JoseB Blog

Protesting is a fundamental right in this country. Sometimes its the only way to achieve change. In the 60's there were two protest movements. I saw it. The Civil Rights and Vietnam war protests.  Yes, there was violence, blood was shed, but they brought about change. Change for the better. An end to a pointless war and overt discrimination against black people.  There will be more protests because a lot of change still needs to happen in this country.  Those who use the protests to inflict violence on others are to be condemned. And those who protest in peace to take this country closer to the ideals of our founding fathers are to be commended.

There are super stars in every field. After all, you have world class lawyers, doctors, architects, engineers, etc... The same goes for developers. Everyone should be given an equal opportunity to succeed,  but not everyone is equally talented or productive. For this reason managers need to treat their team members differently and even unequally in certain cases. I realize saying this may be controversial, especially to an HR person, so I will clarify.   Early in my career I had a manager who considered himself very fair and he treated everyone the same.  He was a stickler for details regarding punctuality, appearance and rules and regulations and gave anyone (whether junior or senior) a hard time if these rules were not followed to a tee. Eventually this manager lost all his experienced senior developers. Why? Its because they expected better treatment and perks given their superior work quality and productivity. The lesson here is that you give your best people some breaks every once

When I studied weather to be a pilot dew point had to be understood. I recently googled 'dew point' to see what was out there on the topic and I did not see anything that explained it at a 'for dummies' level  so here goes... To understand dew point there are a couple of concepts that need to be understood first. The first thing is that hot air can hold more water vapor than cold air. So if its 90 degrees, that air will hold more water vapor than air that is at 50 degrees. So you can think of the current air temperature analogous to the size of a glass that can hold water.  This large glass here will represent a 90 degree day and it can hold more water than this smaller glass that represents a 50 degree day. 90 degree day can hold more water Now lets look at relative humidity. Relative humidity is a percentage of how much water is in the air (glass) relative to the size of the glass (air temperature). So lets fill the 90 degree day glass halfway. Its 50% humidity here.

I believe that the vast majority of the best IT Managers out there were former developers.  In my 41 years in IT, I have worked for a variety of managers and without question the ones who had a technical background were the best. If you think about it, it makes sense. Here are some reasons why: IT Managers are often called upon to troubleshoot failing IT Projects. Projects can fail for different reasons but the root cause is always founded in one of the following.  How can someone with no developer experience know how to figure out where a project is failing? Poor project planning (task estimation, sprint planning) Incomplete requirements Flawed architecture or design Poor quality code Poor testing Poor or no deployment process Non technical managers often focus on metrics to measure project progress and quality (like lines of code, use cases done, bug counts). Unfortunately developers know how to rig metrics 99 times out of 100 in their favor to hide the reality of what's really g

The day was Nov 4, 1984 and I had been doing touch and goes with my flight instructor, Alicia Sykes. After one of the landings she said, "OK, you're ready. I'm getting out and you're going to do your solo." Those words caught me completely by surprise because I didn't think I was ready yet. I knew that I was getting close because I had 13 hours flight time and most of that was touch and goes. But I really didn't think that today was the day.  I asked Alicia, "Really, you think I'm ready?" She said, "Yes."  I said, "Why don't we wait till the next lesson, just to make sure, by then I'll be ready for sure." She said, "Nope, you're ready now. Just go up and do what you've been doing, watch your airspeed and you'll be fine." I realized I had no choice, she was not going to let me off the hook (she was a very firm instructor). She got out of the plane (a Cessna 150 aka Midlands 10) by the runway an

Before I answer that I'll give you a clue as to why it is who it is. If you are into music and know how some of the Beatles songs were written, you will know the answer. Here are among my favorite Beatles songs:  I am the Walrus A Day in the Life Strawberry Fields Baby You're a Rich Man Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for me and my Monkey Dear Prudence I'm so Tired Revolution Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds In My Life And You're Bird Can Sing Across the Universe Ticket to Ride Nowhere Man Hey Bulldog That should tell you who it is. So if you guessed John Lennon you're right. Those are all John songs. A trick to know who wrote which Beatles song is by who sings it. Whomever sings it almost always mostly wrote it.  But here's the thing. I know that Paul is the more musically talented of the two. And Paul has written quite a few masterpieces like Yesterday, Blackbird, Elanor Rigby, Hey Jude, Let it Be, We Can Work It Out, just to name a few.  But there&#

Everyone listens to music differently.  Some listen to the words first, others the music, and others listen to both. I am one of of those who just listen to the music, and then maybe later (sometimes years later) I listen to the words.  My brain is wired for sound. I went for many years not knowing anything about the lyrics of many Beatles songs. The melodies and George Martin's production were too powerful for me to pay attention to anything else.  For some reason, I am wired to interpret music as repeating sonic patterns made of melodic note sequences, chord sequences, and bass and rhythm sequences.  If I like the song, I will listen to it over and over and I will dissect and analyze each individual pattern for anything interesting. I will literally play a song in my head over and over each time focusing on a different instrument. The most interesting  songs have new patterns I've never heard before that are pleasing. The more complex the production (with orchestral backing)