JoseB Blog

No this is not what you're thinking, this is about religion and God. I am turning 70 this year, am retired, accountable to no one, and no longer need to lay low about my beliefs. If you are very devout, you may not want to read this. Not for any reason other than if you have just one iota of doubt about your faith, it might be upsetting. One thing about my DNA is that I have always been a very skeptical person. In order for me to believe something I have to either see it, or its proof. Probably the one event in my life that profoundly reinforced my skepticism was when I found out the whole Christmas Santa Claus thing was a ruse last year, (ha ha, ok, I was six years old). No, it did not traumatize me in any way. What it did was that I resolved never to be fooled like that again. When I attended church I noticed the similarity between religion and Santa Claus. They are both based upon the reward system. If you are a good boy/girl you'll get presents, and if bad you'll get co...

This is my story of dealing with the deaths of my older brother Macu, my mom, and discovering I had  Crohn disease, all within a three-year period. Starting in my early fifties, probably sometime around the year 2010, it seemed like every autumn I would get these low-grade fevers accompanied by persistent diarrhea that would last for a month or two.  The annoying thing was that it didn't make me sick enough to not work, so I still went to work and just powered through the day best I could. Anyways I could not miss weeks from work. I would end up getting used to living with it as I had no other choice, but it really sapped my energy levels. This went on year after year. Of course, I went to doctors, they ran tests but were never able to determine why I was getting sick. I remember my primary care physician saying that there's definitely something brewing there. In late July of 2016, my brother Macu was sick and needed to be taken to the hospital. I picked him up at his Miami Be...

 I don't know exactly when I decided I had to do this hike, but I think it started with a visit to the Grand Canyon with my kids when we hiked down one of the trails. We went maybe a half mile into the canyon and sat out on a huge rock alone to enjoy the view, the peace and the silence of the canyon for a while before going back up.  Years later, during COVID, I watched a lot of YouTube videos of people doing Rim To Rim hikes and that is when the thought of doing it entered my mind. I like setting big goals that give you something to work towards. A couple of years went by and then in the Spring of 2024, I decided the time was right to do it so I resolved to do the hike in the fall. As far as training for the hike, I was already in decent shape with playing tennis three times a week, the twice weekly circuit training and yoga classes. I also started hiking occasional five, seven and ten mile hikes, as well as going up and down outdoor flights of stairs for 30 minutes to an hou...

An IT Project Methodology describes how project work is identified, documented, assigned, tracked, tested, and deployed to end users.  At the start of my career, there was no true use of methodology. Requirements and tracking work was done in an ad hoc manner. A waterfall approach was used where all requirements, design, coding, testing, and deployment were done in their entirety one after the other.  This did not work well because by the time we got around to testing and the end users saw the app for the first time, often they would say, 'Hey this is not bad but really, it's not what we wanted, we wanted it like this instead, bla bla bla.' But by then the app was coded 100%, so it was too late to go back and do a rewrite because it would be too much work.  In the end, we would patch the app with band aids to give end users something resembling what they really wanted.  Later in my career, I was exposed to several methodologies including Method1, RUP, and eXtreme/Agi...

Here are the seven disciplines that you must get right, or the project will fail. This means if you get just one of these wrong but the rest right, the project will still fail. It's all or nothing. It's very unforgiving. It's like a chain, if one link fails, the whole chain fails. Methodology - how the project work is managed Requirements - what the app will do Architecture and Design - the foundational structure of the app User Interface - what end users see and interact with Coding - self explanatory Testing - self explanatory Environments and Deployment - how the app moves from development to production We will dive deeper into all of these in later articles, but for now the question becomes, "How do we guarantee that we succeed in each discipline?" The answer is that there must be one person on the team that is responsible and accountable for making sure that quality is maintained in each discipline.   We will get into the different roles of the project team m...

I graduated from college in 1978 as a Computer Science major and worked in IT for forty-one years, retiring in 2019. In my career I programmed apps on everything from standalone mainframes to internet connected phones. In 2001, I was somewhat reluctantly promoted to IT Management at a large company employing hundreds in the IT Department and that is where all my technical project management experience comes from. There, I was exposed to many different IT methodologies, and thru trial and error, I arrived at a development approach that worked well. It borrowed mostly from agile / extreme methodologies, but also borrowed some of the useful RUP artifacts such as the Use Case and the UML Class and Sequence diagrams.  I managed a team of custom app developers, and it took years of hard knocks to learn what worked and what didn't, but in the end the driving force was always to BE PRACTICAL and only do those things that provided value in terms of making the project succeed, so agilit...

I met Hite sometime around 1978 after I graduated college and started working at my first real job. I started hanging out with a crowd at Howie’s place on Holly St, where the so-called Holly Street crowd would party and have fun. The first thing that struck me about Hite was that he was a cool guy, but he was kind to everybody. It didn’t matter who you were, Hite treated everyone the same, with respect and kindness. Prior to Hite, I was used to cool people only associating with other cool people and shunning others, so he broke the mold.  And if we ever made fun of someone or applied peer pressure to try to make them do something they didn’t want to, Hite would defend that person and tell them in front of everybody, ‘Stand your ground, my man, don’t do anything you don’t want to’.  Hite would literally give you the shirt off his back, which he did one day when I told him I wanted to get a Piggly Wiggly t-shirt like his and he took it off and said, ‘This is for you.’  I ha...

 We've been dealing with this COVID thing now for almost two years. Now we've been hit with the OMICRON mutation which is spreading like wildfire and vaccines offer limited protection.  I've come to the realization that the 'new normal' going forward will be all about coping and living with pandemics.  More mutations will likely come and besides even if the pandemic goes away you will never catch me in a plane or any indoor crowded place without a mask, much like the Japan and Korea have always done.  Why catch colds and influenza when a simple mask will protect you? Once you get used to a mask its not that bad at all.  So here are my points about the new normal to help us cope with disease spreading. If we've learned anything, it's that shutting down the economy for a disease that has a kill ratio of less than 2% doesn't make sense because of the harm it causes to livelihoods, mental health, education, etc...  Shutting down the economy does way more har...

Stephen Hawking was a great scientist and thinker. I enjoyed watching his science shows on TV. I have been profoundly influenced by him from a philosophical point of view (although Stephen would call it science, not philosophy) and would like to share three things he helped me understand that I think are true and very fundamental. Every choice you make is predetermined, free will is an illusion. This is hard to believe at first but if you understand the concept of a state machine then it is easy to understand. A state machine is a system where given a certain set of inputs and a certain state, the next state and outputs are be predetermined by an algorithm.  A car's 4 speed transmission would be an example. Its has 4 states (gears). Given the current gear it's in, and taking the car's current RPM and acceleration as input, the algorithm chooses the next gear.  Life's choices are like the car's transmission. When you make a decision, you think you have free will, but...

Last week as usual Trump said some crazy things. He said that our dead servicemen are 'suckers and losers' and that the pentagon wants to 'make war to keep the companies that make bombs happy.'  Well, for once, he was right about the following two things: Some of our dead servicemen are suckers. Why do I say this? Think about the Vietnam war. Fifty-two thousand died there for what? They were told they were going to save the world from communism and that was a lie. Look at what happened to communism. It has failed on its own without needing to fight a war. Look at how now we do business with Vietnam and are friendly with them. That proves there was no need to fight that war. Those soldiers died in vain, so yes, you could call them suckers. But it wasn't their fault. THEY WERE LIED TO. AND THEY ARE NOT LOSERS. And that goes for all who died in the 2nd Gulf War to get rid of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - oops there were none! The 4.5 thousand who d...

Terry, I just learned of Bob's passing. I am so sorry to hear this sad news and I hope that time has helped to heal your loss. As you know, Bob was more than a friend and a coworker to me. Bob was like my 2nd father. When I started working at DMH I was a sheltered boy who knew nothing of the real world. Bob took me under his wing and gave me an education in what the real world was like in all its glory while pointing out its imperfections. He was a funny guy with all his jokes and great to be around, but he could be firm too when I made mistakes and needed guidance. I learned many things from Bob, but one thing that will always stand out was his love for you and his family. I felt a bit like I was part of his family those 3 years that I shared an office with him because of the way he treated me and looked out for me.  My deepest sympathies and I hope that my words bring some comfort.   Love, JoseB 

I met Mike about 10 years ago at the United Way show. We became friends right away. We had a few things in common, we loved music and we were both frustrated rock star wanna be's.  What we lacked in talent we made up for with heart. We were alike but we were opposites too and they say opposites attract, I was the guy in the background and he was a front man, and when he was on, he was on, like when he was the Big Bopper or Easy Rider at the United Way shows, some of the memorable moments he had on the United Way were: • Born to be Wild • Smoke on the Water • Jump • Big Bopper - Chantilly Lace • Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way • The Devil Went Down To Georgia I had some great times with him. Some memorable gigs playing in the InTransit classic rock band with him and Bob. One of my favorite times was when I visited him up in Tampa, with Carlos the guitar player from InTransit.  He cooked me a kings breakfast, we went to a work picnic and took out our instruments and ...

Voy a hablar en Espanol, porque creo que mi mama, que fue una maestra de Espanol, le gustaria. Estamos aqui hoy para celebrar una vida muy larga de 96 anos y muy variada. Cotica, que eso fue su 'nickname', era una Doctora de Pedagogia graduada de la Universidad de la Habana, y fue fundadora y la directora de la Normal de Kindergarten en Matanzas Cuba. Pero despues aqui en Miami cuando las cosas se pusieron dificil, con la familia acabada de salir de Cuba, ella trabajo en la tomatera tirando tomates por minimum wage, haciendo lo que podia para sacar la familia adelante. Ella nunca fur un 'stay at home mom.' Fue muy independiente. Consigio un Masters in Spanish Literature de la Universidad de South Carolina, y fue una de las primeras profesoras blanca ensenando Espanol en Benedict College SC, una universidad de personas de color. Esto en los anos 60's en el 'Deep South' cuando este pais estaba en la lucha de civil rights. Ella fue escritora de varios libros de...

My dear friends and family, thank you for coming out to remember my big brother Mario. Just a few words about Macu, which was the family nickname we gave him.  He was eight years older than I so he was almost like a second father to me.  He had a profound impact on my formation not just as a person, but also the way he fostered my love of music. I would like to tell you about some of the things I remember about him. When he was in high school and I was a kid, he would draw pictures all the time. But he only drew two seemingly disconnected things that made no sense to me. He would draw portraits of beautiful, exotic women wearing long earrings, fancy hair styles, heavily made up eyes.  And the other thing he drew was architectural designs of movie theaters showing the projection room, the seating and screen. That's it, that’s all he would draw. And he drew literally hundreds of these things.  And I would wonder, ‘what is it with this guy drawing women and movie theate...

  Trump is the head of a cult. Some of his supporters worship him the same way others looked up to David Karesh and Jim Jones. They have drunk the Kool-Aid and are convinced he is the savior of the United States. They will follow him to the gates of hell and this is not good. If Trump loses I predict these dire things... Trump will declare that the elections were rigged, that there was voter fraud and the results invalid. He will do this to get his base all riled up to sow chaos and make the transition to Biden as horrible as possible. Trump's militia (those who ride in the big trucks and carry AR-15 assault weapons), will organize and ride around claiming the election was false and inciting riots before and even during the inauguration. We will see much more violent protests than we are seeing now.  His militia is itching for a fight with anybody who opposes them. Trump will not attend the Biden inauguration. He will goad his followers to resist and not acknowledge Biden as t...

Right wing media has a lot of people scared poop-less. They think that unruly mobs are goin to attack their neighborhoods. They think the US is living in a state of siege. The world is ending and all hell has broken loose. Thats very strange because I live in a middle class neighborhood, walk my dog everyday, go to the Publix and everything is normal. I don't see any mobs or violence anywhere.  Want the truth? The truth is that there are a small number of protests about police using excessive force against blacks goin on in the whole country, the majority are peaceful and a few became violent because of left and right wing agitators. THEY ARE FAR AWAY FROM WHERE YOU LIVE. So if you fear for your life - congratulations - you fell for the oldest political trick in the book... FEAR-MONGERING.  -Hitler used it (Jews will destroy the world).  -Castro used it (The US will invade soon).  -Bush Jr used it (Islamic terrorists are everywhere).  -And now Trump is using it ...

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 peopl...

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'...