Category: Blog

Years ago, on a typical night out, my wife and I sat at the bar in one of our favorite restaurants.  We ordered food and soaked up a couple of Cosmos or Lemon Drops.  We chatted with the bartenders, who we had come to know by name.  Jeff, one of our bartenders, has a razor-sharp wit.  I hear his voice louder than usual as he speaks to another patron seated behind me.  He said, “Sir, there’s no sleeping at the bar.”

At first, I thought Jeff joked with the patron, but I turned around to look.  A man a few seats down nodded off at the bar.  Shortly after that, the patron settled his tab and left.  Bartenders walk a fine line; they manage the most good for the most people.  In most instances, this means allowing you to do what you want as you enjoy your drink; sometimes it means imposing standards that impede others’ experience.

Continue reading “The freedom to do what you want” →

As a young child, I hated baseball.  It signaled the abrupt end of the Saturday morning cartoons.  Hanna-Barbera’s Laff-A-Lympics, assorted superhero cartoons, and, of course, Schoolhouse Rock filled my Saturday mornings.  Once the clock turned to afternoon, the networks turned to the boys of summer, and afternoon games aired.  I remembered the impossibly green fields and the bright sun.

In 1982, I started watching a baseball team that finished next to last in 1981, but that year, they started it with 13 wins.  The Atlanta Braves set a record that still stands today.  I followed them through that tumultuous season until the very last game, when they barely won their division after the San Francisco Giants defeated the Dodgers.

Continue reading “Read my lips…” →

I remember getting my driver’s license at sixteen.  Many high school friends spent hours at the driver’s license office on their birthday; they considered it a rite of passage.  I couldn’t think of anything worse than spending hours in that office on my birthday.  I did finally get that driver’s license months later.

I talked to the attendant that day and asked if I should list my race along with the rest of my stats on my license.  There was a box where you could put in a one-letter code to denote your race.  They seemed mostly indifferent (I think they felt it was obvious) but mentioned that if I were to list it, it would be the letter ‘O’.  That’s what I picked.  I still have that physical license to prove it.

Continue reading “You’re not being cancelled” →

I had spent 29 years at Microsoft before they finally laid me off.  I spent that entire time in the Operating Systems division.  I wish I could try to describe the sheer enormity of a project like this, but I can’t.  We had too many moving parts; I doubt anyone understood everything.  We built our product from source code at a particular snapshot in time.  To put it in perspective, hundreds of engineers may make changes within seconds of each other, and it all had to work.

Some of these engineers had the unenviable task of coordinating these changes from different places.  We called this process reverse integration.  The best way to describe it is like air traffic control for software changes.  They took a snapshot at a specific time, created a distinct version of our product, and then we ran a battery of tests.  If the tests passed, they allowed those changes through.

Continue reading “Empathy is not a spectator sport” →

I’ve rooted for the Atlanta Braves since 1982; this is longer than many of you have been alive.  From 1991 to 2005, the Braves won their division; this excludes 1994, a strike-shortened season, but includes a division move from the NL West to the NL East.  In 1999, the Braves’ closer John Rocker played exceptionally, but he was also an asshole.  This included disparaging remarks about homosexuals, immigrants, minorities, and women.

Shortly after that season, a loved one asked me point-blank.  Do I agree with what John Rocker said?  Absolutely not.  He’s an asshole and an embarrassment to the Braves.  The team traded him away in 2001.  He pitched well, but he was poisonous.  I’m not the general manager, but really…  good riddance.  Get the fuck out!

Continue reading “Rolling back the clock to ‘great’” →

I spent my life through college graduation in the tropics, and I had never traveled to a snowy location.  However, I did grow up on the sunny beaches along the Atlantic Ocean, both in Puerto Rico and Florida.  I had a quiet fascination with snow, the white, fluffy solid water.  Our freezer grew frost that resembled hairy ice; that’s about the closest I got.  In Puerto Rico, we had a shaved ice treat called a piragua.  That certainly resembled snow, but maybe the quantity of a snowball.

My other fascination is the combination of snow and beaches.  The rational pre-engineer in me reasoned that beaches existed in locations cold enough to snow, and snow must at least occasionally accumulate there.  Therefore, there must be instances of waves crashing onto a shore while snow is visible.  This isn’t rocket science.  Why don’t we see pictures of it?  This thought crossed my mind before we all had access to the internet; I couldn’t get answers through a web search.

Continue reading “Seeing the snow on the beach” →

Like most middle school children, I took a physical education class.  On Mondays, we brought gym clothes and a towel for the showers, and on Fridays, we brought the clothes and towel home to wash them.  A requirement to pass the class was to verify that we showered before continuing to other classes.  We all needed to shower and walk to our teacher’s office off the locker room, wet and wearing a towel, then he would check us off a list on his bulletin board.

I found the practice a bit goofy.  We spent a class learning the rules of volleyball or softball, then spent a week playing those sports by the rules we had just learned.  While I understand that we don’t want students walking into the classes that followed dripping with sweat from PE, the practice of walking into our teacher’s office, soaking from the shower and wearing a towel, only to be checked off in a cryptic list was silly.  Still, I participated.

Continue reading “Keep the tip” →

In 1982, I fell in love with baseball.  In 1981, a major league baseball team ended the season near the bottom of its division.  The following year, they developed amnesia.  They started the season with 13 consecutive wins, a record that still stands (though two teams have since tied that record).  In many ways, the Atlanta Braves didn’t know any better.  At the time, I knew nothing about baseball, but I learned quickly.

Though I didn’t know it yet, those 13 games established a kinship that endures today, over 40 years later.  Ted Turner owned both the TBS network and the Atlanta Braves, and thus TBS aired most of their 162 games back then.  I watched every game that I could.  I subsequently learned the names of every position player and remember them today.

Continue reading “Rooting for the home team” →

In 19991, I started my professional career as a software tester at Microsoft.  I began as a Software Test Engineer and then transitioned to a Software Design Engineer in Test.  I also spent time as a Developer and Data Engineer, but I spent the vast majority of my time as a software tester.  The oversimplification is that I verify ‘correct’ behavior.  In my case, documentation and common sense define ‘correctness’.  If the documentation defies common sense, I may push back to change the definition of ‘correctness’.

Occasionally, there are conflicting corner cases. For instance, children can ride in Space Mountain, but only if they’re at least a certain height. That’s just one rule. However, determining which rules apply under which conditions can be complex. There are safety and compliance standards (accessibility, for instance) that we may choose to adhere to.

Continue reading “The threshold of our rights” →

Many years ago, I purchased a new home when my wife and I started a life together.  A new neighborhood so new that it confused our GPS since it did not yet exist.  Based on the address, I triangulated its location and found it.  We made an offer on that house, and after a few weeks, it was ours.  That day when we got the keys was exhilarating, and we celebrated in the kitchen of our new home.

However, I already owned a condo.  We were lucky enough to have the means to purchase our new home without needing to sell my existing home.  These circumstances, while lucky in most respects, had their own disadvantages.  We were focused on establishing our new home, but I still had a home filled with my existing belongings, many of which remained at that condo.

Continue reading “Abusing the voting system” →