Bloodletting, as the name indicates, was the practice of letting blood out of the patient in order to cure them. Quote from wikipedia:

“George Washington was treated in this manner following a horseback riding accident: almost 4 pounds (1.7 litres) of blood was withdrawn, contributing to his death by throat infection in 1799.”

In the context of today’s medicine, it’s difficult to imagine draining the blood out of someone to cure them for falling off their horse. So my question is what’s our bloodletting? What are we doing today which tomorrow’s generation will look back on in disbelief?

An interesting Pfeffer/Sutton quote:

“The business world is among the few places where the term guru apparently has primarily positive connotations. In religion and politics, gurus are portrayed as extraordinary but often dangerous leaders, who attract fanatical disciples who bend to their wishes, even when doing so harms themselves and others.”

The business and technical worlds I’d say.

Apparently there are some issues with renting a coder. As it relates to us, it’s the recommendations that I found interesting:

“Instead, I recommend that you find a coder that you can work with by assigning small jobs to that coder and begin to develop a relationship with that coder outside of RAC.  Once that trust is developed the coder will do a much better job because they are not being gutted by the RAC commissions.”

Or you can talk with us. We can bring a lot of the benefits of services such as rent a coder along with having done all the above already.

Ok, this is non-technology related so apologies if you’re only here for the geek stuff. States are now banning tag. That’s tag as in “you’re it” tag. It’s now too dangerous for our children to play tag, and I thought mandatory visors in hockey was stepping over the line?

I was kidding at the time but how far are we from suing nature?

Parent’s are worried about the “near collisions” they witness when kids play tag. Well get ready for the panic attacks that accompany watching your 25 year old walk a downtown sidewalk for the first time after spending their entire lives protected from ever colliding with another human. Going through that first one at 25’s going to hurt.

We really may be losing our collective minds.

I’m often accused of being a skeptic or a pessimist when it comes to technology. I like to clarify by saying that I’m technology agnostic. I don’t care if it’s google, microsoft, microogle, or goosoft. It’s technology, which I rarely have an emotional connection to. I like to think I subscribe to the following:

“Most claims of originality are testimony to ignorance and most claims of magic are testimony to hubris”

It does, of course, conflict slightly with the Gregory Benford quote Rob has at the top of his site. Curious to chat with him about it.

I’ve been a part of my fair share of painful interpersonal issues within teams. It’s easy to view those situations as failures, hoping to avoid them in the future. A lot of times my advice is the opposite, embrace it. Seek out healthy conflict instead of unhealthy consensus.

I know a lot and one thing I know is that I don’t know everything. I’ve always attempted to surround myself with people who know they don’t know everything, who are genuinely curious. Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his recent book, takes this as far as suggesting that leaders avoid at all costs people who think they know everything. Ultimately, the issue is that people who think they know everything won’t be aware of any facts that conflict with their view of the world. They inevitibly end up in a lonely artificial dark cave.

“When two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary”

I would like to formally apologize for the previous ‘Blackberry PINing’ post. I posted without really taking a good look at that site. Upon further review, one of the following is my opinion of the service:

• don’t get it
• get it and am aggravated by it
• get it and hate it

Being labour day today, it seems timely to post about this whole holiday thing in general. Holidays, and vacations, are yet another concept that has been redefined working in this model.

I generally find out about holidays the week before when someone says to me “you up to anything special this weekend?”

“This weekend?”

“It’s a long weekend.”

The long weekend concept’s lost on me now. I don’t really observe them and typically work on them, a half day today. The same applies to weekends, not that I work them but that I’m far from opposed to working on them. Back in my office days I was vigilant about not working during the defined off hours including weekends, evenings, and holidays.

It’s just all a lot more gray now and to be honest it feels more normal. It’s taken me time to adjust to this but now that I’ve acclimatized to it I prefer it. There’s a thinner, grayer line between work and life, again reminiscent of an older model not a newer one.

I’m trying out ma.gnolia and I thought you should know.

Generate your very own seal if you’re really bored or need yet another useless means of procrastination brought to you by our modern key to productivity, the interweb.