business

Notes on Field Day 2023

I wrapped up another field day with my friend Paul (W7PEZ) in Eastern Washington. For the two days, I had 204 contacts, broken out roughly as: Paul worked 200 contacts, nearly all CW. Both are personal records. Neither of us were “running,” which would certainly have bumped up the totals, nor did we operate all […]

Notes on Field Day 2023 Read More »

Behind the hiring desk

Some time ago, I’d been in hiring mode for a business analyst for my team and “had a few thoughts” that I have kept in draft form for some time.  As this is now an ex-company/team, I feel okay writing about it, but am somewhat lazy about changing present tense. How I think the process

Behind the hiring desk Read More »

The Mintern

In retrospect, there were signs that The Intern might not work out: The child of a friend of the family of a Senior Executive … touted as an upperclassman from a well-known engineering school, but was just starting a search for an internship in mid-June … hasn’t been vetted or spoken with the hiring manager, but was slated to

The Mintern Read More »

Email patterns

Despite a concerted effort to keep my inbox tamed, it’s now back above 30 undealt-with emails.  While falling behind, I’ve noticed some recurring – and annoying – behavioral patterns.  I’m sure the list is incomplete, so feel free to share! “The two-for” – a person who always — always— sends a second mail with the

Email patterns Read More »

Disruptive technologies

Supercomputing 2010’s keynote was Clayton Christensen, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma (and its numerous follow-ons), whose research, studying the demise of companies over time, is utterly fascinating (to me) and I can’t believe I hadn’t read before. He has studied the demise of companies over time — think Digital Equipment Corporation (cut up into

Disruptive technologies Read More »

If our company kitchen appliances had network access…

Toaster [twitter]: “Hope you enjoy standing outside in the rain while the Bellevue fire department shakes its head disapprovingly of your charred mess!” #EpicToastFail [3 seconds ago] “Dude, it’s looking medium well.” [2 minutes ago] NotMyJob: @Toaster is looking very dark now. [4 minutes ago] “Your toast is ready!” [5 minutes ago] Espresso machine [Facebook]:

If our company kitchen appliances had network access… Read More »

Today is a good day to PLOT!

Mister Peabody, set the Wayback Machine to three years ago, pick a spot during a really long product release cycle.  Partly out of boredom, but mostly to mess with development manager at the time, I had asked one of the developers to swap out the splash screen.  The product logo was thus modified: Official Battle-ready!

Today is a good day to PLOT! Read More »

Mission Criticaler

A webinar is essentially conference call combined with a PowerPoint presentation.  Of the dozens I receive a month, few meet my rigid criteria: educational content, straightforward delivery.  It’s usually easy to tell from the email if it’s likely going to be some kind of lame marketing presentation. Speaking of which, here’s an invitation I received

Mission Criticaler Read More »