cisco 4 class

Back to class for Cisco 4, and I wonder where the passion is.  There are a lot of people in the class spouting the typical stuff.  Worried about how much homework they have and how to get out of it.  A lot of spurious griping and complaining from people.

I wonder why they are there.  What's the purpose of giving up your Thursday night for a class you don't care about?

I guess it's part of the degree plan.  But where's the drive to be the best?  Where's the drive to do something great in the world?  To make a name for yourself in your position?

It doesn't exist in the classroom I'm in.

I guess they haven't learned yet.

You do not rise to the occasion.  You fall to the level of your training.

And if your training sucks, so will your response in stress.

How did we get here

I work for an established company.  The company has changed since I've been a part of the company.  Partly because I keep driving change.

Why in the world would I want to do that?

And that, is the essence of this tirade.

It's very easy to sit back and say you are an original thinker.  It's also very easy to sit back and criticize someone else's plan.

So I present the Dale Carnegie/man solution.  The next time you find something that doesn't make any sense at work, don't gripe.  Seriously.  Don't gripe.

Ask people why that policy is in place.  Ask questions about how the policy was put in place in the first place.

If the answer becomes "because that's the way we've always done it" then you are ripe for revision.

"I don't know" is also a good one to work on.

Whether you believe it or not, there are many policies and procedures that end up "because that's the way its always been done".  And there is a lot of "I don't know" in the procedure.

So... once you've find something like that, figure out whether you have the ability to change it.  If you are in IT, you aren't going to change marketing without some deep evidence.  You aren't going to change operations.

Initially, look to change your own department.  Because then you are dealing with people you know and policies you have internalized.

There are two ways to approach producing the change.  The first is to get permission.  The second is to implement and ask forgiveness.

I usually go with the second approach for two reasons.  1) No one understands the need to adjust the policy, and rocking the boat is probably not going to happen.  2) Your idea might sound great on paper, but suck in implementation.

So implement the easiest possible answer to the problem, and start using it.  You might come to the conclusion that your idea sucks.  Good.  Kill it then.  Go back to the drawing board and come up with a new solution to the problem.

If the idea is awesome, show other people.  Get them to start using your idea as opposed to the other policy.  See if people gravitate towards the new policy or the old.

I ended up implementing a Cacti server in this way.  I think it was a great idea, but no one uses it other than me.  So to me that's a partial success.

What I've been working on recently is a different way to document.  It's mostly a combination of PHP, Apache web pages, and a MySql database.  So far, the implementation doesn't work.  But the idea seems valid.  So I'll keep working on it until the idea is operational.  Documentation is always the hardest part of the IT world.  The second hardest part is designing a knowledge base that people are going to use.  You want a solution that is easy to implement and follow.  And a webpage seems to be a good idea.  But the non-technical parts of my team aren't going to run queries against a database.  That's beyond them.  So I have to provide a solution for them.  And that's what this approach is.

Try it.  You may find the cruddy company policies go away.

And you may find yourself with a load of new work.

Either is good.

Those who have seen war...

To those that have seen war know that the war never ends.

The location changes, the faces change.  The weapons change.  But the war starts and never ends.

I remember when the war started.  It was March 20, 2003.  Since then, it has never stopped.

The battlefield has changed.  I haven't been in Iraq since 2007.  No more sunsets in the desert sand storms blocking visibility.  The M4 has long since been returned to the armory, and I probably couldn't even set the headspace and timing on .50 cal any more. Those skills have atrophied with lack of use.

New skills have replaced the old skills  I use a keyboard and mouse now.  Electrical scissors and crimpers.  The speed at which I used to be able to disassemble and reassemble an M16 has been replaced with the speed of making Cat5 ends.  I fight with command lines and code.  Programming languages and interfaces.

The enemy hasn't really changed.  The enemy is still amorphous and dodgy, never wearing a uniform or showing his face.  Sometimes its Haji.  Sometimes its the apathetic indifference of your own coworkers.

The war is still here.  Fought in bursts of insanity and boredom.  Sheer terror and force of will.

It has never ended.  It just moved locations.

And it will never end.


And the rest will choose not to see it.  War exists all over the world.  Right now.  And nothing is changing about that.

It will never change.

Accomplishments

So, a few weeks ago I started reading my goals twice a day.   You can read about that here.  So I've been reading them.  And making some progress.  But not the progress I want.  See, reading is just a simple action.  It requires little effort.  You are effectively done reading your goals in a few minutes.   But reading goals and accomplishing goals are two different things.

So I've started to keep track of my goal accomplishment in a spread sheet.  I just started today.  I'm not sure how well this setup is going to work, so I may tweak it.  But at the moment its something.  The end result is to start accomplishing goals more.  To do the work to accomplish the goal.  Which is a lot harder than just writing the things down.

I have to admit.  Writing them down and reviewing them on a daily basis is causing me to  put some effort in.  Just not the effort level I want to put.  The hope is small accomplishments spread out over time resulting in a big goal being accomplished.  Not some giant, one time step to accomplish the thing.  There's no exoneration in this plan.    Just straight up dirty labor.  Never ending dirty labor.  But that's what gets things done.

Now, back to reading.  I've got 6 more pages on one goal today, and I want to get those knocked out.

Parenting... (a how not to)

I've heard the statement before.  I'll hear it again.  And it's completely false.

"Kids these days..."

That's how it always starts.  It's a giant discussion about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket because the kids these days aren't doing what they should be doing.  I'm not going to blame most of it on the kids.  They get a bad rap, and childhood is a pain in the ass.

I'm going to blame it on the parents.  Children by and large are a direct representative of what their parents do.  Let me be clear: I didn't say what their parents say.  I said what their parents do.  If you yell at your kids, your kids will yell at each other.  They will be you, but with less of a filter.  It is both weird and creepy.  I've seen it out of my own kids.

If I want them to start listening more, I have to start listening.  To everyone.
If I want them to quit yelling, I have to quit yelling.

Do as I say not as I do doesn't work.  Yet that's what many parents use.  For a while.  Then they phone it in and quit trying.

It's strange how we start off wanting our children to be the president when they are four.  By the time the child is 15, you're hoping to avoid jail.

Where did that come from?  How did we fall so low as parents as to go from supremely high achievement to less than the average?  Where did our grasp disappear and our fight go?  Too many bills and too many problems in the world?

Parents, you must hold on longer than you think.  Maintain the discipline longer than you think is necessary.  Especially in the teenage years.  There is a time for responsibility, and that is as the child earns it.  Fail in responsibilities, reduce responsibilities.  It's a constant give and take.

We want women to achieve in life at the rate of their male counterparts, but what do we teach them via most children's education method?  TV teaches most children.  And you demonize business or anyone starting a business.  And you end up with some single mom on TV with multiple kids and a contrived story about how they got there.  Might as well say the sperm donor walked as some of the crap they come up with.

If you want to see women succeed, start writing successful women.  Start teaching that parenting requires two parents.  And it requires full time effort from both parents.  I don't care if you are tired at the end of a work day.  You aren't done until the kids go to bed.  Quit dialing it in and being a dead beat parent.  Achieve something.

And...  don't let the hippies teach you how to parent.  Because they haven't got a clue.

I've heard numerous stories, and I'll leave you with one from "the old Corps".  I heard it during Corporals Course in Iraq back in 2007.

An instructor was asked about the differences between the "old Corps" and the "new Corps".  He said there was a Marine who would show up to a unit, and be great for a few weeks.  Then the Marine would start becoming insubordinate and rude.  Eventually, the guy would be taken out back and beaten up.  It worked OK for a few days.  And then he was back to the same old thing.

He was moved to a new unit, probably due to his disciplinary issues.  Same scenario proceeded.  The man would show up and be great at his job for a while.  Then he'd turn insubordinate and rude.  And he would be taken out back and beaten.

And that same thing persisted until he was finally discharged.

Following the end of the story, I remember a bunch of people looking like it was something to look forward to.  Like they had missed a great institution.  But they missed the crucial point.  Despite the beatings, the man never changed.  The beatings did not fix the problem.  It was a stupid application of force that only temporarily solved the problem.

And yet here was Insanity rearing its ugly head again.   Over, and over, and over again.

Happiness is...

I've heard people discuss how a store experience can make a customer happy.

If you hear someone selling this, run the other way as fast as possible.  They are disconnected from reality and will not solve your problem.

First, happiness is a choice.  It has nothing to do with the circumstance.  It has nothing to do with what you have or don't have.  You choose to be happy.

If you are not choosing to be happy, you are probably basing your happiness on external factors.  As such, you are probably either affected by stuffitis or you have no direction in life.  You buy stuff to make you happy, and wonder why you aren't happy.  That person has confused happiness with temporary amusement.

Second, don't try to make your customer happy.  See point 1.  You are not a psychologist (unless that's your business. I'm assuming most of you aren't).  Try to engage and entertain your customers.  But don't try to make them happy.

Because you can't make them happy.

That bears repeating again.

You can not make your customers happy.

Engage your customers.  Entertain them.  Delight them.  But realize all of these are temporary, transitory emotions.  They fall suite to whim just like everything else.  But that just means you have to keep bringing your A game every time.  Because every single experience is a new opportunity to engage a customer.

Random Theories

Still reading the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Several thoughts struck me as reading this.  I was particularly going through the chapter on the bell curve.  In this chapter, Taleb talks about network theory.  It says the more connected something is, the more stable it is to a point.  But there are certain nodes in that connection that can affect the entire ecosystem.  The edges of the system are incredibly stable, the center is highly affected by problems.

Which made me think of Apple.  Apple is a highly centralized company with a highly centralized development/distribution system.  Then compare their ecosystem to network theory.  With Apple, the central connector is Apple itself.  So the one thing that is most capable of being effected by a black swan is the center.  They have the possibility of other interconnections in their suppliers, but by and large those are mostly fungible.  Foxconn is probably their biggest non-direct control node.  Failures at Foxconn can temporarily bring the company to its knees.  Otherwise, they have deep control of their own black swans because they have deep control of their network nodes.  The biggest problem Apple faces is internal.  They are unlikely to be effected by large external variations.

Conversely, that also seems to mean that their explosive change and variation must also come from inside.  They can't have explosive growth in a non-center node that effects their entire system.  So Apple has direct control of their scale.

Google/Android operates under a different model.  They use the Microsoft model.  The Microsoft model uses a large, highly decentralized network to build resources.  Which creates two results.  1) They are highly affected by explosive growth in the wings of their network.  A side business that Google has no control of has the possibility to take complete market ownership.  2) They are capable of being negatively affected by wings of the network.  Depending on the strength of the network node, they could easily be taken down by a shift in an influential node.

Which shows the difference in two different development/business methods.  Neither is better or worse.  Just different.

I'm probably wrong.  Humans are notorious in being bad predictors.  I'm also very likely to have used affect/effect wrong in several places.

Anyways.