MikeOnBlog

One of my all time favorite people watching experiences is to go food shopping at the Safeway on Mother’s day morning.  Every dad in the neighborhood has dragged their uncooperative progeny in the hopeful attempt to salvage a Mother’s Day breakfast.  It is a site to behold. Kids screaming, father’s panicking, helium balloons being let loose in the store… Even if you’re not a parent this is worth checking out.   I, of course, participate and like anything I do, it always more satisfying to do it 100%.  So, I take a few extra steps to ensure I get the full experience.

1. Give the kids a little sugar before heading to the market
2. Only bring one toy and expect them to share
3. Promise to get them the shopping cart with the cool car attached knowing that it will already be taken
4. Walk slowly down the candy isle several times without buying anything
5. Check and recheck shopping list while muttering “I know I’m forgetting something”

Anyways, from me to all the Dads out there doing there best to survive an extremely hostile and unfamiliar situation (imagine landing in Bosnia under heavy gunfire like Hilary Clinton did),  Father’s Day is almost here.  Remember to clear your bubbles in combat conditions.

Let’s Assume the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) metrics are an accurate assessment of the economy’s activity (it’s not, and neither was the now out of favor GNP numbers, but that’s a blog post for another time). The Reuters article, like many others today,  Growth surprises but consumers stressed - Yahoo! News: leads off with “A buildup in inventories kept the economy afloat in the first quarter…”  The fact that GDP grew at 0.6% in Q1 because of an inventory buildup is probably more troubling than if GDP shrank.  What is likely happening is the the economy is decelerating quicker than businesses are able to react.  Fortunately this article, in paragraph three states this possibility.

” Some economists said the report suggested the U.S. economy was on a bit firmer ground than had been thought, but others braced for worse times ahead as businesses ratchet back production further to try to sell off inventories”

While I’m not in favor of overly negative press accounts of economic conditions as there is some truth into “talking ourselves into a recession”, it is disingenuous to try and pass these numbers off as better than expected, which seems to be the trend of the day.

I’m not a big believer in Karma but I got a dash of it last Friday.  For some cosmic reason in my life I’ve been a finder of wallets and purses and have always dutifully returned them directly to the person or some trusted authority.  I actually had a threefer in college where three days in a row I ran across someone’s left behind wallet. Last one happened a couple months ago outside the Ikeda’s market off of Route 80 on the way back from a Tahoe ski trip where I flagged down an SUV just as it was pulling out of the parking lot.

The cosmic payback came my way on Friday when I dropped my wallet (first time in my entire wallet carrying life) outside the Redwood City Town Hall (I think it is the town hall) just outside the Theater district.  I must have dropped it fishing something out of my pocket while I was eating lunch at the outdoor seating area there.  I didn’t realize it was gone until that evening as I packed up to go home from work.  I’d like to say I calmly got in my car to retrace my steps but there was no calm about it.  Yet, as I approached the seating area I saw a young couple look as if they found a wallet and by the look on my face as I walked towards them they new they had found the owner.  Much gratification and relief flowed profusely and incoherently from me.

So, to the young couple playing cards in the courtyard there, I owe you one.  You have my business card.  Contact me anytime!

Thx,
Mike

If there is one thing that just burns me is when someone says with conviction that a number is statistically significant when none of the formal statistical evidence gathering has been done.  So… A primer on Statistical Significance (from someone whom isn’t that statistically bent), it’s importance, why being Statistically Significant isn’t always significant and why I nearly go into a blind rage when some one uses the term out of context.

I like wikipedia’s definition so I quote it here:

‘In statistics, a result is called significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. “A statistically significant difference” simply means there is statistical evidence that there is a difference; it does not mean the difference is necessarily large, important or significant in the usual sense of the word.’

Or, in layman’s terms, something is statistically significant if what ever you did (or whatever external event might have happened) made a difference (this is where testing, usually A-B testing, comes into play) and it probably (I intentionally use the word “probably” as this is where the term “confidence interval” comes into play) wasn’t just blind luck. 

Why is knowing whether something is statistically significant is important?  Simply put, when you need to know if an event or a trend is the result of random variation or not.

Without going into the mathematics, three important factors contribute to a popular method of statistical significance testing (in this case the t-test) when comparing two independent data sets. These are the mean, or average, the number of data points (for some reason called degrees of freedom to Statisticians) and the range of these data points, or standard deviation.

For example let’s take the average live expectancy of two sets of rats.  One set gets a bowl of Chereos every day and the other doesn’t.  Even if the average of one set is noticeably (note, not significantly) larger than the other, a large standard deviation in each set may indicate that the difference in the average is not significant. [ probably should put some sample data in here]

What if there were a million rats in each sample and a bowl of Chereos every morning increased their life expentancy by 2.4 seconds.  While possibly statistically significant … it really doesn’t make a difference.  This is when statistical significance doesn’t really mean real world significance.

So why does this just frost me when someone says that something is statistically significant without doing the proof.  Because humans are wired to not deal with randomness very well.  We are wired to try to find patterns in randomness that don’t exist.  It seems 1/2 the world believes that magic patterns emerge from their Ipod song shuffle (”Dude… what are the chances of Dylan’s ‘A hard rain is gonna fall’ be followed by the Grateful Dead doing ‘Here Comes the Rain’ followed by CCR doing ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain’.  There is NO WAY that is random!  I’ve got 1000 songs on my Ipod…. blah.. blah.. blah..”) . Probably a survival trait we developed along our evolutionary path but this bias or tendency that, at best, doesn’t translate well into today’s reality and, at worst, makes for disastrous decision making.

OK… I’ve been writing this off and on for a week.  There is tons of stuff I didn’t touch on (hypothesis testing, Type 1 errors, Type 2 errors, p-values, etc) and I’m sure there are people much more familiar than me with these concepts.  If anyone ever read this blog, I’m sure I’d get some, hopefully, constructive feedback. Maybe I’ll follow this up with more details in the future.

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I have to admit that even after over a year working at Flock I’m still addicted to the media bar. Our 0.9 version adds a bunch of new functionality but my favorite is being able to save Flickr and YouTube search queries and getting notified when their are updates.  Just type in some search terms in the Media bar search I’ve nostalgically starred queries for places I’ve lived in (Allston, MA and Vestal, NY) as well as where I live now.

My two favorite queries at the moment that I’ve got starred are “Ultimate Frisbee” (A sport I played at a fairly competitive level when I live in Boston.  At least I thought I was good until I attending an open practice with DOG) on Flickr and “Guitar Instructions” on YouTube (An instrument I’m completely talentless on).

The “Ultimate Frisbee” query has yielded fantastic images almost every day.  An awesome layout here:

Game face on here:

Ultimate in India!

If I was only 20 years younger and 20lbs lighter.

There are also a lot of folks willing to share their guitar knowledge on Youtube which is awesome.  There is no shortage of how to videos for “Stairway to Heaven”, :-).

Enjoy!

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Well… I was really looking forward to doing this year’s bike to work day.  Not so much as an eco-fascist but it’s nice to get a little stretch in before work.   Last year I rode from San Jose to San Mateo which is about 40 miles on a mountain bike.  That was a pretty good poke.

This year I only had to go Mountain View.  About 5 miles from my destination some asshole opened his parked car door into the bike lane and sent me flying into the street.   Stuntmen couldn’t have timed it better.  One thing I noticed that in movies this usually send the victim end over end over the door.  What happened to me was ramming the right side of my chest into the corner of the door and get sent sprawling perpendicular to the car.

Who was this asshole?  I don’t know. I was kind of shakin’ up.  I was on the bike after letting my head clear a bit for 15 minutes but I probably should have made sure his car was alright (and if it was punched out the window of his fancy BMW).

Inventory of damage
1. My right chest and back are throbbing and it hurts to breathe deeply.  Coughing is excruciating.  Here is where the point of the car door caught me in the chest.

2. lost a piece of skin off my right thumb.

3. My right elbow is scraped up pretty good

4. My left pinky is sore

5. My company’s $3000 Macbook Pro is dinged pretty good

6. My glasses are bent

I like riding my bike, though I don’t do it very often, but I’m going to stick to the trails where it is safe (I used to ride my bike through the streets of Boston all the time but this just hurts too much). I was going to bitch about the hour it took to get my bike ready…

Mike

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OK… I’m turning 40 on Monday and amongst many mid-life crisis thoughts (not with standing this past week of a burst water heater, two computers catastrophically crashing and being nearly hit by a car) one is, if I picked my old guitar, what songs would I play for say a twinge of morbidity 5 song set.  Here’s my first pass.

1. Old Man - Neil Young

  I’ve been first and last, look at how the time goes past.
  But I’m all alone alone at last, rolling home to you.

2. Afternoons & Coffeespoons - Crash Test Dummies

3. Standing on the Moon - Grateful Dead

Standing on the moon, with nothing left to do.
A lovely view of Heaven, but I’d rather be with you.

4. Time - Pink Floyd

5. Death Don’t Have No Mercy - Rev. Gary Davis

Death don’t have no mercy in this land.
Death don’t have no mercy in this land.
Well he’ll come to your house, but he won’t stay long.
Look in the bed and somebody’ll be gone.
Death don’t have no mercy in this land.

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Good for a 30 minute run on the treadmill

Tom Sawyer - Rush (Live in Rio. Hell of a way to kick off a concert)
Even Better Than The Real Thing - U2
Beautiful - Laurie Sargent Band
Zoo Station - U2
Solsbury HIll - Peter Gabriel
Exodus - Bob Marley

Cool Down:
In Spite of Me - Morphine
Temple Caves - Mickey Hart & Planet Drum

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While I think for the most part the Harvard Business Review has become complete crap over the last couple of years (much like Forbes but I still keep renewing my subscriptions every year hoping things will improve) every once in a while a sidebar of an article will catch my eye. January’s edition is a special issue on The Tests of a Leader (immediate eye rolling and groaning of warmed over huggy and fuzzy stuff riffed with “Be a change agent!”).

One article is basically a self assessment entitled “What to Ask the Person in the mirror”. Fortunately in this article is a sidebar summarizing the 11 pages of mostly drivel containing a few reminders for anyone who is a manager. In the end a manager is solely judged upon the teams output as it relates to increasing shareholder value. Nothing more, nothing less (more on this in a future blog post). The 7 concepts mentioned are basically common sense but worth thinking about and reminding oneself about on a regular basis. I’ll try to boil down the HBR language into common english:

1. Vision and Priority: Basically the people that work for you should know what’s going on and what they should be working on. This is more than assigning action items. Assuming the people that work for you prefer a bit of independence, the vision provides the context for which they can make their own judgements. Without this you the manager becomes a task master. No fun for you, less fun for your employees.

2. Managing Time: Let’s face it. Most of us suck at managing our own time let alone the time of others. It is human nature to do what is easiest not necessarily what is most important first. Also, tasks with a short term nature are much easier to get started and finish than longer term tasks even though the latter could be more important. I’m always impressed with those that surmount these two tendencies and I find it to be one of the true tests of a great manager. Also, as much as it sounds like micromanagement it is imperitive that the manager is aware of what the employees are spending their time on. Delegation is important but, as a CEO I once work for says “Delegation without monitoring is abdication of responsibility”.

3. Feedback: Give it and seek it out. If someone is screwing up they need to know about it. If someone is doing a good job they need to know about it. It’s can be hard. It has to be done. It is the right thing to do. Always encourage people to give you honest feedback. As a manager it’s rarely going to happen but once in a while you get lucky to have a brash, opinionated employee or employees (sometimes they prowl in packs) that have no qualms telling you that you suck (and hey, when it comes down to it, we really do mostly suck). After channelling this person’s beligerency into reasonable feedback you might get an honest picture of where you can improve. It’s up to you to listen.

4. Succession planning: Well… Having twice been on the receiving end of getting shafted after I hired in or grew potential successors I’m not too sure about this one. I can see how “My” manager likes some bench strength in case I get hit by bus or go postal but this just smacks of executive brain washing to me. I’m all for growing employees (and is actually what I enjoy most about management) but why would you want someone to take your job? Nothing says great job at having a successor in line like getting layed off or pushed aside. The truth is, and let’s be honest, you want someone that can *almost* fill your shoes.

5. Evaluation and Alignment: Classic HBR speak for don’t get too comfortable. Some people by nature are paranoids and they do well in this area. Others should have a structured, systematic approach to revaluating everything (strategy, resource utilization, etc.). I happen to do this once a quarter as I evaluate how things went the previous quarter and plan for the next.

6. Leading under pressure: Nothing get’s a manager jazzed like having an opportunity to prove him or herself under fire. Unfortunately this usually turns into a manager pissing contest because there is more than one manager trying to prove themselves at the same time. Successful managers have perspective. Most of us aren’t managing a space shuttle with lives on the line. We’re managing some operation that if it doesn’t go well will piss off your boss and/or lose the company money. Both usually aren’t the end of the world. The successful manager either calmy navigates the crisis or calmy fails but always with the appropriate level of urgency and always learns from the event.

7. Staying true to yourself: To me, this is the most important. If you can’t look yourself in the mirror every morning without feeling proud of what you do every day you should be doing something different. There isn’t much you get to take with you in the end. I plan on taking my love for my friends and family, my dignity, and my self-respect (hopefully my ipod too but I’m not counting on that).

So…. Am I a better manager than I was yesterday? Are the people working for me working on the right things in the most efficient manner? Do the people that work for me *believe* they are working on the right things in the most efficient manner? Are the people that work for me more effective because I am their manager? Am I a better manager than I was yesterday?

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Hi Folks,

Mozilla has delayed the release of their 1.5.0.9 patch for Firefox until Tuesday, December 19th.  Since this patch is a part of Flock’s 0.7.9 maintenance release we’re going to hold off on our patch until then as well.  Release schedule is here: http://wiki.flock.com/index.php?title=Flock:0.7.9.

thx,

Mike

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