dot-coms, I expressed my social difficulties to my mother in law. One of the main things I've learned from her is it's not always, it's in fact not ever your fault that a task turns out to be so much harder than it needs to be. As optimizers we look for metrics and finite controls to steer events and take control, but often, in fact always, it's just that you have the wrong people in the room. What I thought was my social difficulties was just another case of trying to breathe on Mars. What was I thinking, it's Mars!!! Of course you're not going to be able to breathe. Get over it. In the way she expresses it, she says "You always know when you have found your tribe." To me, that's a loaded word, similar to "native," but for her I suppose she has earned the right to say it.

Now, given the ability to identify a situation where, if different people were in the room, the outcome would be completely different, I am questioning the converse. What about people who have found their calling, and are exactly positioned for success, with all the right people and gobs of money and anything else they might want. A couple examples of those situations have occurred to me recently, and I've noticed all is not as one might predict. Finding your tribe is perhaps not all it's cracked up to be.

Case #1: Simon Cowell. What an interesting character. For those of you without cable, Simon is setting the bar for quality for another year of Pop music via American Idol. Here is a guy who knows music. He has ears, unquestionably better than Randy or Paula. He has guts, and believes that it's better to tell people the truth than cheerlead them on to the wrong direction. He's very Microsoft in that way. Now, this is conjecture, but Simon may or may not be aware that he is in a unique position to increase the resolution of American hearing. Before Simon, we were deaf, and now we know. All due to his consistent feedback. He never lets us down. And yet, is he happy to have started this transformation in us? Does he wake up every day glad that he can bring a standard of quality to a laughed-at medium, rescuing it for those of us who still hold out hope? My conjecture is no, in his words he "doesn't like music anymore," and hearing Don't Cry Outloud a million times will do that to a person sure as sugar. There's a hundred qualified folks who would be thrilled to take Simon's place on the stage. The Understudies. And yet - they wouldn't have the credibility. The show would inexorably change, just like market forces would if Alan Greenspan starts to see the glass as half empty. Simon knows he's painted himself into a corner, and has to see this thing through. So he gets up every day, puts on the T-shirt, and tries to salvage his dignity and ours by setting the bar and not moving it. Perhaps he'd rather be anyplace else, perhaps even playing music himself. But no. This is a man who has found his tribe, and has all kinds of means at his disposal, and the power to change music for generations. I bet he gets more excited about watching Lost on TiVo.

Case #2: Bono. Another interesting character. Started out very young as a rock star. Now he has the business of being a rock star. It's very grown up. An interview said once that U2 thinks of themselves as 2 mediocre albums away from obscurity. They think about this constantly. Again it reminds me of Windows in maintaining market share. Now, nobody would argue that Bono has everything at his feet in terms of creating the best album possible. Enough money, friends, inspiration, and support. Now again, this is just conjecture, but what do you think the chances are of Bono waking up in the morning, for the 57 millionth time, and saying "I'm going to write a great song!" Personally I think it's pretty slim. There are a hundred people who could perhaps write a great U2 song in Bono's place. The Understudies. But again, no credibility. The whole thing would be inexorably different. So he gets up and slogs through it. You never know what might happen, sometimes the hits favor the reluctant. But my guess is he gets more of a charge of having Butros Butros Gali on his cell phone.

The reason why this is turning over in my mind is that each of us has our own Understudies. For every job you think is just temporary, there is someone else who would just think their life is complete if they could only do what you do for one day. As I get older, I realize it's not enough to find your tribe, and be good at what you do. I need to keep turning pages over to the next thing. What's your "old news" is my "new page." There may be 100 people waiting to fill my role, and I am one of 100 people waiting to fill someone else's. Neither chance may actually happen. But just an observance that success is not always what it seems.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 03:07 PM | Permalink

Loyal readers know I'm obsessed with practically everything. One way to do that efficiently is to be obsessed with productivity. That's my ticket to remaining on fire about something, anything this world has to offer: the world lays such glittering things at our feet every day.

But here's an oblique angle to that dynamic. What if I could take great care of myself. What would that mean. What about doing it to an extent that it was outwardly visible, not of course that it would matter that it was outwardly visible, but there would be that intensity of focus and that groundedness.

It's a different type of energy. One angle is hunting and gathering, optimization, harvesting, the sprint, the crunch time. The other angle is more inward, independent, and constant. Perhaps even a little isolated. I just don't want to accelerate so fast in the first direction that I lose all sight of the benefits of the second.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 09:04 PM | Permalink

This is like reverse cheerleading. A cautionary tale. There but for the sake of thoughtful presentation go each of us. It's a criticism of badly written annual reports. Can business books be accused of the same?

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:13 PM | Permalink

This gave me pause. An old family story has one of my Uncles claiming that the spinach hole was all filled up, but there was still space for cake, thank you. This is how I see it, to clear my conscience, but on a daily basis you only have so much to give. Thanks to Susan for the link.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:10 PM | Permalink

Shout out to Brian for rolling out financing for his new product, an events database. And apologies for losing track for so long... at one point I weeded out all partial-content RSS feeds, and years have now gone by. (Hello, Chris?)

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:06 PM | Permalink

I discovered that clicking on this link will bring up an interesting set of results. It doesn't cover blogs by ms employees that are sponsored external to the company, and it has a bit of fluff around talking about hiring (as opposed to actual hiring announcements), but it's worth a shot.

Whenever I look at a posting, I think: "If I got this job, would I turn off my resume on Monster?" Anything else is doing myself and my future employer a disservice. Here are three examples of jobs that might be just the thing for you, however.

Visio: This is the closest fit to my background in the stack, but I'd be worried about the personality fit with Office. I like more of a cowboy culture. OK now I sound like a complete nutcase. Here's the link.

C#: Very interesting position. I love the author's sensitivity to interviewing, and anyone that closely attuned to another person's thought process has to be turning out a great product. Unfortunately I don't have SDE. Do you?

Speech: I don't know much about this field. Occasionally it comes up in design, as the wildcard to solve a sticky interface problem. "We could have speech recognition and that would make it possible to do annotated podcasts" (or voicemail based calendar entries, or lots of stuff). Then we all laugh. But don't worry, we're laughing WITH you. Ulp. (See "nutcase" comment above). The moral of the story is: it shouldn't be this hard to find a program manager off of Monster.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 11:23 AM | Permalink

So today's your big day to make some progress on that thing you wanted to get done all week / month / life. For example, say you'd like to do a cute pseudocode version of your resume. Like beth.experience. Or beth.objective. (How about beth.namingheuristic ??) Or, perhaps a resume in flash, lord knows that will get noticed (despite the tendency of the platform to nauseate impatient netsurfers). Myself, I have always wanted to do a web services version of my resume, where it asks the user for the job description in text form, and outputs a web page with customized experience blocks. Or I could do it neural-net style, with a "more like this" feature. That's a multifaceted background for ya. Anyhoo, suppose you have this daylong project, and you wake up in Seattle. How do you get it done?

Assumptions: You like coffee and wi-fi, and value getting out of your impossibly cramped apartment more than you perhaps value the quiet that aforementioned apartment might provide. You have a laptop.

Options:
1) Internet Cafe on Broadway. Everything else is a distant second. Get there early and get a booth. Lots of Radiohead. Owner has an italian accent that's a pleasant addition to the din. Good comfort food, don't be scared to order it, there are lots of good restaurants on broadway and this is one of them, you're not missing out. Coffee is good too, with that awesome darkness. Mostly the place just feels like you can get something done. That quality is elusive, but you'll know it when you see it. Lousy parking, but it's on the 7 or the 43. Free movies at night.
2) A nice thing about choosing Broadway is there's a kinko's at the north end of the street, where you can go to print out your work and mail it off, if needed.
3) The coffee that's so good, it turns stalwart earl grey tea drinkers into "double tall's" is at Vivace at broadway and Denny. They also have wifi and a kids play area. Also a mysterious painting to stare at. I think the man offering the cup of coffee in the painting will be punished by death if the king thinks it's lousy. But that's just my interpretation. Vivace is a great landmark, but it's less a place to get something done, as the seating is not quite as comfortable, the music is noisier, and it's a hub of business for the Vivace Corporation Mega-Micro-company as opposed to solely a counter service operation. Don't ask why this is distracting. If you are chatty, and like to know about local businesses, go here, but don't expect to accomplish much.
4) Got kids? Wanna ditch 'em? We know, you just need 45 minutes to check your e-mail. Go to QFC in university village and check the kids into the playroom. Sit with your laptop by the fire and do your wifi thing. Then, when your hour is up, you can plonk the kids into one of the coveted "car" carts and do your shopping. Watch out for the prices, though.
5) Vios on 19th and Aloha is a great lunch spot with a playroom open-style, so you don't feel like you're ditching your kids at all. Just look up every few minutes. No wifi, though. And if you are a demanding patron, steer clear of dinner until they have the kinks worked out. Definitely support this business, we need more like this!
6) Again another place to keep the kids happy is "My Cafe" down on Madison, across from vegetarian favorite Cafe Flora. I ate there every week during dotcom. But enough about Cafe Flora. My Cafe is a new place, great toys, no wifi, but again you will get something done if your kids have any attention span at all.

Oh, heck, back to work

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Procrastination is something I have obviously jinxed by bragging that I haven't done it in years. The jinx is it's creeping back. The number of posts in my aggregator is far more than I can handle. My blogroll itself - on my very own blog - is incredibly out of date. Then there's the looming weight of emerging technologies that can't self-categorize so we must do it ourselves, or not do it and feel bad about it. And what do I do but luxuriate over at The Manolo Shoeblog just because it fits my every need for about 10 seconds. No matter what the time window, it's a giddy feeling to have that happen.

I was thumbing through another backlog today, just to sit back in awe of it never getting done. This backlog was my "blog this" folder. I decided I wasn't a linkblog person, I have too much need for thinking and commentary, and I have too little google juice to make a difference to a mere link. But this old post from the SharePoint blog reminded me of something that happened today that might be big. The concept that occurred to me was:

Creating an internally consistent design is not necessarily in your user's best interests. This is because your users will be using your software, not designing it. Your users will never have to scratch their heads wondering where to put a button, or what to have as the default selected item in a dropdown. They will be solving actual problems and will cut corners you might not be aware of, given that you are so darn distracted by your internally consistent design. Moral of the story: put down the feature set, the subject/object model, the line of demarcation between navigation and functionality, put down even the menu driven pedagogical trajectory, and use your product. Now, use your product very very quickly as if you are about to miss your bus. See how much you care now about the internal consistency of your design? Instead, make it fast. Let the data model clean up after itself later.

And to come full circle here is Dave from back in January talking about procrastination. It appeared in blog this because he offers evidence that data entry is a big problem for any calendar solution. I don't care if it's open source, closed source, extraterrestrial, offshore, walking, talking, singing, anything. If it doesn't solve the data entry problem as if it was READING YOUR MIND, it won't fly and we all might as well be back in 1997 again.

I have to drone on and on about the 60% solution now. The idea is you only need 60% of what you have, make, or earn. You only need 60% of your time, money, and space. In case you're slow at math like me, that's packing your entire day: sleeping, eating, maintaining key relationships, exercise, voting, bills: in 14 hours. It means you move out of 1 bedroom if you have a 3 bedroom house, and give up a sizable corner of your den too. It means you can join a cult which takes 40% of your paycheck (from net, of course, I'm not talking about the cult we call the IRS) and you can still live off the rest without undesirable weight loss. The idea is so radical and overwhelming, it simply must be reverse engineered. Here is how the time aspect might go:

Raw Materials: A 14 hour day. Let's say you sleep like a stone, and it's refreshing, wonderful insta-REM sleep. Probably due to all that exercise you're getting, and minimal digestive commentary from the burger gallery known as your stomach. 7 hours of sleep should do it. So, nice and symmetrically, 7 is the number of waking hours you have left. But before we start packing everything in, you have a choice to make:

Choice: Morning person or night person? Oh, let's be radical and say you'll sleep a split shift. That way you get the AM burst of creativity and nature's so-called beauty, as well as the midnight showing of dawn of the dead at the experimental theater. A morning person might sleep their 7 hours 9pm-4am. A night person might sleep their 7 hours 3am-10am. The third choice is the split shift, of 1am-5am, and a nap between 1pm and 4pm.

Daily Schedule:
5am - 9am: Creative Time. Nonessential. Extra. Disposable. This is where your subconscious starts to recombine all of the materials you have ingested and forgotten about. The output feels like your own creative combination. Don't worry, your editor will catch any outright plagiarism. Keep scribbling.
9am - 1pm: This is a big Work-Multitask blob. It's part of the 7 hours of essential items. This is where all the essential stuff goes. What you do during this time is be at work and get things done while multitasking. This is the time to be very Scottish and efficient with every minute. Pay bills online quickly during a lull in round-robin status reports. Have coffee with your spouse rather than your snarky coworker. Hold walking meetings to fit in your exercise rather than sitting down. Delegate. For every ball you personally handle, there should be 3 or 5 in the squad.
1pm - 4pm: Nap. Likely a cot in the stairwell. I won't tell if you won't.
4pm - 7pm: Another Work-Multitask Blob. Part of the 7 hours of essential items. Have your kid test the software you're building. Record audio of a meeting #2 so you can listen at the same time as writing a requirements document. Eat. Shop online for an online shopper. Doctor stops by for an office housecall. Finish document. Listen to e-mail via phone as you drive home, this is part of your work hours.
7pm - 9pm: Absorption time to feed what's driving you. Nonessential. Extra. Disposable. This is where you quietly read or listen to any materials you might want surrounding your other creative work. It can be where you raise the definition of excellence for yourself by looking at something *really good*. I don't know about you, but lots of times when I look at something truly exceptional, I despair because there are not enough hours in the day to live up to it. The 60% solution takes care of that: suddenly there's enough.
9pm - 1am: Free for all.

Now, this is an interesting thing, because I've blocked it out in such a way that the protagonist has an information worker type job, but has their absorption and creative material devoted to some other topic. The presumption is we can't last 29.9 years on this planet (like me) without knowing how to do an 8 hour job in 7. Heck, all you have to do is eat lunch at your desk. Lots of information workers do not have this separation, however: the thing they are interested in and creative with on their own time exactly fits within their job description. And then there's everything in between. (Is buying a new cell phone work related? If it brings up similar design issues to my product... but sometimes we don't know the overlap until later). The distinction between the free (17 minus sleep) and paid for (7) number of hours is important. It's like a budget. The more rigid you are, the more you learn about how the boundaries are crossed.

On to the next topic, I'd love to sketch out how to live on 60% of your money, but I have no idea. Well, maybe your money. Mine, I have no idea.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 09:58 PM | Permalink

I was riding home yesterday on the Vanpool thinking about nothing. My companions were chattering away, one mentioned something jokingly about raising the military recruit age to 74 to offset slow recruiting. Then it hit me, a great idea for a mini-story. I could use my Dad as a model. He would be a great recruit, he has military experience, and he isn't doing much. Lord knows he could get out of the house. (KIDDING!) So what if he gets mistakenly reinstated. He goes down to sort things out, perhaps to Fort Lewis or somewhere. They say yeah, it's probably a mistake, but they can't fix the paperwork. He gets a lawyer, but it looks like there will be all kinds of automatic paper-related trouble if he doesn't go. It will simply take too long to get his case heard. Jail time is threatened, possible court martial. So off he goes to Iraq at 75. What happens to him next. How does he come through for his buddies? How does it compare to his previous history? Now that's a great story. And there I was in the Vanpool.

I get ideas like this all the time. I set up 5 or 6 e-mail accounts at egrigg9000 in order to receive text messages or "voice notes" according to each topic I'm scouting for ideas on. For example, one address is for calendar ideas. Another address is for my novel with the music critic. I spent some time on the phone with my carrier, T-mobile, but apparently voice notes cannot be e-mailed with their service. With T-mobile, and my phone (a T610 I think), you can only e-mail text or pictures. Which I completely don't get, because a picture attachment is the same as a voice attachment. Text takes too long to type, even for a vanpool. It would be nice to have a pile of audio clips stacking up in those inboxes, each representing ideas discovered on the fly. Current plan is to wait until Summer and then switch carriers.

Brian Eno very much encourages us to be ready for the ideas when they come. I'm tryin, man...

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:30 AM | Permalink

One of the reasons why technology is so seductive to me is this book. About halfway through I "got it," I was on the same page as my friends who tinkered with cars and dreamed about running airplanes on steam. Granted reading this book won't make you an engineer, but it convinced me that technology needs dreamers. That there is a place in technology for dreamers. That there is a place for me.

Not sure what the lineage of the Dyson family is, is the vacum guy related to Esther? Which person's Dad did the Orion project, and which one lived in the treehouse?

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 11:53 PM | Permalink

Back from the weekend. I'm intensely involved with aligning what we spend our money on with the trajectories we want in our life. Okay, to be honest, my trajectories and my life. Music? Career? Community? Health? Oh, who can pick. It's a thought problem like Einstein used to sit around and think about all day. Every free moment I stare into space thinking of IT which is the problem of shoehorning everything into a tight space. And then paying off the shoehorn too. Perhaps an apple will drop on my head.

The blogosphere right now strikes me as confident, introspective, and full of gratitude. New products. A very healthy feeling. Seems like it takes being away to come back and notice a sea change.

With no internet all weekend, I nonetheless took my computer out of town with me in order to burn some CDs of the SXSW material. Don't worry, it's not that bad, as I plan on burning MP3 CDs. However, there seem to be thousands of tracks. And I find myself back in the same problem space as I was when helping everyone design RealJukebox. Now I'm using WMP, but it's the same player we worked to design, almost to the feature. For example, I confidently changed the genres in a playlist, just KNOWING that Microsoft's coin would flip the same direction ours did in keeping this info propagating across all instances of that track, not just owned by the playlist. Querying is capitalization neutral. The genre dropdown (oh, how I advocated for that feature! It's like I wouldn't shut up!) is a little overexcited, in the same way RJB was, in that if you mistype a genre name it will be forver in your dropdown list despite a track never actually still containing the typo. Autoplaylists still promise the moon and deliver no results. And the cute little "+" icon. I remember making those with John. We used the word "pattern language." We thought we were so cool. Now WMP has very similar images. Of course I haven't looked in years, Just something to smile about. Over at RJB we were like Xerox Sparc, except slower and less appreciated. But we know what we did.

I hit on a theory of creating accurate genre groupings for my SXSW CD problem, and thereby creating good CDs from that. With many of the tracks already categorized, I only had to go through all with default, unknown, or blank genre. Some funny things happened to me musically as I put on my Simon Cowell ears and plowed through the tracks as quickly as possible.

* Most songs have intros, and many are not indicative of the eventual genre. Best to skip to the middle of the track.
* Why can't Latin be a style. Why does it always have to be Latin Rap or Latin Electronica or Latin Metal. It's like being Latin in music is like being black in film. You have to be something else as well, some other handicap or category. It just doesn't seem fair.
* I have a narrower definition of Rock than most people. I won't give something Rock unless it has that classic Led Zep derivative guitar sound, with similar bass and drums.
* Pop is just like singer songwriter except people put more work into the arrangement. The same song, with just the guitar and nothing else, will get you singer songwriter instead of Pop. Believe me, you don't want to be in singer songwriter.
* A female vocal lead will need to work uphill to not be in singer songwriter. It's awful, I know, but that gushy girl stuff that I used to listen to and write and love is just so oversaturated. I will keep clicking on different parts of the track for you. If you sing about emotions every time, or have some embarassing lyric like "I don't have the space for loving you" or other psychobabble, you're in singer songwriter. On the other hand, if you have actual accompaniment, or have written a piece of music rather than just melodic lyrics over accompaniment, then you get to be in Pop. You could say my bar for Pop is pretty high.
* Men get more of a break in the singer songwriter department. However, one gushy phrase and I comb around looking for anything with some musical depth. If I find none, you're in with the girls.
* I wish I could sort by volume and key. Bring together CD sized playlists all of similar normalization and in a circle of fourths (hey, it's rock and roll) pattern.
* I have a hard time detecting the difference between rockabilly and punk. Funny, because rockabilly is conservative and punk supposedly radical.

Genre project over with. In the words of Simon Cowell "I don't like music anymore." Just kidding. I just have a WMP hangover. I'll get back to burning the CDs when I can.

In other news: fiona apple (queued), bit torrent (working for me via azureus), and lots of advice on how to keep it together despite preschoolers.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:50 PM | Permalink

So, I'm blogging at work, but it's lunchtime and I feel I deserve it. It was a lovely lunch comprising of the final remnants of what you might call groceries in the house. Tonight we leave for Portland just for the weekend. We've got a rock band to whip into shape. And I've got shopping to do but somehow not buy. (I hope layaway is still a concept).

Meandering about Microsoft it seems people with internal aliases can try to get into Raiders of the Lost Ark - Recreation, which if you listen to NPR is an incredible story of two boys recreating the movie over, what, 10 years of their childhood. It STINKS that this movie isn't out on DVD so we can all buy it - including the NPR audio track - and remain inspired about what a little dedication can do to a pile of nonsense. It can do a lot. It can make legends.

Another thing I bumped into is this alternative corporate blogging manifesto. I wrote "much better" and then crossed it out and wrote "alternative." This guy can write, he knows why we are all here, he's brave, and funny. Plus he has the same view that I do: blogging is much more interesting the poorer impulse control each of us have. I love it. Please read.

Right now I'm drowning in powerpoint. I'm thinking of canceling all my meetings for the rest of the day so I can lose my mind altogether. Hmm, which works better for dev lead, is it the little orange clamp guy, or the green frowny face eyeball with the teardrop? My dh coached me this morning "Now is your chance to get all Edward Tufte on their ass!" Except, of course, for the fact that Tufte hates powerpoint and thinks it is poisoning our society. I only want to agree with him because I like the idea of us little software designers being in such positions of power. What, pray tell, have been the societal consequences of mail merge? Of find... (on this page) ? Of rightclick... open in new tab? Ah, microsoft ethnographers, there's a PhD for you right there.

Back to work.

UPDATE: The link to listen to the Raiders story is here. Anyone have the link to the longer and better story done on This American Life?

UPDATE2: It wasn't This American Life, it was a print article in Vanity Fair. The article is available online here

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was happy to hear that the red couch project brought on an editor. Granted I don't know exactly what an editor does, but it seems like they could use the help. The reason why I say I don't know what an editor does is, it could be anything from proofreading to demanding a new scope for the project. This is a spectrum of activities. I would guess at the red couch's editor leaning toward the former. That's just an observation, not a criticism, and also a guess.

Here's the thing about trc for me. It's the only book deal I've ever seen a friend of mine get. I suppose this should have happened to me several times before I left the age where I was allowed to wear miniskirts*, but hey, them's the breaks for picking a career in software.

* 35. But hey, I can run for president. Just not in a miniskirt.

The other thing about trc for me is my hopes to use it personally. You see, I hope one day to "come out" as a blogger. Right now I have not explicitly nor implicitly informed my boss or my mom about my blog. Actually most of my non-blogging friends don't know about it either. One thing you could draw from that is I'm lucky to have a complete and self-sustaining world outside of RSS. Another conclusion, however, is that I'm afraid people won't understand, and most of all I'm afraid of what I wrote, and that I will start to not write quite so relevantly once I'm "outed" due to the looking-over-my-shoulder effect.

A nice book justifying my existence would help that whole thing along nicely.

So with that said, I read chapter 2, and although I'm sure shel intended to follow my instructions for completely diverting away from standard business bookspeak, it must have got lost by the wayside. Of course they might have been completely un-actionable, a non-starter. One thing about blogging. If you decide you have a position on something, you need to harp on and on about it every day, because if it wasn't posted today it simply wasn't posted. Unless you're doing a dorky history of the internet project or something.

Of course that's just my opinion. If next Xmas I buy this book for all my friends and family, and include my URL in the card, I want it to be as good as people say the Bob Dylan book is. It should be an innovation and a pleasure to read, not a legal argument. Perhaps this is another book altogether.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over morning coffee I read the following press release with a grain of salt. That grain turned into a pillar when I caught the following data point:

"Only 34 percent said they are using proven scheduling tools and techniques to help them gain more free time and balance in their lives. Likewise, 60 percent said they don't have work-life balance, and being unproductive contributes to this feeling. (U.S.: 31 percent said they are using proven scheduling tools and techniques; 66 percent said they don't have work-life balance.) "

Okay, so I've had a glass of wine but bear with me. If 66 percent in the US say they don't have work-life balance, and 31 percent said they are using proven scheduling tools and techniques, then is it implied that there is no overlap between the first group and the second? And there's, what, 3 percent of respondents that have somehow achieved work life balance without these proven scheduling tools?

Well good for them.

Seriously, though, the numbers in this study may or may not work as described above. The thing that really gets in my craw is the "proven scheduling tools and techniques." Having your calendar online at work does not result in work life balance. Neither does having a dayplanner, or a calendar on your phone or PDA. Work life balance is a result of enforcing a line of demarcation between the demanding areas of your life, and becoming successful as the result of maintaining this sweet spot of optimum result compared to effort put in. We all know there is diminishing returns. An optimized life is when you never get there. You are always glad to see your family. Your friend's problems are new and fascinating to listen to. You could sit on the phone with your mom listening to her latest assault on the medical system. You look forward to seeing everyone at the status meeting. You turn in your work looking forward to the feedback you will get. It's the sweet spot.

Saying "yes" to meetings or appointments in any calendar tool will not get you there. This is a model of an outside-driven world, where we are but blank slates with no personal regulatory capacities, wandering around the 4th dimension taking instructions from external forces. Ask anyone with work life balance how they got there, they will say they stopped listening to other people and invented their own rules.

Certainly they don't mean Outlook?

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:34 PM | Permalink

I have been reading up on calendar interoperability. Some observations. One is this is touted as the most egregious indicator of the feature set stagnating over the past 10 years, and the first place people look to fix. This in my opinion is not only shortsighted (you only need interoperability if you're committed to local storage of your data), but damaging (the focus will be on b2b calendaring).

Of course the next wave of calendaring will be all about fixing things that are currently broken and neglected. Thus I will forgive the endless ratholes concerning time zone representation. However, the thing I have noticed ever since I picked this thing up is 2 other indicators of stagnation: Data entry is not yet at point of discovery, and calendars themselves make poor visualization tools for life decisions. This morning's realization is that b2b calendaring can probably limp along without these features.

Business calendaring is in a special use case. People are desk-based (or in transit, meetings), and on e-mail. There is an IT staff. Another thing that distinguishes the business use case is you will get paid to handle the set-up of the meeting, whether it takes 10 minutes or 10 days. Do people, by nature, want it to only take 10 minutes? Of course. But if it ends up taking 10 days, the task will get done. In the individual use case, if the task takes 10 days, it simply won't happen. Business customers are motivated to complete the task. Individual customers are motivated to not spend their weekend with their face in the cell phone / computer.

The reason why I'm interested in the individual use case is the conditions and tolerance thresholds are more ideal, accurate, and representative of what it takes to be successful. Also, if we solve the individual use cases, the business cases will come for free. It's like the story of the rabbit who outran the fox. The fox was only running for his dinner, but the rabbit was running for his life. Individuals are running for their lives when accessing their calendar, working with it, using it as a life management tool. This race takes place in the moment: do I have time to write down the time/location of this seminar I see a flyer for, or the talk I hear about someone giving? Do I have the tools to do this reliably, and does it beat pencil and paper? This race also takes place in a broader window: can I integrate a new project into my life at this time. How can I see my way to success with it? What happens if something else goes wrong, how do I know I have a cushion to make up that time? Accurate conditions. Realistic tolerance thresholds. B2b calendaring should not be our desired use case.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:03 AM | Permalink

Congrats to Brad for surviving his Microsoft interview. I bet it was an inevitable hire. Wonder what part of town you'll choose to live in. For you, hmmm, let's see (waiter making a suggestion) I would recommend the North Bend. Either that or Lake City. Not that either qualify as "town." North Bend is still the eastside, but will feel like I imagine Denver feeling, and your property value will go up for sure. Lake City is the shag carpet rec room of Seattle. Both have nice qualities. I'd say "come to a meetup" but I hardly ever go, we'll think of something.

This is one of those days that surprise you. I watch a lot of Malcom in the Middle. One episode has a traffic jam that blocks the freeway for hours, with absolutely no throughput. That's how today is. All week I defer tasks until Saturday, and when it finally comes, they are impossible. For example, I could be doing my taxes. There's cash green money waiting for me there, but I'd have to take down the files and spread them all over the kitchen table, which is enough of a disincentive to put it all off. If you saw my kitchen table you'd understand. There's a difference between this and procrastination. You can't really call it procrastination if your brain falls out - that sounds like a darn good excuse to me.

Those of us who work all week and have weekends with kids know that your kid doesn't always save up the good stuff for Saturday. Sometimes it's the opposite, so loud is the screeching right now that I'm drawn back to the computer and wishing I was at SXSW. Oh, well, I'm there in "download" anyway. I do miss the exaggerated sense of connectivity that conferences bring. I finally get it, why bloggers attend conferences like AA meetings, it's the thing that makes you feel like you're doing something substantial with all that typing. I got it at Blogger's Business, and who knows maybe they'll let me be an usher at Gnomedex. But for today, despite the glorious weather I'm inside, nursing a caffeine withdrawl headache, and keeping it unbearably real.

Now my download is at 37.5%

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 04:29 PM | Permalink

I fell for it, one of Winer's posts got me started and I couldn't resist. After following the instructions on how to install Azureus, I now have one completed download and one that's taking forever. Not sure why.

One think about using BitTorrent is there's an implicit good citizenship thing happening. Me? I have two frowny faces, one incoming and one outgoing. It's a little like transferring to a new school and getting detention.

I certainly agree with the authors of torrentocracy who say, we pay $100 a month for this stuff, and we should be able to have it to watch. That was the problem with TiVO, actually: we were paying for content we were already paying for. What we were really paying for was time shifting. And, like e-mail, sounds a lot like something that should be free.

Now me and Jimmy Smits can enter the white house together: what could be better than that?

I'll let you all know how this goes for me. As I wrote this my download is now 36.3% done. Woo hoo.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 03:08 PM | Permalink

One quick post while I wait for someone to answer my question over in google groups.

I was thinking about this post of Robert's on the bridge to work this morning. Not that bridge, the other bridge. The phrase that stuck in my ear: "I've become quite a jerk lately. Egotistical bahstard. Gotta fix all that and become a better person."

It's funny how text is. I used to hear that phrase "be a better person" or "be a good person" tossed around a lot. Mostly after someone saying "I want to..." and usually after they've done something bad. Like sleep with my best friend, or use my dad's gas card for a year without telling me. It got so popular, in fact, that it became funny. I started cracking up just hearing it. For one, it was overplayed. For two, I did not believe a word of it. For three, neither did the speaker, so it became the plaegel cadence of catchphrases, just a nod towards wanting to be a better person, but not really following through. Like people who say "Gosh I gotta quit smoking" as they open up a new pack. (Plaegel cadence is music theory speak). So when Robert says it, I immediately assume a wealth of things: that he says it a lot (not true), that I don't believe a word of it (also not true, I do believe him), and that he himself is joking about it (this I can be sure of, because this is a confident guy, so while I believe he means it I also believe the joke's on us). So, there's text for you, I have no idea. But it's a memorable thing to say. At least for me.

Getting home this afternoon I pulled up the comments of both posts, and WOW boy is everyone holding him to task. I wonder about the future of blogging if we are all going to be so nasty to each other. Here is some of the good stuff that gets pissed on when people open up with all their rage:
* Comments are perhaps the most defended free speech tool of the past year. We work hard to keep the lines open. Daily and constantly. It's not enough we have to fight the spammers, but we have to fight the nasty people too?
* More than just keeping comments open, it's just not a blog unless you, the blog writer and owner, go through and answer the comments. This is the two-way conversation. For whatever reason, trackback just doesn't cut it in all cases. So by all means don't poison the milk.
* Blogs are written by individuals. That's people, with all kinds of things that go with that. Kids. Spouses. Tempers. Flaws. One of the differences between me at 35 and Robert at 40 is that somehow, at 40 you know better than to keep commenting after things get nasty. Me, I'd be in there begging for forgiveness or arguing or otherwise looking pitiful. I did this last year after getting taken out by Christopher Coultier and don't think I don't dwell on it still, regretting my post of course, not the incident itself. Notice that after Anu's comment, Robert doesn't enter anything else. Bravo.

If he truly wasn't kidding, I wonder what it would take to become this alleged "better person." My immediate thought was Jon Stewart. Jon spends all day in front of the cable news. For us. At night he still has a sense of humor. Then we get him on crossfire one time and he lets loose. Our faces fall off. This is the "real" Jon Stewart. It's not funny. It's serious and cutthroat. And he's so good! We are all in awe. But he can't keep it up forever, obviously, he goes back to comedy and there he stays. We are grateful, but a little chilled that he was hiding all that political talent for so long. So I ask: what would it take for Jon Stewart to maintain his sense of humor, but also become a real pundit, running with the big boys and giving Larry King pause to think? Well, he'd have to become this so-called "better person." And the world is just barely good enough for Jon as things are.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 04:32 PM | Permalink

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 03:04 PM | Permalink

It's Sunday, and spring is yapping at our heels like an "indoor" dog. A girl's thoughts turn to shopping. Since I would venture that 98% of my readers are men, let me just say, I feel your pain. I've seen you in the chair of doom. You know the one outside the lingerie changing rooms? You sit there, exhausted, covered in bags, perhaps anxious about money, and trying to be polite by not parading in to the changing rooms themselves to voice your opinion. "No, I definitely think you should try the 36." In the chair of doom, there's noplace to even rest your eyes, for if you were to look up you'd be staring at women's underwear, like, as if there were a SEXUAL ELEMENT to this whole thing, and you're not supposed to be thinking about THAT right now. This is as close as you get to wishing you were gay. Instead, there you slouch, hoping simply for it to be over soon, wondering where your weekend went, indeed not extrapolating forward to wonder what you could have done with all these and similar moments over time. Yes, I know this is where you are in terms of shopping. And of course you've completely stopped reading this paragraph, you've spent plenty of time on the subject thank you.

You might be surprised to know that shopping is the pursuit of identity, in many ways. At the very least it is the pursuit of what identity looks like. Like most aspects of personal development, this has a trajectory whether you agree with the cult of shopping or not. Perhaps your trajectory, like many, is of comfort. You wear whatever will make you the most effective, assuming that a button down shirt is so distracting as to make you ineffective if worn. Perhaps your trajectory is to project neutrality in all forms. Dockers, campers, and techno-swag Tshirt. Standard issue dot-com era leather jacket. Volkswagen Jetta. Again, the idea is effectiveness, in that if you were to wear something distinctive you'd be, well, distinctive, and therefore less able to do what you want. Ostensibly what you want to do is slip through the cracks and make out like a bandit. And that's fine, who wouldn't.

But some of us are hungrier. How would you dress if you might be interviewing for a new job at any time of your day, without warning? How would you dress if there were TV cameras around the place, always on, and potentially broadcasting? Some of us are even hungrier, having a strong internal drive to simply represent ourselves visually. Perhaps to represent the self we want to be. Oh, and we'd settle for not freezing/roasting to death, and a couple of pockets too.

But shopping takes work:
* You have to actually go to the store in your free time.
* You have to look at things and consider acquiring them (what with all the baggage of past purchases gone awry, it's a little like speed dating a rack of clothes).
* Then, you have to fork over money you'd rather spend on frankly anything, to a store you don't like or agree with and feel like nobody's your friend over there.

Those steps are so formidable, perhaps it's best to lose the hunger, to stay in sweatpants and schlump our way through our days, safe from that sucking sound that is the world of fashion.

Now that I'm sure no-one is reading this except for Halley Suitt, let me paint a different picture, one of hope and deliverance. Since there is only one person reading, I can get personal. Over the past year I have evolved my relationship with the fashion world from the "hungry and jaded" perspective to one I would describe as "open and affirming." Getting to my lowest weight since I started my own business in the early 90s is a big part of it. (*See "sidebar" below) I can be caught reading the Manolo's Shoe Blog. I can be caught actually being satisfied with my purchases. I have even defended the attacks on the fashion industry such as in this comments area on Tom Peter's blog. Money is a big deal, I balance trips to the department store with trips to the thrift store, even if I find nothing, I can feel virtuous that I looked. I have themes in my head and I know what I'm looking for. Right now it's a summer weight jacket in a light color with some kind of memorable detailing. I will have to acquire three in this category this spring. I'm more aware of fashion's product cycle, as it were, and when everything in the "point of view" department starts looking the same I know it's out, out, out and it's time to regroup and find the new tweed. Previously, I would go "Hey, look at all the moderately priced tweed in all the sizes!" And this would fail miserably. Most of all, I have a trajectory I'm going for regarding the way my wardrobe intersects with my identity. (Further quelling the rumors that I have no capacity for self awareness. Just kidding.)

And the trajectories are:

1) Punked-Out Barrista: This is a tough one. I've identified this phrase as the common descriptor, every time I admire the way a woman has dressed herself, it always has this common theme. Yes, she is usually a barrista, and there are always some punky elements. She is usually physically fit enough to pull something casual off and make it look spectacular. Most of all, she has a look that does not broadcast talent, but rather has an undiscovered gem quality, with her entire future in front of her. I can't imagine this person dressing for job interviews. I can imagine her being recruited, almost wooed, by talent seekers. This phrase has represented for me an as-yet-unattained level of self-actualization that definitely comprises the latter end of my fashion trajectory. What are the gotchas? One phrase: "Age-appropriate." In case you were wondering, I'm not 18, and having just passed the "no miniskirts" age, we have to be careful or someone might snap a picture we'd regret. (Yes, examination of most fashion identity trajectories will have you talking in the fourth person like Gollum). Nevertheless, this image still holds some strength for me for what it would mean to have my act together in the wardrobe department.

2) Mister Rogers: This behavior is more revealing than compliments or photographs. It is the bejavior of coming home from work and changing my clothes right away. It's as if I have giving clothes and taking clothes. I take all day to do selfish "taking" things like going to work and attend book readings and things like that. All the universe of activities that earns me more than I bring to it. I have a certain wardrobe for that. At home, I definitely give more than I get, and for that I wear my usual jammie bottoms, mules, old Tshirt stained with everything. It's just vile, but practical for now. Mostly it's representative of the fact that I haven't synced up my giving and my taking wardrobes. It would be a big win to have my act together such that I wouldn't change when I got home. Perhaps I just need an apron ;)

The reason for this post is that shopping and wardrobe issues are in many ways the litmus test for how well things are going in my trajectory-laden world. Many people (men in particular) might not even realize the test is happening, especially when sitting in the chair of doom. Women and other people aware of the phenomenon might appreciate this post just as an anecdotal story. Personally, if I were to divide up the world in terms of: what are my tools for a more grounded life, a good wardrobe has much of the pie chart. Fashion victim no more!

* Sidebar: I don't recommend people starting their own business if they are concerned about their weight. The only thing that will lose weight is your wallet. Once you're there, however, ("there" being at an especially high number in terms of weight that you'd rather not talk about), there is a curious relationship you have with packaging your body into clothing for the day. You're looking for guidance, and you will find it in people who say "you can look great at any size." This is a temporary placation only. This is like saying you can support the troops while not supporting the war. I wonder how the troops feel about having this kind of qualified, marginalized "support?" It doesn't sound like support to me. The lack of support cannot be negotiated away from the equation. What if a customer told you "Gosh, I love the idea behind (product name here), and support what you all are doing, but it's Microsoft, so I'll wait until someone else comes out with a similar product." This is hypocrisy and unfair. Granted when people say that you can look great at any size, they are merely encouraging you to not give up and wear sweatpants all day. This is good advice, no matter how hypocritical. But the troops deserve the whole package. Girls like me are shopping with every bite they put into their mouths. Just like every product helps to define who Microsoft is from the ground up. Just like every soldier is collectively "the war." Giving up these contradictions, for me, is a big down payment on making peace with the world.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 09:00 AM | Permalink

Tyranny of E-mail

P.S. Here's a completely contrasting set of advice. Or is it? Discuss.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:20 PM | Permalink

A couple of things floated my way today from Dave Winer.

1) Nothing will make me want to dig deeper than a post like this in my newsreader:

This is an idea that suddenly made me think the Red Couch book will fly. (This too.) What's more rewarding to read about than a hint of scandal, even when it proves to be completely under control?

Strikethroughs are the bcc of blogging. Or, perhaps it's more like e-mail retract. You only do it if you want to call undue attention to the item you're "correcting." It lets you, the author, off the hook for your mistake because after all, you corrected it, in the most high profile and curiosity inducing way possible.

2) I can hear it now, about how half of the population is genetically indisposed to be interested in Martha, how they will always see her as equivalent to the coverage about her, and are perfectly willing to harbor her disdain because her goals are so completely irrelevant to the world of RFC proposals, IEEE, or whatever time consuming technical pseudo-governmental body poses for relevant these days. What are her goals, you might ask? No, it's not worth going into. A lot of people in technology don't realize that unless you make peace with the Marthas and the Oprahs of the world - and there aren't that many - your work will languish as cottage industry advertising in the back of MAKE magazine 10 years from now. Unfortunately making peace with them also involves making peace with their coverage.

Okay, one small blurb about Martha. She champions excellence. She wants it to occur to you that you can do this ordinary thing in an extraordinary way. She wants you to feel the pleasure from doing that thing well, for the only customers that matter: your friends and family and anyone else you bring into your home. About Oprah, her main thing is ratings of course, but underneath it all she wants you to live your best life. This means self-awareness, cutting the cruft, and taking action. I find it ironic that in the world of Technorati we talk a lot about our customers, and excellence, and cutting cruft and getting things done. We should see these people as on our side. I just had to give them one paragraph.

If you are involved with an emerging technology that's customer facing, and you haven't made peace with the lifestyle gurus, you will have to change your tune. What would it take to get a blogger on either show, talking about how to get started? Anyone catch the scrapbooking trend, and notice how similar it is to blogging, except for perhaps the nice pyramid business model that comes with scrapbooking? (wait a minute... blogads... ) The only reason scrapbooking is hot, for that crowd, and blogging is not, is that the lifestyle gurus are not on technologist's radar screen of relevancy. My point in bringing this up is, perhaps we should change our default response to one of respect.

(Of course you can still resent their media coverage, fine with me on that. Just don't forget the other part.)

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 05:14 AM | Permalink

This is one of those days when everything is stretched to the limit. I know it's not the actual circumstances involved, but my reaction to them, that is hard to take, but wouldn't it be nice if the circumstances went away? For example, I have to fire someone (not work related), I have to be late on some bills, I have to call the IRS and talk them out of auditing me. I have to come in on Sunday to make up for hours I couldn't stick around for this week. We're thinking about shooting the moon and living in our whole house like civilized people, but mostly because renting is so torturous. Access is melting my brain, with its query based forms that won't query each other. I have to argue with someone random about money over e-mail. These things are neither important or interesting but part of what it means to be responsible. I have an urge to buy age-inappropriate clothing. I pull up my newsreader and it fuels even more doldrums from my unfortunately memorable past. Obviously, it's not you guys, it's me.

The interesting thing is how close a few major things are in my life to wrapping up. It's possible that the thing that has framed my home life (the house) is closing its final dramatic chapter. And I have a secret to tell you, the thing that has framed my working life is also closing a chapter. Of course it's closing. I rolled the boulder as far up the mountain as I could by myself, and there was someone else with a boulder at the top already. Remember "As Good as It Gets" where Helen Hunt's son gets better. Someone says to her "Time to do something else with yourself." Doesn't matter if it's closure that I want or not. Sometimes the familiar problems seem like friendlier problems, no matter how evil or impossible. Honestly I'm not sure how to live without two or three BIG CHALLENGES duking it out for my attention. Perhaps for a little while there will be a space of time where a call to the IRS is my biggest concern.

Sorry this is so oblique. I'd live to write something witty and informative about being a solutions provider today. Instead, you get oblique. Happiness reverse-engineered? Perhaps happiness undercooked. Looking forward to the next chapter.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:48 PM | Permalink

Found by way of "faster pussycat... type"

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

This feeds directly into Heather's theory that job candidates are perhaps not the best at self selection when it comes to picking out the job they are most qualified for / likely to get.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:19 AM | Permalink