Introducing Agile methodology into a large, conservative corporate means you wind up with the worst aspects of both Agile and Waterfall. Win!

=)

One of the wonderful things about working in the technical field is that you get to here the word "just" a lot. As in, oh this should be easy, it's just some buttons on a form, how hard can that be? So, yeah, that was my morning. I now have nine days worth of tasks to do, and five days to do them in.

Our current way of communicating inside businesses is fundamentally flawed, and thus businesses waste a lot of energy getting not very much done. A total failure of any one to gain overview, in no small part to the command and control infrastructure that is the backbone of companies.

By all rights, I should be a liberal voter. I grew up in a solid protestant working class suburb, I've worked most of my adult life as a professional contractor, and I'm in the process of starting a start up, with a high tech focus. I'm supposed to be liberal voter material.

And yet, apart from a few times in my naive youth, I've always voted labor down the card. And now that the liberals have elected the hardcore christian believer, instead of the deal maker, I can't see me voting for the liberals for quite some time to come.

Sad. I prefer living in a land that has a real opposition, as opposed to a short bus special excuse for an opposition party.

Jack Dorsey, ex CEO of Twitter, is on the game again. His newest venture - Square - is all about making card payments easy. The hardware consists of a swipe reader for iPhones (and iTouch), with a software solution that sits both on the phone and on Square's server farm. It already has interesting anti-fraud protections, including for example, the ability to associate a photo with a credit card.

I just pinged a mate and hassled him about doing beers soon. =)

If there is something that rattles about the IT industry every time we hit a recessionary period, it's the fear that all of our jobs are going to get out sourced to [insert favourite destination here]. Talking with my father, he remembers the outsource to India game going back to the seventies. If there is one reason why India, and by extension China, can't really compete with the West, it is captured in great detail by the New York Times here: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again.

In short, both India and China are both still Feudal states, with all the subterfuge and intrigue that goes with that. There isn't the freedom to tell the powers that be that they are fucking clueless, and get away with it. Which means, give or take, India and China will never catch up. Well, at least until they realise that learning is actually the most important thing we, as humans, can do.

my head, it hurts...

And I must say, the screen on these new mac 15" macbook pros are niiice. =)

So I scored some ribbing today for not doing friday mufti at work. Ten minutes of discussion around what I consider casual wear, and now they are saying they want to see me show up in new rocks...

So.

Where do i find the whole flame hawaiian shirts? I figure it's the closest i can get to collared shirt that plays on the flames on my new rocks...

I know this has been a while coming. But it finally hit ground.

I've been a cranky bastard most of my life, as I was constantly annoyed at my inability to communicate what i see and feel. I still get annoyed these days at my communication fails, but hopefully with fewer tantrums.

What I am seeing, from my newly minted calmness, is that everyone else is also displaying signs of innability to communicate their needs, their visions, their dreams, and their fears.

This has the odd impact of making what I am working on, in my copious spare time (haha), all that much more urgent. Odd.