[Cadre-politics] status: goofy pile

[Dan MacNeil]

GOOFY PICTURE
SITE VISIT
PROCRASTINATION
HITCHHIKING WITHOUT A CELLPHONE
MVHUB
JOEL ON MEASUREMENT
DOWNTIME
NILAM KAPASI
TIM DEERING
PILE OF RESUMES
BOARD MEETING
HOW MUCH MONEY WE CHARGE
BOUGHT THE PAUL GRAHAM BOOK


GOOFY PICTURE TECHIE AWARD
We won an award, it was partly because we know Felicia and she shares
her connections and partly because thanks to Dave & Eric mvhub doesn't
suck.

It was $1000 and a trophy that looks like a larval alien life form
from the Kirk/Spock Star Trek.  There is a picture of goofy old us and
the baby alien at:

	http://www.blog.grassroots.org/?p=697

SITE VISIT

If:

	"Keep up the good work"
and:
	"Nobody around here is trying to do what you are:"

...are good signs, The Mass Service site visit went well. About 20 of
our supporters turned out at the Eggroll cafe for the volunteer lunch
part of things. It was a little embarrassing how effusive some of the
support was.

Mass Service seems to be a supporter of us now. For a couple questions
in the site survey, I was gently prompted to keep trying until I got the
right answer.

PROCRASTINATION
I procrastinated all night on the paperwork for the Mass Service
site visit. I really was terrified it would go badly.

Usually I can manage to avoid work on several important things at the
same time. However when I'm really terrified of failure, all the other
stuff I usually procrastinate on suddenly gets easy to do.

I find myself realizing that yes, a little rest would be a good thing,
that I really shouldn't leave the dishes for the lovely and patient
roommate and that it isn't that hard to do a status report.

Despite my terror, I got it done. There are only so many times in
one's life that one can leave problems behind and start hitchhiking
without a firm plan to return.

HITCHHIKING WITHOUT A CELLPHONE
Isolation was the core of my months on the road in 1983 and 1986.

I thought I was isolated  before I left but I was wrong.

Isolation is thousands of miles distance from home, with prairie, corn
field or desert from horizon to horizon, the nearest payphone 10 to 100
miles away, no voicemail on the other end, and a ride with very sinewy
man who is enthusiastically sharing much more about his
childhood sexual experiences than seems polite on a first meeting.

Isolation is also about the winter morning desert sun, 2 gallons
of water in your pack and a busy and friendly highway.

It would not be possible to have the same experience today with a
cellphone. Technology changes things, mostly for the better, but
sometimes not. I stopped keeping a journal when I gave up my typewriter.
When editing was whiteout and retyping, I'd blast out raw unedited
pages every day. When I could insert or remove entire paragraphs at
will, I became paralyzed with my power and produced a few perfect
isolated sentences every week.

MVHUB
John's been making mostly happy "ah" and "hmmm" and "ok" sounds as he
studies the existing code. We've been having short conversations about
the code, where he shares his learning and I share my folklore.

He's checking routine spelling and CSS corrections into CVS. diffs go to
the regular cadre-cvs [1] list, until I until we (I) can create the
mvhub-dev list, set cvs to email commit diffs to it and subscribe all
the people who volunteered to help.

	[1] http://lists.thecsl.org/pipermail/cadre-cvs/

I'm really excited about the community thingie possibility with all the
people willing to be on the development list. A side effect of our
failed Google Summer of Code application. [2]

	[2] http://thecsl.org/go/vol/gsoc/2007/

We have a contract with MVwib, they're going to pay us a month in
advance. More important they're going to cut the checks all at once,
stick them in the safe and mail them as they get invoices for completed
work. Given this flexibility and the cash flow loans all we have to do
is the work.

JOEL ON MEASUREMENT
At the CSL water cooler, we were kicking around the mvhub contract. and
the topic of measuring programmer productivity came up.

I'm very keen on measurement of some things [3].  but from painful
personal experience and the writings of the prophet Joel, I don't think
everything can be measured with numbers.

	[3] http://downtime.thecsl.org

The prophet Joel speaks twice on this subject, once slamming
buzzword consultant speak [4] and once more [5] with focus. For
example if you are 411 operator evaluated on average call duration, a
sure fire job preservation strategy is to hang up a couple seconds into
the call.

	[4] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/10b.html
	[5] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020715.html

Of course, there are some people [6] who are really into the whole
function point thing [7]  and there are few people who don't like the
prophet Joel [8] (in case you missed "uncle fatty" last time)

	[6] http://www.functionpoints.com/faq.asp
	[7] http://blog.sc.tri-bit.com/archives/171

DOWNTIME
Kamala is close to finished with a deployable version of the downtime
database. The bottleneck is of course code review by me. This is my
priority after the site visit and any remaining mvhub contract niggling.

NILAM KAPASI
The validate script runs every night on every server and compares config
files in CVS to config files on each server's file system. It serves as
a gentle reminder to commit things to CVS with appropriate log messages.

The whole thing works relatively well. (How many other sites track all
config file changes?)

However, this was one of Chris's first Perl projects. It didn't help
that it was  based on my earlier kludgery.

Nilam's added a "Verbose" flag. This means, I can save a bunch of typing
when correcting errors shown by the validate script.

More features/bugfixes will require a bit of refactoring. See the
prophet Ovid on "linear programming"[8]

	[8] http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=153951

TIM DEERING
Tim's learning Perl and LDAP and creating a script that will
automatically map all the right drives for a BSM (broadcast and Student
Media) users based

He's got all the pieces done (parse smb.conf for groups, get group
membership from LDAP, write share/group membership data out, access from
windoze), now he just has to stitch them together. Compared to our
average new volunteer he's done well. Given single parenthood and a full
time job, he's done very, very well.  Over the course of months, a few
hours every thursday and before sometimes sleep really add up.

PILE OF RESUMES
Nilam, Kamala and I spent a few hours reducing a pile of 50 resumes to 5
to pursue for interviews. One of our better paying customers is hiring a
part time tech and were willing to pay us for our technical talent
evaluation.

I was a bit surprised at lack of UNIX experience, Only 3 people
mentioned a specific flavor of Linux on their resumes. Maybe 10 people
mentioned it all. --Not counting the "LinuxPCOS" guy.

I was also surprised at how much a clear, brief and relevant cover
letter mattered. The best was  something like:
	
	"I just retired. I have 27 years of sys admin and
	support experience with HP. I want challenging part
	time work to keep engaged with tech."

I'm thinking linux certification courses are a business opportunity.

BOARD MEETING
There were no dramatic motions, no gavel pounding, no huge surprises.

Officers were elected:

	President: Karen Zagoda
	VP:	   Fred Martin
	Clerk:	   Laura MacNeil
	Treasurer  Kristina Ickes	

Josh Harding stepped down as President, because he's not local.

We decided we need more board members. (Especially ones not recruited by
me). The minutes (coming soon) will reflect the actions we promised
ourselves to take to correct this problem.

We reviewed non profit purpose #4. (see MONEY below) without
controversy, dispute or strong agreement. This agenda item wasn't
structured toward producing an action item, just a vague feeling it was
a good idea.

We decided it was a good idea to review all our purposes each year.

There was general agreement to pursue Parker Foundation money to provide
desktop support to Lowell Non-profits.

There was the usual happiness with the quality of these status reports
and the usual unhappiness with their quantity. There was not a formal
motion, but there was the strong suggestion we start using real blog
software and that people other than me report on our activities.

HOW MUCH MONEY WE CHARGE
Right now our policy is:

  1) Some stuff, (email, web hosting, etc) we do at no charge,
  2) We have no cost tutoring and advice on Friday afternoons
  3) Given volunteer availability other stuff might be free.
  4) Otherwise $25 to $50 hour.

We (Me, Fred, Stephane) have talked a good bit about charging a rate
large enough cover our overhead and build infrastructure. All this is
important, but there are other considerations.

We've not talked about our non-profit purpose #4:

	By our example, we will encourage a culture
	that measures success based on accomplishment
	not wealth.

This is part of the formal document that makes us a legal corporate
entity. If memory serves, Josh Harding,  Josh Bonnett, Marie
Shvartsapel, David Siegal, Laura MacNeil and I filled in the blanks on
the state's incorporation template in the summer of 2002.

As I recall this clause was a compromise. Josh, Josh and I favored
stronger language. Laura and David preferred not to address the issue
and Marie abstained.

My motivation for this clause is very emotional.

Given stuff like the global rich list.[9] and occasional experiences
watching a fellow laborer beg and sob for his job back so he can feed
his family without welfare, I don't have much desire to join the ranks
of the wealthy.

	[9] http://www.globalrichlist.com/

As Laura points out, I'm a bit of a poser here. I'm born and bred
bourgeois. From my second 10th grade year to graduation, my family paid
for prep school. For me, much more than for other people, my 10 years in
the laboring class were a matter of choice.  Despite the unkind
things the poor say about the rich, they'd cheerfully trade places.

Somewhat more pragmatically, Yourdan, DeMarco, Brooks, Peters and many
other software/IT/management productivity analysts point to the evidence
that wages are not strongly correlated with competence or effectiveness.
The further consensus is that projects with surplus resources fail more
often than projects with less than optimum resources.

I've been on a few teams where the resentment stemming from income
disparities between teammates had a crippling effect on people's
productivity.

Most pragmatically, our customers, especially our target customers don't
have the money to pay us and may never have themore or etter  money to
pay us.There is a Soros Foundation whitepaper that makes the point that
makes this point well. [10]

[10]
http://soros.org/initiatives/information/articles_publications/articles/rethinking_20010215

For profit organizations spend money on IT, improve operating
efficiencies and make more profit, plow some of the money back into IT
and start the cycle again. Non-profit organizations usually don't make
more money by providing better service.

Apart from the structural difficulties and my angst, the culture of the
groups we seek to serve makes it tough to pay anything remotely like
market rate for IT. For example, the homeless shelter that is open to
everyone requires guests to not bring weapons or hypodermic needles
inside with them. This requires a pat-down search of every guest.

People are paid $12/hour to perform these searches. As a bonus, the
searchers are given a pair of Kevlar gloves of their own as protection
from accidental needle sticks. Our very reasonable $50/hr could buy more
than 5 hours of direct contact with shelter guests.

I'm not arguing we don't have overhead or need to pay for training or
R&D. However, I am pretty clear that we can't collect market rates or
even what we need to grow from our customers.

The solution is probably to do better with grants and continue to try to
create an atmosphere where people are happy enough in their work to live
with a bit below market rate.

BOUGHT THE PAUL GRAHAM BOOK
Hackers and Painters is a book of 15 essays titled after one of the essays
	http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

I bought a copy if anyone wants to borrow hardcopy for off-line reading.