Good News and Bad News

Years ago during my career as a management consultant,  I liked to think of myself in baseball terms,  a relief pitch brought in to save the game in the late innings.  At least that was the way it seemed ... until ....

My boss called me into his office.   Wrap up your work in Pittsburgh.  They need a little help on the big IT project here in Arizona.  That sounded good to me.   Very high profile work and I wouldn't have to travel.   No more long plane rides and no more long hours spent in airports waiting for the long plane ride.

The first hint that the job was more than them needing a little help was when the overall project manager told me:  "We need you here ASAP."  Me:  "You mean after Christmas."  PM:  "No, I mean before Christmas.  You can take Christmas day and New Years day off."   So I went back to Pittsburgh for the weekend,  wrote to-do-notes on little yellow papers and pasted the to-do notes all over the remaining Pittsburgh project team's cubicles.  Sayonara troopers!

As soon as I arrived at the project site in Arizona, the project manager handed me her work plan.  She said:   "You're in charge of the programmers and systems analysts ... and the work plan.  Update the work plan before everyone gets back from Christmas vacation."

It wasn't my first rodeo, and it wasn't long before I realized there was a real probability I wasn't coming in as the closer.   I was the guy they bring in to eat up innings to save the bullpen so it could save another game, another day.   About the only kind thought I had for the boss who'd put me into the game was that he might not have known how bad things were ... but he must have had an inkling.

I reported back to the project manager.
"I have some good news and bad news.   First the good news.  It is possible to successfully finish the project.   The bad news.   You cannot finish it by the contractually promised due date.   You will not be able to complete the project for the fixed amount our firm will be paid.   It's just a matter of how much money the firm is gonna lose.   Before you blow your stack.  There's more bad news.   You've already said in the work plan that it will take more than 100 programmers and system analysts to complete the project.   You are far along in the project and are supposed to begin programming in a few weeks.   You only have 50 people on the project now and only 5 of them are programmers.  You need to hire at least 50 programmers who know the unique programming and database languages being used here (Datacom/Ideal).  Worse still,  you don't have any space or desks for the new programmers to work at.   Start looking.  The really bad news is that adding more programmers than you've already planned won't help you meet your promised delivery dates.   You simply won't be able to break the work into enough smaller and manageable pieces for you to do that:   you can't hire nine women to make a baby in one month.

They hired the programmers, literally bringing them in from all over the world.  After much grumbling we got the customer to find more work space and desks for the additional programmers.  The project didn't get completed on time, but it did get completed.   The firm lost more money than even I imagined.   The project manager who started the project was replaced not long after the bad news got out.  Lots of promises were made to those of us who came in to save the day.  None of them were kept.

Gilligan Solves a Hi-Tech, AI Problem

I'm very happy with my new car.   It has adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assist, automatic emergency braking, front and back, and bunch of other stuff.   Stuff you really need if you day dream about the root cause of climate change and whether it's appropriate for hot college girls to wear skin-tight leggings to mass at Notre Dame University ... or are subject periodic flashbacks about tank battles and monitoring the emergency SAR channel when somebody screams "Shit" and then nothing but dead air.

Yesterday my son's buddy needed an emergency ride to Tucson for a meeting.   I figured it had something to do with the Army reserve or a girl.  Either way I was glad to help someone meet a commitment.  Turned out it was a girl.   He's off to Vietnam next Wednesday to meet her parents and had to fit the trip in between reserve training and going to an academy for a new job.   If you need a rush, rush passport you have to go to the Western Regional Office in Tucson to get it.   You can probably get a third party to do it for you, but it costs a lot more than the kid has.

Half way to Casa Grande all my AI dies:  cruise control, braking, lane-keeping assist.   No flashbacks or hot college girls in leggings, we made it to Tucson in one piece.   

I waited outside while the young lover got his passport.  While I waited, I decided to check the sensors on my fancy car.   Maybe one got busted by road debris.   They all looked intact, but one in the front had a tiny bug, about the size of a mosquito, plastered right in the middle of the sensor.   "That can't be it.   What the hell."    I licked my pinkie with my tongue and wiped the bug off the sensor.

After my exercise in post-preventive maintenance, I stayed entertained by watching a homeless guy play human yo-yo riding a bike up and down the incline in the passport office parking lot.

If you have a uniform wear it to your passport appointment.   By the rules, they'd have mailed the passport to the young lover and it might or might not have arrived in time for his flight.  The folks at the passport office took one look at young lover's uniform and said come back at 3 and you can take your passport home with you today.

As I backed out of our parking spot my butt got buzzed and the car jerked to a halt by itself,  emergency braking.   The homeless guy with the bike flew past the back of my car.

When we hit the highway all the AI was working again.   Gilligan had fixed the bug.

Sincerely,

Gilligan

Christian and Muslim Battle Grounds

I suppose if you want a history lesson on hate, you would go to the Balkins like the New Zealand nutjob did.

Some years ago, right here in Phoenix, I worked for a time with a Serbian immigrant.   We were chatting one day and he started talking about the old country and his time in the Serbian army.  

"You know you people were on the wrong side ... trying to stop us ... we know how to take care of them."   Then he pointed his finger at me, cocked his thumb like the hammer on a gun and said:  "Pow!"

He went on trying to impress me by telling how he helped shoot down a stealth fighter.   I observed that we (the good old US of A) were only trying to scare him and his fellow Serbians away from the Muslims, while trying to not actually hurt anyone.

"If they'd taken off the glove and sent in the big boys,  you wouldn't be here today,"  remembering, but not otherwise talking about, how we took the NVA apart in '72 when they finally let us take off the gloves.

Our relationship was never the same and we never chatted again about old times ... because ... you know ... I was pissed off.

Gilligan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mosque-shooters-radical-views-fed-by-trips-to-christian-muslim-battlegrounds

Importing Tech Talent

Heaven forbid that we encourage bright young Americans by making American companies offer apprenticeship programs to bright young Americans, including young blacks and Hispanics stuck washing the floors at Pizza Hut.  My Uncle Joe never went to college.  He got a job at Pratt and Whitney just before the war and became a crack engine mechanic.  In his time he was responsible for testing the engines being developed for the F-15.   That isn't possible today … but it should be.  Uncle Joe earned a top salary and died a millionaire.