My Epson XP-830 started dropping black ink globs on my prints, which would smudge and wreck photos. As I had recently installed $150 worth of ink, I didn’t want to just go out and get a new printer. I also liked the compact format of this printer, and wouldn’t just buy the same one, as this was starting to look like a doorstop after its 2nd set of cartridges. I wasn’t concerned about breaking the printer at this point, because I was ready to throw it out.

My manager has been on secondment to another team for the past 8 months. He stepped into a recent team meeting, where we were re-visiting challenges with our release process, and re-starting an initiative that had been displaced by other priorities.

As he stepped out, he joked (I paraphrase): “Good to see nothing has changed while I’ve been away”

In the next couple months, my manager will return to this team, back to where he started, back to re-visit familiar challenges.

In my primary school years, I’d read my Dad’s “Compute!” magazines. Recently, I discovered they’ve been published on Archive.org https://archive.org/details/compute-magazine , and I browsed through a few issues.

I came across this ad in a 1981 issue:

When it was revealed that the massive Equifax breach in 2017 was attributed to their failure to patch a component in their system known as ‘Apache Struts’, everyone was reaching out to their development teams and asking: “Do we use Apache Struts? Is it patched?”

And I found it interesting. In my opinion, the wrong question was being asked.

What they should be asking us (and what we should be doing) is:

When Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, died in October, I decided to read his 2011 Memoir, Idea Man. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Seven years after co-founding Microsoft with childhood friend Bill Gates, Paul was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He left Microsoft, already a very wealthy individual. A few years after successful treatment and recovery, he bought the Portland Trailblazers NBA basketball franchise.

In 1994, Paul Allen hired Bob Whitsitt as the Trailblazers general manager, to rebuild the team. Whitsitt focused solely on basketball skills in his hiring.

I recently participated in a workplace hackathon.

Here are some reflections on the experience:

• It’s hard to completely step away from day-to-day work for 2 days. Release schedules set long ago don’t change, we choose to keep customer facing meetings, incidents still need to get addressed
• Conversely, much can be deferred (many emails can wait!), and a lot can still be accomplished in two part days
• Two days of development and a 7 minute presentation are great constraints which force many decisions

It’s amazing how much you can get done when: