Reed Me : education

Amen, brother. Preach it, SQL-type dude!

reedme — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:30:02 GMT

My pal, Steve, over @ SQL Server Central has been riffing on the DBA-train-thyself mantra again. Bizactly!!

Too many people seem to believe that everything about their career should be paid for by their current employer... despite the fact that they usually went to school on their own nickel in the first place and probably did a ton of self-study (if they’re successful) to get where they are.

There is no excuse for you not to be able to improve your skills and career. There is no excuse | SQL Musings | SQL Server Central

Remember that you will “Fight like you train.” So, if you aren’t training... You’re unlikely to remember that T-SQL syntax for that database restore under pressure. Or those darn big O notation rules during an interview! I’m just sayin’.

Like Steve said, go learn something new every week. Didn’t somebody famous like Eleanor Roosevelt say that, too? Heh. I’ll only add that you need to train (review and practice) stuff that you already think you know, too.

This whole blog chain echoes something that I’ve told every person that I’ve ever advised or mentored:

You own your own career.

Period. Nobody else will ever be as invested in your career success (or failure) than you are. Not even your mommy.

Tough decision. Should I share this with my son?

reedme — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:03:24 GMT

This summer, my oldest son (age 9) has been plowing through every book in the library on electronics, robotics and astronomy that he can convince the public library to check out to him. His current fixation is BattleBots, because he hasn’t solved the “Earth orbit is a long way up” problem, yet.

For the amount of money he might be able to earn in a year or three, somebody else is willing to solve it for him beginning in 2010...

Total Price of the TubeSat Kit including a Launch to Orbit is $8,000!

Interorbital Systems – TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit | International Space Fellowship

Not to be critical, but don’t we already have enough junk in orbit? Well, it would be cool to have our own piece of space junk in orbit sponsored by Fort Reed.

I think the operative question isn’t whether or not I tell #1 Son or not... It’s whether he can keep from telling his mother about the secret account that I just created to save up for it.

Heh.

I would’ve blogged this yesterday, but...

reedme — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:12:32 GMT

I got distracted. Heh.

The Brain: Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State

I’m not sure I buy the “inebriated zone out less” theory, though. Oh, if I read more carefully, it looks like the researchers agree:

But when we are drunk, that figure doubles. In other words, inebriated subjects report less mind wandering only because they are less aware of their own minds.

I guess I should pay closer attention. Meh.

What will be interesting to me is when they apply this research to:

Autism
Education

In both cases, I think that there are some very interesting lessons to be learned for parents and teachers.

Yeah, I know I said I’d never run for office again...

reedme — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:07:43 GMT

But then I went and put my name in the hat once more... because it’s for a good cause!

No, it’s not April Fool’s. That’s tomorrow.

Personally, I’d like to thank L.D. Kirshenbaum (the author of the article below) for giving us a fair shake. I’m sure that there were some embarrassing quotes among all the hours that we chatted which she could’ve taken out of context, but she was very professional.

The Gun Club at Microsoft

March 31st, 2009 | Posted in American Bulletin

Right now, the Gun Club has 756 members.
At left, new President David Reed celebrated his wedding anniversary with his wife, Samia, at the shooting range.

Photos by Andrew McDonald.

We’re having a big get-together for Second Amendment Day on Saturday, if anybody wants to come out and celebrate with us.

Yeah, I’m a month overdue on a fitness duel update, a bike update and all that. I’ve been busy (and not necessarily in a fun way). Now that everyone @ Fort Reed is reasonably healthy again, I’ll have more time to goof off.

Self-fulfilling prophecies in computer science education?

reedme — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:38:58 GMT

Everybody has heroes. Bjarne is one of mine. If I have to explain why to you, then you wouldn’t understand even if I did try to ‘splain it. Heh. (That comment will be funnier later in this post, if you like irony.)

I’ve done some recruiting events for Microsoft at my alma mater (the University of Houston) and I’ve done my best to influence lots of younger folks to get into computer science, and my experience tracks very closely to what Bjarne describes in this great interview:

[James:] In this interview he speaks frankly about the challenges and problems – and improvements being made – in computer science programs. Among issues like perceptions of offshoring and the need to balance the theoretical with the practical, he addresses complaints by tech companies about the lack of fully qualified CS graduates.

...

[Bjarne:] The US industry could absorb more good developers than there are currently students enrolled in IT-related programs – but not all of those programs and all of those students would qualify as “good” in this context.

Bjarne Stroustrup on Educating Software Developers

Personally, I think “we” (culturally, IT-oriented companies, etc) are going to have to staff jobs with less-than-ideal candidates and train them up rather than count on young kids to bet their futures and careers on computer science education. I was involved with a tax-incented project to provide technical support services back in the ‘90s; it was a project much like the one that I’m proposing, except that more training would be required for my program to turn non-geeks into coders, programmers and someday developers. Interesting. Have I changed my position on fungibility?

The outcome of the project/company (which shall remain nameless) wasn’t any better or worse than the other classic “professional” IT projects/companies that I’ve been involved with, and more successful than most in the long run.

I realize that risk averse companies aren’t likely to try out my rural sourcing ideas (management just thinks I want an excuse to work from a mountain top in Wyoming), so when I’ve accumulated enough capital, I guess I’ll have to try it out myself. The potential upside is good, both tangible and intangible. I especially enjoy seeing people succeed at tasks that they didn’t believe that they could accomplish… all it usually takes is a little encouragement and an opportunity!

In the meantime, I’m glad that smart people like Bjarne are out there working on changing the nature of the self-fulfilling prophecy so that it’s a prophecy that we actually want to come true!