You've all heard the axiom, "Actions speak louder than words" often enough that they probably sound more like Charlie Brown's teacher than anything wise. The problem is that in software development, marketing and in nearly every walk of life, we seem to *ask* people what they want and what they would do in a given situation rather than actually observing their actions.

Jeff Atwood over at the Coding Horror posted a spot-on analysis of just this principle. When you base decisions on what people say, particularly about hypothetical situations like how they'd use an application that doesn't yet exist, you're probably missing the mark. In fact, you're probably missing it wildly.

Then, last night, after reading that article, I saw this whole idea play out right before my eyes. As you turn into our neighborhood off Hwy 252, you go between a SuperAmerica and a Holiday, across the street from each other. Today, the price difference for regular unleaded between them was $0.26 a gallon. Basically, one (doesn't matter which) had changed their price in the morning and the other hadn't yet changed to match it like they usually do.

What's important though is that as I pulled into the parking lot of the more expensive of the 2 (I didn't need gas, just wanted the iced tea I like and the other doesn't have it), there wasn't a *single* gas pump open. As I walked inside, I heard no less than 3 separate conversations about how big of a rip-off the price of gas is.

That's just surreal, but proves the point. Nearly everyone you talk to about the price of gas (which has replaced discussion of weather in elevators across this fine land) will go on and on about how the price is nearly criminal. Now, whether it is or isn't is a discussion for another day. But, here we have nearly 20 people who, if you asked them, would have really gone out of their way to save $0.26 a gallon. If asked, they'd cite price as the determining factor in where they get gas.

Yet, clearly their actions say the exact opposite. Merely turning right instead of left (or vice versa depending) would have saved them that much, but they didn't do that.

The more of this principle that I see around me, the more I want to entirely skip the process of asking people and watch them instead. It's like Dr. House says, "Everybody lies", even if they don't know they're doing it.

The client-site that I'm working at is a cellphone black hole. Once inside the building, I have absolutely no reception. That means that if you call me at 8:30, and I don't leave for lunch, I won't know that you called until I leave at the end of the day. Given how I've had the same cell number for 5+ years and used it as my only number for most of that, being entirely unreachable for the entire duration of the day isn't reasonable.

Now, after about a week, they did give me a desk phone. However, aside from internal people, I don't want to give that number out for several reasons. One is that when the contract is over, I don't want to have to update anyone with a new number. Another is that I really like just having a single phone number that I can control. I can have complete connectivity when I want/need it and can completely shut it off by just silencing the phone.

Except a dead zone breaks that control apart.

So, last night I went looking for how I could forward all of my cell calls to another number. It turns out to be fairly easy, at least for T-Mobile. These instructions worked like a charm.

Basically, you just create a speed dial entry in the phone book with a name like "Forward to Skype" and a number like:
**004*6125551234#

Then I set up one to "Forward to TMobile" which switches it back to the regular voicemail. It was really easy to set up one to point to my home phone, the desk phone onsite, Shelly's phone, etc. All I have to do is hit that speed dial as I'm walking into the building and route the calls to wherever they should go.

Given how this stuff is all digital at this point, this is how it *should* work, but that expectation so rarely holds true that I was pleasantly surprised to find out how easy this was and how well it worked.

Photo: Marco Musso

After I got home today, the UPS guy came to the door with a dolly loaded 5 feet high with large boxes addressed to Shelly. I signed for it and brought them to the staging area, known in most houses as the living room and left them for her to open when she got home.

An hour or so later, she sliced open each of the boxes and unpacked the contents: all of the scented candles from her PartyLite party. At the time, I was in the basement, sitting in my home office, returning a couple of phone calls.

That's when it crept down the stairs, around the corner and punched me in the nose. The smell of . . . brown.

That's the only word I can come up with to describe this smell. It's kind of like how if you take a half dozen really attractive colors of paint and mix them together. You just end up with a nasty shade of brown. This is the olfactory equivalent of that nasty brown.

It's magnified by the fact that my nose is overly sensitive anyway, but I'm pretty much getting an instant headache from the swirling scents of melon, sun-kissed cotton, exotic spice, and wasabi ginger. By themselves, some of them are probably OK, but together, they form an entirely unholy union that's better suited as a cologne for Lucifer himself than as a way to improve the scent of our house.

Thankfully, the candles all ship out tomorrow and the portion that's ours will be sealed up in plastic bags to be used appropriately. One scent at a time. The way the chemists who formulated the artificial odors intended.

Yesterday, Shelly left for Cedar Rapids to spend some time with her extended family and attend her cousin's graduation, which leaves just me and the dogs to hold down the fort this weekend.

I'm a Myers-Briggs introvert. Lots of people are surprised by that because I'm loud and enjoy talking. However, much of the reading I've done on the difference is more about whether being with other people recharges or drains you.

I'm married to an extrovert (we balance each other well). When we go out and spend time with 10-12 friends, she comes home energized and talking about it. I need some time alone to recharge.

At any rate, that means that, while I would never volunteer to spend *all* of my time alone, a weekend here and there is just what the doctor ordered. So, it's me, the home theater, the grill and my laptop and maybe a meal with a friend until Sunday night.

I'm working on a CakePHP project that holds some promise as a commercial product/service. It combines 2 of the things I love: writing and technology. It also targets a potentially lucrative target market: retiring baby boomers. It has no real start up costs other than time building the software and writing the content and the results of the service would be a net gain society (do no evil). I really think this could work.

This is not a billion dollar idea or even necessarily a million dollar idea, but then again, a mere extra $215,000 over the next 10 years would pay off my house. An extra $5000 a year would mean a fabulous vacation. An extra $10,000 a year could mean taking a couple of months off.

The last time I took a stab at the product/service market directly, I was too focused on trying to make a $60,000+ living out of the idea. As a result, a product that was making $30,000/year was a "failure". This time around, I'm not going to do that. I *never* want this thing to be my fulltime job. Just think of the difference between winning $10,000 in the lottery this year and making $10,000 this year as your job. One feels like a lot of money, the other is poverty.

I'm holding back the details of the project itself until I'm a little further along, but I'm really excited about this particular project. If you want to know more about it, send me an email or talk to me offline.