draft letter to mayor

I'll de-snark this before actually sending it, but right now I just have to get this out of my system.

Dear Mayor Ravenstahl,

I write concerning the annual disturbance of the peace known as the Great Race.

As you will see from my address, I live on the starting line for this event. This means that crowds begin to gather at 7:00AM and the sound system is fired up soon thereafter. I understand the need to give instructions to the racers, but the primary use of the sound system is to play high-decibel music. I do not understand the logistical need for that.

I work hard all week, and Sunday is the one day when I can sleep in a little -- except when this great ruckus occurs outside my bedroom window. (There is, in fact, no room in my house where this is not a problem, so I can't just sleep on the couch that night.) I understand that you consider the Great Race to be a great community-building event, so I would like to suggest that some other neighborhood become the beneficiary of this community-building starting next year. It's time for the race to move. If you can't change its location, please change its time by several hours; the end of September is late enough that the mid-day heat is not a concern for runners (and late afternoon would certainly not be a problem).

Regardless of when and where the race is, I urge you to eliminate the unnecessary noise; residents are more likely to tolerate the necessary noise if we do not feel abused by gratuitious disregard of our Sunday mornings.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I would appreciate the courtesy of a resolution before election day.

what good is a camera-phone if the pictures are trapped there?

Dear Lazyweb,

My new cell phone comes with a camera. That's not why I bought it (I'm indifferent to cameras), but, well, so long as it's there... But -- how do I get the photos off the phone and to someplace where they can do some good (i.e. my computer)? Asking Google suggests that I buy a cable and some software, assuming I can find some that's compatable with my phone, which so far isn't working out for me.

I know it's possible to post photos to LJ, so I went down that path, but I got blocked on "enter your cell phone's email address in the authorization list" (my cell phone's what? How would I know?), and side-effects of my Google searches suggest that Verizon is going to charge me for that anyway. Is that the case? For those of you who post pictures, what are you doing?

Managing Humans

One of the books Dani got me for my birthday is Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, by Michael Lopp. This was a great read, and I'll now be following his blog, where I gather a lot of this material was first posted. But even if it was, curling up with the dead-tree edition worked better for me.

The book contains a lot of good advice and analysis of the nitty-gritty of being a manager (or, sometimes, a managee) in the high-tech world. His experience is colored by acquiring all of it in Silicon Valley, but I still found myself nodding a lot. The chapters on meetings, detecting agendas, and figuring out where people are coming from (incrementalists/completionists, organics/mechanics, etc) are valuable for anyone. I found myself rethinking my weekly team meeting, my one-on-one ineteractions with my direct reports, and my nearly-non-existent one-on-one meetings with my own manager.

Sometimes the author draws black-and-white lines where, in reality, there are many shades of gray. Almost no one is either an incrementalist or a completionist, for example; most of us are in the middle. But I have seen exactly those tensions play out on the projects I've worked on, enough to find value in the distinctions. He over-simplifies, presumably for rhetorical effect (for example, saying that incrementalists lack vision); there's usually a grain of truth, but don't take any of this as gospel. My take on it is that if it gets me thinking, it's done its job -- even if I disagree on the details.

The writing style is informal, occasionally vulgar, and humorous (as promised in the title). The chapters are short (most originated as blog entries), so it's easy to take it in bite-sized chunks. (That said, I read it cover to cover in two sittings.)

One criticism of the publication rather than the content: Michael, Michael, Michael... people would pay a little extra for the increased page-count that would come with a civilized font size. Trust me. Ouch. (I'm not sure if it's 8pt or 9pt, but it is certainly smaller than I am used to.)

I highly recommend this book to anyone in the high-tech industry. Or, if you don't want to get the book, at least check out the blog.