Nice (Wo)Men do Finish Last

And not because "jerks" finish first.

If someone is genuinely funny, witty, or just a blast to be around, they will end up being known as the funny guy, the witty girl, or by a slew of other adjectives(none of which are nice). Funny how that works.

Work is another context where nice is a death sentence. Roughly translated, it means, "This person isn't very talented or hard-working, but at least they aren't an asshole."

Nice isn't nice. Strive for better.

Balance of Imbalance

"If you have more than three priorities, then you don't have any." - Jim Collins

We all would like a little more balance in our lives, however, we grow when we are most imbalanced.

When on a serious diet, partying, drinking and even dinner dates will have to be put on the back-burner.

When approaching a looming work or school deadline, all of the above, plus sleep, may be at serious risk.

However, on vacation, those imbalances are skewed in the other direction; mental and physical recovery trump everything.

In order to grow, we need imbalance on the minute, day, and week scale; in order to achieve sanity, we need balance on the month and year scale.

Simple Works

In the event of a fire, we take the stairs, not the elevator.

Subaru Outbacks seemingly last for centuries, dragsters tend to blow up while going down the track.

Bubble sort lacks edge cases, almost all merge sorts are broken more than 60 years after the original algorithm was proposed.

Don't discount a product just because it is simple. When the complicated, fancy things are broken down, the simple ones will still be chugging along.

Today's Problem, Today

Cancer and diabetes are 2 of the largest causes of death in the U.S.

Immense amount of time and research is being devoted into helping those affected, as well as finding a cure. Not-so-ironically, not much time is devoted to treating and find a cure for diseases that do not exist yet.

However, in the software engineering world, much time is wasted at the infancy of projects in speculating and attempting to find solutions to problems that may exist at scale... if they get there.

Let's take a lesson from doctors, and solve today's problems, today.

Scale

Almost all problems(at least those worth solving) become hard at scale.

Fortunately(or unfortunately?), many of the people and organizations worried about how they will solve the problems when they get to scale, never get there.

Why I Will Run a Food Truck

If you have the luxury of doing so, go checkout the line at the nearest food truck.

If you don't have that luxury, I will sum it up for you: a large amount of happy folks, waiting to be served some delicious, unconventional food, by people who are ecstatic to be doing so.

It's a win-win situation for everybody... the net joy in the world had increased because of that one interaction.

Now contrast that to, say, my gambling experience in Las Vegas, where there needs to be a winner and a loser(hint, that was me). I almost certainly suffered a much greater loss in joy from losing than the house did from winning... a net loss in joy.

You probably won't see me becoming a professional gambler(or financial trader or politician or...) anytime soon, but one day I will run that food truck.

Sharing Joy

It's about 3 A.M and 100 degrees in the Las Vegas desert at EDC, I have been dancing my heart out since about 9 pm, and in that time I have only had about a pint of water. My lips were chapped, my tongue felt like sandpaper and I didn't feel like there was an ounce of water left anywhere in my body.

Then my new friends came back from the water refill station with camelbaks and water bottles galore.

I have never seen so much joy experienced from water, not just from those of us that were receiving the water, but from those that came back with the water. It felt like the modern-day, edm version of Thanksgiving.

Another take home lesson from EDC: joy, like water, is best when shared.