I also have a pair of climbing tights that are marvelous – useful throughout a wide range of temperatures and conditions. Metolius used to make them though they are now discontinued. I hate to think about replacing them.
It is wonderful when you stumble on great gear. You can buy a half-a-dozen replacements trying to find another thing that is just as good and end up with half-a-dozen pieces on a shelf, rarely worn.
Jason Uppal of Quickresponse gave a talk on Building Enterprise Architects at the Open Group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Summit. He mentioned that Toyota judges project success based on
three corporate objectives:
Profit from the Program
Market Share
Learning
These facets got me thinking about our post project reviews. We tend to measure our projects on whether or not they were done on-time and under-budget. We have post-project reviews that ask, “how could we run projects better in the future” but they are focused on the project process. We don’t really evaluate the project on a set of facets. So we evaluate “What” and “How” but not “Why”.
As I think about this, I think the interesting facets for us would be:
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Last night I ate dinner a local Japanese restaurant. I was walking from the hotel down to North Beach. It was nasty, windy, raining so I was thinking that maybe I should turn around and eat at the hotel. I went past this little Japanese restaurant – Hotaru (1059 Powell St, Google Street View helped me find the name) Hotaro or something like that. It was nasty so I decided to forgo my usual rule for restaurant selection (learned from a colleague – find the first restaurant that looks good enough then go to the next better looking restaurant) and dive back in.
A little four year-old girl, Rosemary, brought me my menu. Roy, a 15 month old, toddled around holding onto an elderly woman’s hands. A younger woman sat braiding another older woman’s hair. The woman with Roy said, “look at my Sister’s hair”. Everyone looked up and cooed appreciation. There was much discussion of how the young lady did her hair and the fact that she did it without a rubber band.
A man walked it and the elderly woman with Roy asked, “are you Willard’s brother? I’ve seen you at the library.” “Yes. This is Willard’s niece, Christine” he answered pointing out the young lady that he entered with. “Where is Willard?” ‘He is parking the car.’ “We haven’t seen Willard for a while.” ‘He usually comes early after work.’
Willard walked in a couple of minutes later. Everyone said hi. WIllard took up Roy and played with him. He introduced Rosemary to Christine. Others diners came in and said hi. Everyone moved around from table to table, chatting and catching up. I was quickly brought into the conversation.
It was a wonderful neighborhood hang out for these China town people. They walk over drive in from around the city to meet up and chat on evenings when they don’t want to cook. Everyone listened patiently to the elderly woman describe how she was just laid off from her job. They jointly watched the owners children while she ran the restaurant.
It was really a wonderful step into a welcoming local scene.
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In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Some time ago, I was on the circuit talking about Service Oriented Architecture and a roadmap for moving forward. Since then, we have had many false starts and hit many snags along the path. There is slow movement: we are standing up an ESB for testing, we have started a project to expose Course Roster data as an enterprise service, and groups are moving towards Web Services as there preferred integration technology. This is still a long way away from from SOA as an enterprise architecture.
Lola and I went for a long walk down by New Glarus, WI on the Sugar River Trail. I took some pictures and made two into desktops. Note: The originals are really big. They are scaled for my 24″ monitor.
I was the emcee of of a 50th birthday party for a group of friends (11 people had 50th birthdays this year that we celebrated). This is my speech for the party.
These are your formative years – cohort of 57
1957: Your birth year
Everly Brothers Bye Bye Love & Wake up little suzzie are at the top of the charts
Buddy Holly was at his peak
Paul Anka was a rock-and-roll teen idol
Arturo Toscanini has a stroke and dies 2 weeks later
Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch
Wham-O produces the first Frisbee
On E-Day, Ford introduces the Edsel
In Oct – Sputnik is launched
IBM releases FORTAN to its customers
Pina Colada was invented by Ramon Marero at Puerto Rico’s Caribe Hilton
March – Osama Bin Laden was born
1957 was one of two peaks in the baby boomer generation. 4.3 Million births
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Jim Phelps 