There are just some times where it's a blast being a Dad, and this morning was one of them. My daughter thought it'd be nice to chat me and see what I was up to. I love it. It didn't last long as we don't have a lot to say - seeing as how we talk every evening, but she feels special chatting me and having me chat back. Not every kid can say that - that's for sure.
Great day so far!
A very old friend is getting a new job - he's only been at his current position for 7 months, and he's worried that this will make him look a little flighty. I think it's great that he realizes that this isn't the place for him, and found a new place to go to.
A new friend of mine, and co-worker, has put in his two weeks notice and will be moving on to work with another friend of mine soon. He's excited as it's a huge opportunity for him.
My friends are getting new jobs, and I'm currently waiting for plans and decisions to be made. Consequently, this means I have a little more time on my hands than usual which, under the circumstances, means that I get to talk to my friends in these transitional phases they find themselves in. True, one has been at a place six years, and the other seven months... one I've known for decades, the other for a few years, so there are lots of differences, but also a lot of similarities.
Change is always a challenge to go through well. You have to be excited about the new, but you've obviously got a lot of feelings about the old - even if it's not that 'old'.
I look at my kids too. A son starting High School this fall - more big changes... daughters starting new things as well... it's all about a lot of change. We're all pretty well managing the change, and the risks of the change, but every now and then things can seem a little daunting.
It's odd... interesting and at the same time sad, that I'm watching all this change, and not really being a part of it. I've had plenty, and I'm sure more to come, but it's a very interesting time, and there's time enough to think about it all.
I read this on one of the RSS feeds I read and it mentioned that an 'inside source' at Amazon was saying that a new version of the Kindle was going to be coming out this fall. Something with a little smaller footprint and colors. I'm not sure that I'm ready to replace my Kindle yet, but I tell you I'm certainly planning on keeping up-to-date with these devices as they improve. I've become a true believer in the Kindle and Amazon's service.
I love reading and this is without a doubt the best reading aid I've ever had. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's so far better than paperbacks it's not even funny.
I don't usually spend a lot of time dealing with suggestive management techniques - I was a manager, and it's not easy if you're not a natural at it, or you don't have the ability to become really good at it. It's not an easy thing to do, and it's often thankless as you're in the middle of the work-flow - not really doing the work, and not at the top, so you tend to get it from both sides. That having been said, I heard of a motivation strategy that has to be one of the historically worst in human history: fear.
Sure, it's a decent short-term motivator: fight or flight. It's built into all of us. But to use it in business is a sign of desperation. Which is never a good thing. Today I heard someone say "I need you to be excited about doing this - or I'll find someone who is."
When I was talking to other people later in the day, a friend coined the phrase "Be Happy, or I'll Kill You!" - and I had to laugh. It seems so non-sensical when you put it that way, and that's the way it was really put forth. I know people get under stress and they say and do things that they wish they hadn't, and there's always time later for apologies. I'm just worried that this isn't that time. I'm worried that it's going to get worse before it gets better, and if that's the case, then some folks are in for a very rough ride, indeed.
I know management can be hard. I know I'm not any good at it. I've known some people that were really good at it, and some that weren't. I just hear these things and I think Uh oh... this can't end well...
This morning I was updating one of the Numbers spreadsheets I had and was trying to push the envelope a little more and see what tools Numbers really had for - well... crunching numbers. I had some data that I wanted to have massaged a little more automatically, as opposed to the brute-force method that I had been using for the past year - since I moved the data from Mesa to Numbers.
The first thing was to have a better calculation of the YTD comparison of monthly numbers. The issue was that I only wanted to look at those months I had data for this year in the previous year. Making it as apples to apples a comparison as possible. The trick there was that the comparison needed to be a sum of the data, so it was possible to make a new column with the IF() function, but it was done even better with Numbers' SUMIF() function.
By simply making the test range this year, and the comparison ">0" and the sum range the previous year's data, I get the sum for the previous year's data for only those months that I have data for this year. Excellent! One thing done automatically that I needed to do.
The next thing was to have the year-on-year monthly changes automatically computed without messing up the sums or averages by putting a '0' in the cell. This was pretty easily done with an IF() call where the conditional was the value for this month of this year being great than zero, and the true clause was the percent change. The false clause was simply the empty string, and that worked out pretty well.
When I was done with the process I had a workbook that looked the same, but acted entirely differently, and much more like a cool, complex, spreadsheet should operate. Now I put in the raw data and shazam! the complete workbook gets all the data it needs. Very cool.
Yes, I realize this isn't that big a deal, but the little I do with spreadsheets is very much brute-force and the steps to find out these functions and use them well was an interesting exercise.
OK, I've been coding for a long time. I've used lots of development environments and the only one that I've found that really holds my interest is ProjectBuilder/Xcode on Mac OS X. From the first time I used it on NeXTSTEP 3.3, I knew it was something far beyond an editor with build tools. It was just so clearly built by developers, for developers. I'm still of that same opinion today.
This morning I read about an interesting tool that analyzes the Obj-C/C code and tells you where you might have issues with leaks, etc. Nothing that hasn't been covered a dozen times before in a dozen different tools, but this one is a little different. First, it's a syntax checker. Again, lint did this for decades, but this is different in that it knows about the idioms of Obj-C and the class structure that Mac OS X uses. That's huge.
Next, it's slick in it's reporting in that it's all web-based and generates all this very simply. I'm not a big fan of web apps, but for reporting, it just can't be beat. What they have done here is the very best of web reporting for coding issues, and I have to say it's remarkable.
I decided to put in one of my projects to see what it might find. Interestingly, it found a possible error in one of my classes in that I wasn't creating a - (void)dealloc method for the instance. Now, technically, the class involved is the main controller class, and it would not get deallocated except on shutdown, so there's no real problem there, but it's nice to keep things clean and try to do the right thing all the time. So I added the very simple method and re-ran the checker. Clean, save for a dead store issue that I'm not about to change as it's really just the last part of a method that doesn't return the error code. It's more of a coding style than an error, but I appreciate that it's telling me about this.
While I'm not doing a lot of Obj-C coding these days, it's tools like this that make me want to change jobs so that I did do a lot of Obj-C coding. The Mac is a wonderful platform, and its development tools are the best I've ever seen. With the addition of tools like this code analyzer, it's even better. Long live the Mac!
Today I had a meeting with my Boss and he wants me to take a more managerial role in the project he's got, and I appreciate the opportunity, but he really wasn't listening to me when I tried to explain that I didn't think I'd be the right guy for the job. I don't blame him there, either. He's got a tough position and needs to have this project succeed. Everything he's put me on has succeeded, and that's a pretty impressive 7 year track record. Makes sense he wants me to do this.
But it's not what I want to do. Not even a little.
I've been the manager, I'm not that good at it for a wide spectrum of people. I lead by example, I believe in hard work and honest mistakes, and if you're talking and chatting about the Cubs then say you've had no time this week to complete your assigned duties, I've got absolutely no sympathy for you. Face it... you had an assignment, you played around and now want to say you have no time? Sorry. You messed up. Face it, apologize, and don't do it again.
Unfortunately, that's not how a lot of the folks in this place seem to function. They have their own pace. As long as the current management is happy with them, that's great. I just know if I were to manage these folks, many would think I'm even more of a jerk than they already do. But none of them would be able to say that I asked anyone to do anything I haven't already done myself.
I owned a company, I've done the management thing. I realize I'm not the kind that really inspires people. I'm the person that works very hard to get something done and then moves on. I don't waste a lot of time on chit-chat, it's just not how I enjoy spending my days. I want to create. That's what makes my day have meaning.
But they seem determined to try and push me into a management role - that really isn't a management role at all. Just a role of responsibility. Responsibility without authority - a recipe for disaster every time. When I try to explain it to him, he's not really listening. He doesn't want to hear that I don't want this... he needs to hear I'm all on-board and ready to go. So explaining to him without offending him is nearly impossible.
So I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I know that I'm going to do my best as long as I'm here, but this may very well be the reason to move on. I've had a great run here, better than most. So it's not bad to walk away at this point. Look for new challenges, seek greener pastures, all that. Maybe this is just that event I've been waiting for to get me into gear.
Because I was out of communication on vacation for all of last week, I wanted to check my favorite apps to see if there had been any updates to them in my absence from the net. There had been, in fact - Skitch was updated and after the update I noticed a wonderful feature that I hadn't used up till now, but I'm sure to use it more and more in the coming days - it's the Window Snap.
Basically, when you do a constrained snap with Skitch if you just click on a window, it'll automatically select that window - with or without a shadow, on white, the desktop, or a transparent background and save it as your latest picture. You can then draw on it, save it, share it, all the regular Skitch stuff.
I've been looking for a simple 'window grab', and was looking at Flickr for pictures for the web site, but Skitch is just too good. I really like this app. Excellent stuff.
When I got back from vacation on Friday I knew that I'd have the update for my iPod Touch waiting for me - and my $9.95. It doesn't matter, I knew I was going to upgrade - it was just a matter of time.
The upgrade was exceptionally slow, however, and I have to say I was more than a bit surprised at this. Given the other iPod updates I've had in the past, this one should have been much smoother, but it wasn't. Basically, it seems that they saved a few things off to iTunes, then wiped the machine, installed the update, and re-synced all the media again. I would have expected a little more efficient scheme, but I can understand that this is a know, repeatable, reliable way of getting it done.
As a side note, I also updated my PSP over the weekend and it was faster, but that had limited functionality in comparison to the iPod Touch, and yet it went just as smoothly, if a bit faster.
I also updated my iTunes to 7.7 so that I could access the App Store, etc. I'm not planning on buying a lot of stuff on the store, but it's nice to know that should I decide that there's an app I have to have, then I can get it without any hassle.
While on vacation I got word from Adium that there was an update to 1.2.7 available. I got it and promptly forgot what the updates were from the release notes. Typical me. I believe, however, that they were small - as if that helps, but it's something to get anyway. I use it all the time every day and it's become an integral part of my daily communication. Gotta have it.