Bill Gates' Silhouette in Outlook 2010?

Dorky Observation of the Day: I think the default silhouette in the Outlook 2010 people pane is based on Bill Gates mug shot from the 70's. Where do I collect my prize for being the first one to notice this?

Stupid Career Tricks

So I had a job interview the other day. I felt like it went well, but I didn't hear anything within 5 business days, so I called to leave a message with the hiring manager. Problem is, I apparently didn't get his name right during the interview. Somehow, I managed to come away thinking he was "Bill Jones".

So I call and ask to leave a message with "Bill Jones" (who, apparently is an employee with said company) and was put through to his voice mail. I leave a nice VM thanking him for the interview and expressing interest in moving forward in the process. Then today, I get an email from the HR person who lets me know that she'll be meeting with "Bob" later this week to determine next steps. Nice way to shoot yourself in the foot, huh?

Very Interesting Interview with the Author of The Political Gene

Turn so many phrases they call me the Lathe

Dehumanization

I just read the abstract for an upcoming talk at work. One line spoke of the "vision of establishing and running a virtual business, a business in which most or all of its business functions are outsourced to online services". Wow! The complete commoditization and abstraction of human labor is at hand. Isn't that grand!

Others at my place of employment are working on everything from building nanoscale sensors that can be deployed anywhere and everywhere on the planet to the data extraction and analytics algorithms that will be necessary to process and act on - in realtime the terabyte streams of data those trillions of sensors will produce. I'm sure they'll put those to use in good, non-surveillance-type applications!

Maybe my "John Henry and the Steam Hammer" allusions are too much, and maybe "1984" had more impact on my thinking than it should have, but I can't help feel that I'm witnessing - and in my own small way, contributing to - the undoing of civilization, if not humanity.

How did I get so damn vested in such a system? How do I break free without becoming some dirt-eating hippie?

Man, Was I Feeling Emo When I Wrote This, or What?

I wrote this a little over 5 years ago:

A big aching crater
A bunker of despair

To know that it's my own
for no one else to share

A bleeding ulceration
A gash through soul and flesh

To know that it's my own
And is forever fresh

Everyone is hurting
as they twist the knife

Everyone is grasping
for a slice of life

It's my own creation
indeed of my design

To know that it's my own
this cancer of the mind

Deep and dank and lonely
The demon lurks within

To know that its my own
the consequence of sin

Everyone is hurting
as they twist the knife

Everyone is grasping
for a slice of life

Next Wave

Global labor arbitrage - finding ever cheaper sources of labor - has made a tremendous impact on the bottom lines of Fortune 500 companies, US workers, and workers in emerging markets with benefits coming to the first and last largely at the expense of the middle. (I know, Americans got cheap stuff to buy at Walmart as a result, but hey, when you factor in that they were mortgaging their homes to buy that crap, it doesn't look like such a great deal, huh?).

Anyway, the cigar chompers are running out of cheap (or rather, cheaper) labor sources, so what's the next stop in the drive to eliminate labor? (And don't kid yourself by thinking a) senior executives don't want to do just that or b) I'm 'white collar', not ~shudder!~ labor. They do and you are - unless you've got a 'nut' that wouldn't be exhausted by you or your children, even if you never worked another day in your life). The next stop is Automation. Why pay Indians or Bulgarians or Costa Ricans to run your data center when you can have the systems run themselves? Why pay analysts in the EU and the US to munge business processes and design improved systems when you can automatically capture and analyse user interactions with business apps and programatically generate design improvements? And once you know enough to improve a process and its supporting systems *automatically*, you can certainly begin to reduce the number of people it takes to actually *run* those processes while simultaneously improving output.

I'm talking about a John Henry and the Steam Hammer scenario here, but on a global scale. Only this time it will be massive declines in the demand for 'skilled' labor (though I wouldn't have told John Henry to his face that he was "unskilled"). And not just in the US, but globally. Factor in that a large percentage of the people who are displaced by either labor arbitrage or automation will no longer be "good consumers", and the pressure to improve the bottom line as the top line falls only increases.

All of this is going to have a tremendous impact on social and political stability, around the globe. Unemployed people are restless people. Are fearful people. And are often all-to-malleable in their thoughts and consequent actions.

Just sayin'.

More Learnings...

As I reflect on my last position, here are some things I would do differently:

1. Don't let a desire for perfection kill your project schedules. Most of the time 80% is good enough, at least for a first release.
2. Make sure service standards exceed expectations, but not by much. Pouring effort into providing a level of service that is unappreciated keeps you from aggressively pursuing new opportunities.
3. Remember that fear is a poor long-term business driver. Said another way, being overly afraid of layoffs or budget cuts is a sure way to incur both.
4. You can only do what you can do.

Are you kidding me?

This is an absolute nightmare. Think about it. The Chinese gov't holds something like $1T in US treasuries. Once inflation sets in and they begin dumping US $, do we really want them to be able to exchange their $ for a fast track to US citizenship? $1T would buy 2 Million EB-5 visas! Moreover, I saw nothing in this that would prevent the EB-5 visa holder from employing H1B Visa holders to meet the employment criteria. Not hard to imagine several hundred thousand new citizens being created through this process.

Madden said winning is the best deodorant, but clearly it's money. This stinks to high heaven, but will undoubtedly be defended as "good for the economy". Since when did money become the sole arbiter of all we value? Frightening.

Casting Down Idols

Things that are hindering my walk with God:

Love of comfort
Love of pleasure
Love of others' esteem
Pride

Noli nothi permittere te terere

'Nuff said.

More lessons being learned...

3. Genuine praise is a priceless motivation tool.

My QOTD

Google'd this and couldn't find it, so I hereby lay claim to coining the following phrase:

"Successful organizations start with people, and end with management."

Pun *intended*. :)

Things I Think God is Teaching Me Right Now

1. He can be trusted to provide for me and my loved ones; I cannot.
2. He is the source of joy and peace; my circumstances are not.

Christian Pole Positions

1. Cloaking a judgemental spirit in the guise of concern for God's holiness.
2. Turning a blind eye to sin for the purpose of being loving.

In my experience, almost all Christians will naturally fall into one of the two above camps. But the two greatest commandments help us in our battle against these nature tendencies.

Loving our neighbor restrains our judgemental attitudes and creates a desire to extend grace, while love of God reminds us how he has loved and forgiven us.

Likewise, if we love our neighbor, we will certainly not, by our silence, implicitly call the evil they are doing "good" and thereby encourage them to incur more judgement from God (and yeah, God is gonna judge you - even those of us who he won't ultimately condemn). And of course, loving God creates a humble zeal for his holiness.

Authenticity

Authenticity is touted greatly these days, even (or especially) in Christian circles. I wonder if the folks doing the touting know of this word's history within existentialist thought? I also wonder if Christians are confused about the meaning of the term and just simply think of it as a synonym for sincerity, which *is* a Christian virtue?

Random House defines sincere as "free of deceit, hypocrisy, or falseness; earnest". But authenticity is defined as "not false or copied; genuine; real". While the absence of falseness is common to the meaning of both words, I think there's a subtle but important difference between the two. Sincerity implies moral conformity, e.g. "I am sincere in making this statement". Authenticity connotes "I am what I am portraying."

To which I say, "What if you're an authentic Jerk?"

Happiness and Joy

I could be wrong, but it occurs to me that happiness is the intersection of positive expectation and actual experience, while joy is the submission of all expectation to Ultimate reality.

Thoughts Shared with Market Research Firm

One of the market research firms that covers the information industry (OK, the only one that does) sent out a pricing survey today and, among other things, asked for what an ideal content license/contract might look like. Here were some of my thoughts:

1) Content clearly priced per unit (e.g. per full text document) for easy comparison to other vendors and providers.

2) Volume discounts increasing in logical increments until "enterprise" access - i.e. unlimited across an organization - is reached.

3) No "evergreen" contracts designed to "trick" customers into renewing.

4) Clear, yet unobtrusive watermarking of every fulltext download with the following information:

"'Vendor/Platform Name' Content Provided by 'Sponsoring Library's Name'. Licensed for use by 'User Name' of 'Org Name' on 'Date'. Distribution to non-licensed individuals prohibited by law. Your colleagues may access a licensed copy of this document at 'OpenURL Link to Document'.

This would a) Help eliminate copyright and licensing violations related to electronic subscriptions, b) Remind executive sponsors and consumers of content that it isn't 'free', c) Reduce the need for vendors to hedge their positions by baking-in 'X' amount of unauthorized usage into their pricing models, d) Eliminate the need for expensive DRM schemes which frustrate sponsors and content consumers.

Certainly not an exhaustive list, but I think these changes would make a big difference...

Coining a Phrase: WOflation

I think I'm the first to coin this phrase: WOflation. The hyper-inflation brought about by the economic policies of Bush - "W" - and Obama -"O". It hasn't hit, but it will.

Getting Old

I don't like it. Just kidding. It's fine. But sometimes I just feel old and rusty...

Really? Duh!

:Begin Rant

The only thing that's more upsetting than the fact that it took all of us as American citizens so long to figure this out, is that our leaders still haven't. (Or they have and they simply don't care.)
Our enemies (and they don't have nuclear weapons and armies because they think those things are neat) are into us for $13 Trillion. And that's not counting commercial paper and consumer debt.

End Rant:

Couldn't have said it better myself

The link is to an excellent flickr post. I don't think the author is anti-Obama, but he is pro free-thought.

I want to say that I am truly happy that America can elect the son of an immigrant to be President. And a black immigrant no less. Prejudice has been a blight on mankind and on this nation, and I am hopeful that Obama's election marks a true milestone in the healing of racial divides in this country.

And I am praying for our new President. Literally. But I'm also a bit fearful.

Fearful of the blindly fervent support Obama has received and the free pass he's been given by the press.

Fearful that just as in the days following September 11, when we allowed our leaders to rush through the Patriot Act, which had far reaching implications on our political rights - and was subject to little to no debate - we are allowing our leaders to rush through an 'economic stimulus' package that will have far reaching implications on our economic rights.

Fearful that the citizens of America literally see Obama as a savior and as such are unwilling to think critically about his policies.

Fearful that we as a people are so addicted to personal comfort and retaining a sense of "security" - physical, emotional, financial - at all costs that we're willing to believe whatever lies we're fed as long as they contain the promise of security and comfort.

Fearful that we are so divorced from virtue as a concept that pleasure is our only modis operandi; that we have become little more than animals seeking instant gratification of our base impulses.