Seeping Matter

This weekend — tomorrow, actually — is my 20 year High School class reunion, which means I’m, uh, 29.  Again.

As everyone knows, the purpose for Facebook is to help you connect with old friends, like that girl who wouldn’t go with you to Homecoming, you know, to see if her life is in the crapper and she got what she deserved for snubbing you.  So I’ve been using Facebook for it’s designated purpose, and I’ve found a bunch of the people I went to high school with, who, inexplicably, all seem to have great lives despite the fact that I pretty much never had a date in high school.

Since the reunion is tomorrow, many of them have been asking me whether I’m coming to the reunion.  When I say, “No,” they want to know the reason, and so I tell them, “Because.”  This reasoning seems to work well when I’m explaining to my son why he has to mow the lawn, but it doesn’t seem to be working with the old high school friends.

So, in order to avoid explaining this a hundred times, I decided to just write a simple blog post about it.

I actually alluded to this in another post some time ago, but basically the issue is this:

I’m not a fan of high-school Matt.

I’m a fan of perpetually-29 Matt.  That guy is happy with himself, he’s confident, he makes loud noises on a guitar when he feels like it, drives a pretty cool car, mostly wears T-shirts to work, and has great taste in music and movies.  He’s got a wonderful wife and a great family that are awesome to hang out with.  He’s a pretty darn good software engineer and he doesn’t even feel nerdy about it (well, not TOO nerdy).  He’s so dang funny that it is sinful.  He feels free to be himself pretty much all the time and enjoys his life.

He’s not like high-school Matt at all.  High school Matt was ignored because he wasn’t athletic and ridiculed because he was smart.  High school Matt carried labels given him by other people that worked so well even HE thought that’s what he was like.  He didn’t feel good about himself for who he was and instead kept trying to pretend he was someone he wasn’t and fit in with a crowd of people that he didn’t fit with and date the girls who weren’t interested in dating him.  Even worse, he ignored the crowd he could have fit with and the girls he could have dated instead.  He was a poser and a fake, someone who didn’t value his own abilities and instead kept trying to make himself into something he wasn’t.

Whenever I’m around high school people again, high-school Matt tries to come out.  I don’t like high-school Matt.  He makes me feel ashamed of myself, not only of my past but of who I am now, almost as though who I am today is not good enough even though I’m quite happy with it.  He makes me act like someone I’m not, someone I don’t like, someone like him.  So I try to keep him hidden.

And the best way to keep him hidden is to avoid situations where he insists on coming out.  And if I go to the reunion, he will insist.

I’ve really enjoyed catching up with those friends on Facebook and hearing about their lives today.  I’m not really interested in letting high-school Matt come out to feel like a loser again in person.

So, thanks anyway, but I won’t be going.  Don’t be offended.  Or, take offense, whatever, I don’t care.  High-school Matt is obsessed with what you think of him, but that dude is gone.  The current version wants to be your friend, but only at face value.  Otherwise, nevermind.

matt Rants Introspection

Against my better judgment I’m writing about education.  Education is a topic where, if you disagree with the status quo, you are automatically labeled as anti-education, which is logically ridiculous.

So, for the record, I’m decidedly pro-education.  I have a lot of opinion on the topic, and since this is my blog I guess it’s time I break the ice here and start talking about it.  Nevertheless, I’m sure that there are people who are going to take my opinions as being an attack on education or even themselves personally, even though I’m just now calling them out on it.  It isn’t meant that way.  But whatever.

Back to the topic.

I was thinking about this question the other day.  Actually, quite a while ago.  It was picture day at school, and so that morning the kids were concerned about what to wear and what does their hair look like and other such things.

For some reason it occurred to me:  Why do they even have picture day at school in the first place?

The de-facto knee-jerk answer to this question is:  ”So you can have a picture of your child!  Don’t you want a picture of your child?  You know, someday your child will be grown up and you’ll wish you had something to remember their childhood by!  What is wrong with you anyway?!?”

See, the thing is, that is not the answer to my question.  That’s the answer to the question, “Why should I have portraits taken of my child?”  But my question is, why is it done at school?

It surely was not always this way.  If you went back far enough — 50 years, or 80, or 100? — you would certainly get to a time period where kids went to school but there was no picture day.

I can envision the business model here, for a company like LifeTouch that does school picture days all over the place, or at least Utah.  It is actually pretty sweet.  There’s no real estate costs, since you don’t have a studio.  You just set up at the school you are at every day.  You’ve got business automatically provided to you.  In a single day, you might shoot 100, or 200, or even 500 portraits.  Even if you only sold a $20 package to half of the, say, 200 portraits you shoot in a day, that’s $2000 of income in a single day!  That’s a pretty sweet business!

What really struck me as odd was when I asked my wife why our kids were even participating.  See, my wife worked as a professional photographer when we were first married, shooting high school, prom, bridal, and family portraits among other things in a full studio setting, with adjustable lighting and props and everything.  She can do just fine shooting pictures of my kids.  So for years we’ve avoided spending the admittedly lofty prices for boring picture packages from school and instead we’ve shot our own, which are much more interesting and are of comparable to better quality, and less expensive.

Knowing this, I didn’t understand why our kids were even having their pictures taken.  I mean, we know already that we aren’t going to buy any.  Why make the photographer shoot and develop pictures we know we aren’t going to buy?  So I asked Amber, and she said, “Well, it is harder to get them out of it than just to have them go along with it.”

I thought about that, and it makes sense.  Of course it is hard for the teacher to monitor kids that are getting pictures taken if some of them are also back in the classroom not getting pictures taken.  And of course it is hard for the teacher to know if the kids parents really don’t want their picture taken or whether it is just that the child himself is trying to avoid the picture for some reason.

But why is it even the teacher’s responsibility in the first place?

This was what finally hit me.  The teacher’s job is to teach my kids.  Why is there even a school picture day?  Why is it that educators, who have a minimum number of days that they must provide instruction for our kids, are counting as a day of instruction one where time is spent shuffling kids through a picture-taking process that has nothing to do with their education?

I don’t know the real reason, but I’m willing to bet it rhymes with Sick Jack.  But for most people, including education professionals, I don’t think they ever even think about it.  We’ve always had school pictures.  It is just part of the schedule.

I’m not particularly opposed to school pictures, but I fear it is setting a bad precedent.

In years past, they’ve held a book fair at my kids’ elementary.  I seem to remember this going on when I was in elementary school also.  The kids would go down to the book fair, as a class, and look through the books that were available for purchase.  Then their assignment is to come home and pester their parents for money to buy books.  Presumably this is allowed because books are educational, although one time I actually went to the book fair and only about half of the items for sale in the book fair were books.

It gets worse.  This past year at my kids’ elementary, there was another similar thing going on.  It operated exactly like the book fair.  As classes the kids were taken down to this little store that was set up in part of the school.  They were instructed by their teachers to go through the store and identify the things they wanted to buy, and how much they cost.  Then they were told to come home and discuss with their parents the things they wanted.  Then the next day they should bring their money, because they would go down to the store again as a class and anyone who brought money could buy stuff from the store.

Consider:  At this point, we’ve given up on trying to have anything in the store even remotely resemble education.  They pitched this as a finance unit, where kids could learn about how much things cost and how to pay for them.  In our case, however, this was no different than when our kids come with us to a regular store (you know, the kind that pays for its own real estate), where their job is to ask us for money to buy stuff they don’t need, and our job is to say, “No.”  The only difference is that the crap in this store at the school was significantly overpriced.  Significantly overpriced.

Well, when our kids came home and asked for money, of course we said, “No.”  We told them they were free to blow their own money on stuff, which they did.  The sad part of this story is that my daughter spent about $25 of her own money to buy Christmas presents at the store.  She spent about half of what she earns in a year to buy stuff she could have picked up at the dollar store for about $5.

She did this because the store was at the school, and because she was taken down to that store with her class, and encouraged to look at what she wanted to buy, and then come back with the money.  And she spent her own money because, unlike much of the world, we don’t want to encourage our kids to blow money on stuff they don’t need, and so we push back.

It angers me that this situation was even there in the first place.  Someone is setting up a business where they don’t have any real estate, instead setting their shop up in public schools.  Why in the world are we allowing private businesses to run out of a public school?  Why are we allowing children to go down to patronize these businesses as a part of their day that is supposed to be spent learning?

This is something that simply should not be happening, in my opinion.  The only logical reason I can think of why this happens is because the school system profits financially from doing it.  I can’t explain it any other way.  And if I’m right, it really makes me upset to think that the public education system is tricking people into funding the system and shortchanging our kids education in the same process.

matt Education, Rants Editorial, Rants

One of the big things that attracted me to Microsoft is what I’d heard about their culture.  During my interview loop, the interviewers explained to me what Microsoft does to try to build the careers of each person that works there.  And I think it is fairly common knowledge that at Microsoft the communication is direct, clear, and open.  Not disrespectful, mind you, or at least it isn’t supposed to be.  But if your managers — or even your peers, for that matter — think you’ve made a mistake, or that your approach is wrong, or that you aren’t being effective enough, they will question and challenge you.  And you’re expected to do the same, even with your managers.

It’s very refreshing, especially in a social culture that is so different.  I don’t know if it is a Utah thing or a Mormon thing, but in most groups around here people don’t communicate this way.  Companies I’ve worked for in the past usually pretended to care about my opinion but didn’t, or really weren’t interested in what I had to say.  Or they would openly make it clear that they actively believed that my opinion was worthless.  I yearned for a place that valued every opinion, and I found it at Microsoft.  I love that.

It’s not all roses, though.

Hearing feedback about how to improve at your job isn’t too hard to take.  That’s just stuff like a suggestion about a design pattern that will help you solve a problem you’re facing, or someone pointing out to you that your implementation is not threadsafe and suggesting how to address it.  Even when the feedback urges you a little out of your comfort zone, for example to confront someone about a concern, it isn’t that bad.

It’s much harder when the feedback you get is telling you that you have to change something that is just a part of who you are.

The first type of feedback doesn’t even have to do with you personally.  It’s just coaching on how you do your job.  You aren’t your job (or at least you shouldn’t be).  The second type of feedback might have a little to do with you, but it is more about encouraging you to improve on something you already want to improve on anyway.

The last type is the type I got last week.  I won’t go into any details on it, but the general summary of it is this:  ”There’s a handful of character flaws, inherent in your personality, that you need to overcome in order to move forward in your career.”

Or to rephrase:  I was good enough as I am now to get my current position, but I’m not good enough as I am now to move ahead.

Truth is, we all need to learn to take feedback like that.  It’s all about becoming the best version of ourselves.  Nobody on this earth is perfect, so we all have things to improve on.  But when it isn’t your skillset or your approach but your lifelong self that isn’t good enough, wow.  I’m gonna have to dig deep to learn to deal with that.

matt Rants Introspection, Microsoft

When was the last time you did something hard?

I don’t mean “hard” as in trying to drive to work in the snow.  I mean something really hard, like earning a college degree or starting a successful side business or losing 20 pounds.

If you’re familiar with the LDS faith you are probably aware that many young LDS men serve a two-year mission when they are about 19 years old; they are certainly expected to.

I teach a Sunday School class comprised of high-school-age youth, and not long ago as I was preparing the lesson I could see that this topic was going to come up.  I thought about my own mission, which I served in southern Spain from 1991 to 1993.  I was preparing to tell them something I’d found to be true about my own mission, which was that although it was very hard to do, I’ve never regretted having done it for an instant.  I know that same statement holds true for pretty much every person I know who’s done it.  And I also have many friends who did not go, and the general consensus among them is regret — regret for not having done it.

I thought about how true that is about many things in life.  I thought about some other hard things I’ve done, like graduating from college, proposing and shipping a controversial product, or raising a family.  It isn’t just that you are ultimately glad that you did those hard things.  When you look back on your life, you realize that a lot of the things that define your life, a lot of those things you are most proud of, were difficult things that you probably didn’t really want to do at the time.

Isn’t it odd how much we resist doing those hard things, even when we know how meaningful those experiences will be later?  I’ve never heard of a person who said, “Yeah, instead of going to college I just wasted five years of my life playing video games all day long in my parent’s basement, and boy am I glad I made that choice.”

This has been a humbling but important realization for me going into 2010.  There are a number of really important, hard things that I need to get started on right now.  I took the opportunity to look ahead and imagine myself five or ten years from now.  I imagined looking back at 2010 as if I had done those hard things.  I thought about how relieved and pleased I’d be that I had chosen to do those hard things back then, and I could imagine how much better my life would be after having done these hard things.  I could also see how my life would be if, instead of doing those hard things, I kept doing things the way I’m doing them now, that is to say, easier but not life-altering.

Having done this introspection, I know now I’ll look back, either way, at 2010.  It will either be the pivotal year when I made the big changes to improve my life, or it will be just another year in my life where I chose the easy road to mediocrity.

So, I’m doing some hard things this year.  Some of them have to do with my career, so you’ll find out about them.  Some of them are personal, so I’ll only talk about them in generalities.  Either way, 2010 will be a year to remember for me.  It’s going to be a hard year, one that I won’t regret.

matt Rants Introspection

In 1972 the Miami Dolphins completed the only perfect season in the history of the NFL, going a perfect 17-0 and winning Super Bowl VII.  Undefeated seasons are fairly common in college football, and in fact is generally required for any chance at playing for the national title.  But in the NFL it is a different story.  Nobody else has ever done it before or since.

The Hall of Fame quarterback that led that famous team, Bob Griese, went on to become one of the best color commentators in college football.  Yet he now risks being remembered more for the remark he made on October 24, 2009, when a list of the current NASCAR top five drivers was displayed on screen.  Regarding the fact that driver Juan Pablo Montoya’s name was not shown, as explanation Griese quipped, “He’s out having a taco.”

Griese certainly did not consider his words before he said them.  He apologized during the game and later that day.  He was given a one-game suspension by ESPN for it, but I have to wonder if the real punishment is yet to come.

This whole thing has been bothering me ever since it happened, because frankly, I think it’s way past time for people to lighten up a little bit.

Before you cinch the noose around my neck, let me say a couple of things first.  I have many great friends of varied ethnic, cultural, and national backgrounds that I’ve made over the course of my life who I cherish and value, not only for the perspective they provide which broadens my own perspective, but for the numerous ways in which we are the same, as well as the ways in which we are different.  I have been greatly enriched by having the opportunity throughout my career to benefit from diversity in the places where I’ve worked — I value that experience tremendously.  And, believe it or not, I come from a background that’s endured its own share of discriminatory treatment.  More on that later.

Because of those valued relationships, even more than what people might think of me in general, I’ve been measured in blogging about this.  But I’ve got to tell you:  I think we’re taking this whole discrimination thing way too far.  I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

First off, I’ll state that, in my opinion, Mr. Griese should not have said what he said.  He knows it.  He knew it right after he said it.  ESPN also thinks he should not have said it, and I agree with them.

Now that we’ve established that, I’d like to figure out exactly why what he said is considered offensive.

• Eating — I’m pretty sure this isn’t it.  Every person eats.
• Eating A Taco — As far as I can tell, the act of eating a taco itself isn’t offensive, nor would it be offensive to suggest that a person might eat a taco.  I have eaten a taco.  More than one, in fact.  I’m not ashamed of it.  If you were to tell someone who does not read my blog that I have eaten a taco before, not only will I not be offended, but the other person will wonder why this is a big deal.  So I can only assume that it is not the suggestion of eating a taco itself that was offensive.
• Implying That Juan Pablo Montoya Is Hispanic — Whether Griese meant to imply that Juan Pablo Montoya was Hispanic is hard to say.  However, Juan Pablo Montoya IS Hispanic.  Columbian, in fact.  There’s nothing wrong with being Hispanic, or Columbian.  So implying that a Hispanic person is Hispanic shouldn’t be a problem.
• Implying That Juan Pablo Montoya Is Mexican — I honestly don’t know whether tacos are really Mexican or not.  I’m told they are.  But the tacos we eat here aren’t necessarily authentic anyway.  Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with being from Mexico; after all, Sammy Hagar lives there, at least some of the time.  And we already established that Montoya is from Columbia anyway, not Mexico.  I don’t see a problem here.
• Implying That Juan Pablo Montoya Eats Tacos — I don’t know whether Montoya eats tacos or not.  We already established that it is not offensive to say that I eat tacos.  Why would it be offensive to suggest that Montoya eats tacos?  There’s nothing wrong with eating tacos.
• Implying That Juan Pablo Montoya Eats Tacos Because He Is Hispanic — Well, now I think we may be getting somewhere, although I have to wonder why this matters.  Being Hispanic is not offensive.  Eating tacos is not offensive.  Is it offensive to suggest that Hispanic people eat tacos?  Can someone explain why this is?

On the day that Griese made this comment, NASCAR driver Ryan Newman was also not shown on the screen.  What if they had instead asked where Ryan Newman was instead of Montoya?  What if Griese had commented about Newman, “He’s out eating a hamburger.”  Certainly that would be equally offensive, right?

Or what if Griese had said the exact same thing — “He’s out eating a taco” — about Ryan Newman instead?  Would that also be offensive?

If it is not offensive when it is said about a Caucasian from the United States, why is it offensive when it is said about a Hispanic from Columbia?  I thought this whole thing was about treating all people as equals.  How is this treating people as equals?  Isn’t it wrong to treat people differently because of their differences, regardless of how we treat them?

This is society’s problem, not Montoya’s or Griese’s.  In our society, we’ve done a great job of identifying the people who have been discriminated against.  They are in protected classes.  Those are the people who have been discriminated against.  If you, like me, are not in a protected class, then it is not possible that others would discriminate against you.  In fact, according to society, I can only be the instigator of discrimination, not the victim, because I’m not in a protected class.

The problem here is, according to the popular interpretation, discriminatory treatment now has nothing to do with treating people equally and fairly.  It has to do with treating protected classes preferentially.  Ironically, we fail to realize that by treating others preferentially, we draw attention to the fact that there is a difference.  Treating them preferentially portrays the implication that they are uncapable of handling life the way the non-protected-class people face life, which is most certainly not true.  The reality is that we are equals.  Creating different sets of rules for different groups of people in society is exacerbating the problems and not solving anything.

Back in the middle of the 19th century, there was another group of people in the United States that were generally discriminated against by many in the general public.  Members of this group were publicly ridiculed; many others in society shunned and ostracized them, even members of their own families; much of the general public would refuse to live near them or patronize their businesses.  Prominent members were frequently subject to the wrath of mobs and riots, and even had property destroyed, and many were tortured publicly and even wrongly imprisoned.  Members of this group were so persecuted that many were forced to abandon homes and property numerous times as they moved again and again attempting to find a place where they could live peaceably.  Conditions escalated to the point that laws were changed in places such that it was not considered a crime to murder a member of this group in cold blood.  This group repeatedly appealed to local and federal government for protection but were flatly and openly denied.  Many members of this group, including a number of leaders, were killed.  Our government did nothing to stop this.  Eventually members of this group had to leave the country and flee to a barren wasteland in order to be left alone.

This group was not different because of their ethnicity or national background.  This group of people were known as Mormons.  Religion was the difference between them and those who discriminated against them so strongly.  Because of their religion, which is the first freedom guaranteed us by the US Constitution, they were discriminated against, while the very government that should have guaranteed their freedom turned a blind eye or even in some cases participated in the discrimination, to the point that they had to leave the very country that should have guaranteed their rights in order to have any semblance of peace.

These are my ancestors.  Even today, people have no issues at all saying derogatory things about members of my faith.  They will make jokes about how many wives I have (1) or how many horns come out of my head (0) or whether I am allowed to drive a car or use electricity (yes to both).  I find it ironic that a comedian or talk-show host can make fun of my religion in a public forum wherein he will knowingly make statements he either doesn’t understand or knows full well are untrue, and yet someone like Bob Griese can inadvertently and completely by accident say something as apparently benign as “He’s out having a taco” and have the whole world ready to string him up in a tree for being so racist and discriminatory.

I’m fully aware of the history of my ancestors.  I’ve mentioned some of it here.  It is a bit disturbing to know that this happened here in the United States, just some 150 years ago or so.  But I’ve gotten over it, and so have the members of my faith.  We aren’t on a crusade to have society make right to us all the wrongs that their ancestors did to ours.  We’re not lobbying for our group to receive a special protected class status.  And honestly, when people make fun of Mormons eating funeral potatoes or lime jello with shredded carrots inside, we laugh along with them.  Even though I love funeral potatoes and avoid lime jello with shredded carrots like the disgusting fodder it is, it doesn’t bother me that people would joke about me eating either one.

In other words, I would not be offended if people claimed I ate food stereotypical of Mormons, whether I actually eat it or not.

It seems to me like we need to just relax a little bit, and choose not to be offended.  I’ve found my life is a lot happier when I do that.  How might society be if we all did this?  Seems like that is something worth pursuing.

matt Rants, Sports College Football, Editorial, NFL, Racing

I got an interesting e-mail the other day from Novell:

Please Note: You have been sent this email because you are listed as an administrator of one or more Novell Forge projects.

When Novell Forge was first launched Novell recognized the need for a site dedicated to providing hosting services to a growing number of software development projects, many supporting our open source initiatives. Novell Forge quickly grew and was soon providing these service to nearly 1000 such projects. Demand for new projects has all but disappeared during the past two years while a number of additional project hosting options have begun that can provide a similar set of services to those of Novell Forge.

Now that there are many other options, Novell can turn its focus to other areas and pass the project hosting responsibilities to these other dedicated hosting sites. Novell will be decommissioning the Novell Forge system on December 15, 2009.

This is interesting to me because it is not entirely true.  I should know, because without me there would never have been a Novell Forge.

It’s a bold statement, I know.  It’s one I’m happy to explain.

I came to Novell from IBM in 2000.  It didn’t take long to realize that Novell’s developer story and strategy, or rather the complete lack thereof, was (and still is) a significant weakness in their overall execution.  People buy a computer operating system in large part because of the applications that they can run on it; if a business wants to run a CRM system, they’ll want to be sure that whatever platform they buy will run a CRM suite that is acceptable to them.  This is why having a strong developer strategy is crucial to platform providers, and almost everyone seems to understand this.  Novell certainly should; NetWare owned the x86 server market in the 80’s and early 90’s until Microsoft entered that market.  Initially, the Microsoft offering was not necessarily better than NetWare in terms of stability or performance, but Microsoft definitely outgunned Novell when it came to applications.  It was so much easier to create applications for Microsoft’s platform that their supported portfolio dwarfed Novell’s, and that was a significant key to dethroning Novell’s dominant position in the x86 server market in the mid 90’s.

Anyway, when I came to Novell and learned this, I thought that probably Novell’s Developer Services organization just didn’t know what to do (a mistaken analysis, I later learned) and if I worked there I could probably fix everything.  I was pretty young, arrogant, and naive then.  But in 2002 I was presented an opportunity to work in Developer Services and I took it.

One of the first things I was asked to do was to provide support to customers programming to eDirectory.  I decided to try to learn more about how to do this the same way our third-party developers would, by using the resources that were available online.  I found what appeared to be our authoritative how-to-program-to-eDirectory tutorial, got most of the way through my sample app, and got stuck.  Finally I started asking questions.  I quickly learned that everything I’d been doing was wrong; the authoritative documentation was incorrect.  It used an out-of-date and deprecated API and was no longer considered best practice.  It was some two or three years out of date, but hadn’t been changed yet because changing the documentation was just too painful.

I felt this situation was unacceptable.  We needed the freedom to create an abundance of rich and helpful developer content and to have it published and updated freely and frequently.  We needed to be able to do this without going through drawn-out and tedious approval processes and staging phases for even minor edits.  We needed to be able to continuously deliver not only whitepapers but tutorials and sample applications.  I felt that what was needed was a complete overhaul of Novell’s developer site, converting it into a web application where administrators (Novell Developer Services employees) could update the content and have complete control over what information was being provided to our developer community.

I discussed this with a colleague and my manager, and then we called a formal meeting to discuss this proposal.  I think there were four Developer Services employees in the room.  As we discussed the reasons to do this, other advantages surfaced.  A key issue was that, in Novell’s then-existing developer forums, many Novell developers were already contributing to solving each other’s problems, including answering each other’s questions and even sharing code, from small snippets to complete applications.  We realized that instead of top-down support flowing from company to customer, what our customers really preferred was community support with Novell as an active participant.  As we discussed this, one of my colleagues suggested that instead of writing the web app I suggested, we should do a project hosting site, like SourceForge.  Such a site would allow us to participate as a community with our users to exchange sample code, documentation, tutorials, and other content.  Novell Forge was born.

As we began to socialize the idea, we found out that a separate group within Novell had been tasked with creating a project hosting site for internal company use.  When we both became aware of each other’s goals, the synergies were obvious and it seemed apparent that we should try to coordinate our efforts.  Interestingly, we had human resources to give to the project but lacked funding for capital expenses; the other group had capital expense budget but lacked human resources.  Ultimately we agreed that, as my team developed the Novell Forge solution, we would also develop an internal-use version of the site to meet the goals of this team; in exchange, they would help us to get the hardware we needed to host Novell Forge.

Around the time Novell Forge was launched and completed, a number of people involved directly or indirectly from that team claimed credit for having launched Novell Forge.  Some of them were quite handsomely rewarded by the company, presumably at least in part due to their claimed credit for the site.  Others still claim in public that they are responsible for the site even though they had absolutely nothing to do with the conceptualization, proposal, approval, or implementation.

Meanwhile, those of us who did come up with the idea, who did make the business case and get the approval and deliver the site, well, we pretty much had to settle for a brief pat on the back from Novell.  Or did we even get that?  Anyway.

Novell Forge, despite its pretty lame name and humble beginnings, was actually quite well received by the press.  It earned kudos for Novell from Dave Kearns of NetworkWorld, which was not exactly easy to come by.  And as Novell tried to reinvent itself with an open source focus, purchasing such open source companies as Ximian and SUSE Linux, the existence of Novell Forge was frequently cited as evidence that Novell was serious about an open source strategy (example).  Interest in the site grew quickly and it soon hosted over 1000 external projects, as stated in the e-mail I quoted above.  My team was excited about the traction the site was gaining.  We had many, many ideas for how to grow the site and make it an even more useful tool for software developers.  We had more work to do than time to do it, and it was neat to feel like what we were doing had an impact to Novell.

Even though Novell didn’t seem to care about it.

Oddly, in spite of what my team thought was a pretty obvious success, we could not get approval for funding to continue to promote the site.  The team was gradually reduced in size, again and again.  When people would leave, their vacancies would languish unfilled until that position was eventually lost.  The team was instructed to not develop the site but instead to work on undefined new work in other undefined areas, wasting many person-years of development effort.  The community could sense Novell’s lack of investment and they lost interest.  Novell Forge became a laughing stock.  It was used as evidence of what a company does when they “just don’t get” open source, when it was ironically used as evidence of Novell’s good faith not too long before.

Things finally came to the point where there was only one employee assigned to maintain the site, along with other unrelated duties (I, and the rest of the team, had by now been reassigned to different projects).  Novell Forge was completely unsupported by Novell’s IT group, leaving instead the support of the site to this one individual.  I recall an occasion where the site went down over the weekend and was out for a couple of days.  It was obvious that the site was in demand, because users made Novell aware of the outage quite quickly.  However, Novell was not willing to pay for 24/7 support for the site, so instead of being brought back online right away, the site was down for the entire weekend until that resource came in to work the next Monday.  My manager brought this to the attention of our team with the insistence that we address it.  He stated that from that point on, that one employee would be the primary off-hours maintenance person for the site, and I would be the backup.

I then asked if Novell was going to start reimbursing me for my cell phone bill.  He said no.  I asked if they were going to buy me an additional cell phone, pay that bill, and also pay me extra to carry that additional phone.  He said no.  He said they would just list my personal cell number in the emergency contact list, and would call it if there were an emergency.  I stated that in that case I maintained the right to not answer.  He stated that I would have to answer, that it was my assignment.  I claimed that Novell could not require me to answer my personal cell phone if I’m the one paying the bill.  I then reminded him that in Novell’s support organization, at least at that time, people that were expected to respond 24/7 had their cell phone bill paid by Novell, were paid an additional amount to be on call, and were paid an additional amount if they actually took a call and worked that call during off hours.  I said, “If the site is important to Novell, that is what Novell should do.  If the site is important, it should be important enough that Novell is willing to pay in order to maintain uptime and keep our customers satisfied.”

Novell was not willing to pay.

I shortly moved on to a different team within Novell, and the other guy left the company altogether.  I’m not sure who has been maintaining the site since then.

What Novell chooses to do with their money and their human resources is their business.  This isn’t meant as a criticism; I don’t claim to have the right experience to criticize their decision to strangle Novell Forge to death.  This is simply meant as a statement of fact, and the facts are pretty clear:

• You get what you pay for.
• Novell did not pay for Novell Forge by giving due reward and recognition to those who truly brought this idea to the company.
• Novell did not pay for Novell Forge by feeding its success with additional funding, promotion, and development.
• Novell did not pay for Novell Forge by giving it the kind of support and maintenance that its customers expected.
• The customers of Novell Forge were initially enthusiastic, but grew to sense the lack of commitment by the company and thus stopped participating.
• Novell Forge died as a result.

Novell Forge may be planned for decommission this December, but it died years ago.  And don’t think you can fool me, Novell.  Novell Forge did not die because of lack of interest by the user community.  Novell Forge died because you did not care about it.  Whether that was a good decision or not is not for me to decide, but please, Novell, at least be honest with your community.  We did not kill Novell Forge — you did.

UPDATE:  Dan Reese, a member of my team back then, corroborated this in his blog.

matt Rants Career, Editorial, Interesting, Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Shameless Self-Promotion, Software Development, SUSE

I joined my first frequent flyer program when I started working for IBM. Before then I did not really do any business travel. But when I first went to IBM I had to travel to New York just a couple of months later, and I joined the United Airlines frequent flyer program, since I was working in Boulder, and DIA is a United hub.

When I got back from New York, I had somewhere around 4000 miles in my account. Not “points” or “credits” – miles. I did some quick math and figured, “Gee, 4000 miles is enough for both Amber and I to fly round trip to Las Vegas! Let’s go!” So I called United to schedule the trip, at which point they carefully explained to me how stupid I was, because everyone knows you need at least 25000 miles to fly anywhere at all, and what was wrong with me anyway.

One day, I will meet the person who came up with this dumb scheme, and then I will spend the rest of my life in prison. Just kidding. I figure the jury will probably side with me.

Not long after this, I left IBM for Novell, and I also left those precious miles behind as I moved to Utah, where there is a Delta hub, and we are free to bestow upon United Airlines the loathing they deserve. I got a frequent flyer account with Delta instead. But I just wasn’t getting the miles. Traveling once or twice a year to San Francisco or Boston was just not doing the job.

Then one day my boss came and told me he needed me to go to Bangalore. Bwa-ha-ha-ha! At long last! A trip to Bangalore will accumulate nearly 25000 miles in a single trip! That’ll show ‘em!

I’ll tell you what – anyone who has to fly clear to Bangalore and back deserves a free flight.

So I had this nice little balance of, I think it was, 29000 miles. And then it was 30000. And then it was 32000. And all this time I could never actually get a chance to use the miles, because where am I going to fly by myself?

Two trips to Seattle this year bumped me up to 38000 exactly. My mom said if I ever went to Seattle again and wanted to take Amber, she’d watch the kids. And then my new boss at Microsoft asked me to go to TechReady in Seattle. All the stars aligned! I was finally going to get to use my miles!

Ah, if only it were so easy. I logged into Delta’s website to buy Amber’s ticket. What a shocker – the flight I needed Amber to take to come with me cost not 25000 miles, but 40000.

40000. And I had 38000.

I saw a link that said, “Transfer points from another rewards program.” One of the participating programs was the Starwood Preferred Guest program, which I’m also a member of, because the W hotels rule. It said that Starwood points convert 1 for 1 into Delta miles, so I logged into my Starwood account, and lo and behold, I had just under 2300 Starwood points! Hurrah!

Starwood told me you must transfer a minimum of 2500 points. Bummer.

I saw another link that said, “Purchase miles.” I did the calculation and saw that I could buy those 2000 miles for only about $60. The only bad thing was it said it could take up to 72 hours for the miles to be credited to my account – and I needed to leave in 70. I called Delta, to see if I could just buy the miles over the phone, and then book the flight. Alas, they could not do anything about it – 72 hours! Amazing – they are powerless!

The Delta rep suggested another approach. “Sign up for the Delta American Express card,” she said. “After you make your first purchase, your account is immediately credited with 20000 miles. You could sign up for the card today, get the card number, make an online purchase, get your 20000 miles, and then buy the flight with miles.” Ooh, that is a good idea.

So I had her transfer me to American Express. They also explained, “Yes, if you sign up, once you make your first purchase with the card, your Delta SkyMiles account will be immediately credited with 20000 miles.” Sweet! I signed up over the phone for the card. After I got done, the American Express rep said to me, “Your card should be there in about three weeks.” I said, “Okay. Can you please give me the card number now, so I can make a purchase with it today.”

“Uh, I can’t do that,” she replied.

“Well, I need to get those miles today, to use to book a flight, so I was told I could get the number and buy something online today, and get the miles.”

“Well, I can’t do that,” she explained. “And even if I could, you would not actually see those miles or be able to use them for about 6-8 weeks.”

This is a new definition of “immediately” that I am not familiar with. (However, now that I am aware of it, I plan to use it often. Amber: “Matt, will you please change Oakley’s diaper?” Me: “Sure babe, I’ll do that immediately.”)

Anyway, I got approved for the card, but I still was 2000 miles short. There was no way for me to book the flight with the 38000 miles and cover the difference. I had to take one flight in order to be in Seattle in time for a mandatory meeting, but the only way for me to put her on that flight was to pay cash. So I had to book her on a different flight, which meant she would fly out of Salt Lake four hours after I did.

Lame, Delta – lame.

matt Rants Career, Microsoft, Novell, Rants, Travel

Last weekend we had some visiting family at our house which was a load of fun.  Of course, the day before they came, I had to ask them whether they planned to eat at our home.

I have to ask this question because my aunt is my mom’s sister, so there is a chance that she will be like my mom.  My parents have a series of unwritten personal rules about travel.  They are not aware that they have these rules and so they can’t explain them to you.  I had to figure them out by observation.  Some of them include:

• You cannot drive more than 10 minutes without licorice.
• No visit may last longer than the time required to get there.
• Never drive at night.
• Never sleep at anyone else’s house.

Fortunately we do not live very far from my parents; otherwise, they would never, ever be able to visit.

Another rule is:

• Never eat anyone else’s food.

This rule took a while to figure out.  It was only after a number of parental visits, where we would plan a big meal and buy the supplies and prepare something delicious with enough for two extra adults and they would refuse to eat it, that we began to understand that this was a rule.

Finally my dad helped clarify things for me.  One day when they visited I asked if they would like to stay for dinner and my dad really said (no, I’m not kidding):  “No, we do not want to eat your food.”

To which I say, to each his own.  And also, more for me.  And also, your loss, because my wife makes foods of pure delectitude.  But at least now I know the real reason – they simply do not want to eat anything that we owned right up to the time it was served to them.

And this is why I had to ask.  They could have had some obscure, unwritten, subconscious rule about eating our food, like my parents do.  But apparently, our visitors of last week don’t have this rule.  Instead, it appears their rule is borrowed from Ted Theodore Logan:  “Party on, dudes!”  We look forward to having them come again.

matt Rants Introspection, Rants

And by that I mean, the interaction is dumb, not the user.  Since I was the user, I think that goes without saying.

Anyway, earlier this week AMEX sent me a survey request, since I used their tool at work to book travel to Seattle last week.  And since my back kept me awake all night before, I had a low tolerance for dumbness.  So I got this survey, and I thought I would share the answers.

Moral:  Don’t ask dumb questions.

I hope it helps them.

matt Rants Rants, Software Development

Wow, sometimes the pressure of my job is almost more than any reasonable person can stand.  And I’m feeling it now, because I just got a new boss.

I’m kinda like Michael Scott in this way, and many other ways.  For example, I’m incredibly funny.  And all of my employees really, really love me.  And I just got a new boss.  Unlike Michael Scott, I don’t have any plans to leave the company.

But I did stress out about this, in seriousness.  I mean, I’m so much like Michael Scott, probably my new boss would be just like Michael Scott’s new boss is, which is to say, a hardcore, emotionless freak.  Would he dislike me?  I mean, it is unthinkable – but who could dislike Michael Scott?  His new boss!

So I was totally freaking out by the time I got to work today, the day my new boss started work.  Oddly, my new boss isn’t much like Michael Scott’s.  In fact, he seems pretty cool.  He didn’t even get mad at me for coming to work late today.

No, what created the pressure was that Zach told Chris, my new boss, that he should read my blog.  Because, he said, it’s funny.

OHNO!!!

I have to think of something funny!  Something funny to put in my blog!  Today!  Under pressure!  Zach told Chris my blog is funny!  If I don’t type something funny, then he won’t know how funny I am!

Lame.  Zach, that was lame of you to put me in that situation, especially since you don’t have a blog of any consequence.  I mean, I’ve talked about my other boss, Luis, who wasn’t exactly my boss but is still my VP, on this blog.  He doesn’t actually know about my blog though so he never reads it.  But now surely Chris will read my blog since Zach told him it is so funny.  However, to be clear, I do not blame Chris, my new boss and the person in charge of my employment and livelihood, for this situation at all.  Not at all!  Chris is the smartest, hippest, coolest person I know on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of Luis, in case he reads this blog also!  And highly respected!  And smart!  Did I say smart?

Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it now.  I have to think of something funny to write about.

Ah.  I have it.  I will tell the story about the funniest movie I ever saw, in college.  It deserves its own post.

matt Rants Humor, Mozy, Rants