NaNoWriMo’s Lessons in Project Success

It is looking like National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) will end not so much a failure as a success in unanticipated areas. NaNoWriMo is a contest; write a 50,000 word novel in on month. November to be exact. There’s a very active group of people who pursue this challenge, a considerably smaller number succeed. Success is referred to as “Winning”, so anything else is “Losing”, right? Not so fast.

Like many endeavors, failing at the primary goal can still leave the landscape littered with successes in other areas along the way. Take my experience as an example. At least three successes were spun-off from the NaNoWriMo project aside from the primary goal.

The first spin-off success came from one of the most common pieces of advice I read in preparing for NaNoWriMo. The advice boiled down to the idea that when faced with multiple tasks, people succeed at their number one priority. Of course, the NaNoWriMo wrote that ideas as “Make NaNoWriMo your number one priority”. In my case, and prior to NaNoWriMo starting- perhaps even prior to reading that advice (its all a bit fuzzy when viewed from here at day 23 of November), I had committed to a volunteer project. The project was writing some software that turned out to eat every waking moment between the first and 15th of November, as well as more than a few moments that were designated for sleeping. I say that not as an excuse, although it is a pretty good one, but to illustrate the point that I succeeded at the project I had placed as my true number one priority; getting that software done.

The second spin-off success has been the constant admonition by the creator of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, to embrace imperfection. Chris’s advice both in his book and in pep talk e-mails sent to the 116,000+ participants of NaNoWriMo on the topic of perfection and the lack thereof is to just go for it and keep moving forward. Endlessly rewriting and perfecting is not conducive to the true goal of a 50K draft. This bit of advice could easily be applied to many projects that start out with good intentions and get bogged down in beautification plans. Put another way, rough but done is much better that perfect incompletion.

The third spin-off success could be summed up as “Plan your work, work your plan, and re-baseline when you have to”. On day one of NaNoWriMo, the goal is 50,000 words in 30 days, or about 1,667 words per day. What happens when you get behind? Constantly beating yourself up over yesterday’s low production does not improve it. Base lining the project over again at your new place and target can provide a refreshing motivation to get things moving. Creating a base line that is realistic helps to. The goal here is to succeed, and lying to yourself rarely results in a resounding victory at project completion.

Transition Time

It is transition time!  From summer to fall weather, holiday decorations in the stores, and the executive branch of the federal government from republican to democratic control.

The summer to fall transition is reflected in our time change.  Maybe we should make that the “official” end of summer.  Once you start messing with daylight you may as well attach a season to it.

Yes, I was serious about the holiday decorations transition too.  The coffee shop I went into today was decked out for the holidays.  Granted, they were using a brownish color theme—maybe they’ll swap it out for traditional red/green later in the season—but still, isn’t this a bit early?  Only those in retail truly know.

Finally, about the government transition thing, well nobody is questioning that.  I debated picking up a newspaper for a keepsake but then thought, “Nah, that’s stilly of me.  People don’t do that anymore.”  I got home and heard the New York Times went back to the presses, producing an extra 75,000 copies in the wake of huge demand.  Guess I was wrong, maybe this is a sign the printed news press isn’t dead.  I’m OK with that.  I still like something about browsing a newspaper, the way news stories are laid out in a way that Internet surfing can’t replicate.  There is also the tactile sense of a folded newspaper in your hand and trying to hold the pages so they don’t fall apart or flop over just where you wanted to read something.  Reading a newspaper really is an acquired skill.  Nevertheless, I digress.  This was about transitions, not the fate of the printed press.

If you were to think of the federal government like a corporation, the CEO was just fired and the board of directors has been shaken up.  What’s a line worker supposed to think?  Probably not much since it is a big organization.  As long as the whole place isn’t going to fold over night there really isn’t much that will change quickly.  Big organizations (corporate or government) turn slowly.  Even with the PR about new management and change, the new organization has to operate with the same external constraints.  The money situation hasn’t changed and the works in progress are still there, and while the long range goals may be altered today’s work still has to be done.  Probably the biggest influence short term will be the addition of some entertaining (if your amused by such things) speculation about who will get what job in the new administration.  Just like a corporate takeover, the influential people will jockey for position and there will be a long list of rumors about who is going where and doing what.

So the transitions are on.  I’d suggest you find the good in them all and focus on that if you must.  One thing is certain about transitions; there will always be another one coming.  Seasons of the year, store decorations, and people who want to be boss.

Good Blogs, Does Where’s Adam’s iPod make the Grade?

Sometimes things just come together.  Take this post for example.  It is overdue according to the task list item that tells me to make time to write.  After a couple days of repeatedly skipping over that task, I had an idea motivated by a comment written on a previous post.  The comment was “So, where IS Adam’s iPod?”.  Good question.  The blog is actually about Where Adam’s iPod *could’ve* gone had I won it.  I didn’t win, and I don’t recall who did.

So I started to think I should get busy on the next post when an idea came to me.  The idea was that I’d write again about where Adam’s iPod could’ve gone this weekend; The Great Minnesota Get Together.  It started today and a few hundred thousand people are expected over the course of the next dozen days.  It’d make a much more interesting blog post after having gone, and conveniently enough I had another task list with an overdue item.

This other task list is a list of time wasting things I want to do.  They usually involve looking up something obscure that I heard about or recall from a while ago.  In this case, the item was “Browse 43Folders.com”.  It is a website dedicated to espousing ideas for how to better manage you own time.  My words, not the author’s; I’m sure he has a better way of describing his own site.  Regardless, I finally got around to checking the site and came across a topic I talked about not long ago without coming to resolution; what makes a good blog.  The jist of my thought on this topic was that good blogs have a topic.  A topic the author cares about and has either some knowledge of or a desire to learn and willingness to share in the successes and failures of getting that knowledge.

Mr. Mann (of 43Folders.com and other fame) had a more detailed answer to this question.  He was actually asked, “Which blogs do you like” but chose to employ a MBA student technique; sometimes you can write better stuff if you change the question.  He wrote several points that define a good blog, let us see how Where’s Adam’s iPod scores.

1. Good blogs have a voice.
Check.  Voice.  Not the revealing kind of info Mr. Mann advocates for though.  He’d have me tell you where I live and what I drive; or more importantly what drives me.  This blog is a sort of in-your-face response to not winning an iPod, so we’re already pretty far off the road anyway- end analogy.  A quarter point on this one, the voice of this blog is like the Charlie in Charlie’s Angels; you never saw him but also never questioned his existence.  And this blog had 3 clearly human voices in the DC Trip entries.

2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things.
I’m glad he threw in that “maybe even five things” escape clause.  I’m only giving myself partial credit here, say another quarter point.

3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go…There’s a story here.
OK, so for a couple years this blog took the readers on a journey through MBA school.  But the rest of the time, its a loosely connected set of “wish your iPod was here” type things, so again- partial credit, half a point.

4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated.
Heh, heh.  He said defecated.  I’ve read some blog entries that are not so much paragraphs- more like journals.  Not to Mr. Mann’s taste, his experience seems to center on not wasting time so he probably finds the “Journal” style a bit taxing.  This one feels a bit heavy on opinion, and desirous of a focused blog.  Stylistically this blog is readable paragraphs (except the DC Trip entries), so three quarters of a point for this blog.

5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect.
Excuse me, but this seems to be a contradiction of #4.  Apparently there is an allowance here for blogs for amusement rather than productivity.  Oh, and I did look up Curation.  From the word Curate, which (think museum curator) actually also means Priest’s assistant or parish keeper.  This blog is a “post-format” blog so no points here.

6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s.
This is probably the best use of the phrase “fart noises” I’ve read.  It’s a tricky phase to work into polite coversation aside from intentionally trying to shock.  It makes the point in this case and while the concept of this blog is wierd, the content isn’t so much.  Half a point.

7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog.
I like this one.  I have blogs because I thought them interesting, but only after reading several.  I can’t say anyone has told me they started a blog after reading this one, so zero points here.  In interest of full disclosure, I haven’t hunted down the people behind the blogs I like and told them either.

8. Good blogs try…A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
Hmm.  Try, yes.  Obsesses more, not so much.  Quarter point maybe?

9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules.
Bingo, full point here.  While the MBA tangent this blog took for almost two years could be connected to the “Where’s Adams iPod” idea that started the blog, it clearly wasn’t what I had in mind when I started the blog.

So totaling up the points, Where’s Adam’s iPod gets 3.5 points.  Two of the point categories contradicted one another so technically only one could have points, leaving a possible score of 8.  So about 44% for Where’s Adam’s iPod.  Good thing school is already out, that’s a pretty weak grade.

Diametric Opposition, Cable Cuts, and Consulting Clings

It has been a while since I’ve written any blog posts, here or elsewhere.  In that time I’ve found there are two ends of the not-writing spectrum.  On one end you have “having nothing to say”, on the other you have “too much to say, I don’t have the time or energy to write it all”.  In spite of being diametrically opposed to one another, those two have the ability to gang up together and grab “nobody cares anyway” and to go on a trip to procrastination city for the day.  And the next day.  And the day after that.  You get the idea.

So here’s an abridged version of what missed out on.  The transition from grad student to ordinary citizen seems to be complete.  Several of the household projects that were put on hold pending completion of school have been started and completed.  A few unexpected projects have also been muddled through, ranging from a mysterious cable modem outage and a not so mysterious cable and telephone cable cut (unrelated events) to a deep and dark foray into spinal cord tumors and dog euthanasia (sadly, related events).

What to do with Where’s Adams iPod has not been firmed up.  So in the absence of a good purpose and topic, the original purpose will have to suffice; enumerating and documenting the places Adam’s iPod could have gone had I won it, with occasional tangents on how things learned during the process of getting an MBA are being applied in Real Live Corporate America.

On that note, an update on consulting.  The assignment I got at a time when I was heading into the home stretch on my MBA and everyone else was midway between thanksgiving and Christmas lingers on.  An assignment I had expected to last into April of this year still has its claws in me and at this point won’t relent until after the fryer grease has been heated for cheese curds at the State Fair at the end of August.  A funny thing about software consulting; on the surface it looks like if you are good at it you can save your client money.  If you’re really good at it, to the casual observer it would appear they are so happy about the money they saved that they don’t want you to leave, resulting in them spending more money.  Of course, the truth is that people work in companies and sometimes they like you and want you to stay around and help with other projects rather than go through the head hunting process that pervades contract IT services.

What’s really wrong with the Zune?

The real zune screw-deal appears to be the windows media store.  I listened to a TWiT podcast last night (This week in tech) and they said people who had bought songs through the windows media store could not use them on the Zune.  Apparently Zune has its own DRM, separate from the DRM system used by Windows Media 10 (probably related to the whole Zune “Welcome to the Social” song sharing for 3 days deal- Windows Media’s DRM doesn’t support ’sharing’).
 
So if you bought songs from iTunes, you can’t use them on Zune.
If you bought songs from Napster, you can’t use them on Zune.
If you bought songs from Sony, you can’t use them on Zune.
If you bought songs from Windows Media Store, you can’t use them on Zune.
 
I guess you don’t have to worry about filling up the 30 gig drive anytime soon.
 
On a side note: I think this Zune is akin to the first Xbox.  Wait for the Zune360 and we might have something exciting on our hands.  I’m thinking Zune wireless syncing with the 360, and using Live credits to buy media (songs, tv, and movies).
 

Too good to be true, and too wierd to be made up.

This is too good to be true, and too wierd to be made up.

I was looking up Elvin Bishop in Wikipedia (long story) and came across a paragraph that said:

Bishop’s daughter, Selina Bishop, was slain in 2001. According to the Point Reyes Light newspaper, “Bishop, her mother Jenny Villarin, and a friend of Villarin, James Gamble, were murdered as part of an elaborate scheme to extort $100,000 from elderly Concord residents Ivan and Annette Stineman.”

Ok, heres were it starts to get wierd.  I checked the footnote reference and it lead to a, ah-hem, newspaper, that is indeed called the Point Reyes Light.  There website looks real enough.  You have to check out the advertising rate card though to find these quotes about the newspaper’s owner:

“Mr. Plotkin, who still carries a litigator’s briefcase, swept into town with big city literary ambitions and an appreciation for the symbolic. In The Light’s entrance, he replaced a historic photograph of the former creamery now housing the paper with images of Che Guevara and Joan of Arc, representations, he said in a recent interview in his office, of ‘’a messianic quest for quality journalism.’’

- THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 2006

“Bringing flair to the Point Reyes Light … Robert Plotkin, the upstart newspaper publisher in this isolated hub of organic farmers, bistro owners and wealthy Bay Area refugees, is on the move, his journalistic campaign in overdrive … He is, he boasts, an unapologetic “P.T. Barnum” luring new writing talent to town and a media Michelangelo creating the “Sistine Chapel of journalism.” …The new Light replaced Mitchell’s 100-watt news bulb with a journalistic floodlight. He wants to emulate the thoughtfulness of the New York Review of Books, the serendipity of the New Yorker’s pithy “Talk of the Town” and the gravitas of Granta, the renowned British literary quarterly.”

-THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 2006

So here’s the question; is this a real newspaper?  If so, shouldn’t every business begin advertising in it immediately, just ’cause?

http://www.ptreyeslight.com

Kryptos, and its alter ego Antipodes

Q: What do you get when you combine copper, lodestone (yes, lodestone), petrified wood, red granite, red and green slate, white quartz?

A: Kryptos. 

Kryptos is a sculpture located outside one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s  buildings.  As the sculpture’s name implies, Kryptos features an encrypted message.  Various people working individually and/or as group(s) have attempted to decrypt the message.  While progress has been made, work continues to make the decrypted text public. There have also been mistakes; who would’ve thought the decrypted text should say ‘XLAYERTWO’ rather than ‘IDBYROWS’?

While seeing Kryptos isn’t on most tourist’s agendas, another work by the artist is a bit more accessible at the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (part of the Smithsonian Institution). 

Sacagawea bucks and Soda machine poops.

On a totally different topic, Sacagawea Dollars do work in the pop vending machine here at work (Coca-Cola vendor).

Here’s the interesting part; I put my dollar in and it made a satisfying clunk as the machine registered my $1 credit.  Then I decided I had proven my point and wanted to get my dollar coin back, so I pressed “Coin Return”.  The machine pooped out four quarters!  My dollar coin is clearly gone forever, so I shoved the four quarters back into the machine and took my Sprite.

It makes sense, sort of.  I’m thinking if you put in 10 dimes and press coin return it’ll spit out four quarters too.  The designers probably figured they’d wire the coin return to the cash value in the machine rather than hold the exact coins that were inserted.  The cash value computer probably looks at the total amount and returns the largest coins it can, working it’s way down to the amount you put in.

It doesn’t seem to work like a change machine though.  If you put a paper dollar in and press “Coin return” it gives back your paper dollar.

On yet another totally different topic; my spell checker does know the correct spelling of Sacagawea- I didn’t.