Recurring Theme

I was laying down in E's nest in the dining room (we were playing in there). She'd run off to do something and I hear the following:

• Thud, thud, thud (2 year old running)
• CRASH (2 year old failing to negotiate a turn)
• "I'm OK"

It occurs to me suddenly that this has become a constant refrain in my life. I literally think I hear this 2-3 times a day. My wife probably hears it at least twice that often since she's home with the kids all day.
The thing that kills me is the rhythm...it's always the same, very brief, pause then her cute little "I'm OK". Sigh...what did I ever do for entertainment before my kids came along?

Pithy Thought of the Moment

Is stating "That person really knows what they're talking about" any different than "I agreed with nearly everything that person said"?

I had this one a few weeks ago. We'd brought in a process guru at work to help get us started with iterative development. When it was over, people (including me) kept saying things like, "Man, that guy really knows his stuff." One time in particular, after making this rather banal statement to my boss, I stopped and then said, "You know, that really just means that I agreed with him." Apparently he (my boss) thought that was pretty funny because I've heard him using the same line himself.

Rise and Fall of the American Empire

I've been thinking for awhile that our society is starting to bear a disturbing resemblance to Rome in its last days. Decadence, laziness, a general sense of entitlement. These all appear to be hallmarks of the decline of a culture's prominence in the world. Certainly we're seeing the Asian cultures' stars rising.

What I hadn't done was combine this with something else I've been wondering. Everyone says we've become a service based economy. What I've wondered is how does a service based economy generate wealth...i.e., sustain economic growth? Somebody, somewhere has to create new things, otherwise there is no one to pay for those services.

Well, this morning on NPR they were interviewing the author of "Bad Money", Kevin Phillips (link here). His premise is very similar to mine but taken from the second angle. Namely, that we're watching the decline of our culture/civilization/country's prominence in the world because we're we've allowed our role in the world to shift from industry to providing services to the world.

I found myself nodding a lot so he must know what he's talking about:-). Which leads to my next blog post...pithy thought of moment.

Medical Profession

My wife has been suffering with a lot of painful medical problems pretty much as long as I've known her but lately it has gotten particularly grim. She's started down the path to try to determine just what is going on. And has run straight into a problem.

Each doctor she goes to is a specialist. Each doctor looks at her problems through the filter of that specialty. If she doesn't have something that fits those filters they cast about trying to find something that's close but still within that specialty. When the give up it's off to another specialist.

We're guessing at the choices of which specialist is the right one. Which specialty is the right one.
Her primary care physician is trying to help. At least I believe she is, but how much can you do in the 10-15 minutes granted by the insurance companies. Not much.

Where's the old school generalist doctor who looks at you as a person and only calls in a specialist when they get over their head? Sadly this seems to mostly be gone. The ones that do exist tend to be in more alternative branches of medicine and often won't call on anyone from "the other side" so you remove half your options right off the bat.

That brings up another interesting point. Most of the doctors we talk to (I'm talking MDs here) are quite receptive to various alternative practices, but the reverse doesn't seem to be true.

I don't know, just overall frustration I guess. If anyone actually reads this and has a good suggestion, I'm all ears.

Some ideas

In my last post, I mentioned some of the ideas that I'd been thinking about for blog entries. Might as well create an entry to capture some (at least the ones I can remember:-).

1. Pithy things I've thought of (at least I think they are pithy):
1. Approach all conflicts/confrontations with the humility that you might be the one who is wrong.
2. Corollary to the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing different ways and expecting the same results is also a definition of insanity.
3. In response to some politician demanding more police for my "safety": We don't need more police, we have so many that we're storing them on the side of the road.
2. Why considerateness is so important despite being so rare.
3. Things I wish average drivers would do to make everyone's life better.
4. Why the Republican and Democratic parties aren't really different.
5. Processes
1. Why is prioritizing features so hard to accomplish when it's such a simple concept and what happens if you fail to prioritize.
   
2. The difference between size-based estimates and effort estimates
   
3. Why incremental and iterative are not the same thing
6. How awesome my family is!
7. Interesting programming experiences/languages, etc.
1. Why I hate mixed-mode languages
2. Why I hate meta-programming
3. Why hate is probably too strong a word to use in the above two points:-)
8. Interesting math or science articles and my take on them.
9. Grammar and language stuff that I find interesting
10. Cultural observations that I find interesting
    

1st Blog Post

Well, I'm clearly not an early adopter here. Blogging's been around for what...10 years now. Anyway, as is probably the case with most blogs, I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to use this for but I keep thinking of topics and experiences that I'd like to capture. Probably I won't keep up with this but you never know.