Don’t Be That Guy

Cool Design Guy Brian Veloso has a fun forum called “Don’t Be That Guy” where you can post stories about the people who step on you in traffic, at work, as clients, etc.
It’s a funny idea, but I’m afraid I’m too often “that guy” (or girl, if you’re hung up on the gender of it) to go around pointing it out in others, except as a cautionary tale for myself. I strive not to be, and I’m a lot more conscious lately of where I’m automatically negative about something, when there’s no need to be. Being in a relationship has certainly helped me recognize where I’m inappropriately negative, and where I need to smooth out my communication skills to explain what I’m really thinking so as not to upset the charming, lovely woman who’s sweet enough to go out with me.
Another thing I’ve started doing, or rather stopped doing, is reading so much political news, which does nothing but make me angry about stuff I can’t change. And I have a whole Newsfeed category of “Positive Thinkers” — people who come at things from an optimistic, “how can I make this better” approach. I hope I can eventually put my own feed in that group.
So the “don’t hire negative people” slide at the Getting Real Workshop really struck home. Not that they’d ever hire me, but if I were rejected by them, I’d want it to be because of my work, rather than my personality. That’s a tough thought to express, I hope it came out right.

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House Hunting

Sunday we looked at two houses. The first we’ve eliminated from the equation; it was a 802 N. Highland in Cottage Homes. I might throw up the pictures of it later, because we’ve ruled it out. It was a cute little cottage, but was too much work to update the interior.

The second house we saw was pretty amazing. It has pretty much everything we have on our needs list, and what’s on our “wants” list also. The drawbacks are:

  1. Looks like the roof and gutters need work
  2. The bedrooms are oddly configured and might be awkward for our living needs (the lots of clothes issue)
  3. It’s just outside our price range (although we’re pre-approved for it)
  4. Its only the third house we’ve seen
  5. We’d have to jump on it pretty quickly, because it’s desirable, so it would be a sudden move.

Our realtor is nervous about the house because it’s unusual for someone to settle on a house this quickly — and I freely admit I fall in love with houses way too easily. So we’re looking at more stuff.

But there are some things about this house that really make my heart sing:

  1. it’s in a quiet, low crime downtown neighborhood I really want to live in. (Most else we’ve pulled up on Mibor is in Irvington. Which is cool — but you can’t get to Irvington from anywhere.)
  2. The laundry room is upstairs on the second floor, near the bedrooms (sheer decadent heaven!)
  3. The yard is nice and large for dogs to run around in.
  4. It’s Victorian, and looks it inside.
  5. The front porch is huge!
  6. Oh, yeah, this is funny: It has a murphy bed

I know I shouldn’t be attached to this house, and that we should look at more.

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Really?

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. — Albert Einstein
I’ll have to double-check on that one, because it sounds like one of those quotes that we hope is true, but later find out isn’t.

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Daylight Savings Time and Cable

I noticed with some grumpiness this morning that although my digital cable had adjusted correctly to the new daylight savings time, my DVR settings did not, so my show recordings are all off by an hour — instead of recording Desperate Housewives, then Gray’s Anatomy, my DVR recorded Gray’s Anatomy and the evening news instead. Combined with the general wonkiness of the DVR’s recording in general, this didn’t make me happy. I have to go in an tweak my settings in ways that I should not have to, or I occasionally will miss something.
I know must have happened because I had the selection of “record all episodes of this show in this time slot” instead of “record all episodes of this show at all times.” But the second setting results in recording five versions of the same episode, or causing repeated episodes to “bump” other original airings of shows off the schedule without warning. I have no way to tell it to prioritize one show over another, and it doesn’t tell me if it has bumped a show off my recording schedule, so I don’t know to go back and add it in later. That’s broken.
With some other video recording programs, you can tell the recorder to get every episode of a show, but to only record any episode one time, so the when a network re-airs a program, the DVR sees it’s a duplicate episode and ignores it. You can also program them to prioritize one show over another if the schedule moves around and you accidentally try to record more than two things at once. And they will tell you what show was bumped off the schedule, so you can go back and re-set it to record the next week
I have some friends who were showing off their satellite TV/Tivo combination package, which currently weighs in at less money every month that my cable, with more features and reliability, including the ability to transfer shows from one TV to another, so I could move a show upstairs to the bedroom to watch it. I hate to go to all the trouble of doing that, but given that I’m paying more for less service, it might be time to make the switch.

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37 Signals “Getting Real” Workshop

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37 Signals is a web application development company based in Chicago, consisting of 7 guys who produce some very successful products. The day-long workshop called “Getting Real” that we attended was all about how they do that — what methods they have that help them achieve that success with the products they build.

[link deprecated: Here are all my workshop notes], exported directly from OmniOutliner (which creates some seriously crappy html code, BTW.) If there’s anything there that doesn’t make sense — and my notes are really rough, so there will be — feel free to ask questions here.

So here’s the dirt on how they do that, boiled down: They start with a set of core philosophies that they all believe in, about the environment/culture they want to work in, and about what’s important about the products they want to produce. Then they set up some methods of working that reflect those philosophies.

Those methods involve how they interact with one another, how they make decisions, how they design, code, and test their products, how they launch them to the public, and how they handle customer support on their products.

By consistently following those methods, and constantly referring back to those core philosophies (to the point where they call these ideals “mantras”) during their decision-making processes, they are able to produce products that are consistent, functional and pleasing to their users.

When you’re looking at their applications, or listening to them talk about what they do, it becomes really apparent that they’ve identified and filtered out what goes wrong with most software development, especially development that happens at large corporations.

One the keys is that they don’t try to create large, complicated applications all at once. They boil their apps down to some core goals, get them functioning quickly (thus requiring little documentation, meetings, and endless wrangling in the process) and iterate additional features quickly, but only when those features benefit all users and make sense. All this occurs while they refer back to their core mantras for guidance in decision-making.

So are their methods scalable? Can they be applied inside a large corporation? They sugggested several times that skunkworks projects and small groups inside big corporations can achieve that, but I think it’s also possible with a larger team, as long as the person at the top has enough of a vision to set the core philosophies and get people to focus on them and work within them on a daily basis.

Pictures I took in Chicago — not many of the workshop, but lots of the city.

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How to Evaluate Candidate’s Stands on the issues

On Bilerico, Sheila Kennedy provides a great checklist of things to think about when candidates start talking about their pet issue this campaign season. Read the whole post (it’s great!) but here are the highlights:

when Congressional candidate A unveils his “Major Initiative to Solve the Boll Weevil Problem,” I suggest the following four questions to help you evaluate the candidates and their proposals:
Question One: Is there general agreement that Boll Weevils are a problem?
Question Two: Is there agreement on how to solve that problem?
Question Three: Is this a problem only government can solve?
Question Four: Does the proposed solution pass the ‘smell test’? (Does our earnest candidate demonstrate knowledge of available evidence on this issue? )

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The Harrison Center and Anti-Gay Religious Groups

This is extremely disturbing, and not a hoax, despite today’s date. An “Ex-Gay” event will take place in Marion, Indiana, planned and sponsored by a church in our downtown neighborhood — the Redeemer Presbyterian Church at 1505 North Delaware, Indianapolis, IN., which is also home of the The Harrison Center art gallery, run by our neighbor Joanna Taft, who appears to be a member of the board of the church.

According to the Indy Star:

Ministry says it helps gays become straight
Indianapolis Star April 1, 2006

Brad Grammer says he gets 120 calls a year from people asking for help in shaking their attraction to people of the same gender.

As director of Hope and New Life Ministries, a small Downtown operation based in Redeemer Presbyterian Church, he helps the callers find counselors or directs them to churches with support groups.

Grammer’s work is part of a network of “ex-gay” ministries affiliated with Exodus International, a 30-year-old Christian organization built on the premise that gay and lesbian people can change their sexual orientation.

For one week this summer, Exodus will make Indiana Wesleyan University the hub of the ex-gay movement when it brings its 31st Annual Exodus Freedom Conference to the university’s campus in Marion. The event is billed as the largest gathering of ex-gays anywhere in the world.

Exodus says the gathering, which starts June 27, will feature personal stories from people who consider themselves to be ex-gays.

“We are not trying to shove this on someone that is not ready,” said Julie Neils, a spokeswoman for Exodus International, which is based in Orlando, Fla. “We are here to say that change is possible because we have evidence of that, with hundreds of thousands of ex-gays that have come out of homosexuality.”

Leaders in Indianapolis’ gay community are wary of Exodus and its claims. They question whether anyone can turn from an orientation they were born with.

And they say perpetuating the idea that change is possible makes family members and public policy makers insensitive to the real needs of gays and lesbians.

“In my congregation, there are any number of people who had been part of the ex-gay movement,” said the Rev. Jeff Miner, senior pastor at Jesus Metropolitan Community Church, a Northeastside congregation that believes committed gay relationships are not contrary to the Bible. “The stories they tell me is that it was an excruciating time in their life when they were trying to be something they could never be.”

Religious leaders and gay rights groups have for years been locked in highly public battles over same-sex marriage.

Grammer said Christians who believe homosexuality is contrary to the Bible have frequently failed to show love and compassion toward gay individuals.

Exodus International President Alan Chambers agrees. He said Christian groups have spent too much energy pointing fingers at gays and making hostile arguments in the public square.

“The truth is that Christ died for all of us or he died for none of us,” Chambers said. “The way you win the battle is that people are changed when you reach their hearts.”

Some mainstream church denominations have opened their doors to gays and lesbians without challenging their lifestyles. Now, there are tentative signs that churches that don’t condone homosexuality are seeing the need to take a softer tone — not on their doctrine, but in how they welcome gay individuals.

Grammer said at least four such churches in the Indianapolis area have established ministries aimed at helping people who say they want to leave homosexuality. He is trying to develop more.

Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, a self-described pro-family lobbying group, said churches with traditional beliefs on homosexuality have been slow to get involved in ex-gay ministries. But more are getting interested.

“As homosexuality is becoming more and more acceptable in the culture, even to the point of being hip or chic — particularly among teenagers — churches are realizing that this may be a growing problem that they need to address,” said Clark, whose organization is among those telling churches about the conference.

The conference includes sessions for married couples in which one spouse struggles with being attracted to people of the same sex.

A youth-day event will point conflicted kids toward the path of heterosexuality. And there will be support groups and educational sessions for parents with gay children.

Miner, with Jesus Metropolitan Community Church, said he feels only a “deep sense of sadness” for the people who will attend.

He says few — those with an ambiguous sexuality — ever change, and many more will find only heartache.

“The message I try to give to people in the ex-gay movement is that if this doesn’t work for you, remember it is not your only option,” he said. “You can be both gay and Christian.”

But Chambers, the president of Exodus, says he is a former gay man who is now married with children.

He says hearing the stories of other ex-gays helped him find a way out.

He expects many who come to Indiana Wesleyan’s campus this summer will find it also.

“I had been told prior to that by people in the gay community that I couldn’t change, that there was no hope for overcoming that,” he said.

“The truth, in our opinion, is that people come out of homosexuality.”

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