My Opinions Are Important

I recently received this via an email list I’m subscribed to:

YOU ARE INVITED TO EMAIL OR POST US A SHORT BIRTHDAY GREETING TO ISRAEL (Maximum 50 words) for her 60th birthday. We will collate these and make them into a book with an appropriate cover that will be presented to the representative of Israel’s Ambassador on May 13 as a lasting memorial of our support to the Nation of Israel. But be quick because we need them in soon. Take 2 minutes and do it now!

That’s all very well, I suppose, but I’d rather give Israel a birthday message on this blog. So here goes:

Happy birthday, Israel.

I hope all the Israelis reading this feel suitably chuffed.

In IT project management, having the right technical skills is only the start of getting the job done, and probably the most easily remedied if need be, either through training such as Cisco training, or just by hiring someone who has those skills.

More important is getting the design process done right. I once worked for an IT consultancy company, as part of a team doing a fairly complex project. The test analyst had interviewed the clients at length, and had compiled a detailed record of the current processes that we would be automating and how they worked.

However, once it came time to deliver the project, it turned out that the design spec was not complete after all. Sure, it was mostly correct, but some things had been left out.

Because development work had largely been completed, it was necessary to go back and retrofit the new requirements into the code. But retrofitting in this way is always much more time-consuming and costly than getting it right in the first place.

Donald Rumsfeld once made this quote:

“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Paying special attention to the design process is the only way to avoid getting stung by unknown unknowns when running an IT project.

For those of you who don’t know who Corey Worthington is, he is notorious for throwing a massive, uncontrolled party at his parents house while they were on holiday. He advertised it to all-comers on Myspace and over 500 people showed up. The party quickly degenerated into mayhem; there was over $20,000 in damages and police called in helicopters.

Afterwards, Corey was famously unrepentant, offering to organise parties for anyone who asked on national television.

You can find out more about Corey at The Age, Crikey, YouTube and many other places.

My brother decided Corey was an appropriate person to dress up as at a recent party. For your reference, Corey looks like this:

Here’s my brother in action:

(Photo credit: PopMatters)

If you live in the cold, dark wilderness of Alaska, or somewhere slightly more subtropical that still occasionally gets cold sometimes, you are probably interested in keeping warm when it does get cold.

I used to live in an upstairs bedroom of a largely unheated house, with only a coil heater to keep myself warm. Unfortunately, it was one of those heaters that can only heat effectively if there is no ventilation, and only a small room at that. My room was quite large, and for some reason the window couldn’t close properly. The coil heater simply couldn’t provide enough heat to cope with the incoming cold air. I needed something more hardcore - I dare say comfort glow heaters would have been up to the task.

In the past, I’ve found gas heaters get a room toasty warm, and typically are more cost effective than other types of heaters.

Gas heaters are good for outdoor heating also. They are a common site in outdoor seating areas in restaurants in my area.

In my time in a relationship, I find myself jealously guarding the “alone time” of my girlfriend and I. It makes me wonder why parents don’t resent their children for obliterating their time alone as a couple.

But that is not the only reason not to have kids; Bad Dad Radio has compiled many others. Here’s one of them:

Lesson 3
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Just one reason like that would be enough to give one pause for thought; but Bad Dad provides 11. At the end of it all, he advises “it’s all worth it.” Maybe it is, but he certainly doesn’t make it appear so!

The bond that a father or mother has with their children must be very strong indeed.

I’ve just found a very interesting website that sells tactical police gear.

What type of tactical police gear, you ask? For starters, bullet-proof vests, knives, industrial-strength torches and flashlights, backpacks, sunglasses, clothing of various descriptions, gun holsters and much, much more.

All the gear on the site is designed for professional use. Military personnel and cops are among the customers, so if you’ve always wanted to be part of a SWAT team this is the place to start.

The LA Police Gear site includes action photos, sent in by customers. If that page is to be believed, LA Police Gear products are very popular in the Iraqi police force.

So begins one of my favourite songs from my formative years - “Dead Eyes Opened (1993 Remix)” by Severed Heads. (Dig that band name!)

In 1993 I was a teenager and very much into grunge music. Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden were my favourite bands. I didn’t bother with any other genres, particularly not techno music. Dead Eyes Opened was one of the few exceptions to this.

The track could loosely be called dance music; I suppose nowadays it would be called house music. Perhaps Horror House, if there is such a thing. It’s a fairly eerie piece of music that builds up into a climax about midway through the song. Quite well done if you ask me.

I remember playing it to my dad; he didn’t like it.

The clip for the song didn’t get any airplay at that time due to strobing and sexual content (amusing, given that it’s about 10% as sexy as any RnB or rap clip, but I guess ratings systems have always been a tad arbitrary).

Dead Eyes Opened is hard to find anywhere nowadays, legally or otherwise; but I did find the video clip on YouTube. Hurrah for YouTube!

One of the most perplexing questions about opening or running a small business is where to get finance.

The most obvious option is, perhaps, a bank. But most banks are notoriously conservative when it comes to providing finance for small businesses. They would rather deal with big businesses. After all, big businesses tend to be much less of a risk.

Fortunately, there are finance providers available to bridge the gap between capital and small business. Restaurant Business Loans are one establishment who specialise in providing finance to, you guessed it, restaurants.

I support finance businesses of this nature. After all, it is small business that keeps our economy ticking over and our workers employed. When small businesses prosper, we all do.

I’ve never worked at McDonald’s, or been a waiter, but I’ve done many strange jobs while being out of my chosen industry of Information Technology.

How it happened was this: after retrenched from my programming role in 2001, I struggled to find other IT work in 2001 and couldn’t find it in 2002 either. After a period of several months of unemployment I realised I had better seek work in other fields!

I spell out what happened in more detail in my post What I Learned From Unemployment. Basically, I held two door to door sales jobs, spent 18 months doing courier work, tried my hand at high school teaching and even spent time filling cigarette vending machines.

After being fired from a job making announcements on railway stations due to this blog(!), I finally wound up back in an IT role waaaay back in 2007. That was a nice turnaround, but this series is called What I Learned From so let’s get onto that, shall we?

In describing this, it is hard to put tangible points on what I learned, but basically, I believe my life today is much richer for that period of struggle, than if I had remained in my IT role of 2001 and built a solid career in that industry, as was my intention.

Sure, I like being in IT, but how would I even have known how much, without the points of comparison I have had along the way? My colleagues who I left behind in 2001 always seemed discontented, perhaps from being in the one place too long, whereas during the same time period I worked outdoor as well as indoor jobs, working with many different interesting people, and got the chance to start a new business. I now have a much better idea of what I’m good at, what I can cope with, and what is truly important in life.

Although I haven’t made a fortune, I have many “life skills” that I believe will serve me well in years to come.

(This is part of the What I Learned From group writing project at Middle Zone Musings.)

I haven’t blogged about this before, but I have now been going out with my girlfriend, Marjorie, for about six months.

As she is my first real girlfriend (there had been a few half-chances earlier), I have found the relationship a real adventure, and there has also been much to learn.

To that end, I have been spending much time reading relationship books, both with her and on my own. I have learned much from doing this, and can heartily recommend it to any couple. It has opened my eyes to many issues and how these impact on a relationship. Chances are, your significant other has a different family background, and different viewpoints on subjects as diverse as money, sex, religion and gender roles. All these things need to be discussed.

There are many useful web resources also.

But books can only take you so far, and unfortunately some of them contain bad advice, sad to say. It is highly advantageous to at some point consider some form of Christian Counseling, done by qualified professionals who have experience in the field, who can analyze and apply solid relationship truths to what is happening in your relationship.

I think it’s important to take relationships seriously. For that reason, I intend to do some form of pre-marital counselling once that becomes appropriate.