Earned Value Measurement!

Earned value measurement, EVM!

I just learned about this in the past year. It is a magnificent concept. If only I had known about it decades ago.

Management Administration tools such as EVM are to daily activities as algebra is to arithmetic! One equation represents endless calculations.

I never realized the conceptual power of business administration.  And my father had an MBA. He taught business administration.  I wish that I had paid more attention to his work, instead of my fascination with technology and procedural excellence.

How do I know if I am "losing it?"

Over the past year I have finally narrowed down a description of what it means to know that I am losing my faculties.  Span of focus.

First of all, my mother suffered from a slow attach of dementia that started at about age 55 and grew steadily worse until she died at age 77.  The first symptom  for many years was loss of memory, especially memory of what is happening now.

Worried about the potential of the same affliction hitting me, I decided to shift my work activities into the world of IT when I was about 45.  The theory was that if I am working among many young folks at tasks that require attention to detail and good memory, then the people around me would alert me to the fact that I was losing it a long time before I became conscious of this.  I also recalled working for managers in the past that seemed to have totally "lost it" but a good subordinate, like me, covered for them sufficiently that they could maintain their reputation. I did not want to become one of those clueless managers!

Time went by. I passed 55, 57, and at age 60 I decided that OK, I think I may not be a victim of what ever it was that got my mother at age 55.

So now what do I do?

Since I have become fairly skillful, at least in my current context, of providing IT solutions for my employers, and it is a lot of fun, then why not keep going at the same activities?

I have continued to monitor my own consciousness and I have learned to gain some insight, so I believe, into the consciousness of the folks I work with.  What makes me different from them?  My current theory is that my span of mental focus, conscious awareness is greater, hence I can maintain context and see implications that I need to lead other folks through step by step.  Eventually I came to  see that my own mental field of vision can be limited by fatigue, boredom, or sickness (alcohol) and that even though I feel great and competent, I can tell by memory that my span of focus, span of attention is less that it has been at many times in the past.  Hence I am not as smart as I think I am.

The lesson, tentatively, is that span of focus, defines the progression of dementia in my own experience. My guess is that it is the same in others.  If my mind worked at the level of some of the people I know with who have similar experience and training in writing software I would consider myself to be demented.

The sad thing is they don't know. And I fear I won't know when it hits me!
"I see Iterators, but they don't know they are Iterators!"
(ref: "6th Sense" movie for those too young to get it.)

Is this post too harsh?  

Programming Productivity?

Many years ago, about 1995 or so, I started keeping a personal log of my time spent coding per the instructions of the famous Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process. What I learned in the first year or so, especially as I move to new jobs was that the tools I used to do the tasks I was recording kept changing, and what was a lengthy  task in 1995 became a quick simple task in 1997.  The tools for the trade keep improving and productivity logs have limited usefulness.

So how do we manage to measure our own productivity as software developers?

This is not to say that such a log is useless. In 20 years it has saved me once from an attempt to blame me for something that I didn't do. Several times it has provided real data for how long a project takes if it is using the same tools in the same environment as previously recorded. But how often do repetitious jobs come up? Well that depends upon how long I decide to to hang around a job where I have already mastered the skills, and now I am in the process of teaching new folks how to do what I have done.  Probably a sign of stagnation, now that I write about it.

Conceptual Consciousness

Why don't I think conceptually as much as I could?

I witnessed myself getting side tracked from productive effort today pursuing what is likely to be a "red herring" in the current context that my client brought up. I had the thought that successful business people don't get detoured like this? I found that my motivation had shifted from ROI to pleasing what appeared to be irrational requests from the people who are paying me. What I needed to do was stop and reassess, challenge the ideas, and provide the estimate of what the current activities were costing us.

Did I do this? Well sorta ...

Concepts are so remarkably intangible! We all know the concept of circle, but our imagination can only imagine specific instances of circles! So obvious once it is pointed out, but it wasn't pointed out to me until I read about it (Mortimer Adler's "Ten Philosophical Mistakes" ?) when I about 58 years old! Even worse is that this was my second reading of this great book and I had totally missed the idea the first time! My goodness what if I had died before that life changing insight was revealed to me? What other life changing insights are still to come?

For those of us who aren't clear about the concept circle, consider money. This is a concept that everyone seems to understand, but we cannot imagine the concept money, all we can imagine are specific examples of what represents money, e.g. gold, bills, goods, life style, etc. Money is a concept that most people don't fundamentally understand, such as the information value of prices, but everyone knows how to earn it and invest it. Keep in mind that knowing and doing are two different things. This is where I started this post. I do things that I know, conceptually, are not right, but in the moment my sensations, feelings and imagination run the show called "me."

And I suspect I have a fundamental fear of thinking conceptually, that I will lose something that I can't quite verbalize. What is this fear? Napoleon Hill would probably tell me it is fear of success. Ayn Rand might say it is evading the responsibility of being human. Aristotle may say that it is the lack of courage to live the planned life because the unplanned life isn't worth living! Gurdjieff may hint that I have allowed my self to become identified with my imagination, I am a sleeping automaton. All useful pieces of advice and in a sense they are all saying the same thing to me, aren't they?

What if I had mastered these ideas as a young person, instead of a man with gray hair?

The Many Selves Begin to Reveal Themselves?

Walking in the city, remembering myself, wearing canvas sneakers. I feel the sensations of my body and feet. I am learning a new way of walking, having my heel come down a gently as a feather falling as my foot rolls forward to the next push off. There are the various emotions coming and going in response to my own thoughts and perceptions.

I suddenly realize there is something new in my awareness. I "see" my many impulses of thought and emotion. Should I feel frustrated about events of yesterday that need to be handled today, should I feel excited about developing solutions to other current issues, should I day dream about finishing the day and relaxing, etc., etc.

It reminds me of standing next to a spring time puddle and seeing tadpoles scurry under the surface for cover in the mud. Only by being still and patient do they begin to reveal themselves.

This is very subtle and a very profound insight for me. All these years of striving to remember myself, and it is gradually elaborating.

The interesting thing is that once I see this new aspect of my being, it seems to have always been there, but never before distinguished from the background of all else in my span of awareness.

The Ghost in My Brain, and Spiritual Insight

Started reading the recent book "The Ghost in My Brain" a week ago.

This book and the last one I read about science, "The Folly of Fools," elicit many insights into my being.  This is new for me to gain so much value from the reporting of others about their observations and ideas of how we work. 

Is it because the writing is different, is it that I am different?

The other two books that profoundly influenced me in life were "Atlas Shrugged", then a long (8 year?) dry spell until I found "The Fourth Way" by Ouspensky. Now it has happened twice in two months!

My History with Logs and Blogs.

Blog, Web Log, Log.

My first experience with a log was in 1965 as Officer of the Day as a child at Camp Morgan YMCA near East Washington, New Hampshire. Since I lived in the area I was the first camper to arrive when they opened in the summer of 1965. The camp director said you are the first camper to arrive so you are appointed officer of the day. He gave me a list of my duties, a lanyard with a large lead arrow head shape hanging from it, and a log book on the podium/table next to the entrance of the dining hall. He told me what to log in the log book, start of meals, raising and lowering of the flag, any important events, hourly inspections of the dining hall. (Best I can recall that is what the duties were.)

Then there were the logs of the Company Mate of the Deck, CMOD, at Bancroft Hall, 1973/4.
Then the logs on board Yard Patrol, YP, craft during our cruises around the Chesapeake Bay. I don't think I was directly involved in any of those because on the YPs I managed to avoid the duties that involved log keeping. Maybe an occasional entry at the direction of the OOD.

The first "real" logs for me were during the process of becoming an Engineering Officer of the Watch, and later an Office of the Deck, or Office of the Day, and Engineering Duty Officer.

The essence of all these logs was a real time recording, in ink, printed in CAPITAL LETTERS, of significant events as they occurred.

Changes after the fact or writing were not allowed. If a correction was made it was neatly lined out with a single line and initialed so that it would remain legible and who made the change was known by the initials.

Blogs in current day of evolved (or devolved) to point of being any thing and every thing from short comments to literary masterpieces.

I prefer the short real time style because it provides a running record of impressions at the time.

"The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life" by Robert Trivers

This is one of the greatest books I have ever read!

As Winston Smith said in "1984" by George Orwell, we always love an author that says what we are thinking but says it better than I can say it myself.

I woke up at 3 am this morning my mind filled with ideas about how this book ties into Ayn Rand's Objectivist Epistemology (measurement as a means to avoid self-deception) and how it ties in with the Project Management Institute's "Project Management Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK) in that measurement is a project manager's job [because it makes the "unconscious" [or deceptive] conscious].

I won't even mention the depth that it adds to the "Fourth Way" literature! Finally get some solid scientific support!

I encourage everyone to read this book as soon as you can, it can change your life at every level from idle moments to work, from politics, from sacred to secular!

Why snow may not be plowed for a while? 17 January 2016, Baltimore

My friends keep complaining about snow removal, so I started thinking about the numbers needed and I obtained the miles of roads and number of snow plow operators from Baltimore City government web pages.

Assumptions: 

•      The Baltimore City Roadway Maintenance group maintains and preserves 2,000 miles of roadways and 800 miles of alleys. 
•      In 2010 the city had 230 snow plow operators.
•      How fast was the snow falling? 25 inches in 30 hours, about an inch per hour.
•      Each operator is capable of working for 30 hours straight.

A very optimistic estimate of snow removal is:

If a plow clearing 6" inches of snow moves 10 miles per hour then one plow could clear 2000 miles of 6 inch snow in 200 hours.

230 plows in 9 hours.  

Just a path down the center of each street.

I don't account for the accumulation that occurs during plow time, from 6" at the beginning to 15 inches at the end, the plows would become slower and slower as their journey moves on.

After all the 230 plows have made their first pass through 2000 miles of streets, and return to their starting points 9 hours later, they would be facing >9 inches on the second pass, maybe 5 mph?

The second pass would take about 18 hours. The storm is almost over, but when they get back to their starting points for round 3, it may be 18 inches of snow. Rate of progress may be only 1 or 2 miles per hour?

So I am not surprised that all the side streets aren't cleared yet. 

And the snow plow operators deserve a break after plowing for 30 hours straight.

Science and Art

"Concentrating only on the usefulness of science is a bit like celebrating music because it is good exercise for the violinist's right arm." — Richard Dawkins "Brief Candle in the Dark" page 233.

Whole 30 Diet Experience, Cinnamon Rolls and Beer

One week into the Whole 30 Diet with my wife.

As promised this diet can change my sense of life and open up new levels of self awareness. What a wonderful tool for self examination!

What is new and shocking is that I see even more vividly than ever how the magnitude of how sugar and alcohol capture my imagination and drive my attention. I've been using them to distract myself from the "terror of the situation."  This isn't a new insight because I've been observing the varieties of distraction and misuse of my imagination for 5 or 6 years, or longer. 

What is NEW is that I had not realized the size of this distraction compared to other things that occupy my attention.  It seems really huge, compared to valuable choices of conversation, reading, working or exercising. I see and feel magnitude of my attraction to city life driven by the potential varieties of pastries, and beer. 

What do I mean by imagination?

Imagination that is the " … power of fantasy, which takes the place of a real function. When a man dreams instead of acting, when his dreams take the place of reality, when a man imagines himself to be an eagle, a lion, or a magician, it is the force of [imagination] working in him."  reference this blog post.