A blog of rants, screeds, and other nonsense

Clayton Christensen died on Jan 23, 2020 at the age of 67.

You may know him from his 1997 best selling book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.”

He was incredibly influential, well beyond the typical author.

I wrote this in Oct 1999. I’ve fixed up some typos but otherwise this is unchanged.

My Martin Luther King, Jr. day tradition is to listen to the speech he made at my alma mater, Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey, on Feb 5, 1964 (nearly a quarter century before I attend).

This is a sad day for our country. Impeachment is a “last resort”. The fact that it has come to this shows what a sorry state our democracy has become.

With the 9th and finalchapter of Star Wars arriving, here’s a memory from when I saw the premier of Star Wars: Episode I, the Phantom Menace.

Do you know about The Osborne Effect?

The human brain reacts differently to lists of different sizes. When we align what we say with what the human brain expects, we are more effective communicators.

One cool trick to get an audience to ask more questions: Silence inspires questions.

When you ask “Any questions?” be silent for least 10 seconds for someone to speak up. 15 seconds is better.

When the two-dozen GOP senators disrupted Laura Cooper’s deposition, they didn’t just create a publicity stunt… they created a security hole that every spy agency in the world could take advantage of.

Comcast’s #1 concern is that if they can’t fuck you hard enough.

Or, as Vice reported it, Comcast Is Lobbying Against Encryption That Could Prevent it From Learning Your Browsing History.

These opinions have been developed from 3 decades of attending and organizing conferences. This advice applies whether a conference non-profit or for-profit, all-volunteer or professionally run, community-driven or commercial.

Time is precious. A bad conference wastes people’s time. As as conference organizers you owe it to the attendees to make sure their time was well-spent.

(Are you a speaker? Read this instead.)

The single biggest thing you can do to improve your conference’s content is to require all speakers rehearse their presentation two weeks prior to the conference, via video conference, with someone that has not seen the talk before. Everything else is spinning your wheels.

Dave Cheney started a Twitter discussion about when a unit test is not a unit test.

When I was in 8th grade I got a job working for a small company that was a reseller of electronic drilling and measuring equipment. I was just the office boy… mostly doing paperwork, shipping, and occasional data-entry.

Increasingly, vendors understand that the inability to rapidly deploy their products affects the customers’ ability to rapidly purchase their products.

(quoted from Page 152 of The Practice of System and Network Administration, Third Edition)

I believe I first wrote that quote in 1999 when the first edition was still in draft form. That was 20 years ago. I’m embarrassed to say that in the last month I’ve had to remind two different vendors of this fact.

Any vendor that thinks automated installation is a new concept… sigh.

So what does that have to do with Chocolately?

Today’s CNN headline is “Trump economic advisers dismiss fears of a brewing recession” (link).

What crap.

If they were honest they’d be saying:

Question: What would be the impact on your organization if the CA/Browser Forum approves a ballot reducing the maximum validity period for SSL/TLS server certificates from the current 825 days (27 months) at present to 397 days (13 months), effective for new certificates issued on or after March 1, 2020? (Existing certificates will remain valid for their full term).

My reply to:

wrote:

My answer was a 17-part megatweet. I’ve collected them here and done a little editing.

When did the word “Ask” become a noun and how do we stop this butchering of language?

Did you know that DST was first proposed by socialists?

Reporters say that NY Gov Cuomo is calling Jeff Bezos begging him to reconsider.

I’m sure he’s offering even MORE concessions.

Here’s what I would do as governor:

Have you been asked to generate data for a demo system? Here’s some advice.

Creating a software demo is like creating a TV commercial. You should structure the project that way.

When I worked at Bell Labs, there was a door that slammed really loudly when it closed. This wouldn’t be a big deal except that it was right near me. Oh, and it was in the middle of my team’s offices so when it slammed, nearly everyone on the team would jump.

Let’s put this “AT&T could have owned the entire internet” idea to rest. No f—ing way it could have happened.

As “software eats the world” executives need to “understand software”. If you were an executive that was old-school and wanted to “understand software”, what would you teach them?

I just made it a LOT easier to write letters to my representatives.

I can’t believe my health insurance makes me fax certain forms. What year is this?

Well, anyway… that reminds me of something that happened to me many years ago back when fax machines were more common.

This was a draft. The final version is now available as a pay-what-you-want self-published book called Tom’s Finance Guide: Retire Rich!

This was a draft. The final version is now available as a pay-what-you-want self-published book called Tom’s Finance Guide: Retire Rich!