Recently in Personal 03 Category

Gotta love hosting.

The Atlantic had an interesting article this month by William Vaughn Moody about how our IT jobs are all draining into the far east.

We are doing all we can to make our people still poorer, to work for still lower wages, that we may undersell, not only England, but India; for to succeed we must undersell the cheapest ?

...the time is not far distant when the textiles from the Chinese machine looms, iron and steel and cutlery from the Chinese furnaces, forges, and workshops, with everything that machinery and cheap labor can produce, will crowd every market. The four hundred millions of China, with the two hundred and fifty millions of India,?the crowded and pauperized populations of Asia,?will offer the cup of cheap machine labor, filled to the brim, to our lips, and force us to drink it to the dregs, if we do not learn wisdom. It is in Asia, if anywhere, that the world is to find its workshop. There are the masses, and the conditions, necessary to develop the power of cheapness to perfection, and they will be used.

Oh, wait. Got the year wrong. It's from 1879. Yep, them Asian tricksters sure going to undercut us square-dealing Americans. Any time now. Yep. Gonna happen. Yessiree. Any day now.

Show someone that you care.

Return his phone call.

Quickly.

I'm at the Panera South Veterans' Parkway, enjoying their WiFi a lot more than the mediocre americano (oh, for Intelligensia! but the Coffee Hound doesn't have wireless...). Some women at a table three meters away are talking loudly. One was telling another how she still remembers how another returned a phone call (before they knew each other) in five minutes!

A recently reported study said that people believe that folks who return their messages quickly care more about them.

So call back. Right now.

While researching information on W.L. Gore & Co. (makers of GoreTEX and number 199 on Fortune Magazine's Top 500 Privately Held Companies), I stumbled across The Rantings of Eric Nehrlich. What a blast! Eric seems to be about 30 and is already talking about things I didn't get to until I was at least 32! He's got some interesting comments on management that

Eric's interesting. I'm going to send him some information on programmer performance that he may not have. (Which I have now done. Horray for me.)

I've decided to take on creating new social structures through social experimentation in order to change the world. It's taking longer than I thought it would to formulate the initial work statement, which is really hacking into my writing time.

I'm pretty sure I can turn the world on its ear for a $1B and fifty years. May be necessary.

I haven't updated the old reading list for awhile so I reckon I'd better get to doing it.

• Cryptonomicon by Stephenson. I've been reading this forever and I ought to just try and finish it. But the joy just wasn't there: too close to doing work (I used to be a CISSP doing IT security)


• Fritz Leiber's The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich. I've never read any Lieber, to my shame. Looks good. At least it's short.


• Akiko. Actually, it's more of a comic book series but it's entertainingly done, all-ages, and comes out in "phone book" collections.


• Dorothy Sayers's Strong Poison, which my wife just told me is the first Harriet Vane & Lord Whimsy novel. I've read the one where they got married, so it's reading backwards once again.


• A General Theory of Bureaucracy by Elliott Jaques. It's Glenn's copy and I have decided to buy a copy from an independent used bookseller. I can get a copy of David Billis's Organizational Design: The Work Levels Approach from the UK for half the cost of getting it here in the states


• Calvin Miller's Into the Depths of God. Rereading


• Habits of the High-Tech Heart by Quentin Schultze. I promised Quentin that I would give him my thoughts on his and his High-Tech Worship books back in April when I blew through Calvin College. Still on my list....


• Markets, Hierarchies & Networks, a collection of some major thoughts on these ideas.


• Lots of stuff from Oni Press. Chynna's Blue Monday has appeared on my buy list, as has Jetcat and Queen and Country. Of course, they had some of Andi's work — most notably Geisha, the ultimate graphic novel about artists


• After DC's Identity Crisis and Marvel's gleeful killing off of the Avengers, I have finally given up superhero comics, except for Steve Rude's The Moth, which may never come out again
• Most importantly, I've taken back up Paul Grist's work, even though he's now publishing under the Image imprint. Grist, in his Kane, Jack Staff and Burgular Bill, has created some of the most imaginative storylines and layouts. Perhaps not since my first seeing of the post-war Spirit work by Eisner have I been truly surprised by the visual storytelling technique in even semi-mainstream comics. Grist does it all the time. Amazing layouts that always seem to serve the story. As different from Rude as you could get but still in the same league. Maybe it's the whole UK thing....
  

That's what's on the reading list. On deck include Buber, Denial of Death, Walt's God, Habits of the Heart, the rest of Powell's Dance to the Music of Time (I've got 10 books left), and Tim O'Brien's stuff. I've just got to get a life. Plus Game of Thrones and sequels, the last Laurie Garrett book, War and Peace and the entire midsection of Dickens's output.

You know, I got a great recommendation from Glenn Mehltretter and Michelle Malay Carter of PeopleFit and I don't post anything new. What a waste! Well, in my defense, I've had nothing of any value to add to the RO discussions.

I did have a great series of conversations today with Mark Van Clieaf, he of "let's pay CEOs for doing real work rather than the operational work we holding them accountable for nowadays!" The conversation ranged across a large organizational landscape, and truth be told, my mind is full and I have to rest up. And I had to clear up my taxes situation this morning. And I have a big appointment tomorrow at an old client, who asked for me by name. I'd be thrilled, but it's writing software systems documentation and I quite simply don't know that I'm even qualified any more. I will probably scope out the work and call an old pal who is still in the business. I think they will like him. He's a very odd person in dress and some manners but very thorough and talented.

Anyway, I went to library to find some reading materials. They have one (One! Just one!) book by Fritz Lieber, the great speculative fiction master. I remember having a conversation with a guy at the old south Toledo SF/comics shop about him. He called Lieber the true writer "high science fiction", and even wrote a masters thesis in English about him. The rest of his recommendations have turned out well — I especially liked The Mote In God's Eye. I can't wait to start in on whatever the title was of the book. While there, I also grabbed a reprint (1 of only 80 printed!) of a Dorothy Sayers novel. Early 20th century abounded, apparently. Plus the complete recording of Gilbert & Sullivan's something or other and some Carter Family recordings. I can't be sure, since she has commented on her family's coal mining heritage, but I don't think any relationship to Michelle, mentioned above.