Carrot vs. stick... A new study (which I can't help but be skeptical of, simply because it's a psychological experiment!) backs up my own experience as a manager: to modify behavior, punishment works better than reward.
In all my regretted years as a manager and executive, I tried a great many ways to motivate my employees to do what I wanted them to do. Most of these ways were various reward schemes (bonuses, stock options, recognition, etc.).
While these schemes were sometimes effective for a while, they were plagued with problems. The biggest of these problems were that the reward was quickly seen as an entitlement by many people, there was no real general agreement on the criteria for the reward, and a certain class of people (usually about a quarter of them) would immediately start figuring out how to game the reward system to get what they didn't deserve. Every single time, the reward system turned into a management nightmare, and was ineffective anyway. Much time and money was utterly wasted.
On the other hand, I once implemented a remarkably effective punishment system. If any of my ex-employees are reading this blog, all I have to do is say “Mr. Monkey” and they will instantly remember the whole thing. Mr. Monkey was a stuffed monkey with a comically stupid expression on his face. Each week I awarded the monkey to the engineer or technician whom I judged to be the least effective that preceding week. The recipient had to display the monkey on the top of their cubicle wall, and they weren't allowed to hide it. Everybody in the company knew about the monkey, and who had received it – and even why. All this took no work on my part – the news spread by osmosis in moments after each award. I didn't award it for making mistakes – we all do that – but rather for poor work, causing friction on the team, etc. There was only one monkey; I collected it from the previous winner before awarding it to the new winner. My team had 30 to 35 people on it over the period I used the monkey, and nobody wanted to get the monkey. On many occasions I actually heard people refrain from a behavior (say, checking in some horrible code), saying something like “I have to fix this, or I’ll get the monkey!” I never had a problem with people thinking the award was unfair, nor did I have people trying to game the system. It actually worked, over the entire 18 month period I employed it.
As it happened, the job where I used the monkey punishment was the last management or executive role I ever had. I was laid off from that job, and the company failed shortly thereafter. I went from there to a purely engineering job, and never had any opportunity to repeat the experience. I wish now that I had learned the lesson earlier in my career.
I had another experience in the early '80s which should have taught me the lesson. At the time I was an engineer working for a small company in San Diego, with about 200 employees. One of the executives there was nicknamed “The Hammer” because he “brought the hammer down” regularly on misbehaving employees – and it worked. To cite one example he was famous for: he had a rule regarding meeting attendance. If you accepted an invitation to a meeting, you were expected to show up on time. The first time you were late, you got dressed down in front of the entire meeting. The second time you were late, you were fired right then and there. To my knowledge, exactly two employees were fired (one of them a senior manager) – and every meeting at that company started on time. That has never happened to me at any other company I've ever worked at or with. Late-starting meetings are a standing joke everywhere for their tremendous time-wasting. We were all frightened of The Hammer, but somehow I missed the underlying lesson that his methods worked...
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Mark Steyn is back...
Mark Steyn is back ... from whatever evil thing is disturbing his health, and he's got a corker of a piece. It's on the Garland shooting and related topics, and you really should read the whole thing. A paragraph as a teaser:
It'll be a long time before you see "Washington Post Offers No Apology for Attacking Target of Thwarted Attack" or "AP Says It Has No Regrets After Blaming The Victim". The respectable class in the American media share the same goal as the Islamic fanatics: They want to silence Pam Geller. To be sure, they have a mild disagreement about the means to that end - although even then you get the feeling, as with Garry Trudeau and those dozens of PEN novelists' reaction to Charlie Hebdo, that the "narrative" wouldn't change very much if the jihad boys had got luckier and Pam, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer and a dozen others were all piled up in the Garland morgue.
Progress in Paradise...
Progress in Paradise... Still operating under the delusion that our friends were showing up today, yesterday I finished re-doing the electrical outlets and switches in the living areas upstairs. I also repaired a couple of wall-hanging items that had originally been installed with screws-in-wallboard (don't do it, people!) and had since come loose. Debbie decided this was a good moment to do something we'd already planned to do: buy higher quality fixtures for the bathroom. She ordered it all on Amazon, and it will be here next Tuesday. Something tells me I'll turn into a plumber on Wednesday :)
In the afternoon I was feeling lazy, so I went out to the barn and finished the cat-dish holder project I'd started a few days ago. The finished article is in the photos below, sitting our our kitchen cabinet before we took it down to the cattery. I made this entire thing from a single black walnut board, 50" long, 5 ½" wide, and ¾" thick. The top I made by gluing four boards together, with a top layer that had grain at 90° from the bottom layer. While this isn't the best thing aesthetically, it has the advantage of being almost warp-proof. Since this is a water bowl, I figured the wood was practically guaranteed to get wet, so I'd better pay attention to that. I also finished it with a penetrating oil finish, the better to protect the wood in the first place. To get the hole in the middle for the water bowl, I mounted the square glued-up board onto my lathe with a big chuck, and used a parting tool to cut out the center. That was amazingly easy! The legs were a different sort of challenge. You can't really tell from the photos, but they're made from two glued-together boards, this time with parallel grain. I started with a glued up board 8" long, 5½" wide, and 1½" thick. I sawed that down to four pieces, each 3¾" long, and 1½" square in cross-section. I mounted those as spindles in the lathe, and turned them down to the shapes you see here. One thing you can't see: the top of each leg has a ½" diameter tenon that fits into a ½" diameter hole I drilled into the bottom of the flat part to fix each leg. I'm quite happy with the result. Not bad for a starter project, from a single $11 Home Depot board!
In the afternoon I was feeling lazy, so I went out to the barn and finished the cat-dish holder project I'd started a few days ago. The finished article is in the photos below, sitting our our kitchen cabinet before we took it down to the cattery. I made this entire thing from a single black walnut board, 50" long, 5 ½" wide, and ¾" thick. The top I made by gluing four boards together, with a top layer that had grain at 90° from the bottom layer. While this isn't the best thing aesthetically, it has the advantage of being almost warp-proof. Since this is a water bowl, I figured the wood was practically guaranteed to get wet, so I'd better pay attention to that. I also finished it with a penetrating oil finish, the better to protect the wood in the first place. To get the hole in the middle for the water bowl, I mounted the square glued-up board onto my lathe with a big chuck, and used a parting tool to cut out the center. That was amazingly easy! The legs were a different sort of challenge. You can't really tell from the photos, but they're made from two glued-together boards, this time with parallel grain. I started with a glued up board 8" long, 5½" wide, and 1½" thick. I sawed that down to four pieces, each 3¾" long, and 1½" square in cross-section. I mounted those as spindles in the lathe, and turned them down to the shapes you see here. One thing you can't see: the top of each leg has a ½" diameter tenon that fits into a ½" diameter hole I drilled into the bottom of the flat part to fix each leg. I'm quite happy with the result. Not bad for a starter project, from a single $11 Home Depot board!
So last night...
So last night ... as I was about to go to bed, our phone rings. It's our old friend, Jim B. With his wife Michelle, we were expecting him to arrive for a visit today – until he sheepishly told us that he gave us the wrong date by email! He was off by an entire week – they're not due until next Sunday!
When we were in the U.S. Navy together, he was known as “the goat”. There's a reason why he had that nickname :)
When we were in the U.S. Navy together, he was known as “the goat”. There's a reason why he had that nickname :)
Saturday, May 9, 2015
What a sandwich!
What a sandwich! If you're hungry, you should be jealous of the sandwich I'm eating right now. It's made on a bakery bun, asiago cheese and chive flavored. There's beautiful rare roast beef, smoked gouda, perfectly ripe tomato slices, and Duke's mayonnaise.
It'll make your brains fall out!
Duke's mayo is a recent discovery of ours. I've been using Hellmann's (or the western equivalent, Best Foods) for my whole life, and I'd never found the equal before. Something I read online made me try Duke's, and ... it's better! The only mayo I've ever had that beats it is my own homemade mayo, or (just twice) mayo made in a restaurant...
It'll make your brains fall out!
Duke's mayo is a recent discovery of ours. I've been using Hellmann's (or the western equivalent, Best Foods) for my whole life, and I'd never found the equal before. Something I read online made me try Duke's, and ... it's better! The only mayo I've ever had that beats it is my own homemade mayo, or (just twice) mayo made in a restaurant...
It looks like ObamaCare is here to stay...
It looks like ObamaCare is here to stay... The political will to repeal it is fading fast, as is the political will to significantly reform it. Already, the number of voters who think of it as an entitlement is large enough to scare politicians. I think the likelihood is that we will be living with it basically forever.
So what's that going to be like? Megan McArdle looks at the issue, with sobriety. Her conclusion:
So what's that going to be like? Megan McArdle looks at the issue, with sobriety. Her conclusion:
Overall, I think that this is a real potential threat to the future of the insurance market. But as yet, it is only a highly speculative threat. We'll know more as the risk-adjustment programs begin to expire, insurers get more experience in setting rates, and states begin to publish more data on what insurers plan to charge.
Wheatgrass shots...
Most of the kids in the video seem to agree with me :)
CPU jitter for random number generation?
CPU jitter for random number generation? Here's an interesting paper that claims to present a method for generating random numbers by using the “jitter” caused by various elements of modern CPUs interacting in a complex operating system. I skimmed the paper, concentrating on section 5, where the author discusses estimating the entropy of the system. I'm afraid there's too much there that I don't understand for me to make any sort of judgment about the validity of the method.
What the author seems to be asserting is analogous to something anyone can relate to. Imagine you're driving your car 10 miles in heavy traffic, partly on a highway and partly on city streets. You can measure your average speed easily enough, and it will be reasonably consistent from one identical trip to another. However, if you were to measure the instantaneous speed at thousands of points along the way, you'd find lots of variations from the average. Sometimes a slowpoke in front of you will slow you down. Sometimes fortune smiles upon you and there's a mile of open, car-free road in front of you. As you maneuver through traffic, you'll momentarily speed up to pass someone, then slow down to slip back into the traffic pattern. Similarly, your average direction is the same as that of the road, but there will be lots of momentary variations as you change lanes, bobble about in your lane, etc. All those minor variations in speed and direction are – the author asserts – random. There's no pattern to them, and there's no predicting them. Also importantly, a bad guy can't disrupt the randomness. These are all good characteristics of a quality random number generator.
Proving that those generated numbers are truly random is another kettle of fish, though. I'm not sure they've done it. The current system used by UNIX and a number of other operating systems (and cited in the paper) have been shown to be less than excellent under certain circumstances – most especially on server computers with solid state hard drives. The problem, it seems, is that timing on such systems is more predictable than with devices that actually move.
Random is hard!
What the author seems to be asserting is analogous to something anyone can relate to. Imagine you're driving your car 10 miles in heavy traffic, partly on a highway and partly on city streets. You can measure your average speed easily enough, and it will be reasonably consistent from one identical trip to another. However, if you were to measure the instantaneous speed at thousands of points along the way, you'd find lots of variations from the average. Sometimes a slowpoke in front of you will slow you down. Sometimes fortune smiles upon you and there's a mile of open, car-free road in front of you. As you maneuver through traffic, you'll momentarily speed up to pass someone, then slow down to slip back into the traffic pattern. Similarly, your average direction is the same as that of the road, but there will be lots of momentary variations as you change lanes, bobble about in your lane, etc. All those minor variations in speed and direction are – the author asserts – random. There's no pattern to them, and there's no predicting them. Also importantly, a bad guy can't disrupt the randomness. These are all good characteristics of a quality random number generator.
Proving that those generated numbers are truly random is another kettle of fish, though. I'm not sure they've done it. The current system used by UNIX and a number of other operating systems (and cited in the paper) have been shown to be less than excellent under certain circumstances – most especially on server computers with solid state hard drives. The problem, it seems, is that timing on such systems is more predictable than with devices that actually move.
Random is hard!
Progress in Paradise...
Progress in Paradise... Well, I made that trip to Home Depot and picked up a gutter downspout extension. That will stave off any more flooding in our basement's casement window until we have a more permanent solution.
Most of the rest of the day I spent replacing outlets and switches on our second floor. This job had long been in the queue, but the imminent arrival (tomorrow!) of our first overnight guests (Jim and Michelle B.) bumped it to the front. We don't want them sticking their fingers into an uncovered and miswired outlet and frying themselves! That job is now done.
Debbie spent the day baking cookies – her trademark chocolate chip cookies with orange. The house smelled quite delicious all day :)
We didn't end up getting much rain yesterday, and the forecast for today has been much reduced. As I write this, the forecast now says 0.45", and the radar shows a few gentle rainclouds sidling toward us. Even if we get no more rain at all, this storm was still wonderful for us. Maybe we'll get some today...
Most of the rest of the day I spent replacing outlets and switches on our second floor. This job had long been in the queue, but the imminent arrival (tomorrow!) of our first overnight guests (Jim and Michelle B.) bumped it to the front. We don't want them sticking their fingers into an uncovered and miswired outlet and frying themselves! That job is now done.
Debbie spent the day baking cookies – her trademark chocolate chip cookies with orange. The house smelled quite delicious all day :)
We didn't end up getting much rain yesterday, and the forecast for today has been much reduced. As I write this, the forecast now says 0.45", and the radar shows a few gentle rainclouds sidling toward us. Even if we get no more rain at all, this storm was still wonderful for us. Maybe we'll get some today...
Friday, May 8, 2015
Misadventures in Paradise, late night edition...
Misadventures in Paradise, late night edition... Just after I crawled into bed last night, iPad in hand for some evening reading, Debbie came in to tell me that one of our basement casements was threatening to overflow into the cat room. There were several inches of water in the bottom of it, she said, and if it rose any more it was going to spill through the window bottom.
I threw on my nightgown and headed down to the basement with her. There we discovered that the water was already leaking in – the water had risen in just the few minutes she had left. When I cracked the window open to take a better look, the water came flooding into the cattery. Fortunately the floor in the cattery (and the baseboard) is tile, so that water wasn't going to do any damage. But the water in the casement was another story altogether.
We went to work. I emptied the casement (using a bucket) into the cattery sink. Debbie ran out to the barn, got the mop and bucket, and started cleaning up the floor. The water I pulled out with the bucket was full of leaves and twigs, and this kept clogging the cattery sink. I practically froze my hand off repeatedly cleaning that drain screen out. Once we got the immediate threat removed, I went outside to see what the heck was causing this. I found that workmen – either the fencing crew or the painters – had damaged a downspout pipe. Water was streaming out of the hole onto a sidewalk, and flowing downhill to the edge of the casement, about six feet away. I made a temporary patch for the hole in the pipe, and then shoveled some dirt to make an earthen dike to keep the water from flowing down toward the casement. That all worked, but it won't suffice for the long haul, of course. We finished cleaning up the basement and draining the casement, and then went to bed.
This morning I could see better (in the daylight). I'm going to run up to Home Depot and get another gutter pipe, to get that water out into our yard when it rains next time. That will do for now, until we can get something more permanent done...
I threw on my nightgown and headed down to the basement with her. There we discovered that the water was already leaking in – the water had risen in just the few minutes she had left. When I cracked the window open to take a better look, the water came flooding into the cattery. Fortunately the floor in the cattery (and the baseboard) is tile, so that water wasn't going to do any damage. But the water in the casement was another story altogether.
We went to work. I emptied the casement (using a bucket) into the cattery sink. Debbie ran out to the barn, got the mop and bucket, and started cleaning up the floor. The water I pulled out with the bucket was full of leaves and twigs, and this kept clogging the cattery sink. I practically froze my hand off repeatedly cleaning that drain screen out. Once we got the immediate threat removed, I went outside to see what the heck was causing this. I found that workmen – either the fencing crew or the painters – had damaged a downspout pipe. Water was streaming out of the hole onto a sidewalk, and flowing downhill to the edge of the casement, about six feet away. I made a temporary patch for the hole in the pipe, and then shoveled some dirt to make an earthen dike to keep the water from flowing down toward the casement. That all worked, but it won't suffice for the long haul, of course. We finished cleaning up the basement and draining the casement, and then went to bed.
This morning I could see better (in the daylight). I'm going to run up to Home Depot and get another gutter pipe, to get that water out into our yard when it rains next time. That will do for now, until we can get something more permanent done...
More rain than expected...
More rain than expected ... and nobody is complaining! We got 0.7" inch since yesterday, bringing the storm total up to just over 1.5". Yay! Better yet – NOAA has upped the forecast, showing another 0.4" today and 0.65" tomorrow. We may end up with almost 3" from this storm. Yesterday there was an enormous storm cell that hit us from the southeast, after it very slowly passed over the mountains that drain into Porcupine Reservoir – the source of our local irrigation water. It's all good news!
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Panoramic view of Paradise...
Panoramic view of Paradise... I went to the same hill we walked to this morning and took a 180° panoramic photo. The center of the photo is west from where I was standing – so the left edge is south and the right edge is north. Our home is about a half mile in front of where I stood to take this photo, right where the dirt road disappears into the greenery...
Leftover bowl...
I found myself with a leftover piece round of walnut, 1 1/4 inches thick and 6 inches in diameter (this was from a cutout I made in the kitty bowl holder I'm making for Debbie). It seemed a shame to throw such a pretty piece of wood away, so I chucked it up into the lathe and turned it into a bowl. After that, a few minutes of sanding and a good soaking in Watco produced a decent little bowl! I could imagine this filled with candy or other small food items, jewelry, or other small things. The thickness was made from two boards glued together, and I wasn't at all sure how well that would turn on the lathe. It worked just fine, and the results look nice too!
My pistol-packing mama...
My pistol-packing mama ... just picked herself a Mother's Day bouquet. Beautiful, isn't it? Just like my mom :)
Morning in Paradise...
Morning in Paradise... I just got back from a delightful walk of a mile or so with the three dogs. There was a pause in the rain, and I took advantage of it to walk up a dirt road that inclines gently uphill to the east of our home. I've been walking it twice daily this week. I started out on these walks mainly to get Mo'i (our old fellow) some much-needed exercise, but they've been so interesting I now have another motivation. It's beautiful here right now, with the spring bringing green velvet to the hills around us. On the walk away from the house, I'm looking at the Wasatch Mountains to our east, and the fields of hay on the rising foothills. On the way back, I'm looking at the Little Bear River valley spread out before me, and the foothills of the Wellsville Mountains a few miles away. That walk back is just plain gorgeous right now.
This morning we had what a photographer would call “perfect diffuse lighting”. The low clouds, hugging the mountains all around us, completely hid the sun – but there was still plenty of light, but no shadows at all, as the light was coming from every direction. This sort of diffuse lighting makes the green vegetation “pop” in a way that bright direct sunlight cannot. I stopped many times on the way back just to revel in the scene.
The dogs had another sort of experience altogether. If you've ever walked after a rain in the countryside, you know that the rain brings earthworms to the surface. Here we have some fairly large earthworms (they seem to average about 8 or 9 inches long, with some well over a foot), and in very large quantity. Apparently our local soils are much to their liking. Well, the gravel road we were walking on had hundreds of earthworms on it, all crawling along in their slow fashion. I noticed them immediately, and walked carefully to avoid them – and that wasn't always easy to do. The dogs, however, didn't notice them at first.
Then about halfway on the walk away from the house, Race (our border collie) caught sight of one that moved faster than usual. He flashed over to it and started sniffing it, and the worm first contracted lengthwise, then started curling up. That got Race's attention! Next he took a nibble, and decided it was good. The worm disappeared down Race's gullet. From that point on in our walk, Race turned into a worm collie. I tried at first to keep him from eating them, but it was hopeless – he's just too darned fast. Miki (our younger field spaniel) saw all this activity and went over to smell an earthworm. When it curled up on him, he jumped back and barked at it. I'd give anything to have that on video :) He wouldn't go near them again. Mo'i took one sniff, looked at Race as if to ask “WTF is wrong with you, dog?” and kept plodding along.
There are a pair of horses pastured along the road we walk on, and they're both quite curious about the dogs and I. One of them is braver than the other, and will put its head over the fence for a nuzzle, and is curious about the dogs. The other hasn't come closer than a few feet, but is watching us carefully. Mo'i has met horses before, and in his usual friendly way is quite comfortable around them. Miki and Race, on the other hand, act as if they can't believe Mo'i and I are brave enough to approach the horses :) Race wants to bark at them, and (I suspect) to herd them. I have to constantly tell him to stand down while we're near the horses. Miki, the wuss, just pulls back to the end of the leash as far away from the horses as he can possibly get. Every once in a while he'll edge closer – but if the horses so much as blink their eyes, he's bouncing off the leash behind me :)
Lovely morning, it is. In Paradise...
This morning we had what a photographer would call “perfect diffuse lighting”. The low clouds, hugging the mountains all around us, completely hid the sun – but there was still plenty of light, but no shadows at all, as the light was coming from every direction. This sort of diffuse lighting makes the green vegetation “pop” in a way that bright direct sunlight cannot. I stopped many times on the way back just to revel in the scene.
The dogs had another sort of experience altogether. If you've ever walked after a rain in the countryside, you know that the rain brings earthworms to the surface. Here we have some fairly large earthworms (they seem to average about 8 or 9 inches long, with some well over a foot), and in very large quantity. Apparently our local soils are much to their liking. Well, the gravel road we were walking on had hundreds of earthworms on it, all crawling along in their slow fashion. I noticed them immediately, and walked carefully to avoid them – and that wasn't always easy to do. The dogs, however, didn't notice them at first.
Then about halfway on the walk away from the house, Race (our border collie) caught sight of one that moved faster than usual. He flashed over to it and started sniffing it, and the worm first contracted lengthwise, then started curling up. That got Race's attention! Next he took a nibble, and decided it was good. The worm disappeared down Race's gullet. From that point on in our walk, Race turned into a worm collie. I tried at first to keep him from eating them, but it was hopeless – he's just too darned fast. Miki (our younger field spaniel) saw all this activity and went over to smell an earthworm. When it curled up on him, he jumped back and barked at it. I'd give anything to have that on video :) He wouldn't go near them again. Mo'i took one sniff, looked at Race as if to ask “WTF is wrong with you, dog?” and kept plodding along.
There are a pair of horses pastured along the road we walk on, and they're both quite curious about the dogs and I. One of them is braver than the other, and will put its head over the fence for a nuzzle, and is curious about the dogs. The other hasn't come closer than a few feet, but is watching us carefully. Mo'i has met horses before, and in his usual friendly way is quite comfortable around them. Miki and Race, on the other hand, act as if they can't believe Mo'i and I are brave enough to approach the horses :) Race wants to bark at them, and (I suspect) to herd them. I have to constantly tell him to stand down while we're near the horses. Miki, the wuss, just pulls back to the end of the leash as far away from the horses as he can possibly get. Every once in a while he'll edge closer – but if the horses so much as blink their eyes, he's bouncing off the leash behind me :)
Lovely morning, it is. In Paradise...
I'm not a Carly Fiorina fan...
Lots of lovely, lovely rain last night...
Lots of lovely, lovely rain last night... Our storm total is now up to 0.87" – considerably more than predicted. This will give our hay fields a big boost, and with any luck at all will help fill the reservoir, too...
For me, this is like reading about aliens...
For me, this is like reading about aliens... I've always liked being alone, doing things alone. I've never thought of that preference as antisocial or weird – it's just the way I am. I have a few close friends (including my lovely bride!) whom I do like sharing experiences with, but in general my default is to do things on my own. This was a source of friction in my career, as darned near everything I ever did as an employee was as part of a team. The few exceptions stand out in my mind for the pleasure they brought me...
Poronkusema...
Poronkusema... Finnish for the distance that a reindeer can travel comfortably without stopping. More handy foreign words for which there is no English equivalent...
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