“Last night, you became flagrantly psychotic. It will happen again tonight. Before you reject this diagnosis, allow me to offer five justifying reasons. First, when you were dreaming last night, you started to see things that were not there—you were hallucinating. Second, you believed things that could not possibly be true—you were delusional. Third, you […]

On rocket science and software testing

I recently read “Firing a Rocket” by James R. French. Mr. French is an engineer who was involved in the early American space program, working on developing engines and combustion devices used in the Saturn 5 rocket and Apollo space missions. He served as the Lead Development Test Engineer on the Lunar Module Descent Engine. The […]

Podcasting Part 3: Recording your podcast

This is the third in a periodic series of posts about podcasting. Read part 1: Why I podcast and part 2: Microphones. Now that you have your microphone, you need to record your podcast. This post describes several available options, along with my recommendations. Recording software The software that I use for recording podcasts differs based […]

How I stopped procrastinating

Earlier in my life I had a big problem with procrastination–putting off doing things that I needed to do. I think I mainly did this because I was anxious about actually doing the thing, or I felt I would not do a good job, which prevented me from getting started or finishing. In the latest […]

Attn: PR People

When you write blog posts about technical topics, you will receive a bunch of emails from PR people who want you to cover their clients’ products and services. However, most of these don’t usually pertain to the topics that I blog about. This post is free advice to any eager PR folks out there–target your […]

Monopoly: You’re Doing It Wrong

Over the past few weeks my social feed has been full of people trashing my favorite board game, Monopoly. Articles like this have misrepresented the findings of a poll from boardgamegeek.com. The articles focuses on Monopoly having a rating 4.5 in the boargamegeek rankings, but on boardgamegeek there are multiple editions of Monopoly ranked, some […]

“Last Christmas” Flowchart

It seems like the holiday song that you cannot escape is “Last Christmas.” It plays in every restaurant, store, or waiting room that you go to after November. And it is a terrible song. Basically the same two sentences repeated over and over. It is so bad that there is no best version of the […]

Farewell, Wired 2 Win Television

It was summer 2006. I was working in inside sales for Datastream Systems, which had recently been acquired by Infor. Infor was a company that grew from acquiring many legacy enterprise software companies, and their portfolio of companies included ERP systems like BPIX, MAPICS, BAAN, as well as production management systems, ingredient systems for food manufacturers, and all […]

Honest advertising slogans for Disney World vacations

Disney World: where every day is like Christmas, with kids whining and stuff Epcot: see real Chinese people touring the fake China Disney World: got any money? Let it go! Disney World: stand in line 80 minutes for a 5 minute ride Disney World: where this amount of food is worth $50

On the entertainment value of children’s performances

The most wonderful, beautiful thing in the world is watching your children sing in a program. The least entertaining thing in the world is watching somebody else’s children sing in a program.