Jamming with High School Friends You Never Thought You had

Today seems like a good day to be thankful for the wonderful times we've all had on FaceBook and especially last Sunday's Jam Session at Alan and Alouise' house- well before it sinks into the next flood.

Rich East High School's Classes of 1971-1975 are pretty much all up on FaceBook... probably because we're too cheap to buy classmates.com accounts.

Since graduating in 1973, I've learned to play a couple of chords on a guitar. I took two whole lessons going up and down the top top four frets and matching those tones to itty-bitty 'notes' on a sheet of paper.

After dumping the 'loaner' with action (space between the bottom of the string and the top of the particle wood fretboard) of about 14 inches or so, with Epiphone's version of a Gibson J-2000,  my sister (who was a whiz) introduced me to 'chords' and you could actually play songs with 'em. Why, oh why, do we introduce people to guitars with #60 strings and action that rips the tips off your fingers?

I got me a dreadnought size to drown my voice out. At 18, I didn't think I could sing. After finding out about his cool thing called 'keys' it turns out my adenoidal bellowings weren't too bad. But that was far in the future when my better half, with exasperation in her voice, told me to hum the song against the chords and then change the capo position.

Jeez.

I'd been playing rhythm in a couple of folk ensembles for a few years and found that, pretty much, every guy in the Class of '73 did the same thing I did to find girls...learn three chords and buy yerself a capo to raise or lower the pitch. They continued practicing and learning from the folk-rock songs to which we were listening in the 70s.

They kept telling me they were horrible players.

I believed them.

So I suggested a jam session. Lots of flurrying around, excited talk and plansd akin to the Manhattan Project floated around FaceBook for about a month. I figured I'd blow the room away.

Wrong.

These guys were good. And while we had, let's see, Drama, Speech, Industrial Arts, Radio Station, Speech Team, Newspaper and a couple of niches even I wasn't aware of were represented and all the barriers of school were gone. Pffts
.
I wrote a blog on FaceBook about a year about how high school is a troubled time for many (OK, all of us) and what stunned me (and continues to do so even today) is how great these people are and I missed all of it between 1969 and 1973. Blinders and much too concerned with being vulnerable protecting myself.

• Chip was kicking ass on his 12 string- playing so quietly I couldn't believe it was a 12 string. Who knew?
• Dave turns out to live a bike ride from my house...just like when we were kids. I plan on doing just that and inviting him over to my house. After cleaning. He'll be waiting a while.He's killer mean when playing in A or E. Seriously. When we played Gloria he was all over it like a bad suite. I also had an opportunity to put the Fourth Grade Fish Tank and Freshman QSL Issues to rest, for which I'm mighty grateful. I did in a crowd so he wouldn't hit me. Turns out, he's too much a gentleman. He just let the air out of my tires. I'll be here all week- remember to tip your waitress.
• Steve- I heard him before (in my basement) and he plays a very tasty acoustic guitar- he even brought a resonator guitar, which was trey kewl. He is so good, he hit all the fills in Poncho and Lefty exactly like my band's lead player does...almost to the note. And he bitched I was using barre chords. How can you not like someone like that?
  
• Alan- all over Cat Stevens...I mean ALL OVER some of our favorite tunes from the 70s...and his Jimmy Page riffs were dead on. Wonderful Host. Five Stars.
  
• Tom- Alan's brother and closer to my music (folk, old timey, acoustic blues sort of stuff) is as good on his music as his brother. Banging on his guitar, my foot. Cool songs, very cool songs and great taste. He's a member of the Old Towne School, so how could he not?
  
• Mimi- Wow. Just Wow. Her significant other seems like a good guy as well.
• Sheree- just as pretty and intelligent and delightful as in school. One of the women my radar said 'totally, absolutely way above your station in life.' Never partied with her or Mimi- and that's just enough of a rationale to kick myself.
• Alouise- a delight for not only letting is use her basement, but to have around the party without a single sarcastic chuckle. Alan picked good.
• Peggy- A SAINT- who the hell could have put up with me for 34 years? And a crack percussionist. Definitely out of my class. No, not High School.

Funny how your early mind games come up to kick you in the ass in Middle Age.

We missed a few folks and the short notice left out some folks who might otherwise have shown. We won't make that same mistake- because there will be a next time.

Team Clock

I've got a friend from high school. Steve Ritter is his name.

He came over to my house a while back for a guitar jam and blew out the room. Haven't heard hide nor hair from him since. I don't think the rest of us were all that bad...

Now, in the wake of his "I don't usually play acoustic" (he has a $2500 Martin, I'm not stupid, Steve, just tome deaf) and doing electric riffs on heavy acoustic strings- the only thing I had going for me was my writing skill. I knew I was a better writer than he is. Had to be. He was in the plays while I was on the newspaper, yearbook and radio station.

Steve tells me he wrote a book, could I review it?

Sure- just had unemployment (ethics requires me to purchase stuff I review, especially from a friend) and getting used to a new job  kinda delayed it.

Here goes:

Turns out the SOB is also a better writer than me.

Bastard.

Now I have no reason to live.

Seriously, though, Steve's book is titled Team Clock: A Guide to Breakthrough Teams.

Steve took the old group communication model (he uses the psychological version, which is the same goofy storming and norming, etc.). But Steve made almost the same leap Maslow (you remember- 'self actualized' and 'hierarchy of needs') made in the 1950s.

Team Building (communication) is a continuum, not like the seven steps for grieving.  Ritter uses the face of a clock for his model... and the walks you all through the complete life cycle of a team. Any kind of team.

If you are a Project Manager, a Scrum Master, a Portfolio Manager, a Business Analyst or an Architect/Lead Developer, go buy this book.

All that PMI crap about inputs and outputs are nothing compared to what Steve's accomplished in 88 pages. And you don't have to memorize a thing.


There are direct application (pun intended) for software development teams.

Those just getting organized.

Those ready to take the plunge into Agile methods.

Those who's lead developer is now working for Google and pretty much everybody on the team thinks it's great, but why did she get the job and not me?

Oh, sure, if you need some help, the Team Clock Institute is standing by with operators waiting to take your call. i think they take American Express. And, yeah, if Steve and his colleagues are half as successful with your issues as he's been with those who confirmed his theories, you're going to wish you called him a long time ago.

But if you want to know (you PMs and BAs need to know this stuff a heckuva lot more than memorizing that certification drivel) how to motivate and manage your team. This book will explain. If you can help push your team out of the comfort zone into unknown or untried region- Steve has an outline and an example for you.

It's not a How To book. Steve wrote a Think About This Way book.

If my team was having major issues or I couldn't deduce what the problem was, I feel confident Steve and his team would find me an answer and a method of 'fixing it' or at least understanding it.

Team Clock is not a panacea. In fact, Steve mentions that there are times team members have to leave. But unlike goofy management books like The One Minute Manager, Ritter wrote a book that I can use as a team member and a team manager for years. Not many $20 investments can say the same.

Now that's out of the way:

Steve:

1. When did you become such jock?
2. You're killing me with three syllable words- there are perfectly good single syllable words, amigo: it's u-s-e, not utilize and t-i-t-l-e, not entitle (entitle means having a right to something). There are a couple others.
3. I'm just yanking your chain- you did a fabulous job. Very little psycho-babble and right to the point.

Now. How do I sweet talk him into our band?

What I'm doing on my Summer Vacation

I had a couple of minutes last week, so I looked in the enterprise phone book. This is like Googling yourself. It turns out my new employer....er...client thinks I'm an Architect/Designer.

The boss says she doesn't have a problem with that because a. I can do and b. I pretty much am doing it, as a sort of junior- deputy-assistant, associate Architect. That means I have no clue about process, people or things. But I'm learning.

Anyway, I wanted to know what the heck an IT Architect does since I thought it was like a super Team Lead- the kind of person who lives and breathes data layers, web services and other tools we BAs usually nod at like we understand what they're saying. I figure as long as they draw the graphics, they can call that stuff anything they want.

It turns out, I was close- especially on the technical end. But it turns out it's more of a blend of skills and knowledge:

Architecture is a business in which technical knowledge, management, and an understanding of business are as important as design.- wikipedia

Designer? Yeah. I'm not a full fledged Information Architect, oooops! An Information Architect at my client's site is a regular old software architect, not a trained designer and requirements gatherer. Actually, that's the group I'm in.

Anyway.

I'm not a full-fledged web-designer-user experience specialist, but I play one on television.  Everyone other than my boss thinks it's amazing I have more than one skill set. Muahahahahaha.

So, I'm writing and drawing, drawing and writing. We came up with the concept in the first couple of weeks and are now making the case for Knowledge Management. Oops. Sorry. Knowledge Sharing.

You have any idea how cool it is working for a place that could care less what titles and functions mean on the outside? It's confusing as hell. But its pretty cool.

Big and Small

Well, it's been about a month.

I'm reminded constantly that I'm working at a big....large...um...HUGE company and the stuff I learned at the fast-agile firms in recent times ain't gonna cut it.

The saving grace is that I have the time to anticipate, to talk, to work things out with the really smart people I work with. And that's not a bad trade off.

Yeah, it sucks having your laptop locked down. It's worse using Internet Explorer 6 and Office 2003. But I'm beginning to understand why.

This company has about a gajillion (that's 1x10+3 higher than a bazillion) laptops and PCs out in the offices. I remember one agent's kid putting a Golf on his Agency PC. The kid didn't install it correctly and Dad's PC was toast. Of course, it was the IT department's fault.

So, a little sweet talk, a few sentences about how technical my gig is and a superb boss, I got local admin rights to the laptop, M/S Project, IE 8 and Snag It installed. OK. They gave me Snag IT Release 8 and Techsmith just released version 10- but 8 still has that great little image editor- which means I don't have to ask for PhotoShop.

I've been relying on the "people skills" I learned as a Parachuting Business Analyst (drop in for a few weeks and off to the next project). Yes, I should have learned these skills years ago- but a radio news guy is supposed to be a curmudgeon.

So, I've been listening carefully, holding off riffing with my strange, yet obscure sense of humor; until I know you very well- and even then I'm careful about my jokes. It's hard, but it beats getting fired. And it seems to be working pretty well.

I'm also trying really, really hard not to interrupt someone when they're speaking. Then I went to a status meeting of the Enterprise Architects. There wasn't a topic that didn't result in at least one interruption- except when the Director spoke. Hmmm. Kinda funny, no?

I'm using the extra time to extrapolate requirements and high level designs for what could be a terrific Capture/Store/Disseminate system based on existing, every day tools with a little bit of extra horsepower. If this goes the way I'm thinking it will, the only real issues we're going to have are cultural. But we're on top of that, too.

I'll ask the boss what's proprietary and what I can talk about as we go through the process. I'll letcha know.

I really like this gig- and I've been there for about a month.

Enterprise Architecture: Lincoln Logs for IT Folks

It's been a couple of weeks and everything seems to be going well.

I'm working with an Enterprise Architect. As a sort of junior architect. The boss calls me a Knowledge Management Specialist since we're working on cool stuff like search engines, wikis, knowledge capture and knowledge dissemination. The gig's pretty high in the food chain, but I haven't stepped on my di....um....made a major mistake yet. 

Relax. I didn't know what Enterprise Architecture was, either. And no, you don't get to design and build large companies in an artistic way.

It turns out, Enterprise Architects are like BAs, but on steroids.

They ask the questions when someone in a large organization wants to add, improve, replace or remove something. The architect makes sure the IT organization's standards are imposed on new projects at conception. The architect thinks and plans how new technologies will or will not fit and how to scale applications into usable tools. The architect makes sure the data is sourced and accurate (Oracle and SAP anyone?). And that everything is properly licensed, copyrighted and implemented.

The architects shepard projects through the minefield of IT Governance (that's big time talk for who's in charge of the 'puters).  After the Architects get the major questions answered, they 'architect' the project. How does it fit into the mix of applications? Where should the database go? What kind of data base should the application use? How do we get the data from point A to point B. Document it. You get the idea.

There are Data Architects, Information Architects, Application Architects and Content Architects. There are probably other Architectural Types I haven't met yet.

The big difference between an Enterprise Architect and a Business Analyst is that as a BA, I was only worried about my project and how my team got its stuff done. This is as it should be.

But suppose the organization has 60-100 project going at any one time and a third of the BAs are like me? You know, Pragmatic and Focused so my boss looks good. Everyone would be pushing his or her project or portfolio. A mess. A chocolate mess (to those younger than Boomer age, that's how M and M Mars used to advertise M&M candy).

On this side of the Project Management Office, we're looking at how these projects support IT plans, objectives and how they fit into the mix of stuff already available. We got that information from the business. Because the business pays our salaries. And we like our salaries. The words 'align' and 'alignment' are used a lot. Align means do it the way the business needs it done to impact the bottom line, not the way you think it should be done.

So the boss wound up the key sticking out of my back (you know, where the recruiter and HR knives went in?) and set me onto five projects. Knowledge Management Projects (I feel like Bill Murray's character in Stripes when the General asks him what kind of training his platoon completed). Short leash (heck, it's only been a couple of weeks) but fun as all get out.

I'm drawing diagrams in VISIO, I'm writing up Business Rules. I'm creating project plans in Excel (having taken the Project course this spring, I'm sticking with Excel until I have to turn out a plan in Project- there's so much crap in that program you never use, it's results are counter intuitive and you can't adjust the defaults- and don't get me started on task numbering!) and having a lot of fun talking to Subject Matter Experts and Stakeholders.

See, I did a lot of KM back in the day. Much of that stuff had to be created custom in the 90s because, at best, folks were collaborating on NetMeeting. Word Docs and Spreadsheets floats around the world. We didn't know from WebEx, GoogleTools, Open Office, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Tweeting, Twisting or Twining.

That's changed. And it's an exciting change. And that's what we're gonna see: How Scot adapts to the Enterprise View and Knowledge Management 2010.

Tune in again, friends. Same Bat Channel. Same Bat time! (for the younger than Boomers out there- that's how the TV Series, Batman, used to sign off on ABC. Jeez, doesn't it suck to have a joke explained?)

Job Hunting Lessons Learned

OK, last job search rant-- I start a new gig on Monday, Finally.

Here's what I learned:

• I need to be comfortable with my resume. Changing job titles or 'punching up' qualifications is dishonest. Screw the recruiter who wants this done.

• Recruiting 'experts' tell you your resume should be one page, no more than two pages, well, you can go to three if you're really qualified but you really need the last ten years. Screw that. I'm a consultant. I do different stuff on different projects. Even edited to the bone my resume takes five pages. My vitae is around 30. Could I edit it? Well, sure. But these HR software programs are looking for keywords and no one knows what those key words are. New resume for each job. Yeah, right.
  

• Each recruiter has the same wind-up and pitch. The good ones are laughing while they do it. There are very few good ones.

• I have never, ever, gotten a job from a downtown Chicago recruiter. Every time they demand I show up, I've wasted gas or train fare and/or parking money- around $40. And you are never reimbursed for it. When you're getting all of $314 per week for unemployment compensation, that takes a lot of nerve. From now on, I'm going to invoice them for my time and cost of travel next time.

• If the hiring manager pauses slightly after you ask about next steps and says "Our process is a little cumbersome...." Hang Up. Immediately.

• Don't get old in a job that pays more than $75K/year- Ageism, it's real.

• Don't be real good in the job you had that paid more than $75K. It means no one will consider you for a lesser gig...anyone see a Catch 22 here?

• A lot of HR people are flakes. Seriously. I think most of them are Psychology Majors.
  

• A lot of hiring managers are worse than their HR staff (see above). I think these people are at the other end of the spectrum: Dilbert.
  

• Does anyone else see the logical flaws in these massive meetings of 'networkers?' Why would I network with people who don't have a job? And am I the only one who feels silly about 'power networking?'
  

I've been told its because they may know something I don't.

Whaaaa?

You're telling me an electrical engineer is going to know when a software development firm is going to hire a BA?

Right.

I'm only going to network with people I really know.

One guy who tracked me down on LinkedIn aid he wanted my input on something and then spent an hour and a half on the phone with me. In boring detail, he told me how to get a job. It was such a good system that he had not only been out of work longer than me, he refused to introduce me to one of his contacts when I actually tried it.

Networking is phony, counterproductive, a waste of time> Worse, it gives you the illusion of actually doing something. Stick with people you actually know.

• The job boards are pretty much populated by body shops. 
• Be careful of what you put on your Dice, Monster or LinkedIn profiles. The bodyshops, like HR software, have no ability discern nuance. I get a lot of matches for an IBM network tool called Tivoli. When I was with OCE-USA, we used a help desk software package called Expert Support. IBM bought the company that made it and put it into the Tivoli product line. Yes, my resume says Tivoli Expert Support.

They also can't read. I still get 'requirements' (when did a job become a requirement? When I became a number instead of a person?) for San Diego, New Jersey, Texas, etc. They want a BA for $25/hour for four years. When I reply and ask them to remove me from their listss, they started getting snippy in the last couple of months. "Well, your resume is on Monster,' or 'But your profile on Dice says...' Yes. It is. It also says I won't relocate...much less do it for $15/hour for a two month contract. What were you thinking?

 Do you know how many times I was called by the same firm for the same job from the same LinkedIn, Monster or Dice Profile? One job resulted in 57 phone calls over two days. Of those, 12 were repeats from four different recruiting forms. And I was already in their systems but they never looked. Can you imagine how much unused horsepower is in those databases? And I actually got into the finals for the gig. And I was into it until the hiring manager told me she wasn't sure if he'd promote from within or take somebody from the outside. And the job is a technical support role, not what I advertised(for a BA). I'm till waiting to hear from her. Not.

• There's a new business model out there- job sites are getting 'exclusive' listings and want cash money to let you see them. Some of them have free 'memberships' with 'basic' responses (JobFox, Ladders) and have unusually bad interfaces (JobFox- if the site has identified more than a couple of jobs for you, you're gonna be on line for a looooong time. And why is it I found more roles searching on aggregators than on the 'profile' on JobFox?).

• And what's the deal with the date resets, Dice? CareerBuilder? When you reset dates, a lot of us think there are new listings, when in fact, you're wasting our time. Stop it.

• Monster- didja have to go to flash? Taking a screen shot with EverNote is now impossible. And the log in i a pain in the neck. Stop it.
  

• The only good way I see of hiring anyone is to get a prospect vetted by an upper level whatever (BA, PM, Developer, Architect, etc.) and then either test the candidate or let me demonstrate what I can do for you. No one did that. I've had phone screens with development leads, Project Managers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, president, HR generalists and 'other team members.' I'm sorry. Once or twice I had a BA interview.
  

The answers are:

Hidden Requirements you never seem to be able to track down. Someone in Detroit has all of them neatly typewritten and three days before you're off the project he says, "oh, didja want that?'(Question: What's the hardest thing facing a BA?)

A simple abstraction of the process- in a step action table, it includes at least one identified Actor (human or system) with a quantifiable goal. The title should be Verb-Predicate with a unique number from a consistent naming convention. Oh yeah- success and failure states would be nice with an overview and context explanation. You also need at least one color graphic for the managers). NOTE:  Nobody ever reads it. (Question: What' a Use Case)

A quantifiable , 3-4 sentence abstract feature description with tests to determine if the feature is complete and is used to start the discussion between the developer and the end user. Can be placed on a 4x6 Card (Note: seems the Agile Book Authors have asked the Commissioner and 4 x 6 is the official card size) or on a wiki page. (Question: What is a User Story?)

An unidentified, highly educated and emotional visionary whose ideas kept coming and coming and coming. I shunted the visionary into a wiki Blog to capture the ideas and put them in the backlog and explained the process and why we had to concentrate on this small part of the project now so the business requirements would be met (Who was your worse client and how did you handle it?)

So how did I get my new job? I didn't. A close friend had a major project dumped on her at the right time, which allowed her to hire me for the third time. Not really kismet- someone who knows me, knows what I can do for her and her company (actually, my client company, now) on what I expect to be a major enterprise project.

Can't wait.

OK, let's get back to work and Analyzing Business! 

Ubuntu Test Drives

Well, I've had more than week to play with Ubuntu 10.04 and I think it's great. There are a few rocks out there, but overall, it's rock stable, feature rich and totally customizable.

Here's the good:

• Ubuntu, the Open Source Community and a few business have pretty much every application you want. For free. With source code. With the ability to contact developers easily to suggest improvements and features. In other words, Screw the Ribbon. Open Office has everything you need, fer free, there's one exception which I'll discuss in the Disadvantages list.
• It doesn't slow down.
  
• You can blow off PhotoShop. The Open Source Gimp photo 'manipulator' and Open Office's Draw Program pretty much have all the features of PhotoShop and Correl Draw for vector and raster graphics files.
• I've only seen one blue screen and it was my fault.
  
• Much as I love Winamp, Rhythmbox pretty much beats it in every feature.
• I can do without the Outlook replacement Evolution (fingers crossed) because, while it does everything Outlook does. I'm used to and like Thunderbird and its Lightning Add-In, I don't like the way Evolution' calendar works and I like having separated InBoxes for my e-mail accounts. This is obviously a matter of preference.
• There are so few of us using it right now (comparatively speaking) that the evil forces of Virii and Malware pretty much don't care about us. Hence- while you should still run an Anti-Virus Program and software firewall (both free, of course), there's not much out there to hurt your 'puter.
  
• You don't need Snag It. There are a couple of screen grabbers (free) that work very well.
• Ubuntu comes with Open Source versions of Disk Burners, E-mail client. IM client (that will handle all of your IM accounts in a single screeen), FireFox (Linux Version- slightly different), a video editor, video viewer, print manager... yuddah, yuddah. In short, you can get started right after the installation is complete with new, free tools that work as well, if not better than Windows tools and applications.
  
• It doesn't crash.
• There are three ways to download and install software. Two are very easy. One isn't. So use the Ubuntu Software Center or Synetics Package Manager to handle this for you.
• It doesn't crash.
  
• Wireless not only worked right of the box, the client actually knew what security my system has and just asked for the password.
• It doesn't crash.
• If you have a smarphone, the makers of Ubuntu have a new service called Ubuntu One (actually it came out with release 9.04, but I had no idea what it was).... a combination Boxnet.net (i.e. secure cloud file space) and activesynch (for Windows Mobile) on Mozilla's Thunderbird. If you use the built-in email client called Evolution which synchs right out of the box. I don't like its calendar since I'm used to Lightning o the $10 a month for the synch service and 50 Gb of free cloud space is a good deal. You get 2 Gb for free.
• It doesn't crash.
• It will integrate all your social media- including Instant Messaging, Web Services and e-mail in a superb user interface.
• Ir doesn't crash

Now there are some minor issues, nits, really:

• Once I paid my first ten bucks to Ubuntu One, they took down the synch to Windows Mobile option. Arrrrgh.
• While I can install Microsoft VISIO using the WINE application, and it will launch. It craps out very easily and consistently. Yes, I have a certified copy. I couldn't open a 2003 VISIO document and had to make due with creating a bunch of boxes in Draw. It worked, but was a pain. I use VISIO a lot, so I guess my next employer is going to have to gimme a laptop with Windows on it.
• Do NOT put your media files on an external drive and have that drive unavailable when you launch Rhythmbox. It indexes media files on initiation and  it has to re-index when you get your external drive up. You're supposed to be able to put media files up on your Ubuntu Cloud share, but I haven't had time to check that out yet.
• The documentation (web-based) is fine for very unsophisticated users and walk them through simple processes and procedures. You really gotta dig for answers on the community wiki or other websites if you have something more complicated than installing a software package from Ubuntu Software Center. I spent a half hour finding out what to do with a *.bin file containing a program I wanted. It was a simple answer (you right click on it, change the properties by adding 'execute' permission and taking out 'read only' permission and then double click it or right click again and select EXECUTE).

Would I install it on my mother's machine? I'm actually thinking about it. She gets so much adware and malware on her machine it's not funny. I'm thinking not because you do have to be a little technical.

For my wife? Yew betcha. But she's a developer using Visual Studio, so that' out.

The kids? Like a shot. Fast, malware and spyware resistant, FREE software and IT DOESN'T CRASH. Yeah, I'm thinking about doing a demo for them.

Oh Yeah---did I mention it doesn't CRASH?

Ubuntu 10.04

Well, it took a bit of doing, but I've got Ubuntu 10.04 LT on my Lenovo T-61 laptop. I had version 9.04 installed as a dual boot Windows XP/Ubuntu system. All of the issues I've identified were caused my me, not Microsoft nor Canonical, the company that creates and supports Ubuntu.

You say you're not sure what this stuff is? Well, you must have heard of UNIX, right? UNIX (and there are variety of flavors out there such as Sun OS, AT & T, etc.) usually runs on what used to be called 'mini-computers,' which used to be between a PC and a Mainframe. Now it runs on what are known as 'workstations,' which are nothing more than really beefed up PCs. Anyway, LINUX is UNIX which can run on your PC.

The problem has been that despite installation scripts, graphical user interfaces and better installation programs, LINUX has been the haven for the technical among us. Until Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has a philosophy. And in its most recent revisions, shown that it can replace your Microsoft or Apple-centered operating system (in fact, one of the reasons Apple moved away from the Motorola Chips a few years back was to get the Intel x86 architecture. OS 10 and above are based on LINUX.

With Ubuntu, you download a file (called in image file) and burn it to a CD. You then boot your PC with the CD. After it boots, you have the option of playing with Ubuntu to see if you like it, or install it on your PC.

Here's where Ubuntu shines over many other forms of LINUX (because the operating system is 'open source,' anyone can change, adapt and create his/her own version...just like the different flavors of UNIX) since the installation routines have been honed for several years. And its very easy to do.

You have a couple of decisions to make during the install. Of course, I blew it. The power was going on and off during a storm and I had to get it done so I could re-do my resume. This is a recipe for disaster.

The first decision you have to make is whether you want to run Ubuntu as the sole operating system on your PC or with Windows or OS 10. If you pick the former, the installation program completely reformats your hard drive and then installs the new OS. If you select the second option (which I did), Ubuntu adds a 'boot manager.'

This is a program that interrupts your PC's start-up routines and allows you to use either Windows/OS 10 or LINUX. This is what got trashed on the second of my installations. Yeah, I know. I use a laptop and the battery should have taken care of it.

Except the battery wasn't installed because I read an article that says you sharply reduce the life of a Lithium battery by not using it and charging it well before it needs to be charged.

Then, I had trouble. Lord did I have trouble. I knew what I did and knew what I had to do to get out of it. I rebooted into the setup routine.

And pressed the wrong button without realizing it (because I didn't read the damn screen). Big Shot IT professional.

I pressed the button that lays in Ubuntu as the only operating system. And I didn't realize what I had done until the re-format routine was half over.

Office 2003. Gone. All my e-mail archives. Gone. All my resume and archive files. Gone. All my website files. Gone.

Wait a sec.

Ubuntu comes with Open Office (a free, open source Microsoft Office replacement) right out of the box.

It comes with FireFox. XMarks will re-synch all my bookmarks. The password synching didn't work for some reason.

It comes with GIMP, an open source alternative to PhotoShop. It also comes with free Instant Messaging, integrated E-Mail/Personal Information Manager (Evolution), allows you to install Thunderbird and its Lightning add-in and a raft of other 'must have' utilities.

There are dozens of free, downloadable open source programs. In fact, Ubuntu doesn't use the Synaptic Program Manager anymore- it has its own Add/Delete software utility now.

The interface is much cleaner than before. All those upper panel icons have been grouped together to make things a lot easier to find.

Hmmm.

Yes, I can install Microsoft Project and VISIO (the only programs that the open source community or Apple have no replacements for) using WINE- a real time application that allows you to run Windows programs under LINUX without the hurky-jerky screens we used to see on Apple machines running similar utilities.

Version 10.04 comes with integrated social media (a one stop application that gathers all the Tweets, Status Changes and FaceBook attaboys you got).

It integrates with Ubuntu One. That's a web site in the 'Internet cloud' that automatically gives you 2 Gigs of free, integrated data space and the option to pay $10/month for 50Gb (yeah, you read that correctly) AND will synch your Smart Phone (even my Windows Mobile 6!).

Maybe I won't miss Windows much at all.

It's been five days and there's been no withdrawl symptoms at all.

I recommend you run it in a dual boot configuration like I did for a few months so you can ease yourself into it. There's a lot to learn if you have trouble (and I realized I had trouble with R9.04- WINE didn't work, the OS didn't recognize the SD Card Reader nor the USB connection to my phone) and it was because of the multiple installs I did on 9.04.

Don't do that.

Back To Work

I go back to work, this time as a Project Manager for a nationally known retail operation based in Hoffman Estates, IL. I'll probably start on Wednesday or Thursday, but fully expect the the start date to push to next Monday. Hiring managers at this place have a lot to do to bring in a new contractor. This will be my third go round and this may be the charm.

With an unprecedented positive recommendation from a previous IT manager, the new boss was pretty well convinced he'd hired me before I came in for the face to face interview. That's what the recruiter said. This time he was right.

That was amazing. Thanks Nancy!

As usual, it took less than a day to get confirmation for the contract. Every job I've ever gotten resulted in the offer or confirmation taking hours instead of days. Once or twice it took as long as two days- but never any longer. In the latest round of interviews and waiting for the rejection phone call, e-mail or letter, I think offers were extended to other people (when I made it that far) and I was the 'back-up.' Of course, I may think too much of myself.It just might be I'm too old, made too much money or a combination of the three.

The new contract's supposed to run 4-6 months. In the interview, my new boss listed the projects his team will have to handle in the next 12-24 months. I believe he was telling me there's a perm gig in it for me, if I don't step on my....er....keep my nose clean. The recruiter thinks the same.

I had no idea Loyalty Programs could keep that many folks employed for that many projects over that length of time.

Thank Goodness for Marketing. Yeah, you heard me.

The journalist in me cringes when I say that because I've seen marketing and PR communications bombarding the newsrooms I managed.

Since then, I've worked three or four marketing projects and as visionary, pie in the sky and wishful thinking as these folks tend to be, the checks don't bounce and I learned the application isn't mine. It's theirs.

I'm an IT Project Manager now, pretty cool, hunh?

I gotta keep studying for my Microsoft Project and PMI PMP credentials or I'll lose access to the on-line question bank. I've found that pretty good for study.

It'll take a little while to get used to getting up at a reasonable hour more than once a week. So, I'm thinking I'll read and test in the evenings and maybe 8-10 hours a day on the weekend until I'm ready. I hope the new place will give me time off to take the tests. If I was smarter, i would have done all of this over the last 3-4 weeks.But I'm not and job hunting was a much higher priority.

As one Blog Commenter told me, Good. Maybe now you'll quick all that whining.

Probably. But if you've been looking for work over the last two years and know your elbow from your foot, you know I didn't exaggerate anything. And writing this blog with all the rants helped keep me sane. That and the Wellbutrin, Xanex and my wife.

But that's over, hopefully for a while- worst case for 4-6 months.

I hope to have some non-proprietary detail on how small teams in a huge IT arena handle development, project management and some generic info on Loyalty Programs. I've dome them on the BA side, so the PM side ought to be very interesting.

Thanks for sticking with me on this drive to be productive and back to work!

If Anything Can Go Wrong...

...it will. Murphy has to have had my search for work in mind.

This latest one is classic.

The company advertised for a permanent full time Business Analyst.

I got 64 (I'm not kidding) phone calls on this. My LinkedIn Profile is working, I guess. And two dozen e-mails. You know the ones- created in Java or a PDF so you can't do anything with it

I went with the first guy who called me.

Two days later, the company called my recruiter, said it wanted a phone screen. Great!

The phone screen was done by the incumbent. The company is smart enough to allow some overlap. Support Content Management, check; Lead Projects for enhancements, check; create and troubleshoot reports from a data warehouse, check. Great, the hiring manager will get my notes and we'll get back to you.

Three days later they want another phone interview. Hmmm.

The hiring manager is still screening. So what was the time I spent out of class invested in? Nothing, obviously, thought the suspicious former reporter now Business Analyst without a job. Yeah, forgot to tell you, I was in a certification class for the first interview.

I call in. We talk. The manager keeps harping on supporting the Content Management System. No, the manager didn't expect any major or minor enhancement for quite a while. No, you wouldn't be creating reports so much as trouble shooting them.

So you advertised for a Business Analyst because........?

Hmmm. The manager wants a Level Two Technical Representative, not a BA.

The last zinger occurs when I ask about the next steps.

"I'm not sure," says the hiring manager, "If we decide to go outside the team, we'd call you in for a face to face interview."

Go "outside the team"?

"Yes, I know we have people on the team who can do this, I just haven't decided if that's the route I want to go," the hiring manager says.

I politely say goodbye while making a rude gesture as I hang up the phone. It's an old Help Desk trick to lower your frustration level without getting into trouble.

So, the bottom line is:

1. The company's job listing, if not an outright lie, was misleading.
2. The inequitable playing field (she has a job, I don't) just became more so because I'm competing with people she already knows and who obviously have more domain experience than I do.
3. There ain't a chance in Hell I'm getting this job, the manager's doing this to fulfill corporate policy and this was just a numbers game.

If the manager calls back and wants a face to face (which I doubt will happen- trust me, I've been looking for work for over 18 months now), I will politely tell the manager that I'm not interested any longer and have accepted an offer with a competitor as it's new CTO (Chief Technical Officer).

I like Cornell's corollary to Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.

Feeding Frenzy

So I'm about ready to open my Project Management Professional manual to start studying this morning. When I got the first phone call. Every single one of them is the same:

Me: Hello, this is Scot.
Recruiter: Hello, Yes, is this Scot?
ME: This is Scot
Recruiter: Hello, Scot, How are You today?
Me: Fine, you?
Recruiter: <long Pause> um, fine, thank you very much. This is <insert non-Western name here> from <insert goobledy gook because the recruiting companies don't seem to care that their recruiters speak terrible English). Is this a good time to talk?
Me: Sure
Recruiter: um, yes....Scot, I have an immediate need for a Business Analyst in Chicago, IL with Documentum and Micro Strategies would you be interested?
Me: Depends, where is it and what kind of hourly range are we talking about.
Recruiter: Ah, very good, um it says Chicago, Illinois.
Me: Well, the Chicago area goes all the way from Joliet North to the Wisconsin Line and as far west as Bannockburn. That means my commuting time and cost would determine if I could take the contract or not.
Recruiter: What is your best rate?
Me: <getting pissed> Um, anything above $45/hour if it's downtown or within ten miles of my house. More if they want a senior role and even more if they want a BA/Project Manager.
Recruiter: $45? That's within our range.
Me: <pissed off now and knowing the offer is going to $47/hour> I said anything above $45 per hour.
Recruiter: Would $48 per hour be satisfactory?
Me: <visibly pleased about the potential of making an extra $8 per week> Yeah, I can do that. Who's the client?
Recruiter: <proprietary information> (the world's second largest soft drink company, the Choice of a New Generation, which is no win its 50s)
Me: Sorry, I was presented yesterday for that role and you're the twelfth caller in the last three hours.

Yes, I got 12 calls this morning from people who search my LinkedIn, Monster, Dice and CareerBuilder profiles. And 8 e-mails. All with the same role. Unknown to these intrepid seekers of commission, another, faster company with people who don't speak English that well got a hold of me yesterday and offered me $50/hour.

That $50 is straight time- no benefits, no overtime. While it's W-2, I couldn't take it if the wife wasn't working as a Developer/Analyst with a company that doesn't immediately dump its workers.

So, here are my 'take-aways:'

• Recruiters are finally becoming wise to the internet and job boards.
• Recruiting Company Employees can't read. They keep calling my cell phone even though I marked my home phone as the preferred contact method. I get a lousy cell signal in my basement office.
• Recruiting Companies don't look in their own databases. I had applied to other jobs posted by three quarters of the companies that called me.
• Recruiting companies need to practice their recruiters on everyday American English. Sorry, but that's the common language here. As liberal as I am (which is plenty liberal), this is one thing that annoys the hell out of me. If you're going to work in a public arena, learn the language.

If history is any indicator- this belly-aching won't mean much since I probably won't even get a phone screen.

Agile and Finger Pointing

Anytime there's been a failure on a project in iterative and waterfall methods, the first thing you see is finger pointing. Either as a CYA maneuver or as a means, they think, of root cause analysis

• The Business tells the DevTeam it should have been able to deliver what it wanted or needed in time to make <fill in the blank here>.
• The DevTeam tells the business in a slow, methodical manner that when one keeps adding more and more features and more and more complexity, one needs to either add additional developers or stretch the final release to a more reasonable time.

And you know something? both sides are right.

Both sides can point to pieces of paper that tell them they are right. Which is cool because they can use that paper to wipe off their lathered faces.

Remember that one of the Agile goals is to generate useful code, not create documentation. Despite what may appear to be a stand that goes against my vocational goals (BAs control the documentation in Waterfall and Iterative projects), I think a pile of paper is counterproductive. M-Gates be damned.

I've more important stuff to do than write stuff that no one reads. So do you.

Unless, and this is important, you have regulatory requirements (HIPPA, SOX, FDA, etc) or the customer wants documentation (in which case, you find out what they want and chances are it's usually a user manual or Admin manual which I can whip up in less than a week- usually).

The only place I've worked where the business actually read Use Cases (instead of looking at my color flow charts) was at a pretty big company. The managers there knew a multi-million dollar application which touched pretty much every server or mainframe in the house probably required them to read the Use Cases. And they provided superb feedback (at least to me). But the developers weren't reading the use cases.; And Because our company didn't allow us (the BAs and there were a lot of us) to talk to the developers, you wouldn't believe what the issues list looked like.

Just before everything blew up, we had a meeting. We were going to make this Agile stuff work, damn it. All we need is a new template.

A template for what, I asked
For requirements!
You think a template is going to clean up the process?
Yes!
No, templates only help standardize the results of requirements gathering...we have a governance issue.
Sit down, Scot.
I gave them all the reasons we weren't Agile.
We are MODIFIED Agile

Obviously, no one in my company had read the Agile Manifesto.  Agile, by definition, adjusts to change and issues. There's no such thing as 'Modified Agile,' because all Agile projects are modified (Teams are self organizing, remember?).

But the finger pointing stopped, by gosh. One day the champion came over to our area and asked us all to get our stuff and leave. We piled all the stuff in our manager's trunk- he had no idea what was going on. A week later we all found out that our company hadn't been paid for five months before they hired me. I can guess the reason. But the finger pointing stopped, by golly!

I won't tell you an Agile Project can't fail. They have and they will continue to for a variety of reasons- scalability comes immediately to mind as does risk management and lack of buy-in.

But done with a little bit of care and a committed business unit, Agile eliminates the finger pointing.

God I hate finger pointing. Let's just figure out what went wrong and fix it. Anyone can make a mistake.

No matter how many SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), Stakeholders and champions you think you have on your team, it won't work unless the business frees the application owner or designate to spend a significant amount of time on the project (say 25-50% depending on how well communication works). This person needs to be able to:

• Make decisions for the business.
  
• Negotiate sprint features lists with me (the Business Analyst).
• Help me develop the road map.
• Coordinate Change Management with me or assist in coordinating with the business' own Change Management Team.
• Attend as many Scrum/Stand Up Meetings as possible.
• Perform the same Alpha tests that I do on a new build in production.
• Cheer lead for the end users to play with the application and get feedback.
• Co-Plan each UAT (User Acceptance Test) round with me so we're actually testing requirements.
  
• Let me help them create User Stories and tests. Agile is test-driven and the developer needs to know when s/he is done. So do I, so I can test boundaries and functionality.
  
• And stay on top of everything like the Project Manager and me.

If you were spending $250K or more for an application, wouldn't you want to avoid counterproductive finger pointing and bring the project in on time and withing budget?

I thought so.

Assign a decision maker to the development team and back them up when the need arises.

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Fixes for FaceBook

OK, friends and neighbors, it turns out we do not have to take this constant change of FaceBook sitting down. You have to get a little geeky, but it's pretty simple. if you follow these instructions you should be just fine.

What we're doing is adding a 'scripting' program to Firefox called Greasemonkey, three scripts and a program to manage your scripts to make things as easy as possible.

Greasemonkey and its scripts are designed specifically to do the sorts of things we're going to do. There are hundreds of available, free scripts so you do not need to be a programmer. The scripts alter the way Firefox displays pages... including the never ending changes to FaceBook.

• You have to install and use Mozilla Firefox, latest release (3.6) because that's what I'm using and no, I'm not gonna test it on anything else. Go here if you don't already have Firefox 3.6. Install it over your older version, you don't need nor want it. If you really think you need the older version, this procedure may work. It may not. If it doesn't, I told you so and you'll need to go back and install 3.6 anyway. Is this making any sense?
  
• Install the add-on called Greasemonkey.
• Install the add-in Greasefire.
  

• Allow Firefox to shutdown and restart.
• Click Tools, then Add ons on the Firefox Tool bar:
  

• Click the Greasefire add on and 'update' the list:

• Open FireFox to your FaceBook homepage. Then click TOOLS|ADD ons again until you reach Greasmonkey. Add the three items you see below:

• Close everything up except FireFox and your home page will look like this:

• You will see a new icon at the bottom of FireFox, this is the Greasemonkey Icon.
  

If you want to delve deeper (like find the script options, or finding other scripts), lemme know and I'll try to help. Or you could read the same web pages I did (They're all marked above).

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Vocational Testing

Let's bring everybody up to date:

October 2008, Scot and about 17 others were let go when their company didn't handle the client's expectations;or the client was going to steal 'proprietary code.' I think it was the former rather the later. The 'proprietary code' was a simple flash reader that allowed annotation...exactly...ten years old. The other stuff in the application was simple database and UI implementation of the client's business rules. Complex as all get out, but not real hard. And nothing any other Java or .Net should couldn't have replicated very easily.

November 2009 (yep, a full 13 months) Scot got a short -time contract- great people, enjoyed it and there's a possibility of a the company calling me back.

In the mean time, I either have to find something more stable or freelance. I'm, of course, doing both.

So part of the deal is getting training. I was thinking about getting PMP from PMI (Project Management Professional certification from Project Management Institute, so, I applied. Last September.

They got back to me this week. One of the bazillion links in the packet to get your voucher included a 'skills assessment,' which turned out to be a list of personal values. Kind of like the Minnesota Multiphasic meets The One Minute Manager in Senora, Mexico, Bizarre and warped. I think Salvidor Dali wrote this thing.


Now, by looking over around 100 values (not skills, sorry, U of G but that's probably one of the reasons you guys are so low academically) and selecting five values that I get "a great deal of pleasure from,' ten values that give me a 'moderate amount of pleasure' and 20 values that give me a little pleasure (but not pain).
 

They rank each result 1 to 100. There's only one over 50: 61 for Industrial Production Manager. Hmmm. This 'tool' thinks there's a clipboard in my future.
Police and Detective Supervisor? I hate mysteries. I used to cover cop shops all over the upper Midwest. No thanks. If I want paramilitary, I'll rejoin Civil Air Patrol.

Agricultural Engineer? That's U.S. Bureau of Labor-speak for farmer, right? Or is the Extension Agent with which I always ended doing a monthly interview, in all the markets I worked? Good call, Georgia! I'm probably the only person in the U.S. that says subsidizing farmers is wrong. They call it a lifestyle. My rejoinder is simple: no one subsidizes my lifestyle, why in the world should I subsidize yours?

Curator? Just shoot me.

Technical Writer? OK, that's one good one. But they don't make enough cash for the mental anguish.

Business Executive? I couldn't stop laughing.

Human Resources? Don't think so, I worked with a GREAT HR director and that ain't gonna happen.

I have no idea what an Operations Research Analyst is, unless that's the guy who shows his butt crack when he  removes the PC that fouled up on your desk because they wouldn't give me admin rights.

Economist? See Curator

The IT stuff? Second good call

Arbitrator? I'd just knock heads and rule for the little guy all the time. Besides, that's just a baby Arbitrager, right?

Numerical Control Tool Programmer? Dunno. If there was an Alphabetic Control Tool Programmer, I might think about it.

Aerospace Engineer--- actually all the engineers:  I was a child of the 60s and if I was involved, that time a programmer switched decimal to hex and the satellite was like at Mars already? I would have done that four or five times so it wouldn't have made any difference. It'd be a toaster now.

Historian? Yeah, OK. Third good call. One of my B.A. Minors.

Sociologist? Maybe, another minor.

Storage and Transportation Manager- I've seen those guys. They're bigger than me. No Thanks.

So, your help is solicited- I'm thinking a PMP boot camp and ITIL. The state pays for the test and the trainer helps you put the freaking Vitae together (which is why I never tool the CBAP test- I resent having reviewed the Business Analyst Body of Knowledge and then spend five or six weeks getting details together. I figure PMI makes sense, since the Project Manager function is pretty set, the BA rols is still in a state of flux now that Agile is the method of choice for good shops.

Leave a comment. You may have a better idea than I do!

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An End User's Experience with Cataract Surgery.

So the eye doctor's office called twice with time changes for me to head to the hospital. They finally settled on the original time. I liked being in the loop, but good lord!

Brian, youngest son, drops me off at the curb. He's gonna stay in the car, play the radio and play with his new Android phone. Hmmmmm.

I walk in, go to the Outpatient Services Desk and say, "Okay, I'm here. Cut me."

Both ladies behind the desk laugh and the one closest to me says turn around, walk to your right, past the gift shop and go to Outpatient Surgery Desk.

This is not looking good.

Same joke gets same reaction. Please sit down Mr. Witt and we'll call you when we have a room.

Have a room, I say to myself, what was all the dicking around over times all about then. As I reached for my phone to play BubbleBlaster (no clue why I like it, it's a dumb game but I love it) a lday comes up to me ascorts me to my room. No bed, just a lounger.

This won't hurt a bit. She's right. The IV needle didn't hurt at all. I want her to do all my sticking from now on.

We're going to put the goop into your eye now. Goop?

Lidocaine in a gel. Now I know what lidocaine is from the TV shows.

Three times. Goopy crap. But my eye is numb as a post now.

"Hi, I'm Tim, please get up on the gurney and we'll wheel you in." Turns out- he's the anesthesiologist. He keeps telling about the 'couple of cocktails we're going to give you.'

He straps in the blood pressure cuff, inserts the O2 hose in my nose and says he's starting now.

Nuthin. The only good part of the procedure was the professional grade drugs. Yes. I am a child of the 60s.

My eye doctor opens my lids with a contraption that looks like it came out of the Marquis de Sade's basement. Eye's numb, no problem.

15 years ago he went in on top of the cornea. This time it was the side. Either way, the procedure (see? I can talk like a Doctor, too) lasted all of ten minutes. And they let me out of the hospital five minutes after I got back to the room.

No glasses. Didn't really need them now. It was like looking through a quart milk bottle (remember those?) with about a half inch of milk still in it. It seemed fuzzy as well so I went to the mirror and looked through the eye. Just as good as the other one in terns of acuity....at least when the haze goes away.

Now, I have a few follow-ups and have to put prednizone drops in my eyes every two hours (they sting, but make the eye feel better. And a few more drops. Drops, lottsa drops. I had on bottle of drops 15 years ago.

Maybe they haven't advanced the science so much...

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School Days, Dear Old Golden Rule Days.

Youth is wasted on the young. Mark Twain

For some strange and interesting reason most of the Class of 1973, Rich Township East High School, Park Forest, IL are up on FaceBook. It suprized the hell out of me. I occaisionaly searched the goofy alumni websites but there'd only be one or two folks up there and I didn't know them very well. If I remember correctly, we had around 430 graduates. I could be wrong- I often am.

What I find exceedingly and embarassingly interesting was how wrong, way, way wrong I was about the people in my class, how we all stuck to our little cliques to protect ourselves with people exactly like us. I heard someone recently call High School the only place you protect your body AND your soul. How right that was.

Here's just a few of the things I've found out in the last three or four months that amaze me and make me sad I was such a dope back then:

• I thought my best friend and I were the only liberals. We'd canvassed for McCarthy and a couple of more local folks and found out our hometown (Park Forest, IL) was a Republican Bastion...sort of like Wheaton without the College. Almost every single one of the folks I've found up here were (and are) just as liberal as Chris and Me. And I never knew. Yeah, there are a few neoconservatives in the class, but most of them moved to Southern  or Western States where they're probably more comfortable anyway. I just simply don't talk politics with them. I already have heart disease.
• We had a  lot of spectacular looking young women at that school. I *always* felt out of my league. Turns out- they're all extremely warm, intelligent and still very good looking. Don't get me wrong, I love my wife and have absolutely no plans to leave... but one *does* wonder what might have happened if one wasn't so self-aware, scared, intimidated and had a few chips on the shoulder. Do all kids go through this? I know we all think puberty sucks, but I saw a lot of poeple having parties on the weekends and suppporting each other. Could have made a difference in my own experience.
• I've been invited to vacation at about a dozen places by these folks. Even if we can't plow through and see some of them, it made each of my days when that happened. Not so much for a free meal or a jam session, but to think they'd go out of their way for me when I was in some really narrow and goofy cliques.
• One young women for whom I was rabid (remember them days of constant hormone movement?) called me a 'geek.' Now, I've never worked for the circus and certainly never cut off chicken heads with my mouth, so I asked her what she meant (it coulda been extremely embarassing). She said- oh, only that you're smart. Me?!? Boy I musta pulled the wool over the eyes of a buncha peoples' eyes (she and I hardly mixed, weren't in many classes together) because I never, ever thought of myself that way. My former best friend in the entire world said the same thing a few years ago. I remain astonished, embarassed and foolish. If I was so smart, how come I didn't get a scholarship or get on the It's Academic Team or last more than a year in Debate? Looking back, I think it was immaturity and excessive competetiveness. And being a jerk, of course.
• Music. Suprized the bejesus out me when one of the popular women from 4th grade through graduation told me she now lives near Teluride and invited me out to jam. She also said her mother was going to the same anti-war rallies Chris and I were going to (!). Another friend came over the house one Saturday and jammed with my music friends and freaked me out- he was doing much of the same stuff I do- except he knows barre chords and stuff. When I posted a YouTube clip of a Pete Seeger/Wood Guthrie promotional film on my facebook page- I got a LOT of comments. And most of them have stayed current with the music as well. That's soooo coool in my book. Music has always my raod to spirituality- not classical stuff, stuff you can play in your own living room with friends- share and enjoy. It took me 40 years to realize that and a second time to get my calluses back (never, ever, again) but I did.

I don't think my classmates are all that unusual. Well. Now that I think about it, it IS unusually for 54 year old men and women to hop up to FaceBook, expecially with the lousy numbers we keep getting from women on use of th einternet ((but the numbers are getting better). But other than that, they'r enjoying their kids and grand children just like I am and preparing for retirement, which I can't do yet.

We all pretended, though, that the town we grew up in, a post WWII bedroom community and the first planned community ever (Take THAT, Leavittown) was special. But it was only special for the white, suburban ethos which many communities have. While our town was desegregated and pretty much welcomed everyone and had a complete housing inventory, we had very few black familys, Muslim Familys or Chicano Families. They simply couldn't afford to live there. So it was privileged. And everybody could stay out late at the playground, guys, we're talking the 50s and 60s here.

I have enjoyed reconnecting with people whom I'd only nodded to in the hallways or whose lockers were next to mine. And I'm glad I have a much better picture of them. Before this, I thought my time in high school was the worst period of my life- isolated, scared, falling in love every hour and a half with someone new and keeping it all inside. I even wrote a year end column for the newspaper that was, um, caustic. I was pissed off for 30 years that the Speech Coach forced me to audition as a Senior against a Sophmore for state competition. I think he was angry at me for the way the Debate Team (when I was on it) brought his effeminant  mannerisms to ridicule, He was actually the first MetroSexual I ever knew, but I couldn't care less. I think he was punishing me for the Debaters as well as getting his own boy (our former head coach moved to another district high school my Senior year) state experience. I was 40 years old before I let that go. He wound up at one of the local high schools here in the western suburbs. He was a principal. I think often about stopping by and beating the shit out of him. But I didn't. I should have. I wanted to. He deserved it. But what would that say about me? And I could imagine the headlines: Radio News Guy Beats Former Coach. Not good. That's when I let it go.

So.

I am enjoying my classmates immensely. They are far, far better people than I thought, even though I knew intellectually that sterotyping is stupid.

I may even show up at the next reunion. I gotta get back on that diet...

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Working Retail

Well, I finally got me a job. It's consultant work, but the pay's pretty good and the people I work with are great.

The job is for a large retailer with a lot of stores. My six week gig (over yesterday, 12/31/2009) was to get enough documentation together so they could price it. I initially suggested a high level functional and technical document combined with a Function Point count.

Typically I use a PowerPoint template I stole...um...borrowed...er...folk processed from a former company and Functional Requirements Document (usually around 5 to 10 pages). I usually leave the technical paper to the architect or lead developer. What do I know about which indexing system to use- typical Relational Database or Data Warehousing standards? I'd be guessing.

Turns out the Project Manager is hell on wheels and did most of the documentation. After some requirements gathering sessions, I began to understand what the business wanted: a tool to tracking and assign work to retail stores with some sideways bells and whistles. Since my previous work there had major governance issues, I figured they would use Waterfall. Hence the Use Cases.

Wrong.

The first one almost created a riot. 13 pages? Sub-Use Cases? Diagrams? And you want me to sign off on this IT stuff?

Well, first of all, between the front matter and the sign-off forms in the back, it's only 7 pages. And of those seven page, all of them are beautiful color graphics which leaves two pages of text- the Step Action table of the actual Use Case and about a dozen business rules which I inferred from our meetings.

No! A thousand times no, you pathetic excuse for a BA.

Hmmm. How about an Agile approach. I'll give you cave drawings and you sign off on them?

Yes, that's better, BA Boy.

So I created eleven major wireframes and defined all the fields, buttons and controls in a two column table, complete with bolded headers and bullet lists.

• I don't like these icons.
• This stuff is not at all intuitive, you need to change this (two days before my contract ended)
• Where did you get these dashboard numbers, just make them up so we could see what they looked like (yes)?
• I know we said we didn't want Admins and yes we need to turn Key Performance Indicators on and off depending on the last stop light remaining in Fartwest, Idahpo, so how are we gonna do that?
• How did you do that Admin Page so fast?
• Can we change the color of this crossbar? It's too, I dunno, too red, I guess.

Every thing's back to normal!
God, I love being a BA and helping people.
My manager's gonna try to get me back in for a longer contract in a week or so.

Agile, Waterfall, business analysis

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