Category Archives: Tech

Don’t Be Weird

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When I talk to companies about using technology to help solve problems they have, or to enable new things for their business, I usually end up telling them to “Try not to be weird.”

We are all different…..

At first glance this might seem to be something that gets me gently shown the front door with my coat in hand, and some explaining to do to my boss. What I mean when I say this is: realize that products and features are designed and created by humans who listen to customers, and then try to design things so that they help the most number of customers well. If you decide to use things in ways that aren’t somewhere in that sweet spot, you are sometimes making your own life harder. Notice I didn’t say impossible, or that it won’t work, or that you will be cursed forever. If you find ways of doing things that are unexpected or on the fringe of the normal use cases, you may find your total cost of operations to be higher, or end up with future upgrade issues, or just….. harder.

This is not new of course, software has worked this way for ever and ever. The biggest difference now is when we consider cloud based solutions and how fast they change. If you implemented something considered “weird” in your datacenter in the past, tinkered around and got it working, you might be good to go for years before those sins came back to bite you. These days, products iterate and change every quarter, or more often, and if you do something strange or unexpected you may find yourself regretting that sooner than you think.

Microsoft publishes things like reference architectures for this reason, among others. In general if you use these as north star guidance, you are likely to be in that sweet spot.

People should be individual and unique and revel in those differences. Cloud consumption and architecture patterns usually should not.

Fear of Change

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Disclaimer: This is a rare work related post. I don’t usually write much about that but figured I would give it a try. If geek stuff bores you, well I guess you are screwed.

I’m in consulting services at Microsoft. That means I help customers use our products to solve their problems. Often they buy a new thing, aren’t sure the best way to use it, and then I or one of my colleagues come in and try to help. (Sort of obvious description of IT consulting I guess)

Sometimes in spite of the company deciding to invest in our products, then signing a services contract to get me there (let’s face it, those things cost money) I find that some folks that I talk to aren’t exactly excited about the changes that I represent. No surprises there, lots of people fear change. To some it represents a worry that they might lose relevance or influence. Many folks spend careers building their specific skills, and can resist hearing that a skill they fought hard to learn is no longer relevant. Or resistance to learning a new skill, either because they don’t want to invest in themselves or any number of reasons.

I myself have had those thoughts at various points in my career. Learning can be hard. Time and energy are ever more scarce resources. Some companies do not place an emphasis on employee growth and so do not allow for training time/budget. Employees are required to learn on their own time, or are not afforded courses and/or time to grow. It’s an unrealistic expectation, but one that persists at some companies.  Microsoft is excellent in this regard to their own employees, since for obvious reasons the source of some of this churn is driven by the company itself (due to many reasons; market, security, industry, etc.).  Some companies fail to identify to real costs of employee churn (and then costs of acquisition, replacement), job satisfaction, etc. that these practices can cause.

These reasons do not make change any more palatable or attractive for folks that aren’t excited about it, however.  So I find sometimes I am left trying to find ways to encourage, sway, or otherwise convince some customers to do things my way.  I’m not going to try to have a new take on the literally thousands of management books that try to solve these problems, I’m absolutely not qualified for that.  (and man those books can be dry, amirite?)

I have found that approaching these issues with the knowledge that all of this really comes from fear is one way that (even if not completely successful) moves the conversation forward.  Empathy is the thing that can swing the mood around to being open, uncross the arms, and have people lean in again.

Vallentyne.com is 15 years old (sorta) today!

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While doing some poking around on the blog, I realized that Jan 7, 2003 is the oldest post in my WordPress database.  That’s kinda nifty, but it also makes me feel old.

The first wee post to

That’s the oldest entry in the database, but the website actually started as just plain old HTML, no content management system at all.  It was ugly.  Fortunately the WayBack machine provides a look:

Yeah, no idea what I was thinking there.

But the /Family site used Blogger shortly after that, which looked a bit better:

Back then we had lots of participation, not just posts by me…. (this was pre-Facebook and pre-Twitter).  There was some good stuff on there, actually.  You can read them for yourself here.

One particularly pithy one is this Alison Gibson original composition, which is surely worth something now.

Labels and napster and fortune dot com
Lawyers and rapsters and good ideas gone wrong
A user’s agreement that 10 pages long
When all I wanted was to buy one frickin song
Yeah that’s what you get for your Commie ideals
Face it man, everyone lies cheats and steals
Take your gripe to the national court of appeals
If you’ve got a problem with these amazing dealsIt’s wireless, digital slick plug ‘n play!
Hurry, you need it, buy now and don’t pay!
NO INTEREST, NO PAYMENTS, sign up today!
Mastercard accepted, click Submit and OK!Whoa what the fuck happened to me just now?
I think I bought a cellular phone somehow.
All I wanted was Cougar’s “Blood on the Plow”
Not to feed the bloodthirsty corporate cash cow

But that’s what you get for your Commie ideals
Face it babe, everyone lies cheats and steals
Take your best shot and see who squeals
We bet you can’t afford the court of appeals

 Now that’s a song that still has relevance right there.
Blogger worked for a while, but then I went to MovableType since I was running this on my own servers at home and it was so much easier to do it that way.
But, even these posts aren’t actually the oldest bits that existed.  No sir, if you dig a bit more, you can find this:

So, while my memory doesn’t recall, it seems that the first thing I put on the Internet at this location was on May 27, 2002.  Something about a kid being born.  :-)  That page is pretty funny to read through now, wow.  I was just editing HTML by hand back then, so it’s really, really ugly.

So there you go.  A tour of the blog’s past, and it’s not even the first time I have written one of these posts, because after 15+ years you kinda forget.

 

 

 

Automatic Cow Scratching Brushes are a thing

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So it seems that I’m not 100% up to date on the latest farm technology, which I know is shocking.  However, I think I need to invest in one of these beauties for Lloyd.  That’s a happy cow.  Like blissfully happy.  I mean, just look at this thing.  That, and an automatic feeder, and Lloyd’s entire life needs are met.

Obligatory jokes:

  • Beef tenderizer
  • Scratching your rump roast something or other
  • Pre-Whipped cream
  • Milkshakes bringing the bulls to the yard

I needed to get those out there, or I wouldn’t have slept otherwise.

This is all via Boing Boing.

Conference Call Etiquette Should be Required Teaching in Schools

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Today children, let’s discuss how to be a good conference call participant.  I attend many conference calls, for better or for worse.  I can tell you with iron clad confidence that there is only one critical aspect to being a good con-call participant:

Treat your mute button like a walkie-talkie

That’s it.

There’s just no reason you need to snort, sniff, sip, cough, breathe, gasp, chuckle, smack, slurp, swallow, blow, whistle, whoop, grunt, puff, groan, squeak, sigh, or wheeze even once that your fellow call participants can hear.  When you have something to say, collect your thoughts, come off mute and say it.  Then mute again.  Simple.  It also has the following side benefits:

  • It improves the audio quality on your end (and for everyone else)  since it reduces the bandwidth needed (don’t ask why I know this, but I can assure you that sadly I do)
  • Your friends/coworkers will appreciate it too, with fewer interruptions in the audio stream that sound like interjections that result in those awkward go/no you go moments.
  • You may find you are more purposeful in what you say since it’s not just an open channel for whatever falls from your brain onto your tongue.  That could mean shorter calls, and everyone can get behind those.

That’s it for today, kids.

Old timer discovers Podcasts, shakes stick

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I am realizing lately that I am auditioning to become a certain variety of old person.  I haven’t got the part yet, but let’s just say I have received a call back.  I’m going to be a geek, certainly, but my particular flavour of old geek is one that enjoys music and radio a lot, as much as or more than I always did as a normal person.

The old geek I will become recently discovered he likes podcasts.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically free radio episodes you download over the Internet.  Most people use an app that let’s you discover the latest episodes automatically, you can listen to them off-line, and there are other technical details that appeal to the (eventually old) geek in me just fine.

I never really caught on to podcasts before now, I couldn’t really even tell you why.  I knew they existed, but maybe there were just too many to decide which ones to start with.  There are podcasts for every damn thing under the sun out there, seriously there are so many.  It seems to me that most podcasts follow a talk radio kind of format, so you may have to hunt around before you find one you really like.  Personally I haven’t found any of those that interest me, however there is another kind of podcast that definitely has caught my attention.

The Black Tapes podcast and my second recommendation TANIS are fictional serialized dramas.  These podcasts aren’t just inane chatter about whatever the hosts want to talk about.  This is a story, written with care and following an arc that takes you through it in a satisfying way.  The voice acting is generally good and there is care taken in production values, etc.  The whole experience rewards listening with headphones.  Both of these podcasts are actually from the same media company, which explains a few things, and some of the voices and people are the same in both.  They both also share some similarities in that they are just ever so slightly creepy.  If you want to try one, I would start with The Black Tapes since I find it to be slightly more accessible in nature.  It’s a paranormal-flavoured story line, but the overall arc is really good, the characters are great, and I’m hooked.  Season 2 begins soon, you might have time to get through the first season before it starts.

TANIS is quite a bit different, it’s definitely got a bit more of an X-Files theme to it.  It’s weirder, darker, and cooler.  It’s also newer so it has a little further to go before I can say for sure which one I like better.  I’m actually leaning towards TANIS at this point, we will see.

Also, if you do like what you hear you can support them via Patreon  (The Black Tapes link) as well, which I have done because that is also the kind of old geek I am auditioning for.  Why I am compelled to support and pay for things I enjoy that are generally available on the Internet for free is the topic of another, probably lengthy blog post.

There you go people, grab these things for a listen and tell ’em old Court sent ya.

TANIS-TRAIN-RUNNERS

Get off my RSS feed, you kids.