Jeremy's World

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of North Carolina.

A big part of my job is managing projects.  Big projects with complex dependencies, multiple milestones, stakeholders wanting date commitments, etc.  The last one in particular is always a challenge, and if a Project Manager tells you otherwise they are lying.  It’s never possible to say – with any reasonable certainty – that a given project can be done on a specific date or will take a specific number of hours.  Disagree?

The usual game that’s played is to put in some CYA padding.  The PM’s internal conversation goes something like,

“Ok, I don’t really know the specifics of the project yet, but we can usually do them in 3 weeks.  I’ll commit to 4 weeks ‘just in case.’”

Back to the question in the title…How long is your commute?  10 minutes?  What if there’s traffic?  20 minutes.  What if it’s snowing?  40 minutes.  What if, what if, what if.  All of these “what if’s” reflect the obvious reality that there is always uncertainty with things like this.  Sure, we can’t plan for every “what if,” but in the project world with padded estimates, we try to give ourselves wiggle room.

What inevitably happens is the client says, “Whoa, can’t we do that faster?”  It turns into a negotiation on timelines that were ambiguous, padded swags in the first place!  The padding goes away in the negotiation, something happens, and a date is missed.  How has this worked out traditionally in the software world?

Continue reading…

You know how the saying goes, “It’s like a [insert vehicle here] wreck. You can’t turn away.”  Well, for me, reality TV can be this way.  The trashier the better.  And, I’m (mostly) not ashamed to admit that.  Besides network reality TV like American Idol and Survivor, there’s the entertainment found on VH1.  And one of the best there?  Rock of Love with Bret Michaels.

Obviously I’m a big fan of hair band music, and Poison is the epitome of that genre.  Since Brett Michaels is the front man there, I guess that makes him the quintessential hair metal icon (never mind he’s probably bald under that bandana).  Now that it’s some 25 years past the hair band hey day, what’s a rocker to do?  Go on TV and find “real love” with skanky girls half your age, of course.

That’s the premise of Rock of Love.  Lonely Brett needs to find a girl to be his true love because apparently he can’t do that without TV.  And since this is the third season, I guess it didn’t work out the past two times.  Poor guy.  Ok, I know, he does it because losers like me will watch, he has an album to pimp (which is pretty good), and I’m sure he gets a gazillion dollars to do it.  And the girls on the show?  The trashiest of trashy.  Every great once in a while there may be *one* who you wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring home to mom.  But for the most part, these girls make Britney Spears seem as elegant as Jackie O.

That said, last night was the big finale, and of course we watched.  It came down to a big choice between the “girl next door” and the Penthouse model.  Brett chose the Penthouse model (Taya, on top)…For the record, I would have chosen the girl next door (Mindy, on the bottom).

I’m sure your life is further enriched knowing this bit of information.

I finally got around to seeing this movie.  I was pretty excited when it first came out.  Even though Oliver Stone is, well, Oliver Stone, as long as one keeps in perspective the liberal slant his movies take, they are enjoyable (to me anyway).  I am not a fan of former President George W. Bush, and I’m not ashamed to say that.  I think his presidency was absolutely miserable.  But this isn’t about that.  The movie…

I wasn’t expecting an action-packed thriller or anything, but it moved at too slow of a pace for me.  But, that’s typical Oliver Stone, so I’ll give it a pass on that part.  Overall I still wasn’t impressed by the film.

The biggest drawback was the caricature-like portrayal of some of the players.  The portrayal of Condoleezza Rice was something I would expect to see on SNL – forced and distracting.  Colin Powell, Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer fall into the same category.  Rumsfeld was kind of humorous, but it went too far on the “clueless” angle…at least one hopes it was too far.  It was almost as though the actors were doing impressions more than acting.  I think that actually detracted from otherwise solid performances with the W., Cheney, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush portrayals.

It’s too bad because I really did have high hopes for the movie.

Saw this on fark.com one time and it cracked me up.  I’ll probably burn in hell for posting it and it may provide another reason to run me out of my church.  But I did LOL…

Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree…yeah, makes perfect sense.

I use the Facebook app on my Blackberry as my primary interface for updating my status and keeping up with my friends.  It’s great, and very much aids the crack addiction that is Facebook.  However, it has some limitations.  It doesn’t give you all those nice invitations and stuff that people post on your profile.  Maybe that’s a good thing?

I logged into the regular web interface last night and found this.  Holy crap, have I neglected so much of my Facebook experience.  That said, am I really missing out?  I mean, I like to think I’d fair well in a “Nicest Person Contest,” and I suppose I could use a “(lil) Green Patch” (though it sounds like there’s probably an ointment for that).  I could probably join the “Save the Gay Baby Whales for Jesus” cause…But is all that stuff a good thing?  I can’t seem to find the time for it.

So, I guess I am a Facebook loser.  I should probably update my status accordingly.

I received this recently in an email from a friend of mine.  You’ve seen these before, often propagated by opponents of the current administration, etc.  For some reason, I actually found this compelling and thought I would post it here.  Particularly the comment about how the current representative structure may no longer be relevant given advances in technology.  Anyway, an interesting idea…

When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that happens is that they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers need to find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.  Wall street, and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of "tough decision", and his board of directors gives him a big bonus.

I feel our government should not be immune from similar risks. I therefore am recommending the following cuts to be implemented by the president.

Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members and Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Also reduce remaining staff by 25%. Accomplish this over the next 8 years. (two steps / two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.

Some yearly monetary gains include:

$ 44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165,200 pay / member / yr.)

$ 97,175,000 for elimination of the above people’s staff. (estimate $1.3 Mil in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Mil in staff per each member of the Senate every year)

$ 240,294 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.

$ 7,500,000,000 reduction in pork barrel ear-marks each year. (those members who’s jobs are gone. Current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion / yr)

The remaining representatives would need to work smarter and would need to improve efficiencies. It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country?

We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well. It might even be easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.

Congress has more tools available to do their jobs than it had back in 1911 when the current number of representatives was established. (telephone, computers, cell phones to name a few)

Note: Congress does not hesitate to jump on a train for home when there is a holiday, even when the nation needs real fixes for real problems. Also, we have 3 senators that have not been doing their jobs for the past 18+ months (on the campaign trail) and still they all have been accepting full pay. These facts alone support a reduction in senators &congress.

Summary of opportunity:

$ 44,108,400 reduction of congress members.

$ 282,100,000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.

$ 150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.

$ 59,675,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining house members.

$ 37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining senate members.

$ 7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.

$ 8,073,383,400 per year, estimated total savings.

Big business does these types of cuts all the time.

“Wow, JD, your last blog post was back in July ‘07.  What’s up with that?”

I heeded some sage advice from someone I trust and hold in very high regard (my wife) during my recent job search and disabled my blog.  Why?  Her thinking was that if I was interviewing at some conservative/old school company and they read my blog posts where I lament about the problems with the search or frustrations with my work it might reflect as a weakness on me.  Would it?  Really?  I don’t know.  But, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Well, I now have a new job that is an amazing fit and is with a technically progressive organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  I would tend to think my blog (if anyone stumbled upon it) wouldn’t cause me problems there.  It’s not like I bash my employers or anything, and I like to think higher education institutions will be pretty hip to the free speech thing.  Besides, I moaned and complained much more about my job hunt saga on Facebook and everyone in my network could read that (oops on the privacy settings).

So my blog is back, and I hope to be writing again soon for both of the people who sometimes check in on my blog.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt.  Ever heard of it?  It tends to creep in with me during certain seasons of, well, fear, uncertainty or doubt.  Right now that FUD for me is my professional life.  My career is in flux right now and that can be pretty scary.  I thought I would have found the right position by now but I haven’t.  FUD.  “Did I really screw up leaving my last position in search of a good fit?”  “Will I find a better fit in this market?”  “What if there’s a gap…How will I pay the mortgage and feed my family?”  FUD.

But, that FUD seems to permeate other parts of my life with me.  If I’m facing it in one area, for some reason I begin questioning things even more.  God, faith, church, religion in general are usually the victims.

My latest doubt revolves around Biblical accuracy (again) and the nature of God (again).  I was watching a show on History International the other day covering historical Egypt.  They were finding and exhuming corpses that were reliably dated as being from around 3000 BC.  That’s certainly possible, even for Biblical literalists who scoff at the millions-of-years determinations by carbon dating.  So, these Egyptian people died in the middle of regular Old Testament times, right?  Here’s the rub…They mentioned one who died at “about 52 years of age, a relatively advanced age for that time.”  Contrast that with Biblical accounts of people living hundreds of years right around the corner from Egypt?  Smells funny to me.  And, the shorter lifespan version is more logical to me, and there is archeological proof.  Not so much with stories about Methuselah.  Why trust the Bible?

The nature of God…We’re beginning a new series this week at church called “Prayer (a quick-start guide).  In Christian circles (or other faiths, I imagine) I constantly hear, “I’ll pray for you about X” and “Prayer really is a powerful thing.”  I’m hearing that a lot with my job hunt and also with some potential family matters we are facing.  But does that matter?  I mean, is the nature of God such that he will make up his mind and act based on what people pray about?  Is he sitting there saying, “I know JD is looking for a job that’s the right fit…I’ll point him to it if enough people pray for it.”  Or, “I’d show JD the path to the right job but I have to hear the words from him.”  Does that sound like an all-knowing, all-powerful God to you?

I’m not buying it.  If God is an active participant in our lives (and I’m not convinced he is), is he really swayed by what we say?  Is thinking it the same as saying it?  Will he only act in our best interests if we ask him for it?  But I thought God always acts according to “his will.”  So…my prayers wouldn’t really impact anything if he’s going to act in his will anyway, right?  If that’s the case, then what’s the point of prayer?

I’ll let y’all know if they run me out of my church. 

Ok, it’s been forever since I’ve written anything. And now, all I have is to share this kick-ass picture of Rob at a recent gig. Almost makes me have a man-crush on him…He does have a purdy mouth.

Have you ever seen the CBS show "NUMB3RS?"  It’s kind of fun – FBI agent solving murders who has a math-geek-university-professor brother.  The math guy applies all of his seemingly superhuman understanding of math, patterns, statistics, algorithms, etc. to find things that otherwise would not have been seen using "pure" police science.  Yeah, it’s often silly but can be entertaining.

I came across the reverse tonight.  Netflix is hosting a contest for people to come up with a movie recommendation system that is 10% better than the one they currently use.  I think it’s brilliant on their part to get ingenious output from people for a relatively low price ($1 million prize) in a method the article calls "crowdsourcing" (very clever).  Anyway, if you can make it through the 4 pages, it’s an interesting read on how a psychologist is applying human psychology to the problem rather than "just" mathematics and computer science…with astonishing results.  Read it from Wired Magazine.