Category Archives: Life

mini-cases: keeping the lights on

Posted on September 8, 2010 by mark

You know your job is in trouble when you can’t log on to the Internet, and the Internet Service Provider tells you that the bill hasn’t been paid in months. Such was my situation at a small government contracting company. … Continue reading →

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mini-cases: more movement means more mistakes

Posted on September 6, 2010 by mark

I used to have the power to email over 250,000 people at my fingertips. We weren’t spammers; far from it: we were publishing a successful newsletter to all those subscribers, and had quite a few who were actually paying for … Continue reading →

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mini-cases: taking stock

Posted on September 3, 2010 by mark

It’s not unusual that writers occasionally need to do fact checking on the stories they write, and when your “stories” consist of stock recommendations, it’s even more important to keep your ducks in a row. Such was the situation at … Continue reading →

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upcoming entries: mini-cases

Posted on September 2, 2010 by mark

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be doing a series of entries on my (attempted) usual MWF update schedule: Mini-Cases. In school, virtually every class used the “case method” of instruction, where we would use short narratives about business situations as … Continue reading →

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wait to decide

Posted on August 30, 2010 by mark

Today’s entry is late, which is appropriate, because it has to do with waiting to make decisions. There’s a school of thought that says to commit to a course of action as early as possible; this goes hand-in-hand with the … Continue reading →

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one trip to the buffet

Posted on August 27, 2010 by mark

A few weeks ago, I wrote an entry which touched on a phenomenon I call the “Buffet Paradox“, which prompted a question from my old friend Alan: Curious about your thoughts on avoiding the buffet approach to begin with. Ive … Continue reading →

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you can’t save the princess

Posted on August 23, 2010 by mark

I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately about goals. I think that a lot of that stems from working on a product that’s built solely to measure progress: one of the first parts of the implementation is talking through … Continue reading →

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two cooks, two courses

Posted on August 20, 2010 by mark

I accidentally invented a new Sloppy Joe recipe last night. I was making turkey tacos–one of my favorite meals–and I decided to get rid of a few mostly-empty jars of hot pepper rings and jalepenos that were taking up space … Continue reading →

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proving yourself

Posted on July 29, 2010 by mark

Somebody told me a long time ago–and I hated hearing it then, and I hate hearing it now, and I hate knowing it’s true–is that you can never stop proving yourself. You never “win.” It’s never over. You prove yourself, … Continue reading →

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40 hours

Posted on July 28, 2010 by mark

Now that I primarily work by the hour, I’m stunned at just how difficult it is to get to a full 40 billable hours. “Billable” basically means that I’m actively working for a client. That is, I’m writing code, or … Continue reading →

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