As with knowledge capture, so must any successful organization pursue training. Training need not be formal. It can be self-paced, on-the-job, as-you-go, or formal. I know that I have learned the most about the product I support not from formal training, but from actually supporting it. Part of that is because we have had a [...]
Category Archives: insights
preparing for change (part the first)
Thursday, March 13, 2008
I have recently been preparing to change jobs within my company from Support to Professional Services. This has lots of caveats, concerns, and corners to shine light into, alleviate, and circumvent. The first thing that I did when I found out that I would, in fact, be able to move to ProServe from Support was [...]
computers were made for americans
Monday, November 5, 2007
Or at least, they were built for people who speak English. Evidence for my claim: the first electronic computers were built during WWII by the British and Americans for code breaking; the first programming languages were designed, written, and implemented by Americans and British; the transistor, which led to the IC, was developed by Americans; [...]
a perfect hash function?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
As I was walking to get my turkey pot pie today that was cooking in the microwave in our break room, I looked at the parking lot below and realized that parking lots are approximately perfect hash functions. Think about it: cars come in in some semi-random order; spaces are available in semi-random fashion; cars [...]
the inanity of ‘special’ lanes
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Carpool lanes do not alleviate traffic. They encourage folks to either a) ignore the ‘carpool-only’ signs, or b) get pissed-off at other drivers ignoring the signs. I’ve been in California for a few days on a working vacation, and the carpool-only lanes are stupid. Because I’ve been driving by myself to work, I do not [...]
i know why search is broken
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Search is broken. Google, Yahoo, Ask, Alta-Vista, and on, and on the list goes. Hundreds of companies, thousands of individuals. I know why search is broken, and I know what needs to be fixed. Now to figure out the how of fixing. When you’re looking for information, you search on keywords. Google’s been nice enough [...]
is plagiarism really so bad?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
There has been a lot of talk recently about the huge issue of plagiarism among students. Ars Technica had an article about it on 20 October [arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061020-8041.html]. I have also heard the issue discussed on radio talk shows, and been lectured on the consequences of being caught plagiarizing by almost every professor I’ve ever had. [...]
ask the right question
Thursday, September 28, 2006
If you’ve never read Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley, and especially chapter 1, you should. Even before finishing this post. Even if you never write a program or touch a computer. Now that that’s out of the way, I can continue. The biggest issue in answering any question is not the answer – it is [...]
queuing the next generation
Like many people, I work for an under-staffed segment of a remarkably under-staffed company. Before transitioning to professional services, I worked for support, and they are even more under-staffed. I see a simple solution to this problem, but the company is too short-sighted to implement anything like this, sadly. Problem: We need new people. Desperately. [...]