Fried

I don't know how it happened, but somehow, one of our automatic voltage regulators (AVRs) at the office melted one of the prongs right off of the plug of my laptop power cord today.



One of my officemates nearby was the first to notice something wrong -- she said she could smell something burning. The AVR that I use is actually a couple of desks away, so I didn't notice the smell at first.

Anyway, she followed her nose and finally realized that it was the AVR! We turned it off and unplugged the power cord. As my camphone photo shows, one corner of the rubber insulation on the plug had melted away into a black ugly mess. A quick check showed that the missing prong is still stuck inside the AVR socket.

I can only conclude that something went wrong with the AVR, which is really ironic, since the whole point of using an AVR is to protect your equipment! Thankfully, the laptop itself appears to be unaffected. Now I just have to get myself a new power cord.

Tempted

I actually found myself tempted to look into this job.

Just shows how a great job posting can make an arduous task seem like an exciting adventure. Haha!

Methinks that ad would be well received on the job boards of the STC.

No More Death Marches

It's been several days since my last blog post because I've been chasing a particularly tough deadline.

In my previous job over a decade ago, I could literally just sit at the keyboard for 10 to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a few months straight, and still produce consistently good output. I could never understand my project managers when they'd say they can't focus anymore and needed to take a break, or how they'd disappear for an hour for dinner before coming back to work. To me, it made more sense to just sit there and deal with the problem.

Maybe as we get older, we lose not just our physical stamina but our mental stamina as well. I don't really know.

What I do know now, after the experience of chasing this deadline over a period of three weeks, is that working nonstop on a task seven days a week is not only unhealthy, it's also unproductive. My boss calls that style of working a 'Death March' and I can't think of a better or more picturesque term for it.

Personal experience has now convinced me that it's much better to take a break and do something totally different for a while to clear your head before returning to the seemingly insurmountable task. Get a good meal. Meet up with friends. Take a walk. Visit a bookstore. Or if you're like me, go to rehearsals.

Whatever form your little respite might take, go ahead and enjoy it. Relish the experience. Grab the chance to forget about the problem for a while. When you come back, you'll find yourself feeling happier and less deprived of life's little pleasures. More importantly, you'll realize that your mind is once again ready to focus on the challenge.

Horses and Clients

One of my boss' favorite lines has been coming back to haunt me often the past few days: You can take a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. [origin]

If you have sound advice to offer, but you have the sinking feeling that the client will not be able to (or worse, will refuse to) implement it, can you still consider that advice 'sound'?

On the other hand, if we don't draw a hard line somewhere, won't all the 'tailoring' or 'customizing' we do to account for the specific circumstances of the client just be equivalent to 'watering down' our recommendations (no pun intended)?

I doubt I'll find the answers to my questions tonight. :-(

Worrying about the Fragile Web

I have to admire Jason Goldman for the passion that he feels towards his work.

In a recent blogpost, he asked the question, Does working on the web truly matter? and immediately answered with a resounding Yes!

And you know what? That got me thinking.

Deep down inside, I believe that working on the web does matter. Perhaps that's why I'm always surfing the 'net, forever adding new blogs to my RSS subscriptions, and endlessly creating one more account on yet another new website so I can explore the features for no real purpose other than the intellectual stimulation of having my curiosity satisfied.

At the same time, however, I can't help but worry about the fragility of the web. Perhaps living in a newly industrialized country such as the Philippines has made me more sensitive to how easily bits and bytes can be destroyed or rendered inaccessible. Heck, in the past few months alone, I've experienced losing all the basic utilities (electricity, water, and Internet access), sometimes for extended periods. When you have no 'up time' guarantees for the basic stuff, well, the web by necessity takes a back seat.

Perhaps that's why so few of my friends here have even heard of 'Web 2.0' or 'User Generated Content.' Frankly, most of them will have to work to stifle their yawns if I try to explain the idea. They're more concerned about balancing their budgets, raising their kids, managing their businesses, and doing other things out in the real world.

Add to all this the fact that anyone with a web browser can easily find the location of Google's mega-data center in Oregon, and well, you have to wonder how susceptible this blog is to getting blown up in some freak terrorist attack.

I know, I know... I'm sounding delusionally paranoid now. But that's the direction that my mind naturally takes when I realize just how many of my eggs have (over time) been moved into this single basket called Google.

Having said all this, I return to the original question: does working on the web matter? My answer is still Yes... but (and there's a but) the work is simply too high up on Maslow's pyramid to benefit the Filipino everyman, and frighteningly far too susceptible to damage and sabotage in our increasingly unsafe world.

Writer's Block

Am going through a bit of writer's block these days.

I know exactly what I want to write and what I need to write, but I can't seem to actually sit down and write it because I can't find the words or the proper train of thought.

The last time I had this much trouble writing was almost a decade ago, when I was working on the book.

Sigh. Hopefully the upcoming change of scenery will help clear my head.

Excellence

I attended a luncheon today where the corporate sponsor paying for lunch was also was the speaker for the session. Sadly, the content of the talk was pure fluff. The best description I can think of is that the speaker took their corporate brochure and converted the content to a 10-slide powerpoint presentation and called that a 'talk.'

Afterwards, my seatmate politely commented that she expected there to be more to the talk than what we saw, something I felt rather gratified to hear. Yet, I couldn't help but wonder how many of the other attendees felt the same way.

Lately, I seem to find myself in situations (like the one today) where I get the impression that the average client can sense the difference between quality consulting and mediocre consulting, but they don't care enough about the difference, and certainly aren't willing to pay for the difference.

After all, in these tough financial times, why pay P200 for a bottle of Perrier at a restaurant when they can also serve you regular tap water that's been filtered and chilled at no extra charge?

Do the extra care, attention, and thinking that we put into our consulting advice actually translate into a difference that the client will take into account when they choose a consulting services provider?

I am reminded of a recent conversation I had with a fellow choir member at church. We were talking about the many improvements that the choirs can still make (musically speaking), and how it would be great if we can actually make these changes. He shared with me his wife's reaction to this line of thinking. She asked, do you think the average church-goer can appreciate the difference between a professional choir and a volunteer church choir? And if they cannot, is it still worth it to invest so much time, energy, and emotions into pursuing choral excellence?

At what point are we making sub-optimal decisions by focusing so much on being 'perfect' that we automatically reject what is already 'good enough'?

And if we're so used to compromising and just delivering what's 'good enough,' how sure are we that we haven't already crossed the invisible line that separates 'good enough' from 'mediocre'?

I really wish I knew.

The Peril of Professional Services

This week, the boss and I found ourselves receiving three different requests for help from three different groups of people. Each one entailed reviewing and providing feedback on IT plans, strategies, and budgets. Each entailed some degree of reading, analyzing, and formulating recommendations. Each one was framed as a "favor."

The timing could not have possibly been worse since we were chasing deadlines on a number of items, plus the boss and I were both downed by this cold/cough thing, which slowed us down significantly, and made any kind of heavy thinking difficult.

As I was reflecting on the situation (and the not-so-amusing timing of it all), I realized that this is the peril that everyone in professional services faces. If you're a doctor, a lawyer, or a consultant in similar fields of professional services, you'll always be approached by people who want your advice, but are not willing or not able to pay for it.

Doctors probably know this best of all, since I know from personal observation that people will ask for medical advice at the strangest places -- while you're in line getting into a movie theatre; while you're eating at a restaurant; while you're sitting on a church pew; heck, even while you're in the rest room! If you had made an appointment to see the doctor and asked exactly the same set of questions, you would have been billed a consultation fee. If you bump into your doctor at some social function and ask for their advice, then you're getting it for free.

Personally, I'm more than happy to give people advice about most things that don't require a lot of work. Want my pasta recommendation for a particular restaurant? I'm game. Want to know what TV shows to watch? I've got an opinion that I'm happy to share. Wanna know if the laptop you're thinking of getting is good enough for you? I'll be happy to take a look. Wanna know if the new Google spreadsheet service is any good? I'll be happy to give you my $0.02 (assuming of course that I've tried it already). Heck, I even get a kick out of giving people (unsolicited) career advice, although of course I always attach a disclaimer to that.

Bottomline, there's a world of difference between advice that you can dispense casually over a meal, and advice that you can provide only after wading through stacks of paper and thinking things through. And that's where the situation gets really tricky.

Most people don't realize that when they ask for free advice from someone in professional services, they are actually depriving the person of income.

If my business is selling Product X, then it may make sense for me to give you free advice that will help justify your purchase of my Product X. So when a large hardware company comes along and tells you they'll be happy to do a free study of your data center and give you recommendations, it makes absolutely perfect sense to me. After all, by the end of that study, they'll probably be recommending that you upgrade or dispose of some of your current hardware and procure some brand-spanking new machines (preferably from them).

That's not the case in professional services. All you really have to sell is your time and your thoughts. Any time that I spend giving someone free advice is time that I cannot devote to a paying client. There's an opportunity cost involved. And if I've already given you the advice that you need, what other income can I hope to make out of that?

* Sigh * If I were not drowning in work right now while trying to shake off this cough/cold, I'd probably feel really flattered that people want to know what I think, and this mini-rant probably would not exist. Unfortunately, I feel really tired, and I can't help but think that the best form of flattery anyone can give me right now is to say that they value my advice so much, they're actually willing to pay for it.