• Reality Hunger by David Shields. An excellent exploration of what we read, why we read, the evolving nature of the things we read and the things we write. I used to think I was a thoughtful reader, now I realize I am a rank amateur. If you read extensively, I recommend this highly – you will gain insight into what you read, and into your own motivations for reading.
• Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross. A lot of fun. Humanity merged with electronics in a fun way – adapted for life in space, water worlds, and other extreme environments. Also a nice exploration of the cultural and economic implications of a civilization spread across the stars, but having no FTL travel. In light of my first book, I wonder why I find hard SF engaging. On a positive note, I enjoy the complex thought exercises that a good author goes through to explore the implications of a certain technology or trend – it is just good brain exercise, keeps the brain nimble, encourages you to think longterm and to question preconceptions. On the negative side, what am I trying to escape from exactly?
• Medusa by Michael Dibdin. Very good detective tale set in Northern Italy, how did I not find Dibdin until now. Secret love and betrayal all hidden behind political intrigue. Again, tho, what am I trying to escape from? After a day of reading technical material and screwing around with open source software, these kinds of books tend to help me decompress, I think.
• The Rope by Nevada Barr. I am not very squeamish but this book is disturbing. I am unable to finish it, the kidnapping and brutality against the main character are just too disturbing. I’ve never had a problem with horror novels because the events always have an unreal, cartoonish feel. This book seems too real. Not my cup of tea.
• The Office of Mercy by Ariel Djanikian. Do not reward this author/publisher who are trying to ride on the coattails of the Hunger Games. A horrible book. My dog has more depth than the characters in this book. No, make that my dog’s chew toy. Really terrible.
• A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay. Starts out as a typical small town murder mystery: a mysterious encounter on a dark night, a murder, a long hidden family secret, corruption in the local police force and government, a PI with personal issues who works slightly outside the lines. I’ve read all this before. But the ending is not all neat and tidy, but is instead dark and emotional and painful. Nicely done. I’m not going to explore why I find a book with a sad, emotional, dark end so appealing.

Kickstart and Anaconda. Grub. Syslinux/isolinux. UEFI boot vs BIOS boot. USB key boot vs ISO image boot. Secure boot. Virtual Machine boot vs physicalized boot. Building packages. Integration with Puppet/Chef/Ansible/Salt. What a mess of configuration parameters, configuration files and syntaxes, constrained execution environments, etc. Design piled on top of design on top of design. Clearly the entire hairball should be reconsidered.

The most annoying impediment to deal with was the btusb bluetooth driver that singlehandedly would prevent the entire system from booting. Struggling to understand the design decisions that led to a system that can be taken down by a stupid race condition with the bluetooth driver. Bluetooth, for gosh sake.

This was a first for us. 15 minutes out of Anacortes and the captain announces we are taking a detour to help a vessel in distress. We change course and the search lights go out, and in about ten minutes we come across a small sailboat with sails ripped. It was a pretty windy night, probably too much weather for this boat. The ferry crew verified that the small boat was not taking on water, and so we just tracked him with our light for 15 minutes, awaiting the arrival of the Coast Guard 35 minutes away in Bellingham. Had the sailboat started to take on water, the ferry crew was ready to do an emergency rescue, but that would have been at some risk to the ferry crew and a lot of risk to the small sailboat, it certainly seems like the ferry would have crushed the boat.

Eventually another ferry arrived, and also kept their lights on the boat. The ferry captains decided for whatever reason that the 2nd ferry was the better one to track the boat, and so we moved on. The well-lit ferry boats had to be a welcome site to the small sailboat, it was a dark and windy night, had to be a little scary out there.

Read for instance Tales of an ex-Microsoft Manager or The Poisonous Employee-Ranking System That Helps Explain Microsoft’s Demise. (Aside: did someone at Slate get a shitty review years ago and now they are determined to get their payback?). If you believe these, Microsoft failed in part because of its corrosive review system, everybody hated it, not a single person at Microsoft liked it, its existence was hidden, etc etc etc. Man that place must have been utter hell to work at.

I was at Microsoft from 1988 to 1999 and have a different experience. Stack ranking (sometimes called the lifeboat drill) was in effect and the system worked fine. It wasn’t hidden, everyone knew they were being ranked. Yes there was stress around review season and yes people could be unhappy, but it didn’t immobilize the organizations I worked in, and people still worked hard and were committed. Perhaps the system in place at Microsoft in the last dozen years is dramatically different than the system in place when I was there.

In my working and academic life, stack ranking has been pervasive and omnipresent. I was stack ranked in high school via grades and class standing. I was stack ranked in college, every course I took had a curve. I was stack ranked in graduate school. I was stack ranked aggressively at Booz-Allen & Hamilton: it was an “up or out” organization, you either got promoted every two years or you were “counseled out”, and everyone knew exactly what everyone else was getting paid. I was stack ranked at Microsoft. We’ve kept track of individual partner returns at Ignition so I am effectively stack ranked now. The notion of stack ranking doesn’t offend me. The last time I wasn’t stack ranked was when I got my 5th grade “Certificate of Participation” for pony football.

Every team I have been on has a distribution of people with a distribution of effectiveness. The people at the bottom of the stack rank are not bad people, they are just the least effective people on the team. It could be a bad fit for them. Or maybe they had other things going on in their life this year that hampered their effectiveness. Whatever the reason, there are real differences across a team in performance and effectiveness. And some part (not all) of compensation will be tied to effectiveness, that seems pretty fair to me. Every manager and company I have worked for has been honest about this system and has explained it well.

My annual review results have never been a big surprise to me. And for a lot of people on my teams, the annual reviews were never a surprise to them either. Because annual results are not something that get unveiled once a year. You build your own annual results (and thereby your review outcomes) one month, one week, one day, one hour at a time. Your story is getting built all year long, and you should know where you stand all along the way. I was always very observant of my own results and those of my peers and tried to adapt along the way each year. People that aggressively manage their career and their work are generally not surprised by year end results.

So – for me anyway, stack ranking has been omnipresent, it is not irrational, it has never been an ugly surprise. But a lot of people think it is awful at Microsoft, and that eliminating it would have helped the company. I will offer a different view.

When things are going great at a company, as they were at Microsoft in the 90s, no one complains about stack ranking. When things aren’t going great, then people complain about stack ranking and about everything else. Why aren’t things going great?

• The mission for the company is unclear. Employees are not excited, not inspired. Customers are not excited and inspired. Developer interest is waning. Analysts are not excited, the company is no longer viewed as a bellweather.
• And growth in stock price has stalled, partly as a result of the lack of compelling mission. The rising tide is not lifting all boats. Comp starts to feel like a zero-sum game.
• And the organization is not growing dramatically. The opportunity to move around the company and find better fits is more limited. A low performer on one team may be a star elsewhere due to a better skill match, better team meshing, or whatever. Having a ton of new teams starting up is a great release valve to have in a company

If you took a magic wand and “fixed” the stack ranking system at Microsoft, but left everything else constant, people still wouldn’t be happy. The underlying problems of mission and growth need to be attacked, and the other dominos will fall. I suspect, as Ben Slivka has articulated, these problems are easier to solve in Microsoft broken into some parts with separable and clear missions. But the stack rank is not at the heart of Microsoft’s problems, and is not at the heart of issues to address going forward.

At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential

-- Microsoft Corporate web site

Eh. This could be the mission statement of GE. Of Procter & Gamble. Of a bank.

When I joined Microsoft in the late 80s, the mission was “a PC on every desk and in every home”. And this was exciting at the time. When I started my work career in the 80s, I was doing spreadsheets on paper, we were typing up documents on typewriters. It was thrilling to work on all the software pieces needed to bring PCs to everyone, I was thrilled to go to work every day. Decision making at work was pretty easy, everyone was pulling on the same oar. Recruiting was easy, people were drawn to the mission. Customers were excited. Developer partners were excited. The energy level was palpable.

And it wasn’t about the money. I took a 50% salary cut to join Microsoft and had no idea the stock would go on a decade long run. I was there for the thrill of it.

By the late 90s tho, the mission had been completed. And since then the company has done well, but the spark is gone. People have left. Infighting has increased. Developer interest has waned. I attribute this directly to the lack of a compelling mission (or missions, separate parts of the company might need separate missions). The current mission is just an umbrella statement to smear over everything, it compels no one, any action can be justified under it. And it doesn’t force any hard choices – no efforts can be focused or trimmed. Microsoft could justify making sunscreen and student loans as part of this mission.

This isn’t solely a SteveB issue. Sure he has been CEO and so ultimately he bears responsibility. But he hasn’t been working alone in a closet. The board has been there the last decade, including Bill, while the company has rumbled along without a mission, and seen its relevance erode. If the board has decided that change is needed, then they need to look at themselves too, as they have been complicit in the direction of the enterprise.

Changing the leadership isn’t going to help the company unless there is a commitment to work on the mission with all that means – organizational fallout, potential divestments, etc.

There are going to be a kajillion articles written dissecting Steve’s legacy at Microsoft, and a kajillion articles speculating on who and what are next for Microsoft. All super interesting and entertaining, though I bet that the results will largely be invariant – Microsoft ends up being largely a highly profitable enterprise company, and some consumer assets get spun out to an uncertain future.

Personally though I am most interested in what Steve is going to do next. Bill Gates and Paul Allen have had outsized impacts on the local economy and culture post their Microsoft years. Steve is passionate, cares deeply, is good hearted. I can’t see him spending the next 30 years fishing or building model railroad setups. I am hopeful that he engages with the Seattle community and the Northwest in a positive way, and I’m interested to see how he applies his energy. This could be a very positive outcome for Seattle.

I just discovered 507 movements, what a great resource! Back in my active Halloween days, I used to spend a lot of time figuring out how to turn simple rotary motion (as available from a myriad cheap motors) into some form of erratic or lateral motion. Or lateral motion (as available from a pneumatic piston) into some other form of motion. I have the 4 volume set of Ingenious Mechanisms, which is even more excellent. But the 507 site is free!

• Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life by Steve Almond. An interesting voice and some great stories. What slowly emerges through the stories is a collection of insights about the creative process and the demons that drive creative people – how the most creative artists create for their own needs, not by commercial success, and are driven to do so. Not clear it makes them happy either but is an imperative for them.
• The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. At times fun but not amazing. Given these writers’ past works, this seems like an odd collaboration, and indeed it starts to feel a little strained, as if the authors were hucking chapters over the wall at each other, leaving the next guy an even more absurd collection of hanging threads to resolve. “I will see your intelligent turtles and raise you a race of intelligent beagles!” “Fine, I will add three more characters and narratives, let’s see if you can relate them
• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. I don’t think she has a bad book in her, this is another fine effort. There were a lot of moving parts and between the character shifts and flashbacks I sometimes was left a little confused, but all came together nicely at the end.
• How to Live by Sarah Bakewell. I’ve never read Montaigne. Perhaps I should. Apparently he was a proponent of living fully in the moment, so reading a book about his essays seems bassackwards. And 1/6th of the way in, I am basically bored. If the answers to the big questions in life are in here, I guess I won’t find them.

Ubuntu Edge looks doomed.

I don’t think the Canonical guys are stupid, and it would have taken about 4 seconds of analysis to figure out that a $32M crowd funding campaign was not going to ever work. So I assume they already knew that. So what is their game?

• They are getting lots of free press for themselves and for the idea of a Ubuntu phone, so that is good for them.
• If they had no intention of ever producing this phone, or seeing it produced, it would be dumb to stir up excitement and interest.
• So I assume that there is a plan, regardless of the Indiegogo campaign, to get this phone produced.
• Canonical may be using the press and interest to raise capital via other channels, that would make sense.
• Or they may have a partner on the hook to produce the phone, and the partner needs a little goading.

One way or another, I suspect this phone is coming out, or something very much like it.

Smoking is back without the stigma. These will look great with your Google Glass(es) and your bluetooth earpiece.

Now I just need something to stick in my nose.

Random things I’ve stumbled on in the last week, and that I am sure I will need to know again.

• …permanently delete some files from Github? Like when you check in something to the wrong project accidentally.
• …temporarily show a localhost web service to someone? Horribly dangerous but sometimes useful.
• …peek inside really big files from the command line? Nothing earth shattering here, I just forget to use these tools.
• …edit Python code? Pycharm worth a look.
• …structure a flask application? One man’s opinion.
• …use ansible to modify a file or install a package or whatever? All the modules are listed here.
• …use graphviz to make a certain graph or a certain shape node?
• …build a python command line? Seems less obtuse than some of the solutions I’ve looked at.
• …pick a messageq framework to use? No idea but this post suggests that perf differences are dramatic.
• …snapshot vagrant boxes? Very handy if you are trying out a lot of config options.
• …install packages from other repositories on CentOS?

In Ohio, a federal judge rules that Ohio has to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. This is going to roll through every state, company, organization, municipality. If it is unconstitutional for the federal government to discriminate against legally married couples, then it is surely unconstitutional for any other entity to do the same. Great news. If I was a responsible party at a government entity or a company, I’d make sure my organization was in compliance now, no point in waiting for the inevitable lawsuit.

The Poppy guys have done a great job running their Kickstarter campaign – they met their goals early, they’ve hit a bunch of stretch goals, it has been super positive, they have a bunch of great supporters. I think they were super thoughtful about the whole process, and I’m excited to see the product, I am of course a backer.

And it has become clear to me what Kickstarter is really for. It is not about raising money. These guys raised a modest amount, they could have funded this easily themselves or from friends. But they have built a great community of early adopters and backers, who feel like part of the team, who are going to help evangelize the product, who are influentials. And that is what Kickstarter really seems to be about (for tech products, I am clueless about movies or other domains) – it is in some sense a marketing expense, it is the way you reach out to the influentials and early adopters and get them on board and pulling for you, which is a HUGELY valuable asset for a young company. It is certainly not about the cash – the $147K these guys raised, less the Kickstarter and AMZN fees, is nothing compared to the funding needs of the business.

• Night Soul and Other Stories by Joseph McElroy. I just don’t enjoy short stories. These seem well-written and intriguing, but the lack of plot and character development due to the strictures of the form just doesn’t work for me. Giving up.
• Portobello by Ruth Rendell. Given the author I expected a straight up mystery but this is an odd little tale of characters along Portobello Road and their obsessions and delusions and misbehaviors. Enjoyable but not hard-hitting.
• The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. Somehow in my trip through the science fiction canon I have missed McDonald, and that has been a mistake. A good tale of a near future Istanbul awash in nano tech. The characters and ideas were much better than the plot, the story got a little too Dan Brown-ish in parts for me, and overall there were too many moving parts. A better book is in here, focused on just 1-2 of the characters and their stories. But still, a good read.
• Firmin by Sam Savage. I had no memory of why I bought this book, but what a quirky little tale. A hyper intelligent rat aspires to rise above his essential rat nature, with inevitable triumphs and crashing failures. Not unlike our own lives. Enjoyable.

This last book reminds me of how valuable it is to search out small publishers and see what they are emitting. Coffee House, Graywolf, etc. With the consolidation among the major publishers and the collapse of retail book selling, you can’t rely on the mainstream to bring interesting writing to you.

Apparently Linux 3.11 has been named Linux for Workgroups. How awesome, even if it is not really meant in tribute.

This was the first shipping product I worked on at Microsoft. A great great team of people. I remember how surprised we all were on the product team when the product was marketed at launch as a “Notes Killer”. We were just trying to make networking work within Windows, because up to that point, networking install for Windows was a ball buster.

I still have a WFW screwdriver.