Duane Gran’s log of thoughts

Have you ever seen those “x days since an accident” signs in a workplace? They are placed there because the very act of measuring something has an effect on improving it.

Every organization is measuring something but not every organization takes the time to make sure they select the right things. Are you measuring whether people are at their desk at 8am? It might be vital if there is a shift change or you have set expectations with customers to be reachable at that time.

Measurement always has a cost, either in time spent tabulating or opportunity cost for other focus, so make sure it actually matters. There are few blanket statements, but some good ones are:

• customer satisfaction
• support response time
• new clients in the past quarter
• repeat projects from existing clients this year

There is a trend here. Figure out what matters to your customers and find a way to internally measure your progress satisfying their needs.

A must read if you are curious about the inner workings of the sub-prime collapse.

“We always asked the same question,” says Eisman. “Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.” He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S&P couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number.

An explanation from a well-read Libertarian is the best summary I’ve seen of how the markets have become so volatile and why the government bail out is the wrong answer.

I’ve upgraded the weblog software on this site to Wordpress version 2.0.4, so please let me know if anything seems awry. The primary motivation for upgrading was to utilize the Akismet spam filter.

Waldo asked me to host this week’s roundup of interesting local writing in what has become known as the C’ville Blog Carnival. For the uninitiated, a blog carnival is sort of traveling showcase but without the requisite carnies. Next week’s collection will be compiled and hosted by Jim Duncan.

Speaking of Jim, he wrote this week about the various policies surrounding connected communities in central Virginia and Trish writes about the propensity of developers to burn organic refuge when clearing space.

In political news, the big fuss around town is the May 2 elections, with voter guides from Charlottesville Tomorrow and The Daily Progress (by way of cvillenews). Additionally, Brian Wheeler’s Charlottesville Tomorrow has a podcast of 4th City Council Candidate Forum. If local politics aren’t your thing, The Hook notes that Cindy Sheehan will be coming to town, but I expect that it won’t please our more conservative bloggers like Whitney Blake, who has been recognized for sowing “chaos, dissent, and apathy.”

Social justice made big news with the Living Wage campaign at UVa, but David Swanson puts it into larger perspective. C’ville News covered the unveiling of the free speech monument while also stimulating a pretty good discussion on the site. Who needs chalk? We have weblogs.

Too much time on your hands? Sean Tubbs would like a volunteer to help with our local podcasting network and Jennifer suspects that The Paramount will need volunteers next year.

Local cartoonist (comic-maker?) Jen Sorensen has taken up the issue of food safety laws in her latest strip.

In school news, School Matters discusses the value of teenagers serving on school boards and Dean Jeannine talks about the implications of a myspace.com account in the admissions process.

Finally, if you enjoyed not paying extra for the bandwidth used in this posting (which is made with 100% recycled zeros and ones) you may wish to follow the advice of Bleeding Edge Tech and try to save the internet.

That’s all folks. I’m just one fellow surveying the local scene, but if something notable was left out please leave a comment with a link for others. If my cheeky way of writing upset anyone, no offense was intended.

It is that time of year once again where we make resolutions and reflect on the past twelve months. It is a time for resolutions — to be resolute about something we wish to change within. As a fan of the agile methodology, which guides the development of new technology through iteration and willingness for change, I couldn’t be more conflicted about new year’s resolutions.

On one hand, I think inner reflection is great and welcome the opportunity, but on the other I believe that one iteration per year is too wide of a gap. If the calendar were only three weeks long!

But I digress, because I actually have something to resolve about, which relates to writing. I’m no politician, but I’m going to resolve to write more about solutions and less about problems. I enjoy the low hanging fruit of a good complaint as much as the next fellow, but it doesn’t advance the cause of humanity very much. I’ll endeavor to suggest an alternative to the status quo or to point out good examples of the social order I desire.

This writing space gives me practice for communication, which I like to think of as a useful life skill since I neither live on an island (apologies to visitors from Hawaii) nor am I antisocial. The Poynter Institute has a fantastic guide to 50 writing tools for improvement. In the coming months I hope to stamp out that passive voice and seek out my inner grammarian.

For some fun, check out a guide to writing good (sic).

I’m experimenting with the Letterhead theme for a more pleasant look for this writing space. While I’m gazing at my naval — blogging about my blog — I should mention that not so long ago I added a tag cloud of terms to the about me section of the site. If you detest the new layout I’m open to suggestions, but I’m leaning toward minimalism.

Matthew Kirschenbaum has written a thought provoking proposal for scholars to chime in about ways that blogging technology has actually paid dividends in their academic pursuits. This is in response to a controversial Chronical article that has made the rounds as of late.

If you run a blog, take a survey from the nice folks at MIT.

I just got back from a weekend in Washington DC to attend a baby shower (well, not me, but you know what I mean) and to visit with a few people. Having lived there for three years you would think that I understood the place, but I always see it with new eyes when I go back. On the whole I love the area and feel a certain energy from it all, but I was left with the following reflections.

• Having walked the shops of Georgetown, it is a wonder that anyone can dress well in the city. I caught the clothes bug after leaving, so I saw some old shops with new eyes. Many of the Italian shops along Wisconsin Avenue give Italy a bad name. Que Mala! There must be another section of the city where diplomats and politicos can dress with confidence, but all I saw were cheaply made clothing for club outings.
• Traffic was surprisingly light. Maybe I have just come to expect the worst, but I zipped around pretty easily this time.
• There is something in the air or the water that seems to draw conversation into materialistic or work-related topics. Maybe everyone is weary of the same old political debates by the weekend, but I found it fatiguing at times. I’m all the more convinced that it is rude dinner conversation to discuss the price of things, especially when it is done to exclaim one’s super hero status for affording the unaffordable. Places like Washington are the source for that oft-said phrase, “conspicuous consumption.”
• Food was great, but service was spotty. Oh well, you can’t have it all, unless you are in Italy.

Why don’t we do it in the road?

In Suzhou, the traffic rules are simple. “There are no rules,” as one local told me. A city of 2.2 million people, Suzhou has 500,000 cars and 900,000 bicycles, not to mention hundreds of pedicabs, mopeds and assorted, quainter forms of transportation. Drivers of all modes pay little attention to the few traffic signals and weave wildly from one side of the street to another. Defying survival instincts, pedestrians have to barge between oncoming cars to cross the roads.

But here’s the catch: During the 10 days I spent in Suzhou last fall, I didn’t see a single accident. Really, not a single one. Nor was there any of the road rage one might expect given the anarchy that passes for traffic policy. And despite the obvious advantages that accrue to cars because of their size, no single transportation mode dominates the streets. On the contrary, the urban arterials are a communal mix of automobiles, cyclists, pedestrians, and small businesses such as inner-tube repairmen that set up shop directly in the right-of-way.

When I was in Rome earlier this year I witnessed a similar phenomenon. As crazy as it sounds, it actually works. Probably the thing I like the most about it is that it recognizes that public spaces are for transportation, not necessarily built for one mode of transport. I can’t begin to tell how many times I’ve been “informed” by motorists that me and my bike aren’t permitted on their roads.

Update (19 April 2006): See a wonderful video of a street in India for an example of vehicle, bike and pedestrian traffic merging and co-mingling. The chaos is disturbing and enlightening all at once.

You find out some peculiar things when you google search on your name. In my case, about three pages inward I found a suspicious attribution to me. Here is the link (with obligitory nofollow tagging). The page includes audio and other nastiness — you are forewarned if you are curious.

I’m not vain enough to think that I’m a household name, but my name is unique enough that I don’t want it diluted with some crass marketing attribution, especially for a dubious service. Therefore, I wanted to share this public service message to clarify that I have nothing to do with the “power of you” network and that I don’t endorse their services. I’ve left notice with them to have my name removed, or to clarify the city of residence for the person who endorses the product.

Update (7/20/05): After several polite requests, the offending party has de-listed me as an endorsing party. In fact, it seems that the whole page is down and there are no more traces of this mess.

A Slashdot article covers a rise in corporate interest in recruiters bloggers to create buzz. I would say something witty about this, but I’ll cede that ground to a particular comment that summarized it best:

Corporate America is willing to pay to steal the last shred of legitimacy from an already specious source of information.

Not only can we count on unedited accounts from the mouths of non-specialists… we can count on those non-specialists being paid off by corporate interests to spout off opinions that those corporations will not have to take any responsibility for.

This can apparently only be used for good.

I’m back from a wonderful two week trip in Italy. I can’t say enough good things about it, and it has reaffirmed my convictions about the value of public spaces and diverse transportation. It would be hard to pick the high point of the trip, but looking out on the hills of Tuscany, cathedrals in Rome (let alone the Vatican), walking the streets of Venice and viewing masterpieces in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence certainly rank high on my memories. My head is full of observations, but I’ll share just a few for now and let the remainder trickle out in future entries.

• Driving in Italy is performance art. It is fast and aggressive, but once you figure it out, it makes sense. If you aren’t willing to haul ass at 140 km/h then get out of the fast lane. In the states everyone drives the same speed in all lanes. What is up with that?
• Italian coffee is a wonderful thing. I do my best to replicate it at home, but there is nothing quite like un café.
• I feel dreadfully ignorant of my Western culture. As much as I try to study the classics and take a genuine interest in cultural issues, sometimes I feel like a mouth-breathing idiot when I look upon masterpieces of sculpture and painting or hear people gracefully intermingle with multiple languages as I stand helplessly monolingual. Actually, I’ve studied Spanish, French and German but my comprehension and capacity for dialog barely suffices to order a meal or ask for directions. I’m sufficiently motivated to be a smarter person because of this trip.
• American cars are rediculous. Upon returning I thought someone let the air out of the tires on my car, as it lumbered along with reluctance, compared to my svelt rental Fiat that leapt with vigor. Really, why is that our cars must weigh two tonnes and are we really so dumb that we can’t operate a stick shift any more? Yesterday I swore that I saw a house parked in the road, but it turned out to be an SUV.
• Not once during the two weeks did someone ask me “what I do” as a means of sorting me into their rolodex of usefulness. It was refreshing to talk art, travel and whatever came to mind without concern about vocation.

I’ll be doing some travel for a little while, so I’ll have to write my thoughts on pieces of paper, but rest assured when I’m back I’ll share them. I’m sending all comments into the moderation queue to avoid hundreds of comment spams. See you back a little later…

Lately I’ve been reading a book titled “A Short History of Italy” by Henry Dwight Sedgwick, published in 1905 (link). I’m reading it in advance of a vacation, but also as a primer on Papal history — while not synonymous, it is tightly related with the history of Italy. I chose this book as an experiment and found a few interesting things:

1. Because it predates the Second Vatican Council of 1962, many views of the role of The Church are inherently different. I don’t have empathy for Christians who reject these reforms, but I think the book gives a perspective unavailable to the modern historian.
2. The phrase “dark age” is nearly absent in the book. I’ve suspected for a while that this was a recent terminology for the period spanning from the 5th century to the 14th century Renaissance. The author denotes many efforts to revive the memory of the Roman Empire during this period.
3. We often hear of the barbarian invasions after the fall of the Roman Empire (476 AD), but the author is more generous and points out that the Lombards, Visigoths and various others were in fact not barbaric. They often tried to embrace the Roman law but they seemed preoccupied with civil unrest and feuding city states. There may be better modern explanations, but most of them over simplify the fall of the Roman Empire in my opinion. This book offered a refreshing alternative. To me, this explains the previous point about the dark ages.

So far the experiment has been most interesting, but I confess that I need more solid grounding in history to avoid trading modern for antiquated bias. Neither is worthwhile, but I think reading old history books, along with current ones, may be helpful to get a better picture of the past.

Project Syndicate

Over 50% of Russia’s population, including teachers, scientists, doctors, and military personnel, have seen their quality of life fall since communism’s demise. No surprise, then, that they are nostalgic for the past, including Stalin.

It shouldn’t surprise us. I’ve heard it from Russians myself. While Communism wasn’t perfect and people were generally poor, at least they felt powerful. Now they are more poor and they are mocked by the West.

You know you are working in a Library when you see some graffiti in a bathroom stall and someone else has corrected its grammar. True story.

In middle school I had a life changing discussion with a teacher. I was bored in school and had a bad habit of disrupting others, but I apologized every time I was reprimanded. She sat me down and explained, as best as I can remember, the following:

Saying that you are sorry should mean that you feel sorrow… a moment of introspection where you realize that you aren’t being the sort of person you intend to be. If you find yourself saying you are sorry for the same thing over and over, you probably aren’t really sorry because people who are genuinely sorry – those who take the time to feel the pain they cause – change. Saying you are sorry to get a fresh slate abuses trust, but making an earnest effort to change builds trust.

Just something to consider in your journey. May it be helpful at some point.