Category: My People’s Keeper

Do Your Updates, Part II

Bobbie1 Comment

Firstly: a new Apple iOS update is out for phones/pads/Macs, and you want to take it *as soon as possible*. Not only does it have a zero day in it, that zero day is under active exploit. This means that a problem is/was identified before a fix was identified (zero days to fix) and professionals are already abusing it (under active exploit). Granted, the typical target of these things are journalists, government officials, etc., but also folks working at corporate offices. Maybe even you.

One of the questions I have fielded since Do Your Updates is best distilled as “why can’t developers do it perfectly the first time”. Aside from the unrealistic expectation that an engineer not be human, there’s a few reasons for this.

  1. The biggest vulnerability in any system *is the humans* and it’s not just the humans building the system, it’s the humans *using* the system. Phishing and social engineering – those emails asking you to click a link urgently or telling you “here’s your PayPal receipt” for a transaction of several hundred dollars (designed to make you panic) are phishing. Social Engineering is more like the person calling you on the phone saying they’re calling from Chase to verify a recent fraudulent activity and asking you for things like your passcode, to verify a 2FA, etc. These methods rely on the target feeling *vulnerable* and have a sense of urgency.
  2. Code evolves and so does technology. There was a time where a very strong password was sufficient to guard your stuff — but then we had data breaches. So then we added 2FA (second-factor authentication, e.g., when you get a text with a code to support your log in) — but then we had SIM swapping. So then we added MFA (multi-factor authentication), physical YubiKeys, etc. etc. — for each fine cat, a fine rat: engineers on the malicious side are not resting, so engineers on the corporate side cannot, either.
  3. We talked about packages and post-deployment vulnerabilities in Do Your Updates. That is still a thing.
  4. There are *a lot* of ways an attacker can poke at the platform or the code:
    • They can insert things into text boxes for forms that interrupt the inbound form contents (e.g., the text box in which you give your feedback on a thing) to try to get into the database in which those contents exist (this can go by a variety of terms and also has a variety of methods, one of which is called SQL Injection and is/was the first thing I learned about cybersecurity, aside from “never share your password”, back in 2002).
    • They can do something called a “brute force” attack which is just like it sounds: employing a variety of clients to just pound the ever-loving crap out of any intake on a site to either force it to give up/let you in and/or just take the site down (Ddos: Deliberate denial of service). 2FA helps with this but so does throttling (making it so that only so many requests are allowed before it locks you out), or Captcha/Re-Captcha. Except now AI can pick out all the parts that are a “motorcycle” in the image, even if you can’t. And so now engineers have to figure out the difference between a less tech savvy person reaching for their paper-written passwords and typing those carefully but incorrectly into the little box, vs. an AI acting as such.
    • They can code up sites that *look* like the site you want to go to and the URL even looks like the site you want to go to — except maybe instead of a “O” it’s a “0” in the site name. You go to the site that looks legit, that the engineer has scraped/copied the design from a legitimate site, and you type. your login as always. Because it’s not the real site, it tells you “oh gosh we need to verify it’s you, please type in the 2FA code” and instead of you sending that code to the real site and doing a real authentication, you are providing that code to the attacker so they can go log in as you.

AI is also not going to solve our security problems — it will make them harder to (as malicious folks have access to AI, too)– but it can help. AI can be used to detect anomalies faster (in most cases you don’t have to tell your bank you are traveling as it employs AI to figure out whether or not that was you booking a 7 night trip to Cancun or not), or even predict patterns for exploits. When it does, it will not be replacing the engineer or even making what the engineer does perfect. This dance does not end.

So do your updates.

Accounting on a Monday in May

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Imagine a filled bubblegum dispenser, a big glass globe replete with colorful gumballs crowding the edges and filling to the top.  Imagine each of these represent at thing to do. Imagine that you are holding the great glass globe in your outstretched hands.

Now imagine the glass disappears and gravity does its thing. That’s a bit how I feel right now; I’ve decided May is the month of mania. Work is hectic, school is hectic, life is hectic. Enter a 3-day weekend, to give some respite.

As very little gets done on the home front during the week, all of the home front to-do’s get crammed into the weekend.  Usually there’s some spillover into Monday, kicking off an already frenetic week with additional to-do’s.  So it’s nice to have the catch up Monday.

At a cost.

Memorial Day is the day we reserve for those who went into uniform and never got out of it; the men and women who went to war and never came home (or at least not alive). (Veteran’s Day is for those who are remembered at Memorial Day *and* those who got to come home, in whole or in part).

Did you know that at 3pm local time you’re supposed to take a moment and remember those who died?  I knew the whole day was reserved, and that there are parades and postings. I knew about visiting graveyards (which is something I like to do anyway) and the pinning of poppies; I didn’t know there was a special time.

I do know a lot of people died*:

  • 620,000 soldiers died in the US Civil War (Memorial Day was started shortly after as Decoration Day)
  • 10.8 million soldiers in World War I (add in another 8 million or so civilians)
  • 21 to 25 million soldiers in World War II (estimates vary) (with up to 28 million civilians)
  • 600 thousand in Korea (another 600 thousand civilians)
  • 1.8 million in Vietnam (note: not including civilian deaths, which pushes it up to 2.5 million)

In more recent wars (the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War (still going!), the Iraq War (still going!), the tallies seem to muddle.  Accounts and numbers vary depending on the resource.  It’s notable that the more “sophisticated” we are and the more precise we’ve become, the less specific and discrete we get in how we count the dead.

As we see the increased attention to Iran and the “will we/won’t we” hype machine spin up, and as we review the meaning of this day, it would be as well to get clear about our accounting, and the very real ways we all pay.

Speaking of currency, if you’re interested in donating to a worthwhile charity, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation is highly ranked on Charity Navigator and supports veterans and their families in active duty and beyond.

 

 

*Yep, I know this is US-Centric.  Mainly it covers what our kids are taught in our schools, such as that is.  I graduated in 1991 and my World and US history books only had a paragraph about the Vietnam War, which had ended when I was born in ’73.

Listening Ears

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The last month or so has been an exercise in emotional control and perseverance: there are the usual challenges (it’s the last productive month before people start to serially take off for holidays, trying to eat healthily when people bring in baked goods is difficult, etc.) and new and unwelcome ones (a dear friend has passed on, the car decided I needed to spend some serious cash on it, a coworker is leaving which in turn throws into sharp relief just how much I can separate work and life). As such I haven’t had time to blog or really reflect on much: I’ve spent most of the month reacting and creating contingency plans.

As November is gone and I find myself firmly in the twelfth month, I have either got better at dealing with these challenges or I’ve become numb to their effect. The result is that I can finally take some time to concentrate on a (relatively) new concept: being self-aware and open-minded during challenging times (especially meetings).

We’ve had some training on this recently at the ‘soft, and courtesy of a side-program I’m getting a larger tutorial in how perspective can shape an entire interaction for the better (or worse). Traditionally I am not one to necessarily assume the best of intentions in dealing with someone during conflict — it’s something most people do not default to. (I know of one person who I think can honestly say that during a contentious debate can keep her “opponent” in a positive light; it’s fitting that she is the extremely patient Executive Director of a nonprofit devoted to helping schoolchildren (and teenagers alike)).

The idea of unconscious bias is not a new one, it’s the reason I assume the teenager in the brand new Porsche in front of me is spoiled rotten (instead of thinking they may be enjoying a ride with Mom or Grandma in their car), that the guy who cut me off on the freeway is a jerk (instead of hoping that whatever emergency they’re rushing off to is quickly resolved), that the person at work who hasn’t got back to me is a slacker (instead of positing that their workload is just as heavy as mine). It’s the reason some bosses assume it is ill-advised to hire single mothers (and some deliberately hire them), why some tourists raise their voice to speak English increasingly loudly to the people who don’t understand them, and why most people think NPR listeners are Loony Lefty Libs. (Hi.)

Nor is the concept of self-awareness a new one, if not practiced terribly often. In an era of “selfies” and Kardashians, you’d think self-awareness abounds, but alas it does not. The next time you think you are self aware, check how long it takes you to calm down after an argument with your spouse: that is, once the issue at hand has been resolved and how long until your autonomic nervous system chills out (e.g., your tone of voice changes, your heart rate slows down, you stop grimacing and feeling like you’re still arguing but aren’t really sure about what anymore).

In other words, it’s hard, when the guy has just cut you off and your latte has landed in your lap, to stop and think “gosh I hope he gets there in time”. It’s equally hard to sit in a meeting with someone who is disparaging your product or questioning your priorities to believe they are coming from a positive (or even just productive) space. It’s a skill set to practice and a useful one at work and at home, to be sure.  It’s harder still when the media (“social” and otherwise) is screaming you about the impending Armageddon (be it ISIL or Climate Change or Global Economies or Airbags or Guns or Presidential Candidates), to be positive about much.

The suggested approach (from training, shortly to be invoked in different ways) is to practice active listening: in other words, to let the other person say what they need to say NOT with a view to “how much longer do I have to listen to this drivel” but with an earnest attempt to understand where they are coming from, and acknowledge that position. This, combined with assuming the best of intentions, should serve to deter the impression that the other person is wasting your time/out to get you. The other tool provided includes essentially a “so what are we going to do about it?” mechanism — it’s perfectly fine to air an issue, but come ready to solve it or to commit to solving it. This should serve to ensure that conflict — when it does arise — is used in a positive and productive fashion. These things sound practical and practicable, but I suspect in the heat of the moment they aren’t that easy to call upon. I think, however, it is better to try, in these trying times.

 

 

Squashing

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Friday morning I found myself squatting in a field.

No, not doing that.

Chinook Farms in Snohomish, WA has, or rather had, a few acres of acorn squash it grows for charity. Girl Scouts planted it, the farmer tends to it, and United Way Volunteers pick it and crate it, and it is then shipped to food banks in the surrounding area. Microsoft’s CDnA group (Consumer Data and Analytics) had a cadre of volunteers to do so, of which I was one.  Acorn squash are delicious but their foliage is sharp and laden with micro thorns, I actually wore through spots of a new pair of leather work gloves and have an impressive rash on my forearm (where my “long” sleeve backed off).

The morning started with that crisp, autumnal chill we get in the Northwest that belies an Indian Summer; it was all turning leaves and wishing for pumpkin spice lattes as I drove the windy road into Snohomish. Arriving at the farm I saw some hundred-odd other blue-shirt volunteers, ready to go out and pick squash. Another hundred or so were the contingent from Nordstrom, in crisp white shirts. I signed the photo waiver and so somewhere, out there, there are photos of me with my group, wearing our blue t-shirts, dirty, smiling, posed in front of a pile of acorn squash.

IMG_1851
Pretty sure we didn’t do it right.

Our VP was in the fields with us, tossing squash to collectors; early on we had deviated from instructions and while we did have fairly neat rows of trampled-down, already-picked squash plants in our wake, our piles of squash (to be wheelbarrowed down to the shipping crates) left a lot to be desired in terms of neatness. The Nordstrom folks had symmetrically neat piles, as you would expect.

Several of the volunteers commented that this was hard work and they would thereby appreciate their brain-intensive but body-light regular jobs much moreso. I found this a little wry in terms of the layoffs that occurred the day before: some of us were already in fervent appreciation of still having a job. I mentioned that to my VP (read, 3 levels above) and he said, “That’s a horrible thing to say. Do you like your job?” I replied in affirmative, and I’m not sure that either of us got the point of where the other was coming from. When the sun poked out of the clouds and it got hot, some took to complaining a little more; they were shut down by the volunteer coordinator who pointed out we could have gone to clean the bathrooms in the downtown Seattle YMCA instead. Not a peep after that. I noticed one lady who never complained. She is 7 months pregnant, and was picking squash in the fields with us.

As the group drove away from the farm to the place down the road where free pizza and beer was promised, I drove home; I had a pile of email to wade through that I was (unashamedly) looking forward to. I had done my planned volunteering for the morning, but I still had that job that I love, and am still grateful for, waiting for me.

On the Naming of Me

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My name is pretty unusual, in and of that I’ve been challenged by telemarketers, customer service people, and baristas alike that “That can’t be your name” or “What’s your real name?” (As if the sort of person who gives out a fake name would abruptly turn around and provide a real one). My name is in fact Bobbie, although legally it is Roberta; the only people who call me Roberta are telemarketers, teachers, and attorneys.

Per Wolfram Alpha, fewer than 200 people each year are given the name Bobbie (as a given female name – and yes it does say it assumes Bobbie is female). Less than 1 in 3331 people have the name, and the most common age for a person with the name Bobbie is 76 years. (Roberta clocks in at much the same, with 1 in 1823 people having the name and the common age is 57 years).

So it’s safe to say “Bobbie” is an unusual name, and that is that.

Over the years my name has been mangled quite a bit, from the masculine “Bobby” to the alternative female “Bobbi”. I also oftentimes get the email typo of one more o, one less b; for the most part I choose to ignore these and hope the sender goes away. That said, I wasn’t really particularly particular about how people spelled my name (with the exception of that last) until I read Freakonomics.

Freakonomics has a pretty good chapter on Correlation vs. Causality, particularly around naming conventions. The main anecdote is about a man who named his sons Winner and Loser, and the indication that the son named Loser had an extremely successful life, whilst the son named Winner had an extremely unsuccessful one. There is no causality in naming. However it also had a second anecdote, and a study, around names given to female children. Specifically, names that one would associate with strippers.

The idea was thus: if I name my daughter, say, “Bambi” or “Sugar” or something like that, am I dooming her to life on the pole? The short answer is no, you are not. By virtue of naming your daughter anything like that (there is a third indication of a daughter named Temptress who indeed had a pretty name-similar life) you are not going to ensure she ends up with a job whose uniform consists of two ounces of elastic and slightly more than that of glitter. But there’s still a good chance it will happen. Why? Because the parent who names their kid something like that is also probably not going to make sure she gets home in time for a curfew, or is getting her homework done. It’s the correlation – the fact that a parent who names their kid something like that isn’t likely to be hammering on the grades – rather than the causality that drives the preponderance of “Crystals” and the like to the pasties.

As part of this chapter in Freakonomics, there is a list of the top 10 names found amongst strippers at time of publication. The name “Bobbi” – with an “I” – is on that list. The name “Bobbi” with an “I” has a common age of 39. That means those Bobbi’s were born in 1975 or thereabouts, and Freakonomics was published in 2005, with data from studies probably the year previous, and so I think it’s entirely reasonable that their stripper population was about 29 at the time.

Since reading that I’ve made it a point to educate people on the value of the “e”. I don’t look good in glitter.

In Development

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I was at a holiday gathering the other day and during the usual course of “…And what do you do?” I replied that I was a developer. The inference was that I was a Real Estate Developer; I had to explain that I was a Make the Computer Do Useful Things Developer. I was talking to two ladies about my age (Hi, I’m 40), and was surprised at the reply: “Oh, that’s unusual!”

I suppose I should not have been. I know a lot of women in IT, but darned few who do development.  To be clear: most of the women I know in the Information Technology space were at one point developers, or have a passing knowledge of some development language. They merged into Project or Product Management, or Business Analyst roles. These roles require knowing what is possible of code without actually having to write any of it, and so if you get tired of the incessant progress of development technology then that is one way up and out (and it is a way I took, about five years ago).

Careers arc and opportunities knock and itches flare up and I am once again a developer.  And I find myself, when talking to people who don’t work with or know other developers, battling not only the usual misconceptions about development, but the gender-based ones as well.

Development (in IT terms) is the handle one applies to the concept of using a series of commands (code) to tell the box (tower, laptop, server, etc.) what you want it to do; if you want it to take in something or not, if you want it to spit out something or not. In order to create this blog post many people did varying forms of development (from creating the templates that instruct the browser how to make this post look all shiny, to the protocols that tell the server where to put this post, to the widgets on the front end that tell you things like I haven’t posted in a while). If I typed it in MS Word, that required a bunch of other development by a bunch of other people.

Development is not:

  1. Something you can do on five screens drinking 3 bottles of wine to create a “worm” that appears as a graphic on your screen (as in Swordfish), and usually doesn’t involve a developer logging an Easter Egg of themselves in a bad Elvis costume with sound effects (as in Jurassic Park)*. If I drank 3 bottles of wine and was looking at 5 screens they’d probably be the ones you see in a hospital room, and the only graphics I would see appearing would be the “worm” that is my heart rate monitor flat-line.  And while I have myself buried Easter Eggs and commentary in code, it isn’t that elaborate because you don’t typically have time to build elaborate things. You’re busy rewriting all of the stuff you just wrote because someone decided to change the scope of your work.
  2. Anything involving a graphic user interface (GUI). When a developer talks about manipulating objects, they are things that are typed out phrases, they are not boxes that are dragged and dropped. There are some development environments that offer up a GUI in tandem with the “scripting” – that bit about writing out words I was talking about – but they are there to illustrate what you have scripted more often than not, and not there to assist in your scripting.
  3. Finite. Development technology is constantly changing and no one developer knows all of the development methods or languages. That would be like someone knowing all of the spoken languages in the world. Rather, it’s typical you’ll find one developer who “speaks” one development language really well, or maybe a branch of languages (much like you run into a person who can speak Spanish and French and Italian, because they are rooted in the same “base” of Latin, it’s not uncommon to find someone who can code in ASP.Net and VB.Net and C#.Net, because they’re all of the Microsoftian .Net base).  No one hires “a developer”, they hire a .Net Developer or a Java Developer or a Ruby Developer or what have you. Specialization exists because the base is so broad.

Modern cinema has done an injustice to developers in terms of making what we do seem both simple and sexy; the “shiny” environments typified by the interfaces “hackers” use on-screen looks really slick and probably took some real developer hours of time to make look good… with absolutely no real purpose. That said, actual development can be simple (with clear requirements and a decent knowledge of the things you can and can’t do) and can be quite sexy (if you’re sapiosexual). It’s just not well-translated in current media. (To wit: Jeff Goldblum uploaded a Virus to an alien system on a Macbook. He didn’t have to know the alien system’s base language, machinery, indexes, program constraints, functions, etc. And it was on a Mac, in the 90’s, for which development was not one of its strengths).

Most of what development is, is trying to solve a problem (or two), and generating endless logic loops and frustrations along the way. You build a “thing”, you think it works, you go to compile it or make it run, it fails, you go dig through what you wrote, find you’re missing a “;” or a “,” or an “END” or a “GO” or a “}”, re-run, find it fails, and go dig through some more. For every hour you spend writing out what you want it to do, you spend about an hour figuring out why it won’t do it.  This process of “expected failure” is not sexy or shiny or ideal, and that’s why it doesn’t show up on-screen.

These are misconceptions every developer, regardless of gender, has had to deal with at some point. Some deign to explain, some gloss over, some simply ignore; much like I really hope we get a socially-functioning, intelligent person on-screen soon, so do I hope that we get a showcase for the simple elegance of real development.

It would be great, too, if there were more female developers on “display” as well (and not for their bodies, hence the scare quotes).  Think through every movie you’ve ever seen that shows people doing any real development, “hacking” even (a term that is abused beyond recognition); how many were female? Go back to the movie “Hackers”—did Angelina Jolie actually, ever, really type anything? You inferred that she did, but the real development, the real “hacking”, was done by the crew-of-guys. Oh, and that’s right, she was the only girl.  The Matrix? Carrie Ann Moss spent precious little time in front of a computer there. She did look damn good in skin-tight leather.

Fast-forward a decade (or two) and we’re pretty much in the same boat. You see women behind computers on-screen, but they are typing in word processing programs or moving the mouse to click it on the shiny picture of the Murderer/Prospective Boyfriend (or, you know, both). They aren’t buried under a desk trying to trace a network cable or eyeballing multicolored text trying to figure out *WHY* it won’t compile, they’re delivering the shiny printout to the Chief/Doctor/Editor from which Decisions Will Be Made.

We find it surprising in social circles, I suppose, for women to be in development, because we don’t see it exemplified or displayed in any of our mediums.  TV, Movies, even proto-development toys for children often feature eager-looking boys interacting with them, the girls are reserved for the beading kits and temporary tattoo sets (actually, there’s precious little out there for getting your child, regardless of gender, to learn code, but that is changing). We have crime-solving anthropologists, we have NCIS ass-kickers, we have cops and coroners;  maybe it’s time we had a developer.

*Jurassic Park is a good example of both great and poor development display. Right before tripping that “Dennis Nedry Elvis Graphic”, Samuel L. Jackson’s character is eyeballing Nedry’s code. That stuff that looks like sentences that don’t make sense? That’s code. That’s what it looks like, for the most part. Unfortunately, later on when the little girl is hacking the “Unix System” that “she knows”, it’s all graphical. And that’s not accurate.

A Pluot Principle

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“…And then I heard this guy say, ‘I feel like I’ve missed pluot season’…”

It was a surreal Seattle moment: at a friend’s house for the Sunday before Labor Day, eating fresh, organically home-grown grafted tomatoes from a tomato plant nestled next to kale and squash, with three young urban professionals (not including yours truly and the Editor), one of which we will call John.  (The others we will call K and Margles). John had been on Bremerton for the day, rode the ferry (and heard the above quote), cycled to K and Margles’ house for dinner, and shared the quote.  (Note: my garden failed this season due to rabbits, deer, opossums, raccoons, and possibly a plague of locusts. I’m not bitter.)

There is nothing not Seattle about all of that. From the cycling* and the ferrying and the home-grown tomato-ing and the quoting and the pluot piece, that was all so clearly Seattle it made me ache (appreciatively). It also made me vaguely jealous: somewhere, out there, is someone for whom that is a thing. Someone out there has TIME to worry about whether or not they’ve missed a season of a fruit that is only a recent addition to the fruit sphere.  They’ve worried enough about it that they were talking to someone else about it, like there is some sort of Pluot Appreciation Week or Festival that was missed. (NB: you can get a 12 pack of pluots at Costco. I’m not sure how artisanal they are anymore).

*Not just John who is the cyclist – K and Margles once spent a season doing nearly every long-range ride (including at least two double centuries) the Cascade Bicycle Club arranges. They called this “fun”.

What I am getting at (albeit laboriously) is it seems to me, more often as of late, that there are a wide variety of things out there to learn/do/participate in/obsess on and a diminished resource of time, and that some of the prioritization I have had to make of late (work… obsessive housecleaning…) combat with this time scarcity issue.  I’m not entirely sure if this realization is driven from a burgeoning sense of mortality or if this is something that’s been floating around in my head for a while and now it’s just beginning to gel. I find myself increasingly weighing the experiential benefits of a reorganized library or an extra couple of hours’ sleep on the weekend against a bike ride or sailing or woodworking or such. In effect, the culmination of years of only marginally completed “to-do lists” seems to be weighing in more heavily as I head to 40. This is compounded by the fact that I am the product of four hyper-driven parents, each with hobbies that involve activity and analysis (cataloging, if you will).

I haven’t been entirely a bump on a log this time, and have done a little cycling here and there, for example. But I think it’s time to start a new list and drive a little harder on it.

Item one: experience pluots. Before they go out of season.

Plus One To Self Worth

Bobbie2 Comments

In Dungeons and Dragons (yes, I used to play D&D, get over it) the very first thing you do, once your DM has declared the arena in which you are playing (or RIFTS — we did that too), is you wrote up your Character Sheet. Inevitably a piece of Xeroxed paper, it had check boxes and blank spaces for you to detail your character’s physical appearance, social abilities, physical, mental, and emotional abilities/proclivities, as well as a back story. It was not uncommon for everyone’s character to be a fantastically good-looking crack-shot nuclear physicist and ace-pro lover, ala Buckaroo Banzai, but there would be the “fatal flaw” they’d introduce in their character: you know, to remain interesting.

Life doesn’t hand you a character sheet. You are given the looks you inherit genetically, you are alloted the IQ points that amass themselves in your grey matter. Your character, however, is something you can develop and change. (Yes, you can “train your brain”. Yes, you can use surgery to enhance your physical appearance. But really, your character is something both easier and harder to manipulate, and it’s what we’re discussing here, so let’s ignore the caveats and nota benes, shall we?)

One of the best speeches in recent movie history was in The American President, where Michael Douglas’ president makes the statement that a the upcoming presidential race would be *entirely* about character. Any race: presidential, rat, or otherwise, is about character.

I’ve spent some time evaluating the things about myself I don’t like: I send emails too quickly, I take things to heart too easily, I spend too much time worrying about others opinions, I continue to not have the discipline to have the physique I’d like. Some of these are correctable via self-direction, some of these I will have to run into a brick wall or two in order to acquire the necessary mental note. Others seem doomed to compromise: my weight being one of them. 

I’ve known a few people who have taken stock of their life completely, and turned it around in a fashion amazing to those who knew them well and those who knew them casually. One good friend lost nearly a hundred pounds,  got divorced, acquired all sorts of new hobbies (including running, triathlons, and barhopping); another lost a significant amount of weight (she is not telling, nor should she), stayed married, took control over her education and career and is literally living the dream in Hawaii. Some friends have made changes not so sweeping: leaving an unsatisfying job, taking on new hobbies, reinvesting in their health; I think part of the human condition is to self-evaluate and, for some of us, to target improvements.

I have no idea how much of this is driven by the checklist mentality or the presumptive dopamine rush that comes from living this way. I do know that I have a few things I’d like to change, and maybe if I’m open and outward about them, and write them down, and profess them, if not in a character sheet with 8 or 12 friends and a 20-sided dice but in a blog with 8 or 12 readers and a 20-sided life, maybe then, I can upgrade my character.

Resolve

Bobbie1 Comment

I have no resolutions this year.

Available data indicates that I’m not terribly good at keeping them, and that the things that need to get done get done anyway. Ergo, no formal resolutions. There is the list, which is the same list I tackle every year. This year includes finally learning to drive a stick shift (lesson two is next Saturday) and learning to ski; there is also some plan to get my Spanish back in gear. Oh, and there’s the STP and apparently I’m back in a book club (thanks, Carla).

I have no problem with other people’s resolutions… save one. The gym resolution. Now, many folks resolve to get in shape in the new year. Some have attainable goals (I’m going to lose 10 pounds! 20! 30! in 2/4/6 months!). Some have wildly fantastic goals (I’m going to lose 50 pounds by April!). And one and all, they arrive at the gym on 2 January, clogging up my classes. For those of us who were there the day before Thanksgiving and on December 23rd, as well as December 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th, the inevitable barrage of well-intentioned people into the gym class means that we have to get to each class extra extra early (example: proper etiquette is to arrive at spin class 5 or even 10 minutes early to get your bike, fill your water, acquire the appropriate towelage, figure out if you really want to be behind *that* person, if you really want to be in front of *that other* person, etc. In the Resoluter Month, you need to arrive 20 minutes early to do all that *and* navigate around the newbies).

I would wager that most of these folks are gone by the end of January — maybe February. So it’s a discomfort of short duration. I think I can get through that. And if that’s the most I have to complain about, well, then, my life’s pretty darned good.

Drive

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There is a really, really good short video on “Drive”, aka, what drives people. What makes them want to succeed. And things not to try in that venue.  You can get it here.

I have spent  the last two days in Vegas surrounding various concepts of “drive”. How to drive money. How to drive production. How to drive traffic. How to drive employees.  How to drive change, innovation, and how to drive drive itself. You name it, we have contingency plans to push it. We are a V8^2 machine, on racing fuel, listening to Metallica.

This evening’s party was at Gillys at Treasure Island. For those of you not familiar with Gilly’s it features bikini-and-chaps clad drink waitresses and a mechanical bull. And really, that about sums it up, doesn’t it?

Except yours truly decided to find something to do. Now when you’re at Work-Fun events, usually there’s a center of interest — sometimes it’s the “boss”, sometimes its the event itself, but this event was about release. And there was a mechanical bull.

I decided to work on my powers of persuasion. You see, I’m a geek. I was trained to ferret out information, issues, data, contingencies, anomalies. I was not trained to convince, addle, wheedle, or persuade. This is something that has, until recently, been merely a hobby.

I am proud to report I got someone up on the mechanical bull. The fact that he nearly broke his nose is not a point of pride… he is clearly more man than I … and I did NOT succeed in convincing my boss, my boss’ boss, or my boss’ boss’ bosses into doing it. Still: I got one up there.

After nearly two weeks straight of daily work, at 10-16 hour days, to get Plan out (and other initiatives), I find myself exhausted in Las Vegas. I have an incredible room — next post is a hotel review about The Venetian and It’s Inherent Awesomeness in One Thousand Words or Less — and supportive folks and I have no right to whine. I even have Discovery Channel on the telle.

And with that I’m going to it. It’s almost midnight, I have meetings in 8 hours. Whee!