Book: Openness Unhindered

This book is a must read.  Rosaria's personal history combined with a solid theology makes for important insight.  This book is both theologically insightful as well as personal.  No abstract to stogy theology here.  This book beautifully connects the dots between grace, shame, temptation, identity, sin, repentance, and sin.

So here's what I learned:

When I became a Christian, I noticed a lot of struggle with the Law.  There were those that supported theonomy, the application of the Mosaic law to current society.  There were those that said we didn't need the law, that Christ fulfilled the law.  There were those that said some parts of the law were important and others no longer applicable.  People generally felt confused by the law.  Others fought with the law.  What came through in this book is that I'm no longer in conflict with the law.  The law is my friend and my tutor, teaching me who God is and what He wants.  I suddenly felt free by that.  Don't need to get wrapped up in the details of what applies, doesn't apply, how, etc.  I just let the Holy Spirit do the teaching.

We need to be looking at our lives from God's perspective, not ours.  We tend to get our own experience confused with what God is saying.  God says it's sin, but we're feeling okay about it - is it sin?  Yes.  It is.  What necessarily flows out of that is our need for obedience.  But it feels right - it's who I am.  Is it who you are?  If God says it's sin, then it's not who you are, but rather temptation.

We are made right with God by believing that Jesus has taken care of our penalty before God, but we continue to sin.  Repentance is the key between that act of sin and God's grace.  I've heard people go on and on about how they're trusting in God's grace, but secretly I know they're struggling with shame and guilt.  Repentance is the key.  This is where we live out Jesus' command to take up our cross daily and repentance is key in that.  Then there are people that say their trusting in God's grace, they feel the awful affects of sin, and aren't repenting because they want to blame other people.  The cycle is terrible and will leave those involved devastated.  Because there is no repentance.

Rosaria drives home again and again the importance of community and the need for repentance in the community.  Not for punitive reasons but so people can see that repentance is important and learn how to repent.  For support in temptation through prayer and counsel.  For a witness.  In a YouTube video she talks about how the church today is on a starvation diet of fellowship.  When people see that, they react that they don't want to live like that.  Our witness is ruined.  

I would strongly encourage reading this book.  There is so much heart and substance here, that you'll walk away well fed.

Selfies: What They Say About Us

Funny story: my son was traveling in Rome and came to a place where probably a 100 street vendors were all selling the same thing: selfie sticks!  Now either the lord's of the street merchants had to unload a lot of selfie sticks or there was a big demand for them!

Selfie sticks, selfies, facebook, posing for the camera and taking your own picture: what's it mean?  What's going on inside someone's head when they pose, take a picture of themselves, add a little caption and post on Facebook?  I'm curious for two reasons.  First, I've seen some people that seem to do it a lot.  One of those things that make me go hmmmmm.  Secondly, I'm interested in Facebook as a proxy for who we are - we do stuff on Facebook that reflects something about who we are.  Facebook, it's a funny topic.

So I take the question to google search and found some interesting stuff.  Here are some bullets of what I found, with quotes from those sites below:

• The first selfie was taken in 1839!  The camera is invented and we gotta take a picture of our self!
• Women tend to take more selfies than men.  Full disclosure: first selfie was a man.
• Lot's of selfies can be an indicator of narcissism
• Lot's of selfies can indicate the importance of self worth through appearance
• Is a selfie a form of personal advertising?

So if I posted 25 pictures of myself over 6 weeks, would you wonder?  Yeah, I think you would.  If I was working on my poses for those pictures?  Yeah, you'd REALLY wonder.  Should you say something to me?  Is this situation one where you think you should say something but then blow it off because it's one of those things that uncomfortable to talk about and maybe not a big deal?  How do you tell a narcissist that they're a narcissist?  That sounds tricky, huh?  Are there situations where this behavior would be appropriate or inappropriate?  Probably, I mean Billy Fuccillo is a product, so we see him a lot.  If my business is selling me as a consultant, then pictures of me is not unexpected.  We may get irritated, but it makes sense.  But if I'm just trying to sell myself?  Maybe I'm not even consciously trying to sell myself? 

More questions than answers I guess.  Something to think about.

Here are some snippets from articles I read that make some interesting observations:


The Academic Study Who Post Selfies Confirms Everything You Suspect
"People who post selfies on social networks are more likely to exhibit what some psychologists call “the dark triad” of personality traits, according to two recent studies of nearly 1,200 men and women who completed personality tests and answered questions on their online habits. This dark triad consists of narcissism (extreme self-centeredness), Machiavellianism (manipulation of others) and psychopathy (acting impulsively with no regard for other people’s feelings)."
MarketWatch, Nov 5, 2015

Women Who Post Lot's of Photo's of Themselves on Facebook Value Appearance, Need Attention Study Finds
"“[I]t is disappointing to me that in the year 2011 so many young women continue to assert their self worth via their physical appearance — in this case, by posting photos of themselves on Facebook as a form of advertisement. Perhaps this reflects the distorted value pegged to women’s looks throughout the popular culture"
"The people who tended to base their self worth on things like academic competence, family love and support, and being a virtuous or moral person spent less time online and showed less interest in attention-seeking through social media"
LA Times, March 10, 2011

The Psychology of Selfies
"Robert Cornelius took what is thought to be the first self-portrait photograph in 1839... So self-portraits are about self-image—how we define ourselves.

They’re also a way to figure out who we are. The “looking-glass self” is a psychological concept that says that how we see ourselves doesn’t come from who we really are, but rather from how we think others see us.... A UK study asked 508 Facebook users to rank how close they felt to friends who also use Facebook. They then compared the answers for each person to how many selfies that person posted.  They found that the more someone posted selfies, the lower they ranked on the intimacy scales of the participants."
June 17, 2015

Weather & Technology

I think it's interesting how technology has changed how we talk about the weather.  It used to be that we just wanted to know what the weekend would be like - rain?  Cloudy?  Sunny?  Maybe it would be a 30% change of rain tomorrow.  Now we want to know when will that 30% be - 5:30?  There are now apps that we can buy that will tell us what the weather will be in the next 30 minutes!  Certainly there are situations where knowing the weather accurately for the next 12 hours, but most of us?  Not so much.

Yesterday the forecast was going to be cloudy up until 3:30 when there was a 25% chance of rain, then at 5:00 that chance grew to 40%, then dropped back down to 25% at 7:00 pm.  First of all, when someone says, 'hey, what's the forecast for the day', how do you communicate all that?  Certainly not in a short answer!  It used to be you'd get one answer, 40% chance of rain.  But now that the information is different, people's expectations of that question are different.  What actually happened: it snowed like crazy all morning and not rain later.

We make fun of the weather man, saying that he's almost always wrong, but we slavishly follow the forecasts on our smart phones.  Why?  Do we think the information through those fancy apps is better than when the weather man talks on the radio?  It's the same information.  Actually the weather man provides more value by explaining things.  Actually the weather man's predictions are more accurate than we think.  Here's a guy who's trying to predict the future, he's actually right more than he's wrong, we thinks he's wrong more than he's right, and we fuss and fiddle with our cell phones to know that the weather will be in the next 30 minutes.

Maybe it just gives us something to do with our thumbs while we're waiting!

Posting

Man, was it 2009 that I last posted?  Well, every now and then I get the urge to post something.  The itch is back!

Google/Squidoo Censorship?

Hey, get this: there's this service called Squidoo that allows a person to create a web page for free - it provides a lot of modules for adding functionality, liking listing out content from ebay, amazon, having lists of links and stuff. They call them a lens - a collection of links that you think related to a particular set of content. Pretty cool concept.

So I create this lense called buying 22 ammo - it has information about where to buy the ammo, what the costs are, what the different policies are, etc. I found out all this information when I was trying to buy ammo on line and had a difficult time figuring out the various places and policies. Figured other people would benefit. Squidoo has around 900,000 of these lenses and my lense was ranked around 5,000 - not bad. Definitely interest in the topic.

Then I get an email today, saying that they've shut my lens down because it violates the google ad policy and Squidoo makes money off the google ads. They say they can't have ads with firearms related content. here's the email:

Google has contacted Squidoo with the request that your lens be changed or
deleted, because the content on the page violates our advertising agreement with
them.

The lens: http://www.squidoo.com/buying22ammo

The Google AdSense program policies don't allow publishers (that's us, Squidoo,
and by extension, our lensmasters) to place Google ads on pages with content
related to weapons or weapon accessories, including firearms, fighting knives,
or stun guns.

To respect our partnership with Google, and as per our own Squidoo Terms of
Service, we're locking your lens from view.

The rest of your Squidoo account has not been locked or deleted, but chances are
this lens will remain so.

You can read more about Squidoo lens locking policies on the links below:

http://www.squidoo.com/squiddont
http://www.squidoo.com/locked
http://www.squidoo.com/pages/faq#ratingpolicy
http://www.squidoo.com/pages/tos

If you dispute this locking decision and would like to request a second review
of your lens and the chance to re-publish the lens with better content, please
forward this note to locked@squidoo.com with a written request.
We'll review your request within 1 month.

Thanks,
The SquidTeam
www.squidoo.com

I scanned through all the links above, but couldn't find any statement of policy against creating a lens with firearms related material. I'm going to have to read these again (read: lots of boring lawyer mumbo jumbo).

Wonder what else these guys don't like? It's interesting that Squidoo allows a user to flag their lens as adult content - that seems to be okay?

More to research on this one...

Cool Architecture

This is such a cool house: http://www.archdaily.com/22597/montecito-residence-oska-architects/

Movie: Ghost Town / Eagle Eye

So we sit down to watch Ghost Town and a 1/2hr into it I gotta pickup the kids. Kathy says she doesn't want to finish it and I'm not too jazzed about the movie either. So I go to pick up the kids and spot the movie Eagle Eye on the friends counter, "hey, just saw a preview for that in a movie we were watching tonight." They ask what movie we were watching and they laugh. They thought Town was okay, but wanted to see Eagle Eye because it was in the previews!

Ghost Town wasn't move'n me. Eagle Eye was fun - I get a little tired of, uh, how do I say this with out giving away the plot - this particular type of bad guy, but the movie was still fun.

Movie: The Great Raid

Amazing WWII film about the rescue of POW's from the death camps in the Philippines. These POW's were the survivors of the Bataan death march that claimed thousands - and that was before they got to the camps. Read the book, Ghost Soldiers for an in depth look at the march, the camps, and the most successful rescue on US history.

Architecture Principle

Isaac drew this crazy picture of a house with stairs all over, lots of rooms, etc. I said, "That's a pretty cool house!" "A house should be a good place to play hide-and-seek," he said.

Now that's a good architectural principle!

March Weather Madness

This weather is crazy - 55 on Saturday, Sunny, heavy rain, snow, 17 degrees, more rain, lots more rain, sunny and 22,.... I hate early spring.

But spring is coming: maple trees are tapped, geese flying, redwing black birds are here, blue birds are here.

First (big) Snow

Couple days ago we got a snow that put a layer on everything, but was gone in a couple hours.

Last night was different.

Kathy said that the snow had started in lafayette around lunch time, but it was just raining in Syracuse. When I left the office around 7:30pm, it was snowing. Got half way home and things got nasty. Cars and trucks off the road - towing services were having a busy night. Had to drive past the Lafayette exit since it was clogged with cars, and drove to the next exit in Tully. Took the back way home and that could have been a disaster. There was more than 6 inches of snow on the road with just two tire tracks. Took it slow and easy. Wind gusting hard which made things worse.

Winter has arrived in Syracuse!

HP Printer Virus

I just got a free HP printer with the purchase of a iMac. Free! What an oxymoron. It'll cost me a $1000 in ink cartridges before it's all over.

Here's the other thing about HP printers, their freak'n viruses. Put that 'install me first' CD in and it takes 15 minutes to load all the software - browser tool bars, picture managers, print center management, and the list goes on and on. I just want to print a document! Of course there is an option to customize the install, but I learned THAT too late after one computer got 'infected'. Got smart on the next computer, but the thing wants to give me a gilt trip for not installing all the junk!

I remember the good old days - plug that HP Laser Jet 4 into the computer, share it and we were in business. Go to print in word, pick the printer and guess what?!?! A page came out! Now I get popups and notices and on and on.

I'm sure some marketing genius has something to say about the new internet economy, but I'm just pissed off.

Dream

I had this dream last night....

Tin-tin and I got our down hill ski equipment and climbed up this very large mountain. When we got to the top, we were attacked by zombie's who tried to grab our equipment. We took off down the mountain on our skis with the zombie's in hot pursuit. With some quick foot work, we faked them out and they went over a cliff. Didn't shake them all though. When we got to the bottom we had to shoot the rest.

This morning when I woke up, there was snow over everything.

Biathlon season has started.

Passing

Last night at 11:50pm ET we got the call: Mike O'Dea had passed away. A husband, father, brother, friend. A quick smile. Irish eyes with mischief. A man among men. The donut man to the nephews. A boat captain. Devout to his family.

Mike, we will miss you very much

Picture

We go down to Onondaga Lake park to do some beach volley ball. Part way through Isaac says he wants to rent one of those bicycle car looking things that can be peddled by four. I've got a new camera and am taking pictures as we go. See some cute kid on a tiny bike riding by, take aim but he's gone before I can snap. Next thing I know there's a bottle bouncing off the bike thing. "What the heck?" I look around and see this large dude yelling at me, all angry and stuff, telling me not to take pictures of his son. By the time I register what's going on, we're long gone. Was the guy afraid I would steal his son's soul?? Pretty strange...

Reading: The Black Swan

Just finished the book: The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb, and here’s what I learned. The book defines a black swan as the occurrence of a highly improbable event that has significant positive or negative impact, and has been rationalized with hindsight. The invention of the internet or jets flying into crowded buildings are examples of black swans. It’s these events that shape our society yet we are so bad at predicting them. After the fact people say they understand why they happened, but really don’t.

The big point that the author makes is that we humans have trouble understanding random events or the unknown. Since the future is all about the unknown and we have everyone from the guy in the barbershop to large organizations (corporations with five year plans, government agencies predicting future economic trends, etc) trying to predict the future, we got a problem. Taleb outlines a lot of factors that impact our ability to assess the unknown, for example, we tend to estimate too low or very high and we tend to way underestimate our margin of error by 300% or higher. We apply estimation and assessment techniques to the unknown that are only meant for environments where variations are no significant, such as the weight of people – we don’t get a person so heavy that it blows the sample sent, but Bill Gates salary can. We ignore the silent evidence – those books about those people that talk about how to make millions that say to be aggressive, break the rules, etc? How about all those books we don’t hear about or weren’t written by people that followed the same advice and lost millions?

There’s a great chapter on innovation and predicting innovation trends where he says to get exposed to lots of ideas and trials. Great innovation has almost always come from people cleaning up mold in a lab or finding bird poop in antenna. Trying to predict the unknown unknown doesn’t usually work.

It’s these factors that he outlines in this book that are incredibly valuable. The author does tend to rant about ‘those stupid people’, but I think he fails to see that it’s those people that took their ideas as far as they could, into areas where they didn’t belong, but it was through those efforts that that helped Taleb to know where not to go. I just let the ranting go.

The application in the area of internet trends is obvious – lot’s of people predicting, but most can’t – so be happy, they can’t do any better than you! Related to this is a strategy for finding the next great thing: don’t listen to people trying to predict the future – go start fiddling now! From an information systems deployment perspective, I find this material very relevant to the development of schedules – aren’t they predictions of the future?

Hating Change

I haven't read this yet, but the title is so right on!


"People Don'at Hate Change, They Hate How You're Trying to Change Them"
http://blog.changethis.com/


My organization has been undergoing some big changes. To prep people for the changes they've had a variety of presentations about coping with change. The gist of these presentations is (1) you don't like change and you won't like this one, and (2) there's help for you. I was baffled - I actually thought the organization changes proposed were going to be for the better. Why assume I'll hate it, then make it my fault! Unbelieveable.

So the take aways: (1) focus on the change, not people hate change, (2) if people hate the change it's more than likely they hate how you're trying to do the change.

Meat

Every year we get together with the Smith's, Thompson's, Beckhausen's and who ever else can tolerate use for some camping. This year was the Loleta Recreation Area that's part of the Allegany State Park system in western PA. This place had a large and very private group area along a stream.

Isaac (8 years old) is really excited because HE is going to share a tent with HIS buddy Zach. HE is very excited! I help the two guys set up their tent and get the gear stowed. Their off and running through the woods.

The park ranger stops by and says hello. "Oh, by the way, there's a bear that lives up on the hill. He comes down every now and then to rummage the garbage. Then he takes a stroll through the camp sites looking for something to eat. Don't keep food in your tent." We thank him and he wanders off.

Isaac heard it all. Suddenly he has no desire to sleep in a tent. He wants to be in our tent. Not sure what difference I'm going to make with a couple hundred pound bear, but he's doesn't want to sleep alone (even though he's with Zach).

"Isaac," I try and reason, "the bear isn't interested in you. He wants potato chips, cookies, eggs - not you."

"Yeah, but I'm meat!" he says with a quivering lip.

Too much TV

System Requirements Review

Completed Systems Requirement Review (SRR) on a big program last week and here are some lessons learned:

1. Know the approvers. You'd think this would be easy, but there are circumstances that complicate this. For example, when deploying a COTS product that will be deployed as a general service, who approves? Don't forget security folks!

2. Get to the approvers a minimum of two weeks ahead of time and review.

3. Leadership will provide an endless list of people that 'need to be involved'. Our SRR had over 30 people! Clearly only about 10% would really add value. Figure out who these people are and focus on them.

4. An SRR is about communicating status, not a review of requirements. Give enough detail so that the audience knows you've been in the details

5. Review the slides with the team at least a week before.

The temptation is to see the SRR as a formality, a box to check, since all the hard work has been done. While that's true to a large extent, it really represents the time from when the requirements are completed to the review - that time period is when you're formally closing with the primary stakeholders, and that's important.

Weekend

The weather couldn't have been better - clear blue sky, mid 70's, breeze, low humidity. Jonathan had been asking me about fishing so we went on Saturday. Took the canoe to Shackham pond up in the state land. Had to carry the canoe back in, but it was worth it. Had been to the pond since the last time that Jonathan and I had been there fishing in the fall last year. We just puttered around the lake casting. He caught a fish not to long after we started, but then nothing for about an hour. The frogs, you should have heard the frogs! There was a big old bull some place around the pond and when he got going, he sounded like he was everywhere! The other frogs would join in.

We found this one section were we caught a bunch of sunny's, then moved on into a stand of dead trees that stuck out of the water like a bunch of bones. Kept hearing splashing in this area. Brought out the Wayne lure - I call it that because Wayne kept telling me what a great lure it was, 'hey I caught a bass last weekend with this', 'caught a bunch last Saturday', etc. Figured I'd buy one and give it a try. Haven't caught anything with it in 3 years. Well today was the day to break the spell, Jonathan and I started raking in the bass with the Wayne lure! We only kept 2, but it was fun! Cast out and as soon as the lure hit, a bass would pounce on it - wham!

After about an hour it was like someone switched off the fishing and we didn't catch anything more. The sun was intense, but with the breeze and mid 70's it was very nice. Then I looked down - my legs were a pair of lobster tails! Forgot the sun tan lotion. Won't do that again!

What a gift of God this weekend!