Board games and logical thinking: Settlers of Catan

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During my recent blogging vacation (otherwise known as March) I developed quite an addiction and it’s all Wired magazine’s fault.  I’ve spent the last couple months playing increasingly more difficult board games with my 7 year old in an attempt to let her have a fun way to develop her math skills.  We started with Life, which has larger and fewer bills to keep track of, before we moved onto Monopoly and increased the complexity a bit.

That’s when my April issue of Wired arrived and introduced me to Settlers of Catan.  I quickly and hopelessly became addicted and I’m pretty convinced that a return to logical based games helped me catch a mistake at work.

My alma mater and the wrong distribution list

Image by ken mccown via Flickr

Go Tritons! (and take the Padres with you)

In a widely reported story yesterday, it was revealed that the UC San Diego admissions office accidentally sent acceptance emails to candidates it rejected.  They set up distribution lists for both groups of candidates and got mixed up on which message went to which group.  Admissions director Mae Brown was forced to send out a second email admitting the error, “In all humility, I ask that you please accept my apologies and those of the University of California, San Diego . . . and know that we continue to wish you success in your educational pursuits.”  Ouch.

So any email mistakes I make (and I’ll reveal another next week) is all about my pedigree 8).

Classic Nerd Guru: Just when you think you’re getting good . . .

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Note: This article originally ran on February 7, 2008,  and is slightly edited for reprint in an effort to share previously published ideas with new readers.

There have been times in my career when I think I’m getting pretty good at what I’m doing for a living and then . . . I find somebody that is way, way better. Sometimes it is somebody that is a lot better in a totally unrelated field, but either way, I tend to have one of two reactions to this realization: give up or get inspired.

On a much, much less important scale I experienced this sensation recently while tinkering with one of my Christmas presents from my wife: a Rubik’s cube. As a child of the 80s, I had one during my Junior High School years when they were first popular and got pretty decent at it. With my new present in hand this past December, I found I remembered the basic moves for solving the first three layers (a top face and the first two rows of the faces perpendicular to that top face), but that I needed some help with the last two layers.

How to manage geeks (send this to your manager)

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I once joined a work group that was formed completely from scratch.  When we got together in a face-to-face meeting for the first time, we did the typical round of  introductions during which the following was said by a technically inclined friend of mine:

“Hi, my name is Dave and I’m a high maintenance employee.”

Are those of us with good technical skills harder to manage?  Can we be more demanding?  Are we high maintenance employees?

Yes, yes we are.

Progressive enhancement & Disney’s Bolt 3D

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When creating a product, do you design for your power users and figure out a way to scale down to the larger, less sophisticated audience?  Or maybe is it best to build for the masses and figure out how to upgrade to satisfy your more gung ho constiutiants?  A third option still is to build separate experiences for each group, but that costs more.

What do you do?

My annual Walt Disney World pilgramage this year included a trip on the Disney Cruise Line and much to the delight of my 7 year old daughter, we not only got to see High School Musical 3 again as part of the package, but we also got to see Bolt in a state-of-the art, crystal clear Disney Digital 3D theater.  Some things I saw during that 3D showing made me think that the movie industry is facing these exact choices these days as they try to distinguish the traditional theater experience from what you might have at home while they struggle with inconsistant equipment quality.  Maybe your industry is too.

WWD: The Borderless World

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Celine Rogue has a nice article over at Web Worker Daily today entitled “Web Working in a Borderless World”, which covers special challenges facing international teams.  Having worked with people from all over the world myself, I agree with her ideas on paying attention to cultural differences (she cites the expectation of Fillipino collegues to have some chit chat time at the beginning of a meeting) and being sensitive to time zone.

Both are absolutely true, but the idea about the importance of culture is an especially good one.  Accidentally offending someone by not paying attention to cultural nuances is an easy trap to fall into.  Plus, you can’t exactly ask someone “So, how does someone from your culture conduct business?” without looking like an idiot.  So how do you figure that out?  It’s a tough one.  Pay careful attention to how people are behaving and if you notice something that is unusual to you, the culprit might be a cultural difference.

As I’ve written before, you have to be careful about not using slang in those situations too. We Americans are typically more guilty of this than anyone else. Also, just because everybody is speaking English doesn’t mean everybody is speaking the same English.  The concept of time, when certain things are supposed to be happening in the scop of your project or issue, need particular attention.

DZone/JavaLobby: The Software Sales Pitch – Choosing Wisely

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The nice folks over at DZone and JavaLobby were kind enough to run an article I wrote about choosing 3rd party software.  An exerpt:

“It’s a common tale:  Some business need arises for capability your IT
department doesn’t currently offer but there are multiple commercial
alternatives available and maybe even an open source solution that can
help you fill your gap.  Then again, you could always write the thing
yourself.

Build? Buy? Both?

Here are some ideas that might help you decide.”

For the rest, hop on over there and take a gander.

 

Impressing your friends as a motivator for excellence

Competition breeds excellence. Any introductory economics class will tell you that when there is competition in the marketplace, the consumer wins as different companies vie for your attention by building better products. Similarly, your career can win if you can find somebody with similar skills and goals to push you into being better than you thought you could.

Busted! My boss caught me meeting multi-tasking

“Doh! I got caught,” was the first thought that ran through my head.  Thursday, my boss was running a meeting with her staff of 5 where we were practicing an operational review we were collectively presenting to her boss, our Vice President, the next day.  It’s been a long week of 8 hours straight of meetings and I was falling behind a little bit on some other deliverables.

So, yeah, I stopped paying attention and was working on something else.  Then she said, “Pete, what do you think?”

Uh

Er

Um

So you know what I did?  I followed my own advice and plead guilty.

“I’m sorry, you caught me multi-tasking.  Can you repeat the question?”

It was indeed repeated with no tone of anger, I gave my answer and the meeting continued.

Sometimes, doing more than one thing at once is a necessity but, more times than not, admitting your full attention was elsewhere when you get busted for it is the way to go.

Employer-employee loyalty part 2: LaDainian Tomlinson

What loyalty, if any, does your employee owe you?  How about the other way around?  Last August, I asked this question as it related to Brett Favre and his he’s retired, he’s not, he is, he’s the starter, he’s not, he’s traded to the Jets ordeal.

You can say one thing about team sports: events repeat themselves.

In the wake of their recent playoff exit, grumblings about the future of San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson reminded me a whole lot of the Farve saga.  So much so, it made me want to ask the question again:

Is there such a thing as loyalty between an employer and an employee?