Business

I wrapped up another field day with my friend Paul (W7PEZ) in Eastern Washington. For the two days, I had 204 contacts, broken out roughly as: Yes, I worked SSB. It was kinda Frankfurt United Norway WT8P is sporting the 6-day salt and pepper look Paul worked 200 contacts, nearly all CW. Both are personal records. Neither of us were “running,” which would certainly have bumped up the totals, nor did we operate all the time, because most of the fun of Field Day is Everything Else. ...

Some time ago, I’d been in hiring mode for a business analyst for my team and “had a few thoughts” that I have kept in draft form for some time. As this is now an ex-company/team, I feel okay writing about it, but am somewhat lazy about changing present tense. How I think the process should have worked: Hiring manager (me) transforms needs into requirements. Human Resources (HR) discusses it with me then initiates a search. HR is the gatekeeper, protecting the interests of the company and doing first-level screening. Potentially-qualified candidates are forwarded to the me for review. If there’s interest, HR will set up a meeting between the candidate and me. If the results are positive, an interview may be scheduled with an extended group. If the results are positive, there is a verbal discussion of terms. If an agreement is reached, a formal offer is generated. Employee and employer have a productive relationship How it actually worked: ...

Despite a concerted effort to keep my inbox tamed, it’s now back above 30 undealt-with emails. While falling behind, I’ve noticed some recurring – and annoying – behavioral patterns. I’m sure the list is incomplete, so feel free to share! “The two-for” – a person who always — always— sends a second mail with the attachment they forgot to include the first time. I can’t tell if the person is genuinely a flake or if they’re just pining for the return of corporate instant messaging. One wants to post a sign on their monitor: always wait at least 30 minutes after eating receiving the first message before swimming responding. “I must copy my manager on everything” – the sender wants to ensure their manager knows they’ve made a token effort to be “proactive.” Note the air quotes. (It’s also possible the sender’s manager “wants to be kept in the loop for minutiae” (cough: micromanages) or needs a high message count to justify her Crackberry.) I used to whittle the Cc list down, but have since decided that it’s best to keep the list going. “I must copy your manager on everything, too.” – If I’m the sole entry on the “To:” list, the sender is implying I won’t respond to their request by overtly creating an audit trail. Their manager is copied, too, as if to say, “See, I warned them to check their blood pressure / Beware of the Ides of March / Soylent Green is people — but they did not listen.” What usually happens is my over-detailed, super-helpful response will usually elicit a walk over for the executive summary. “The Escalating Cc:” – two people in an email discussion have differing opinions. Instead of, like, actually walking down the hall and having a conversation, they start adding additional people to the discussion. Sometimes this will devolve into the passive aggressive tone. Paraphrasing an exchange that might hypothetically have gone out to an entire department: “I don’t want to blame anybody, I want to fix the problem.” [three sentences later] “[…] but Bobwas the last one to touch it. I will ask Bobwhen Bob****comes in what Bobdid to cause the system to become hopelessly broken.” ...

Supercomputing 2010’s keynote was Clayton Christensen, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma (and its numerous follow-ons), whose research, studying the demise of companies over time, is utterly fascinating (to me) and I can’t believe I hadn’t read before. He has studied the demise of companies over time — think Digital Equipment Corporation (cut up into bite-sized chunks in 1998, the rest of which was eaten by Compaq, which was eaten by HP), SGI (a darling when Jurassic Park came out, but ultimately liquidated in 2009, assets bought by Rackable systems), and Sun (bought by Oracle). He’s observed recurring patterns of market disruption. For example, in the case of DEC, their rise was predicated on being cheaper than mainframes. As they gained more experience, the minicomputers became more reliable, but were still in the $100k range. DEC itself was subject to PCs meeting a nascent market need willing to tolerate PCs being utter crap (early-on), but at a far different price point. As PC technology evolved, it became compelling enough that few were buying VAXen. ...

Mister Peabody, set the Wayback Machine to three years ago, pick a spot during a really long product release cycle. Partly out of boredom, but mostly to mess with development manager at the time, I had asked one of the developers to swap out the splash screen. The product logo was thus modified: **Official** **Battle-ready!** Appropriate text was substituted, changing our tagline from “Enjoy the view” to “Today is a good day to PLOT!” Laughs were had, and it was removed before alpha testing several months later. ...

In April of ought six, I pondered two options for saving for my kids’ college: the 529-plan I have and Washingon State’s 529 program, Guaranteed Education Tuition (“GET“). At the time, I concluded my existing 529 would have a better expected return because the expected returns over my relatively short investment horizon (10 years) would not be enough to offset the better expected return, but 20% front-end load of the GET. ...

(See my update on this topic.) We have a 529K college savings program set up for my kids through the State of Missouri program administered by TIAA-CREF, soon-to-be Vanguard. Its investment options are turnkey bundles based on age ranges. In the initial years, the investment selection is aggressive. As college-time nears, the portfolio’s mix shifts from stocks to bonds. The program’s return has varied. From 2000 through 2003, it did poorly, like everything else I owned. The last two years have been very strong, negating those losses and then some. Overall, I’d estimate its average return has been about 6.5% over the period we’ve had it. While not bad for a retirment portfolio (especially during that time period), it is less than college tuition. I really need a way to invest into “tuition futures.” ...

I’m coining a new term, fomplicated, to describe a product that requires deliberate intervention and expertise from a customer beyond what any sane human being would consider reasonable. The word is a contraction of a well-known English expletive rhyming with firetrucking and the word “complicated.” Although it’s applicable to a variety of things, I’ve been seeing it a lot related to my computer. For example, this morning I had a minor fomplication. While poring through some mailing-list email, I saw that KMTT 103.7FM has an online stream. The Mountain Music Lounge is great stuff, but I don’t get good reception indoors. I had an unsatisfactory experience with a pay-for service that claimed to have the station, but really only played a pre-selected “best of” 20 songs. (Cancelling that service was unnecessarily fomplicated, too.) KMTT’s option would not only serve it live, but would also be free. And it claimed to run on my Linux and Windows machines. Score! ...

For you newly-minted pilots who have asked me, “should I buy an airplane?” I offer a quick rule of thumb, based on my ten years in general aviation, four years of ownership, and MBA: No. Okay, now that we’ve gotten that formality out of the way, here is some insight into the costs of acquisition and ownership, so you can make the inevitable decision. You have no doubt heard the fairytale that you should consider ownership if you fly more than 100 hours a year because airplanes are an investment. It’s true that my airplane outperformed 11 of my 12 stocks, but if you look at the numbers closely, you’ll notice that buying postage stamps or stuffing the money into a mattress for those four years would have beaten everything. ...