The building in Bellevue I was working in just had an emergency and evacuated everyone.

Tons of firemen and emergency services people running around. Time for lunch.

Need something built? Problem solved?

You can have it done:
1. Quick
2. Cheap
3. Correct

Pick any two.

The above adage is something that gets brought up pretty regularly in the consulting world. Along the way, I've added a few more elements to flesh out some more guiding principles about what it takes to maximize deliver along all three fronts. These are in no particular order.

• If it works, it works. Conceptual isn't relevant. Theory is only interesting if during the discussion, the participants are allowed to drink beer.
• Simplify. There is no code that runs faster than No Code. Use fewer words and as little fine print as possible. If you can't hold the whole thing in your head, it's too complicated. If you need more than one diagram that can be read from a single sheet of paper, you've over done it. If there are more than three If's involved, you need to remove, restate, or reorganize.
• If it isn't written down, it isn't real. If it can't be measured, it can't be written down.
• Measure consistently. When your measures stop moving, then you've stalled and you should kill the [project/idea/initiative/report/product/etc.]. Or you've simply been measuring the wrong things. The later is more likely.
• One voice, one vision. No great idea or product in history was ever conceived by more than three people. If your working group (or decision-making authority) is larger than that, you might as well quit now.
• Intuition rules. You know what you know, don't second-guess. If you don't have an intuitive response, learn more about the subject until you do. Habits and standards always beat new, slick, and fancy when it matters.
• Change consistently. It isn't that you should seek change or avoid change, but accept it when the opportunity presents itself. Whether you go gracefully or kicking and screaming, make sure your reasons are rock-solid, repeatable, and right.
• If you can't change or compete, then compensate. We like to think everyone should be good at everything. Which is complete crap. If you need something done that you aren't good at, get someone better to do it. Don't like doing something? Pay, entice, or swap with someone else. You don't have to be good at everything if your address book is big enough. Stick to what you are good at and surround yourself with people who will compensate for your short-comings (as limited as they may be).
• Going pro? Go big. When you decide to pay someone for their experience or specialized skills or knowledge, choose wisely and don't hesitate to pay well. Then shut up, listen, and learn. There is a sign in the garage that says: Oil Change $10, Oil Change While You Watch $50, Oil Change While You Help $200.
• Kompromise Kills. Don't even start.

It has been a little while since I've been posting, mostly due to it being not quite comfortable for me to type. However, being completely addicted to my daily ingestion of news, trivia, and other related spew from various internet sources I have no shortage of interesting ideas.

The following one was inspired after clicking through the TinyUrl posts of half a dozen major bloggers I follow. They seemed to share a general approach and pattern which sort of stuck in my craw. In my ever expanding exercise of de-mystifying how the magnificent manage to remain so. . . well . . . magnificent, I'm going to share the secrets of the list masters with you now.

In a nut-shell, if you want to create a captivating post, just design a top ten list and then follow these steps to spell it all out for your readers. It's a sure-fire recipe for blog post fame. Here goes . . .

1. Start with the most obvious point first. Keep it simple and short. Something flashy. Something sexy. No big words.
2. The second point should be more under-stated, perhaps even a little vague. Don't give anything important away, you need them to keep reading.
3. After two good points, the third should really stir the point. Something sure to incite a response is best here. Blatant offense is good if you can handle it.
4. So that people don't think you're closed-minded make the next point at the other end of the spectrum. You want people to think you've really considered this crap and put a lot of thought into the order of your points.
5. Now that you are over the hump, it's time to add filler. They've read this far already so start shoving in any of your points that don't really fit anywhere else.
6. To keep reminding them that you've really thought about the contents of this spew this would be the place to add references to other like-minded posts, authors, or books.
7. Before we start the conclusion you should try reiterating the first couple of points again. If you lump a couple together with run-on sentences it might seem like you're introducing new material.
8. Here is where you start redefining words, concepts, and introducing catch-phrases and "action items". Make sure you are ready to deliver the "call to action" that's coming up.
9. This is pretty much your last chance to sound like an authority, so really step it up here. Maybe try shifting into formal prose or future-tense. If all else fails you can always talk at length about the amazing results people will get if they adopt "the list".
10. You have a couple of choices for the conclusion. Witty remarks showcasing your casual humor are always appreciated. On the other hand, something self-absorbed and overly personal will often inspire interesting comments from the readers who might mistakenly think their opinions will change the contents of the list.

Have you ever heard the expression "Let's get down to brass tacks."? It's generally used in a business or negotiation setting in reference to the details of a deal. Presumably from the days when things like luggage, horse shoes, leatherworks, cobbling and furniture, used tacks in their construction. To refer to the brass tacks meant the little items that would hold the whole thing together. They signified the quality, care, and luxuriousness that went into its creation. All in all, a well worn sentiment in full use today at a more conceptual level.

This post isn't about wheeling and dealing, negotiation or the art of influence. Read that sort of stuff here.

This post is about how my God and my faith in him so often lets me address even the biggest issues and short-comings in my life with a simple review of the "brass tacks". Let me explain:

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
-- 1 Corinthians 1: 26-29

Throughout His Word we find stunning examples of how He changes the rules of this harsh world that bind our minds. They usually always share the same mark, "But God". That is all it takes to see the world anew, to be refreshed and freed and made whole. Those two words are the light showing us how He breaks through the stalemates and posturing and questioning and doubt and impossibility. Because He is God. He can. He does. He has. He will.

He said to them: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?"
-- Acts 10:28-29

It doesn't matter what we are faced with. He doesn't care what zany predicament or embarrassing situation we have gotten ourselves into. It doesn't matter if we are shiny, happy, people just stuck in a rut that isn't glorifying God. At any time, in all circumstances, if we call on Him in faith He will move. If our desire is truly for His will, then our reaching hands are grasped every time.

Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.
-- 2 Samuel 2:14

In the last few weeks I've been struggling, but more important I've been watching people close to me struggle. My friend who is stuck in mediocrity hidden amongst flash and distraction. He cries out and screams "What am I supposed to do?" into the silent void. I only weep behind my eyes and pray with him. He won't be hearing brass tacks from me, we aren't close enough anymore I guess.

The downside is how powerful those words can be if you can just work them into the conversation. Like the twist at the end of great movie, those seven keystrokes change everything that has happened and opens the way for anything to happen.

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. 15He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.
-- 2 Samuel 2:14

Even in my family my frustration with failing to influence increases exponentially each incident. They say they reach, and want to, but they won't do beyond the theory.

In all this winding footpath that is your life, each step must be deliberate. Without those conscious choices to celebrate and deviate and recuperate and recreate and sometimes just buckle down and do, we meander and wander letting aimlessly and despair creep in. Our companions of Worry and Frustration comfort and console us onto the softer path as we casually, care-freely careen over the cliffs and into the caverns of chaos. And then we ask "Why?" It is then we have the presence of mind to question our state and fate. Only then we realize that at every step our indecision and indeliberation made our choices plainly for us. And we accepted. We kept plodding, broken and bowed.

Take this time now to grab hold to faith. Inject a little "But God" into your speech. When you think you are out of options remember all those times the story changed with only two little words. You don't have to stay on the softer path. You can halt the free-fall. You can be broken, but God will heal you. You can be flounder, but God will bring vision and light to your world.

It works for me.

When I let it.

My life is usually pretty simple. I travel full-time so I have to stay pretty light. Which means I don't collect nearly as much stuff and junk as at one point I was known too.

Okay, so I still end up with stacks of books everywhere I go, but books are so sacred that surely we can over look that one. And music, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 thousand songs taking up around 400GB on my external drive. Again, music is a sacrosanct virtue so it shouldn't count, right?

The hardest thing for me are gadgets. Trips to Best Buy and such are torture for me. I see the beautiful flat screens and WII's and Xbox's and so on. I start to sweat a little and my mouth gets dry. Then I usually see a nerdy looking sales person and I snap right out of it. I have no home so no Blue Ray player for me.

When it comes to what other people can't live without it is interesting what ranks highest. In a poll from last summer men valued sex 5 times more than chocolate and 4 times more than alcohol. On the other hand women ranked sex and chocolate the same. This was a serious marketing survey. Hmmph.

As someone currently Celibate By Choice (CBC) these stats don't really amaze me. Well, the difference between sex and alcohol is a little surprising. Without the alcohol there would be much less sex, wouldn't there?

There were some other interesting statistics but nothing that wasn't equally obvious.

How would you rank 'em?

This week I had the chance to discuss using Team Foundation Server in a large team setting specifically as concerns Build and Deployment.

As I was organizing my thoughts to answer a question about check-in policies, merging and branching, and so forth and I kept coming back to my guiding principles:

• The Build is the build. There is only one Build.
  
• Build anywhere you like, as much as you like, but it only counts if it is in the Build.
  
• If it doesn't work in the Build, it doesn't work.
  

Now I am certainly familiar with having to manage simultaneous release schedules, juggling branches, and so forth, but that doesn't mean I like it. I absolutely support the mainline concept. Much like the Highlander, when it comes to the build, there can be only one.

We could argue that there are many techniques to allow these fancy behaviors but that doesn't make it okay. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. Experience tells us that if you have a big team, you can't afford to have anyone interrupt the flow of the system. This includes breaking the build, causing failures of critical tests, etc. When more people or organizations are involved, the cost increases.

In the agile communities there is a push towards Continuous Integration (CI) which is really an attempt to implement the Only One Build concept as an ideal. When you can do it, you should. When the amount of code grows or the number of loose connections increases this can be cost-prohibitive, primarily in time. Compiling 1.8 million lines of code is going to take a little while regardless of how big the build machine might be. And when it comes to running Build Verification Tests, these problems are compounded. Especially if you are using disparate services that are loosely coupled.

The idea behind CI is to bring compilation and integration issues to the attention of the team as soon as possible thereby minimizing distribution. Going beyond that are tools that would actually test code entering the system before check-ins occur and reject or accept them based on the results. With TFS policies this is fairly straightforward to set up and an open source effort has begun to bring this to life. You can find out more about this effort at http://www.opengauntlet.org/.

If you prefer to wait until this functionality is built-in, you'll be glad to know that the next product release most likely will include a similar feature with a working title of "Gated Checkin".

When you are listening to a song and you really can't stand just a part of it but you love the rest?

I'm listening to Somebody Wake Me Up by The Veronica's. The opening is just garbage but the rest of the song is excellent and well produced.

Makes me wonder what the heck was going on in the studio those days.

The last couple of days I've been giving a friend some advice as he tries to flesh out a startup. Having spent a decade or so playing in that arena with some good successes (and even more valuable failures) to my credit, I'm doing what I can to make his transition into the ranks of the entrepreneur less volatile than mine. From time to time, I use this place to spew thoughts that seemed to be helpful to him and might be useful for others.

In the technology workspace there are a couple stereotypes that have evolved. The first is the Developer. The technical guy who solves engineering problems, makes the impossible a reality, and knows way more details about how things work than most of us will ever care to acknowledge. The best ones are often very temperamental, strong-willed, and emotionally volatile. Their opinions and decisiveness, an un-erring determination of their own correctness or failings, and unflagging curiosity are their hallmarks. These traits are what spur them to the feats of creative genius and startling leaps of intuition which are why they are tolerated. As a sweeping generalization, the more valuable and miraculous they become the harder they are to manage.

The other major stereotype is the Manager. The general purpose resource who can direct activities, plans details and contributions, and makes the decisions. The best ones align themselves with contributors and seamless funnel opportunities and remove roadblocks in their relentless pursuit of specific outcomes. They are cheerleaders and priests, mothers and big brothers. They protect their people when necessary but make the hard choices on who to throw under the bus when necessary. Being social and flexible, easy to speak and quick to learn are key traits. As a sweeping generalization, great Managers sell themselves and their people, and act as information insulators.

In the startup world today you need both types of people. If you are somehow able to find both in the same person, hire them immediately. If for some reason you can't hire them, send them my way and I will.

The babies and I had a great time at The Childrens Museum.

The Garage was really fun, but nothing beats the messy chaos of the Clay Studio!

My baby was wearing the coolest finger socks this morning. Lime green, no less.

Lincoln Square is such a hip environment packed with great shops and fun things to do. I need to get a job on Seattle's Eastside so I can take better advantage.

The condos in this place are fabulous!

As someone who travels full-time as part of my career, I am no stranger airports, hotels, taxis, and rental cars. Few things stick in my craw as much as the way the rental cars fleece their patrons. Except perhaps the insurance industry.

My recent bout with Hertz just really got to me. The rental car had serious problems so it had to be returned. The lady on the phone was extremely short with me as if my trouble with the car somehow inconvenienced her. When trying to figure out the best way to handle it she just said take it back to the airport. Which by this point is 30 miles away in the opposite direction I need to head. No alternatives, no sympathy even, just take it back. She didn't even offer to call the facility and ensure they'd be ready to exchange my vehicle.

So I make my way back to the airport and lacking any other information proceed to the rental car return location. Which as it turns out is only for returning cars, not for exchanging them. Don't ask me what the difference might be, they couldn't explain. Further, they never offered to explain where the heck I should have gone to do an exchange either.

While filling up the gas tank, I took the time to read the contract terms and noticed that had I not returned the car full of gas they would have charged me $7.49 a gallon. I had to read it twice to be sure I understood. Yep, more than DOUBLE what it would cost me to fill the tank up! Or I could purchase an entire tank of gas at 10 cents a gallon cheaper than gas on the street. Evidently they have decided it is okay to bend over their patrons simply because they can.

Either you save a meager few cents but make up for it by buying an entire tank of gas, or you do it yourself, or they'll rape you when you return. Why? They obviously have a sunk cost already in they guy who will fill it up if I return it less than full. With the volume of cars, surely the get a discount on the fuel as well. They can certainly continue to make a profit by simply performing this service for a small fee instead of the bitch-slap of more than twice the cost of gas! Why not simply charge me a few cents more per gallon? If they can offer me an entire tank for twenty cents per gallon less, why not charge me twenty cents per gallon more for a partial tank?

Simply put, it is because they can. Because rather than be a good company that provides great service for solid value they choose to be an evil company that provides minimal service for exorbitant fees. They might not have to kill the golden goose, but that doesn't mean they can't choke it a little and give it a flogging from time to time.

Argh.

I went with the kids to Flagstaff to play in the snow. Dustin and CJ really rocked but I think Thomas stole the show.

More pictures and videos online later.

The holidays are fast wrapping up and it is at this time of year, while reveling in the litter of prior annum's carcass, that many attempt to clarify new directions and choices for the coming one. We politely call them resolutions and listen to them almost tongue-in-cheek.

It seems that as a Body we are struggling to be resolute about anything these days.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
-- 1 Peter 5:6-10

I'm sure you've heard someone talk about their resolutions this year, and then almost immediately speak about which ones they'll break first. Which of these serious intentions they'll let fall to the wayside . You might even be one of those people who writes a list and files it away in a drawer. Not that there is anything wrong with writing down your intentions and declaring your choices.

Like most things, the basic idea sounds attractive and helpful. What could be wrong with trying to make improvements? Surely nothing. But like all good deviations it isn't the core that leads you astray it’s the pretty paper it's wrapped with.

Discipline, servanthood ,and faithfulness are not choices to be listed out and checked once a year. Change doesn't happen in that gloriously reflective mood so easily induced by turkey dinners, catching up with family over football, or after a midnight champagne toast. Real change is incremental. It is practical and hurts. It usually makes you feel worse before it makes you feel better. Think of it like exercise, or a savings account, or a 14-hour flight to Australia.

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. -- 1 Corinthians 2:2

Don't get me wrong, I applaud taking time to reflect. Self-assessment and personal growth planning is very important and necessary. But the convenient timelines are too often a slippery slope. They allow us to start our mindset off on the wrong foot. The clock isn't reset every YEAR, it resets every WEEK, every DAY, every HOUR…you get the picture. When we focus only on the big decisions, we ignore the little ones that truly define our character and being. We give ourselves a built-in escape route. After all, no one ever keeps all their New Years resolutions, do they?