Kyle Smith

My second redbook was published on Wednesday.  The book shows some of the ways that z/VM can be useful when testing and developing applications.

In other fun news, three of the original savages (Eli, Jason and I) will be reuniting in June to work on a z/VM basics textbook here in Poughkeepsie.  If you’ve used z/VM before and found it painful, this will be the book for you.

A second article that caught my attention earlier was from Seth Godin and talked about sheepwalking.

I agree with Seth that the employee can’t be faulted initially, but after the typical probation period I think it’s entirely the employee’s fault if they aren’t able to break from the flock of average performers and demonstrate some initiative. As much as I’d like all companies to have creative cultures like Google’s or that of a startup, it’s not going to happen. Once the company is established the happiness of the shareholders or funders inevitably becomes the primary concern.

Thankfully, I think as long as a company is willing to allow people to innovate for a few hours a week that’s enough. If you’ve hired the right people they’ll take the initiative and locate or create opportunities to be innovative and make the most of that time.

When I first started full-time at IBM I quickly got bummed that my manager wouldn’t let me go off and work on any project I wanted to. After several months I’d had enough and started working on small projects on my own in my spare time. Once I’d demonstrated to him that I was able to accomplish my regular work as well as my side projects, he started suggesting other opportunities to me and giving me more freedom.

Since then I’ve worked on two redbooks (and am scheduled for a third), started writing an article series for developerWorks, signed up to teach a weeklong workshop in Ontario, and participated in two “patent farms”.

The point? As long as you’re willing to take the initiative being creative shouldn’t be a problem. An easy place to start is to determine where the boundaries are between your job role and your coworkers job roles and then fill the gaps (don’t try to take over their roles).

If you’re not willing to step outside your comfort zone, be prepared for a very boring 9 to 5 job and an equally mindnumbing career.  If you’re looking to change that behavior you might check out Robert E. Kelley’s How to be a Star at Work (thanks to Bryan and his “How to Kick-Ass at Work” discussion group). I highly recommend reading it.

I doubt many (if any) of you are involved in hiring employees but I came across a post on TrueTalk by way of Jason Yip which had an awesome quote:

Friend of mine used to say, if you need to hire something that climbs a tree, hire a squirrel. You could train a turkey to do it, but it’s a heck of a lot simpler to go with the squirrel. Or, “hire for temperament; train for skills.”

Unfortunately I’ve encountered a number of employers that do the exact opposite. They hire the people that have a particular skill they need right now and neglect to look at the rest of the candidate. As soon as they see “Linux” or “Java” on a resume tunnel vision develops and everything else is forgotten.

When the next project starts and the manager (or a coworker) realizes the employee doesn’t have the skills or adaptability to do it properly, it’s too late.

When I interviewed at Microsoft in 2005 I got the sense that even though they had an immediate need for a particular skill, they refused to give in to their desire to hire someone that had it without looking at them as a whole and considering how they would perform on project N+1 or N+2. The writings of Joel Spolsky and William Poundstone seem support my view. I also get the sense that Google looks for more talented people (like my friend Dave from elementary school).

Sadly I’m pretty sure companies won’t improve their hiring process even though they’re already being bit by this problem.

This morning the first article in a series on IBM Director that my coworker Jay and I are writing was published on developerWorks.  You can read it here.

Dear Citibank,

Please join the rest of us in the 21st century by eliminating your stupid browser checks, which are preventing me from viewing some of the content on your website. According to your FAQ I need to upgrade my browser, but I am using Firefox 2 on Linux, which happens to be just as good as Firefox on Windows and Mac OS X.

If your snazzy site maintainers and web application developers inform you otherwise, you should probably fire them and hire a team of monkeys because if you’re going to have unskilled staff, you might as well pay them in bananas.

I, and perhaps others who decide to use free operating systems instead of paying $200 for an OS, will take my business elsewhere.

Several weeks ago I volunteered to be a mentor for an area middle school student as part of an outreach program IBM has.  The program involves communicating with the student via an online discussion forum and completing small activities together.  The most recent activity that we tackled was a free-writing assignment where we each answered four questions.  Since I spent some time thinking about them in order to give serious answers to my mentee, I thought I’d post them over the course of a few days as a challenge to all of you.

Today’s question is: if you could have three wishes, what would they be?

(No, you cannot wish for additional wishes.)

Do not edit this page

A few months ago I had a follow-up appointment with my (still relatively new to me) doctor to get some test results as well as to get a new prescription for my allergy medications. Afterwards I left St. Francis feeling rather annoyed at the lack of bedside manner and common curtesy she displayed, to the point I considered canceling all my future appointments and switching to a new healthcare provider. My aggravation was renewed last week when I received a bill with a number of “overdue” charges, except I was never billed in the 8 months since my initial visit.

Yesterday NBC’s Today Show had a segment about firing your doctor if you’re unhappy with the care you’re receiving. While I have certainly considered that numerous times in the last few months, the only thing keeping me with my current provider is the fact that they have my medical records and the last time I requested complete records from a hospital, DHMC sent me the logs from when I was briefly receiving allergy shots and nothing else (very unhelpful).

Last night I was thinking about that problem and wondering if there was an open standard for electronic health records, so that I could easily find a new doctor and have them immediately know my completely medical history. This morning I came across a press release from IBM (my employer) from last month announcing that they had contributed a chunk of technology to the Eclipse Foundation for their Open Healthcare Framework project, which sounds like it will resolve this problem.

While I am still concerned about the privacy and security issues surrounding medical records and how they’re used, I’m also looking forward to the day when I might have the ability to change doctors on a whim when service is poor. Imagine how much healthcare service would have to improve if there was actually competition for customers like there are in other industries.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that my 10 minute visit with the doctor for her to glance at a sheet of test results she had never seen before and tell me “your numbers have improved” cost $160.

Over the course of the last few months I’ve been trying to get better organized. I’ve been using a simple steno pad from Staples with a page for each week or so to keep track of my action items, with all of my “next action” items for the day/week at the top of the page and any calls or emails I need to make growing upwards from the bottom. For the most part the system works works. Hard things go on my calendars, soft things on my list.

The one area I haven’t really tamed is project ideas and future items (basically my tickler file to use David Allen’s terminology). The only solution I’ve come up with that might work would be a binder that I could add pages to on an as-needed basis. The downside of such a solution is that it’s yet another thing I’ll forget to bring with me (along with my iPod, digital camera, and digital recorder), so I would really like to have something on my laptop to keep track of this. An electronic solution would also make it easier to search and add rich content to.
My requirements are as follows:

• Must be secure (accessible only by me, data would ideally be encrypted)
• Must not be publicly-accessible (may contain IBM confidential information)
• Must be lightweight (doesn’t require Notes or a continually-running service on my laptop)
• Easily searchable (I <3 live search) or have a flexible tagging system
• Would ideally allow attachments or embedded objects (images primarily)
• Must support rich text formatting
• Dependency tracking would be cool
• Related to dependency tracking — a reminder or “can’t start until X” feature would also be nice

Anybody know of a piece of software that meets some or all of those requirements?

Stacy and I went to a tasting at The Villa Borghese Sunday night and it looks like that’s where we’ll be having our wedding ceremony and reception next year.  In the last few weeks we’ve put together a preliminary guest list put togther, and think we have a photographer lined up.  Now we just need to find a DJ or band.

On a different note, I’m pleasantly surprised by how many people I know from high school are now married, engaged, or going on for graduate degrees.  I’m also surprised at how many people are now in the NY metro area.  For the longest time it seemed like I was the only person from HHS in New York.

Posted a few photos I scanned the other day as well.