I'm struggling on this rainy afternoon, feeling glum, getting an obscure run-time error on a chunk of code that worked fine until I refactored it. I've gone from loving Java to hating it, cursing it as the droplets fall and the gray hangs heavily all around. All of a sudden, I become aware of the music coming out of my iPod on the office speakers. It's Frank Sinatra, singing Here's to the Losers. It doesn't help.
Month: September 2003
Spellbinding!
I finally got around to seeing the documentary Spellbound, about eight contestants in the 1999 National Spelling Bee over the weekend, and what a film! If you haven't seen this yet, I highly recommend it, especially if you're any sort of language nerd and enjoy weird words. It also provides insight into all kinds of American families, from various geographic regions, ethnic backgrounds, financial strata, etc. and demonstrates an intriguing combination of hard work and luck. It was also emotionally uplifting and funny. What more could you ask for in a film? Check it out if you haven't had a chance.
Handy advice for life
Lunch discussion, summarized: don't befriend/work with/love/etc. anyone who is incapable of saying, "I was wrong" and "I don't know."
Geeks vs. Suits
Maciej closed out the month of August with two great posts about NASA and the loss of Columbia: Physics 2, Business Administration 0 and Things I Have Learned About Foam From the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report. From the former (which leads off with a must-read quote from the Columbia Accident Investigation Report),
Engineers are trained to ask "what could possibly go wrong?". Managers are, too, but they use the phrase with a completely different intonation.
It made me chuckle when I read it, and then I realized the horror of such a flippant question when lives are at stake. Go read Maciej, and not just for this, but because everything he writes is really very good, and his linguistical flourishes impress me to no end.