Friday, July 31, 2009

Still Alive, not (D)

Stanford informs me:


It has just come to our attention that there is a misprint in the front of the '84 Class Book. The notations indicating which classmates are deceased in the freshman dorm listing are incorrect, so please disregard the (D) notations that appear after classmates names. For an accurate listing (to the best of our knowledge) of deceased classmates, please refer to the In Memoriam section at the back of the book. We realize that this kind of misprint may have caused some alarm, but we hope that you'll still enjoy reading the rest of the book and catching up on your classmates' lives.

In case anyone was wondering, I'm still alive. I plan to attend the
25-year reunion in October.

This mixup brings to mind the '84 yearbook, "The Quad", featuring
Milner and Tudmala. I wonder whatever happened to those guys?

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule



One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.

There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.

When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.

Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.

When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

UPS is having problems finding 83 Beaver Pond Court. Google Maps doesn't have it yet, but I hope Google will find this link.

iPhone Development Emergency Guide

Nice summary by Matt Legend Gemmell
http://mattgemmell.com/2009/07/14/iphone-development-emergency-guide