Simplify the Debate

May 12, 2012 · Politics · Comments Off

As the election season continues to heat up, I’m consistently amazed by the ways that politicians choose to argue. If you try to dissect the reasoning behind many fiscal conservative cries for spending cuts, it seems that they want to cut spending for the sake of reducing taxes. This “tax-first” mentality may resonate with people who think they want more money in their pockets, but it leaves out the bigger part of the picture.

Every person participating in this debate needs to first evaluate the following two questions:

What are the services I expect from my government?
What am I willing to pay for those services?

Anyone who reflexively says that they don’t want the government to take any of their money should be called on to define what minimum services the government should provide and then their answer for question 2 should be reconciled with that level of service. Anyone who comes up with a huge laundry list of services & social programs for question 1 should likewise be called to reconcile their answer to question 2 to a level reasonable to pay for those services.

Basically our entire complicated federal budget can be simplified to something like this:

(yes those bars are to scale, scary huh?)

Now there’s a large number of people who shout about the fact that the interest on our debt is going to bankrupt us. Let’s split out interest spending on the above chart to see how big of a part of the problem that is:

(note for data nerds, the purple box gets smaller if you discount the portion of interest payments to the Federal Reserve that get kicked back to the Treasury)

I think it’s safe to say that no matter what your political slant that we’ve got a problem in that the spending column _way_ overshadows the income.

Now how we _fix_ the problem is the subject of many debates. I think we collectively waste a lot of hot air shouting about how we’re going to fix things when we haven’t even come to a basic understanding about questions 1 & 2 above. If you and I have a difference of opinion about whether the Federal Government should maintain the road outside my house, the interstate I drive on to get to work & the railways that bring coal to the power plant that provides power to my home, then we’re never going to agree on what marginal tax rate, and progressive tax structure would be appropriate to _fund_ those things.

Now in reality, question 1 _is_ the major divisive question in many political debates, but framing it as a question on tax policy first is dishonest. Let’s discuss our differences on what we expect from the government and come to a legitimate compromise on what a reasonable level of government service is. After we have agreed to a compromise on what the government should do, it should be possible, though not easy, to begin the debate on how we are going to pay for it.

No I will not alter links in a 4 year old post to help you optimize search results

July 12, 2011 · Technology · Comments Off

Hopefully this isn’t too harsh. I received a request today to alter an old blog post in a way that I can only assume is all about Search Engine Optimization. The communication was mostly generalized flattery with a pass at being respectful of the integrity of my writing, but not enough that I think they actually took time to read through that specific post or any of my other writing. I figured that the initial communication and my response might be interesting to those who’ve never had interaction with SEO folks. Names and info removed.

From: [removed]
To: me
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 18:10:32 -0400
Subject: Contact Request: Link in Blog Post

You have contact request!

Link in Blog Post
From: [removed]

Hi Rick,

I hope this message finds you well. I’m currently working on cleaning up [company name].com’s online presence and noticed you have a link to our site in your blog post. First off, thank you for finding us valuable enough to link to – we appreciate it! Part our clean-up process includes adjusting links to match the current title we’re using on our site outside of the [company name] brand name.

Your Post with Link: [link removed]

If you could please change the current link text from saying “[company name]” to “[company name] [important industry keywords]” it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time. Let me know if you have any questions on this change seeing as I fully want to respect your blog post as is as well. I look forward to hearing back!

Sincerely,

[removed]

Hello [removed],

I am not a big fan of altering links just to serve Search Engine Optimization. If your request below is really about cleaning up branding, I would gladly change the link but if I do so I would also add a nofollow tag. If [company name] prefers not to be linked to in this manner, or the original form from the blog post I wrote over 4 years ago, I’d gladly change the post to remove the link.

Just as a side note if you don’t know already, many bloggers are going to be defensive about this sort of thing. I’m not trying to be difficult, but taking time to edit a post just to serve your employer’s search rankings isn’t on my list of priorities.

I am a bit curious what sort of success rate you have with this type of request.

Regards,

Rick Hallihan

Moving Contacts From a Verizon Feature Phone to Hotmail for Windows Phone 7

July 2, 2011 · Technology · 6 comments

First, I have to explicitly state that the following process is not endorsed or supported by Microsoft or Verizon. I have used it a couple of times successfully, but I can’t guarantee that your phone won’t spontaneously combust or otherwise cease to function if you follow the steps below. If you have trouble, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help.

I have heard several stories lately from folks who are finally taking the plunge into the world of SmartPhones on Verizon (with the AWESOME HTC Trophy). Some Verizon reps simply state that you can’t move contacts from the old to the new phone, but they helpfully print out a hard copy of the contacts from the old phone. Others point to the Microsoft Article on Syncing Outlook Contacts with Windows Phone which isn’t very helpful if you don’t have or use Outlook. I figured it would be worth putting up a post on the process I used.

The first step is to make sure your contacts are backed up with Verizon’s Backup Assistant from your old phone. The process is different for different phones, but should be similar to the following.

On this feature phone, you select MENU, then Contacts, then Backup Assistant, then OK, and finally Backup Now. If you have not used Backup Assistant previously there are a few extra steps to set up a password, but they are pretty self explanatory. Verizon also has a great deal of documentation on their website at http://verizonwireless.com/backupassistant

Once your phone shows “Pending: 0” that indicates that all of your contacts have successfully been updated to the web. You then need to sign in at http://verizonwireless.com/backupassistant

If you haven’t already signed up for Verizon’s online account access, there will be extra steps here.

After signing in you should see a screen listing your contacts. Click on “Select All”

Now click the drop-down next to “Select All” and select “Export Contacts”

You will be prompted to select a file download type, select “Outlook (CSV)”. We’re not actually going to use Outlook, but this is a file format that Hotmail can import.

Your browser may prompt you for permission to download the file, select “Save” and make a note of the file’s location.

downloadprompt height="39" />

Once you have the MyContacts.csv file saved, go to http://hotmail.com and log in. You will need to use the Primary Live Id that was first associated with your Windows Phone during setup. From the main screen, select “Contacts”

On the contacts screen, select “Manage” then “Import” on the Menu.

On the next screen select “Outlook”. Again, we’re not actually using Outlook, that’s just the common language that both Backup Assistant and Hotmail know how to use.

Next click the “Browse” button and locate your MyContacts.csv file, then click the “Import contacts” button.

If everything has worked as expected your Hotmail Contacts should now include all the phone number from your previous phone.

A few points to note. If you are using a Live Id that is not a Hotmail Address, you can still log in at Hotmail with that Live Id to access the contacts section. Also, if you have been using Hotmail for a long time your Contacts folder might have a large number of entries that you no longer want. The web interface has some good options for cleaning up and combining duplicate contacts, and is also a good place to sort through and clean out unwanted contacts. Any changes you make on the web will be synced to your new Windows Phone.

Service Design and Linchpins

April 6, 2011 · Leadership · Comments Off

Seth Godin put up an interesting blog post today. At first I thought this was in conflict with his writing in Linchpin, but then I realized that the true challenge is in designing a service that not only allows, but encourages the participants to be creative and human while still ensuring quality, throughput and other business objectives.

Reading List: Linchpin

April 4, 2011 · Reading List · Comments Off

During some recent travel I had enough time to read Seth Godin's Linchpin, cover to cover in one sitting. Well actually it was two sittings back to back with a layover in Dallas Fort Worth, but close enough.

Looking back, I almost wish I had stretched this over several days since the concepts take a bit of time to bake. Godin appropriately points out early in the book that the ideas will meet with resistance in your mind. In fact, one of the main premises in the book is this idea that we are all basically of two minds. Our creative social mind, and a nicknamed "lizard brain" that resists risk and sometimes sabotages our ability to put forth our best effort. My lizard brain was on full alert as I crammed through the book, but strangely that helped me to at least validate some of the theories in the book in real time.

This book is different from the other Godin books that I have read in that it wasn't prescriptive in how to accomplish a goal, reach an audience, or spread an idea. It was more of a manifesto, a plea for the reader as an individual to be different. The different that Godin is pushing for requires breaking the rules of conformity and abandoning the repeatable cookie cutter factory-like methods that so many industries cling to in the name of quality. He asks the reader instead to focus on human interaction and emotional nuance and makes a compelling argument that this will allow the reader to stand out, do more, and become indispensable to the organizations they serve.

Godin rounds out his argument with anecdotes of modern successful linchpins, historical perspectives about why the current career landscape encourages cookie cutter behavior but actually favors certain types of rule breaking, and even gives some basic evolutionary neurology backing for his theories.

This book is a great read if you are looking to stretch your mind a bit about what it takes to stand out, be successful and make a difference.

Reading List: Outliers

December 2, 2010 · Reading List · Comments Off

It took me two attempts to get through Outliers. The first time I started reading this book, I had trouble getting past the fact that everyone focuses on the “birthday” success factor when talking about the book, and outside of sports I tend to think that other factors are more important to success. I’m glad that I decided to re-tackle this book on the plane because the latter part of the book covered some of my own preconceived ideas about success, and added several new facets as well.

If you have heard of Outliers have most likely heard the correlation between professional sports “stars” and their birthdays. Basically Gladwell highlights a correlation between those who are the oldest players in a year-group, and those who grow up to be successful athletes. This correlation is provable across many different sports, and Gladwell argues that the attention these players get from being just a bit better due to physical advantages means that they get more playing time, more praise and more practice, and that this cascades and accumulates, ensuring that they have more opportunity to excel and become experts.

The later part of the book brings in many other factors that drive “Outlier” like success. There are a few other circumstance type drivers, such as the year when someone is born, or the historical experiences that a culture shares. Gladwell also points out several Outliers that had happenstance advantages, such as being given a unique opportunity at a key point of personal development.

Gladwell revisits the idea of “time spent practicing” later in the book, but in more of a comparative way instead of the “10,000 hours to excellence” that was highlighted earlier in the book. One such comparison was academic achievement in different countries, compared with the lengths of their school year. This highlighting of marginal differences was much more compelling to me than the first part of the book. I also appreciated that the end of the book discussed some ways we can eliminate the biases that our “normal” way of life imparts on us.

The last running theme that struck a chord with me was that success is not a matter of personal will, but rather a mixture of will, chance and opportunity. I do paradoxically wonder what happens when more people are given the knowledge of what it takes to become an Outlier, and they set their will toward making it happen.

Reading List: Pleased But Not Satisfied

September 28, 2010 · Reading List · Comments Off

This small book by David Sokol holds some interesting perspectives about managing change, from one of Warren Buffett’s chief lieutenants. A lot of focus is placed on the Plan, Execute, Measure, Correct cycle, and after reading this book, it’s very easy to notice the absence of the “Measure, Correct” portion of the cycle in many change initiatives. Too often as leaders, we have a tendency to stick to the plan simply because we are committed to our decisions.

Sokol makes judicious use of personal and business anecdotes to highlight the points he’s making, but doesn’t belabor the reader with too much domain specific detail.

If you can get your hands on a copy, it’s an excellent quick read.

Reading List: Googled

August 27, 2010 · Reading List · Comments Off

Ken Auletta has written a great book about the changes that are happening in advertising and in media, against a backdrop of Google’s rise to prominence, with some interesting insights into the Google culture.

Auletta seems to have enough proximity to some of the major players that he paints a vivid picture of the personalities and motivations of high-level Googlers, specifically highlighting why Google is different from most major corporations. It would be interesting to hear an inside opinion of how accurate the portrayals were.

This book is a worthwhile read, whether you are involved in the tech industry, media, or even as a consumer who wants to understand more about why and how “free” really works on the Internet.

Reading List: Sway – The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

July 19, 2010 · Reading List · Comments Off

Sway is one of those books that makes you think about human behavior in an entirely different way. By running through some common scenarios where people behave in seemingly inexplicable ways, and identifying some common themes, Ori and Ram Brafman provide perspectives and tools to help identify and avoid irrationality. The story-telling reminded me a great deal of the styles of Malcolm Gladwell or Steven D. Levitt. Anecdotal evidence was backed by some more rigorous analysis that made the ideas both compelling, and personally believable.

After reading this book, I settled on a new definition for Irrational Behavior: Acting in a way that is counter to or wasteful with regard to your true goals.

Just because someone doesn’t do what you want, doesn’t make them irrational, but when they start making choices that move them away from what they want, they have entered the realm of the irrational.

Fixing a Drippy Ice Maker

August 16, 2009 · Random · Comments Off

A few weekends back I spent the morning fixing a drippy ice maker in our Whirlpool Gold Side-by-Side refrigerator, so I figured I’d do another “fix-it” post.

One morning when I opened the freezer there was a bit of a winter wonderland scene, with frost and icicles covering the upper-right corner of the freezer. The in-door ice bucket was full of huge chunks of refrozen ice, and frozen up to the point where it couldn’t move the agitator to dispense ice. Pretty much just an icy mess.

I originally thought that maybe someone had left the freezer a bit open, but there was still a bit of water dripping around and I know the door had been closed before I opened it.

Still not knowing what was wrong, I removed the ice bucket, emptied it out and melted all of the ice that was frozen around the agitator. I put it back in the freezer and then went about my morning. A bit later, I went to get some ice and remembered that I hadn’t turned the ice maker back on, so I hit the switch. I closed the door and waited for the ice to drop (It’s an in-door bucket so it doesn’t drop until the door closes). Right when the ice dropped I opened the door and was then able to see first-hand the real problem with the dispenser.

Evidently in this model fridge, the water is dispensed into a small collector that then lets it flow into the ice tray. The collector is circled in orange in the picture below. Somehow this collector had filed with a solid chunk of ice, and was blocking the flow of water directly into the ice tray. Since the float switch to stop the flow of water is in the tray, this means that the water stays on until enough water dribbles around the collector to fill up the ice tray (as well as coating a good portion of the freezer with water.

At first I thought I could attack this with a hair-dryer, but after removing all of the food from the top two shelves and then sitting with a hair dryer on the collector for about 5 minutes, I realized this was not getting me anywhere. My next idea worked much better. I used a turkey baster to squirt near-boiling water into the top of the collector (with towels positioned below to catch the overflow) and this unfroze the collector in about 2 minutes.

We haven’t had any further problems with the ice maker. I’m not sure if this was just a fluke, or if there’s some sort of accumulation of ice in the collector that will come back again, but for now it’s working great and I know how to fix it quickly it it freezes up again.

If Your Dodge Caravan's Power Sliding Doors Stop Working, Consider Replacing the Battery

June 11, 2009 · Random · 4 comments

I’ve now seen this on two different cars of the same model & year and I couldn’t find a reference to this specific resolution on the Internet so I figured it would be worth posting.

The symptom is simple. The power sliding door on one side or the other will stop working. I’m guessing that this problem is shared between the Dodge Caravan and the Chrysler Town & Country since they share the same parts for this mechanism. Some people on the Internet say that the problem went away after they had the dealer flash the BCM (Body Control Module). Other people had to get an entirely new BCM before the problem disappeared. We never went down either of those paths since I had a simple quick, although temporary, fix. If you open up the fuse panel under the hood next to the battery:

Then remove, count to 5 and then replace the following fuse:

The doors should work again for a while.

With the first van that had this problem, we went for many months just pulling and replacing the fuse whenever a problem occurred, and it would usually only stop working every few weeks. A while later we ended up replacing the battery after the van wouldn’t start one morning. Since the door issue was only an occasional problem, I never really realized that it never happened after we got the new battery.

Fast forward a few years, and we ended up having to replace the van, and we opted for the same exact model & year. When we had the “new” used van for a couple of weeks, the left power sliding door stopped working one day. We were on a trip so I did the quick-fix fuse pull & replace, and the door started working again. Within a week, the van wouldn’t start one day. A jump start got us working again, but I took the van to Auto Zone to have the battery checked, and it failed the load test. I replaced the battery on this van, and we haven’t seen the doors stop working again!

My guess is that the Body Control Module (BCM) that gets so much attention has a failure mode that is supposed to disable the sliding door motor if it detects a short or a stuck electric motor, but that when the van’s battery starts getting marginal, it trips into this mode unnecessarily.

Gateway CX2620 Battery is Now Charging

January 25, 2009 · Technology · Comments Off

My trusty CX2620 has been serving the family well for almost 3 years now, but for about the last year the battery hasn’t held a charge that would last more than 5 minutes. I had attributed this to a bad battery, and with replacements going for around $150, I wasn’t going to sink that much money into an obviously aging laptop.

A combination of events recently lined up to get my laptop battery back in action. Our original power adapter’s cord had broken through the insulation around the place where the DC cord enters the adapter brick, so we ordered an el-cheapo replacement from Ebay. This new adapter had the same specs as the original, and we managed to continue along, still not able to hold a charge, but functional while plugged in.

This new adapter only lasted a couple of weeks before giving out entirely right before we were going on a trip. We decided against getting another cheap adapter, and put in a order for the original OEM spec adapter, to be shipped to one of the destinations on our trip. When it wasn’t there when we arrived I checked the order status to find that it was backordered for another 4 weeks. Since we were suffering from laptop withdrawal, we ended up running out to Circuit City and picking up a Kensington Universal Notebook Power Adapter (K33404US).

Well, the new adapter is a 90 watt adapter, vs. the original 60 watt. Low and behold, the battery will now hold a charge almost as good as when it was new!

When the world seems "broken" the incentives are wrong.

January 17, 2009 · Economics · Comments Off

Pretty much every time I notice something in the world that seems "broken" the analysis eventually leads me to think that the incentives are structured in a way that causes the brokenness. Take the recent mortgage crisis, and look at what was driving the behavior of the key stakeholders:

Real Estate Agents: Both buyers and sellers agents are paid a percentage commission on the sale price. This means that the "knowledgeable representatives" on both sides have a financial incentive to get houses to sell at the highest price possible.

Mortgage Brokers: Again, usually paid either a flat commission, or a percentage commission. Either way, they earn exactly zero dollars for the mortgage they say shouldn’t happen.

Mortgage Lenders: This group was a major part of the real problem. Mortgage lenders, through bundling and selling of mortgage backed securities, had no incentive to turn away bad loans. The mortgage backed securities were selling at a value that didn’t account for the risk using standard economic formulas, so the lenders had an incentive to accept risky loans and sell them, passing the risk along to people who had no ability to understand the risk they were accepting. Basically the more they could get a potential homebuyer to promise to pay, the more money they made. No incentives to push down the price of homes.

Appraisers: This is the group that should have been the safety net, but it seems that they’ve turned into yes-men (and women) for the Real Estate Agents and the Mortgage Lenders. They are well insulated from liability by the formulas they use, and are dependent on Agents and Lenders for referrals so that they can make a living, so they have no incentive to challenge the value of an overpriced home.

Home Buyers: This group seemed, as a whole, to believe that as long as they planned to sell their house every few years, they should buy as much house as they could afford in order to maximize the future profit. As a whole it looks like we bought into all of the advertising that claimed that houses were a great investment, touting huge yearly percentage gains in value, even though the fine print read "past returns are not a guarantee of future performance." Greed, and the blind hope for turning a profit led this group to accept the inflated values as a reason to buy.

Home Sellers: Finally we get to the one group that should have been putting upward pressure on home values.

So, we now have a correction of sorts underway. Home buyers are wary of getting into the market for fear that the values will continue to drop. Mortgage brokers and lenders know they can’t bundle and sell risky mortgages since there will be too much scrutiny, but they do seem to be trying to lock in anyone that has a good to excellent credit rating. I haven’t seen any real changes in the real estate market, but I’d be amazed if there isn’t at least some fear of liability if an agent helps someone buy an overvalued home.

The current climate of fear and risk aversion has slowed the bad behavior, but nobody seems to be talking about fixing the system. If we come out of this and the incentives haven’t changed, then the bubble will just grow, and pop, again.

Old New Traffic Bump

January 2, 2009 · Random · Comments Off

I usually don’t worry much about the traffic on my blog, but when I logged into the control panel today this caught my eye:

Page Views showing 800 views on the day Raymond Linked

Now I already was expecting a bit of a bump since Raymond had given me a heads-up about the link, but I’m always curious exactly what traffic a link will bring. Between December 31st and New Year’s Day about 900 extra views compared with my normal baseline is a pretty good reach for a pile-of-links post referral. The results say a great deal more about Raymond’s reputation for putting up interesting links than anything else!

Impressions and Observations from PDC08

October 31, 2008 · Random · Comments Off

I just finished up my first time attending Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference and wanted to capture a few random observations.

This conference is beyond huge! I was trying to unit-ize my perception of the size, and all I could come up with is “several football fields” worth of people.

The conference was run very well. The event staff did an amazing job. I did notice that they held some pretty strict people-routing rules and some of the attendees would get upset when they were told to go to the center doors of the Big Room in order to get to a meal that was in hall G or K. If you’ve ever been responsible for maintaining order with a large gaggle of people you would recognize that they were doing it right. If you wait until the line becomes a problem, it’s too late to fix it. You have to send people along the path that a long line would take in order to keep this from becoming a problem.

The Cloud is coming. Microsoft’s Azure has a ton of promise and it’ll be interesting to see how it rolls out over the next decade. I’ve always been a big fan of Amazon’s S3 and EC2, and it’s awesome to see Microsoft hit this space with a coherent broad strategy that covers not just silo’d implementations of storage and computation, but an ecosystem that can field complex applications in the cloud, on-premises, or any combinations of the two.

When developers file into a room, they seem to default to a sort of “worst-fit” algorithm, filling up the rows of chairs in the least efficient manner possible, causing the presenters and coordinators to have to go through several rounds of defragmentation in order to get the room to capacity.

It was great to meet some of the other Microsoft bloggers that I’ve been following for years. I went to Raymond Chen’s talk even though it’s been a long time since I wrote any code that even came close to a Win32 call, but it was an interesting talk just the same. I also stopped by the Win7 table in the Microsoft Pavilion and shook his hand. It was a bit of a geek fan-boy thing to do, but I’ve enjoyed reading his blog for a long time, and it was cool to meet the man behind the blog. Raymond was very friendly and approachable, and it was interesting to see that his face-to-face personality matched up exactly with what I had come to expect from years of reading The Old New Thing.

Scott Hanselman’s talk was awesome, entertaining, and educational all at the same time. He’s another of my favorite bloggers and I’ve been a subscriber since long before he joined Microsoft. He was pretty busy after the session, so I didn’t make the time to do the fan-boy introduction, but it was cool to see Scott in person.

I also got to meet Charlie Kindel. It was a bit awkward since the last time we spoke I was an outside blogger who was spending a ton of time on Windows Home Server. Since joining Microsoft last December, I really haven’t made time to do much of anything related to Windows Home Server, so we didn’t have much to talk about. Still, it was good to finally meet Charlie and the WHS sessions at PDC were very interesting. (Developing Connected Home Applications and Services for Windows Home Server, Exposing Connected Home Services to the Internet via Windows Home Server) CJ and crew did a great job with the presentations and demos. I’m still a huge fan of WHS as a key part of any home network, and as a central nervous system for the smart home going forward, I just don’t have the time necessary to evangelize the platform like I did before.

The gender divide at the conference was very pronounced. I’ve been in Microsoft’s Charlotte office for nearly a year now and even though it’s no where near 1:1 there, I’ve gotten acclimated to a less skewed environment enough that I really noticed the gap at PDC. It’s a shame that the industry is so far behind on this.

The geeks as a whole seemed to be making healthier choices from the provided snacks. The fruit tables seemed to get a fair amount of action, and the Ho-Ho’s and Twinkies seemed to stay on the tables for quite a while longer. I’m sure that plenty of extra calories were consumed this week, but it didn’t seem to be too far off the unhealthy end of the spectrum.

The folks from the Dev Teams were here to really connect with customers. The “Ask the experts” were the formalized version of this, but extended post-session Q/A sessions and lots of business card swapping means that real connections were being built. It seems that if you came to PDC, you could reach out and get some real people to talk to about almost anything that Microsoft does.

Lots of international participation. Hearing people having side conversations in various languages and then instantly switch to perfect English for another conversation reminded me how much it seems like Americans are behind the curve with languages.

That’s it for my random observations. All in all it was a great conference!

One Man Shouting

Trying to change the world, one thought at a time