Cast: Elaine (my sister), David (my brother), Dace and Dover (my nephews)
Dover: "Aunt E, how come you are not married?"
Elaine: "Baby, no one has asked me to marry them yet."
Dace: "Why don't you marry Uncle David?"
Elaine: "I can't marry Uncle David because he is my brother."
Dace: shaking his head, "That stupid law."
Moving from individual contributor (IC) to taking on management responsibility I have observed two important (and probably obvious) facts. First, a manager ends up making a lot more incorrect decisions then a IC; Second, (and perhaps most obviously) those decisions effect more people. So how do you cope when you make a wrong decision?
I've found the hardest part for me is dealing with different reactions when things go wrong. My first reaction is to start fixing right away. My idea of taking responsibility is to try to resolve the issue if possible and start damage control if it isn't. The error here is that I didn't stop long enough to think about how the team will react.
Here is an example: working on a (hypothetical) project with delivery date for a software module. Discussing it with the team, one member is concerned about the risk of meeting the delivery date and proposes an alternate date. After some back and forth I make a judgement call and decide that it is worth taking the risk since getting the module out early will lower cost. Half way in, it is clear that my judgement was wrong. Now the team member is very upset. Not only was he proven right about the risk, now he is going to be asked (by his jerk manager me!) to work harder / stay extra to try to finish the module within the required deadline.
Putting the poor guy (or gal) at ease has to start with eating crow. I think the idea here is to communicate that the mistake was mine and that I'm going to try to fix it. I think it is important to say it (provided I think it was my mistake). I have to admit though I don't know exactly the best way to do this.
Let's reverse the situation and say that it was the team member that made the case for the risky decision that turned out to be wrong. In that case, I think it is important to take responsibility for decisions you approved. Identify if the team member made an error of knowledge or a breach of judgement. Sometimes information was wrong or not clearly understood.
I know I have more questions than answers at this point so I'll turn to you. What are your strategies for dealing with wrong decisions?
I used SmartSleep for a long time to control my MacBook Pro's sleeping habits. I've finally discovered that this utility doesn't work with Secure Virtual Memory. First, some background.
There are essentially 2 ways a Mac can sleep. The first is 'regular sleep', or for you Windows users, suspend. In this mode the computer saves power by shutting down peripheral hardware (like the disks, screen and keyboard light) while keeping the processor in a low power state. The battery is used to keep the RAM powered so that when you resume (ie. open the lid) the computer can turn everything back on and start right back where it left off.
The second is called 'safe sleep'. This is like hibernate mode for Windows users. In this mode the computer RAM and processor state is written out to disk and the computer is turned off. Obviously this is very power efficient (off == good for battery life!). The problem with this mode is that when you want to use the computer you have to wait a LONG time for the resume process to complete. On my machine I have 8 GB of RAM (on a laptop - how far we've come!). It takes almost 2 minutes to resume my machine in safe sleep.
SmartSleep is supposed to let you control and choose these modes. There is also a hybrid mode that will suspend AND hibernate, but only power down the machine if the battery goes too low. If the battery is removed or dies, you can then resume like you did from a hibernate. It takes a long time but it works and you loose no data. In the best case it resumes quickly because the state of the processor/RAM was preserved by the battery power.
Now enters Secure Virtual Memory. I use this setting because I don't want data like key material and passwords leaking into my swap file. It has almost no impact on performance and in the case that my laptop is stolen or captured at the border it will protect my privacy rights. You can turn on Secure Virtual Memory in the Security System Preferences Pane.
SmartSleep doesn't take the Secure Virtual Memory setting into account. This means that if you have it turned on it sets the hibernatemode option incorrectly. When my machine goes into safe-sleep, it can't recover and I'm forced to reboot (and loose data!). Here is the settings that should be used:
The hibernatemode option in power management settings selects the suspend policy: $ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 always regular sleep (disable safe-sleep) $ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1 always safe-sleep (disable regular sleep) $ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3 regular sleep first, safe-sleep if the battery is very low on power or is unplugged $ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 5 always safe-sleep with secure virtual memory $ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 7 regular sleep first then safe-sleep with secure virtual memoryTo find out what setting you are currently just type:
pmset -g | grep hibernatemode
I've uninstalled SmartSleep for now and will send this feedback to the author to see if it can be fixed.
I have found that if you look into the lives of the kind of people you want to be like, you will find common themes. If you want to be skinny, study skinny people, and if you want to be rich, do what lots of rich people do, not what some mythsayer (sic) says to do.To understand the error in this kind of argument I’m going to use an example I first heard from Dr. Doug McGuff and John Little in their book “Body By Science”. People look at champion swimmers and bodybuilders and want to change their body composition to match theirs. The way many people think leads them to conclude if they want to look like Michael Phelps, they should train and eat like he does. If they would like to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, they should do what he did preparing for the Mr. Universe competition. After all, all the swimmers in the olympic finals all have the same body type, as do all the competitors in a body building competition. The error lies in the conclusion that the cause of the swimmer body type is their training and diet.. To put the hypothesis that swimming causes a swimmers body you can simply visit a national AAU swim meet. At the start of the meet you will see competitors with all different body types during the initial qualifiers. Over the course of the day, this variety changes dramatically, becoming less and less diverse, until in the finals almost all the swimmers have the same body type. The reason is a self-selection process, the swimmer’s body type is the best for swimming. What you are observing is an accelerated evolution at work. The erroneous conclusion that swimming causes the body type is reversing cause and effect -- the body type is what enables exemplary performance at swimming. So when using observational statistics it is important to keep the entire context and not assume a cause-effect relationship from a correlation.
Start an emergency fund of $1,000.His wealth building advice is much shakier then his debt reduction strategy. He talks about investing in real estate and mutual funds. Most mutual funds do not beet the S&P 500 index over the long term so selecting the right mutual fund is crucial and understanding the risks and alternative are key to making that kind of investment decision. Real estate is also risky, as demonstrated by the recent credit bubble puffing up the market which is now in the process of correcting for over-investment through lowering prices. Many people have put more cash into their houses then they could now get on the open market for much of the foreseeable future.
Pay off all debt fast using the “debt snowball” method (except mortgage).
Build emergency fund to cover 3-6 months of expenses.
Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and other pre-tax retirement accounts.
Save for your child’s college fund
Pay off home early
Build wealth and give! (Mutual Funds & Real Estate)
My first assignment in my Technical Innovation class I was tasked with a 'concept diagram' with my view on the importance of technical innovation. I wasn't the only one to take a more philosophic bend on the task though I was the only one who quoted Rand :-)
Technological innovation is bringing something new into existence combining knowledge gained from scientific study to solve practical problems. It is different from traditional engineering practice, since there the principles are known and while creativity and problem-solving are required they are in the application of existing and tested principles. When an architect builds a building out of steel and concrete he can lean on all of the knowledge about existing structures and their performance to aid him in his design. He also has an established business market to sell his building in. When Bell invented the telephone, he had neither. The engineering principles (and some of the scientific ones) had to be discovered and the market needed to be created. If the Wright brothers had chose to publish a paper on wing warping after their discovery of that aerodynamic process in their bike garage it would have been a great scientific accomplishment. Taking it all the way to the 1903 Wright Flyer made it a technical innovation. Clearly there is an extra step taken after the laws of nature are discovered by science before they are of practical use to man.
So why is technical innovation important? Technology innovation is the creation of new applications of scientific discoveries to productive problems of man. It is how we get from the discovery of radio waves to iPhones and from the steam engine (known as far back as ancient Greece) to the modern jet engine. Man's ability to be more productive (and live better, more flourishing life) is bounded only by the creativity and ability of the people who innovate. This is why it is important: it makes YOUR life better.
Most of the rest of the class focused on the military and cultural superiority that comes from leading technical innovation. I wanted to bring in especially Rand's quote that technology is the implicit and ultimate purpose of man's pursuit of knowledge.
I'm tired of every class ramming Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs down my throat. In 1943 Maslow published "A Theory of Human Motivation". His basic idea was that there are five abstract goals that he called basic needs: physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization. These basic goals are in a "hierarchy of prepotency" meaning that people focus on the former ones until a minimum satisfaction is achieved before moving to the higher ones. Man, as a "perpetually wanting animal", is on average most often partially unsatisfied in all of his wants. Maslow traces all psychopathology to things that threaten the achievement of these basic human goals. This is the most enlightening part of his paper:
I think this is full of rationalism. First, there is no evidence that man is born with a built-in need hierarchy. In fact, as Objectivists we know that to live man requires three fundemntal values: reason, purpose, self-esteem. These needs, though, must be discovered by man as he matures and he isn't born with them. He chooses his values and their hierarchy either by conscious effort or default. Dr. Locke points out that:The role of gratified needs. -- It has been pointed out above several times that our needs usually emerge only when more prepotent needs have been gratified. Thus gratification has an important role in motivation theory. Apart from this, however, needs cease to play an active determining or organizing role as soon as they are gratified.What this means is that, e.g., a basically satisfied person no longer has the needs for esteem, love, safety, etc. The only sense in which he might be said to have them is in the almost metaphysical sense that a sated man has hunger, or a filled bottle has emptiness. If we are interested in what actually motivates us, and not in what has, will or might motivate us, then a satisfied need is not a motivator. It must be considered for al pratical purposes simply not to exist, to have disappeared.... The perfectly heatlhy, normal, fortunate man has no sex needs, or hunger needs, or needs for safety, or for love, or for prestige, or self-esteem, except in stray moments of a quickly passing threat.
Certain types of deprivation do result in death faster than other types; for example, oxygen deprivation causes irreversible brain damage within about 2 minutes, whereas people can live without water for several days and without food (if there is water) for several weeks. But this does not prevent people from risking their lives to save loved ones from drowning. Nor do physical needs automatically take priority over psychological needs. For example, a person with very low self-esteem may not eat or may commit suicide.Dr. Locke further points out that people do figure out some of their needs in part by having them deprived, for example the growling of your stomach tells you that you are hungry. People don't know automatically what to do about it though. The growling doesn't tell you how to get food. Someone who feels worthless doesn't automatically know how to build his self-esteem. I know I tend to buy food at the store before I'm hungry, anticipating my needs before I'm deprived. Reason is the way people learn to discover their needs and how to satisfy them.
The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one’s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself—the kind that makes one think: “This is worth living for”—what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself. (Rand)These are the reasons why I'm tired of having to hear about Maslow. His theory isn't useful to me. Does this make sense to you? Post your comments and lets discuss!
