My humble apologies to John Godfrey Saxe, whose poem I have modified to add a seventh man, and to make a point…   ‘twas seven men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approach...

Ran across this on the blog of Andy Blumenthal… very cool idea. 

...at a really great place. I'm at Rancho La Puerta , a "destination spa" in Tecate Mexico (just south of the US border in the Baja California). Now that my wife and I have been here a couple of days, I can heartily recommend the experience. I am eating healthy, delicious food, prepared by excellent...

Now that the president and the United Way have teamed up to proclaim that 9/11 shall be honored, each year, with a national day of service and volunteerism , Microsoft jumped onto the band wagon in large numbers. Thousands of individual Microsoft Employees signed up for our annual Day of Caring activities...

I mentioned to a Christian friend of mine, yesterday, that I consider him to be a “mensch.”  He was unaware of the term, and it made me wonder what other folks say about the becoming and being a mensch.  I ran across Guy Kawasaki’s blog post on the topic, but to me, his post didn’t really provide...

Even non-geeks will get a huge kick out of this, and I’m betting that most of the folks who follow my blog will find it as funny as I did… Word up.  My only question for the MS Marketing guys who finally loosened up enough to pay for a viral video: What Took You So Long! Special kudos to Traffik...

I started two good blog posts today. Both will wait for another day, as I take this space to say goodbye to three colleagues friends from my department who were laid off today. Gentlemen, I am sorry to see you go. I consider myself blessed to have had the opportunity to work with such talented, intelligent...

There is a joke that I sometimes like to refer to, more as an allegorical story than anything else.  This version is from AJokeADay.com : A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted,” Excuse me, can you help...

It's been a while since I was blogging regularly. The reason: I was in a ship cycle. As we approached our deadline for delivery of a comprehensive end-to-end information model for information technology, more and more of my time was spent focusing on the details. Is it explained well enough? Are all...

This is the story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it...

A couple of years ago, Phillippe Krutchen 'reinterpreted' the Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tsu for Software Architects ( link ). I saw it again recently and I have some new appreciation for the things I saw there. I most enjoyed this bit. (Note that the number is a reference to the original Tao tablet that...

I love the Mythbusters. Not just because I like to watch them blow stuff up. (I do), More importantly... infinitely more importantly... because those two goofy guys are teaching my son to love science, engineering, and experimentation. Yes, the clips are stripped down of any real rigor, but they have...

Nothing makes you appreciate your health more than spending a week, flat out sick with the flu. Just as I'm finally getting over all the coughing, congestion, chills, etc... my wife and kids have all come down with the same thing. And we all had flu shots this year! Alas... my hiatus in blogging...

It has been a long road towards the end of Netscape. Every worthy competitor deserves an honorable farewell. Now that Netscape has announced the end of support for the Netscape browser, as of February 1, 2008, it is time to sound the bugle and offer the 21-gun salute. Netscape is being laid to rest...

Joe Freeflier is not a lucky man. He's been promoted. Oh, he wanted the promotion. He asked for the promotion, but it is a lateral move, and he had no idea of the difference between his old job and this new, unfamiliar role. When he came to work for the first day in the new building, in a new city...

Ran across this post that asks "Why is Enterprise Architecture becoming the next big thing?" There's no really new content there... It's just fun to imagine that I've spent the past few years doing the 'next' thing. For once, I'm ahead of the game. ;-)

Quality is a skill. We need to teach it to our children, just as assuredly as we teach responsibility, compassion, and honor. At work, we need to both embody it in ourselves, and encourage it in those around us. I was a SDET for a while. That's Software Development Engineer in Test. I wrote code to...

I just hit the 'send' button on a rough draft of a 10-page document describing key elements of our SOA program. It is my attempt to describe, in terms that business people can understand, the reasoning and rationale for our Enterprise Architecture approach to Service Oriented Architecture. Writing...

Aaron Hanks gets credit for coining this term. Ever heard the old saw that says that software reflects the organizational structure of the team that writes it? That begs the question: which came first? The Architecture of the app (to which the organization fit itself) or the organization (to which...

For those of you who like to poke at me for my support of Mort (whom I love), you will get a huge kick out of this "alternate" list of developer types. Read the comments: there's some great additions. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BeyondElvisEinsteinAndMortNewProgrammingStereotypesForWeb20.aspx

Some time between 1am and 8pm on July 5th, my nine-year-old daughter's appendix perforated. We are lucky, really. Working at Microsoft, I have some of the best health care in the US. That says quite a bit. She is resting comfortably, now, at Children's Hospital in Seattle, ranked by US News and...

No organization is perfect. We each can look around and say "stuff is broken here." So, how to fix things? First off, why fix things? After all, if I am a lowly programmer, it is not up to me to fix things, right? After all, they pay executives, don't they? Shouldn't an executive earn their salary...

In my career, if I take any window of time that is two years long, regardless of start and end date, I cannot find a single period where I started and ended the period doing the same thing. Not one. Oh, I've worked at employers for longer than two years, but not doing the same job. I'm about to begin...

Not an architecture post, so if you are looking for technical content, skip this post. This week, I am in Nashville Tennessee at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration conference and the Gartner Enterprise Architecture conference. I'll post seperately on content, and ideas...

Just a quick post to say Happy Mother's Day to all the women who have moved mountains for their kids.