Monday, March 09, 2009

Breakfast of Champions

This week's Economist shared some figures on obesity in West Virginia in light of a discussion of health care reform.  Among the figures is that in one metro area, 77% of adults are overweight and 46% are clinically obesce.
Personally, I find those figures to be among the most depressing and demoralizing I can find in the news today.   Yes, our economic woes are regrettable, and yes, in many cases economic strain goes hand in hand with poor health, but I think we'd do well to start with our bodies and worry about our banks afterword.

I'm no health-nut, and my freezer looks a lot like Tony Hseih's, but I'd feel awfully bad about myself if I didn't feel more fit than most folks around me.  Sure, it's all relative and too-easily sated by the plumetting health-standards around me, but at least we're better than most.  

When asked why they buy (and eat)such huge amounts of lard, West Virginians simply respond that "we always have", yet West Virginians havn't always been fat.   Working in coal mines 12 hours a day doesn't leave time for getting fat (just getting emphazima).

Kurt Vonnegut dogs on West Virginia in Breakfast of Champions, which, coincidently, I just finished. I wasn't remarkably impressed or enthralled. I've read only limited Vonnegut, and none recently, but it struck me as heavy-handed and self-indulgent. It rings of a wildly-liked only because of it's author's existing fame. As a stand-along work...I'm unimpressed, though I won't pretend to have considered it too deeply. It just didn't seem to warrant it.

Code Complete is actually looking quite a lot more promising...and part II of Don Quixote may be on the way.

Monday, March 02, 2009

hard facts, bad resumes

The story goes that a resume should show results. Words ending with 'ed' are supposed to be good:    ...saved, completed, increased, launched...

Figures, too, are to be applied liberally:     ...300,000 dollars, 100% of projects, sales by 30%, 6 new products...

Doing so is meant to indicate real value, real productivity, and real accomplishment.    Humor me while I share my alternative: the gerunds and sunflowers approach.

Use -ing words only:    ...Planning, Teaching, Writing, Managing...

Sprinkle with whatever toppings go with them:   ...for expansion, good decision-making, user-stories, during transition...

For example...

Say I were hiring an investment portfolio manager last summer for a bazillion-dollars stuffed under my mattress: Those submitting resume's of the -ed type would show me how much they earned, how their assets were valued, and whether their portfolios had increased during their tenure.  And lo and behold, the marketplace would be rife with well-qualified candidates.

And, had I choosen one of them, and let them excercise their proven talents on my previously safe money-bags, I'd have lost a great deal of cash in the time since.   What did all their -ed words mean?   Doodley-squat.

But what if I had choosen an odd apple from the bunch, the one wall-street whacko who put forcasting, advising, and modeling on a resume?

I'd have kept my money under the matress, and had my own weather forecaster to advise me what to wear each day while wearing alluring outfits!

The point is....

1) Accomplishing stuff means doodly-squat unless you can articulate how you accomplished it. 
(If you can't articulate it, how are you going to do it again?)

2) Articulating how you did something requires gerunds.   
(I wrote this by writing without properly planning)