I'm slightly sore after finally getting back onto something of an exercise plan. It's not the kind of pain you regret, like if you did something you shouldn't have. However, there is still a bit of pain and is there because of other decisions (like sitting on my fat behind). And, it seems a fitting metaphor for life in general right now.

Things are really busy with our new family member (Laurin), which has put us in dew-soaked fields early on Saturday mornings and sitting in the back yard around the fire, teaching him how to make s'mores.

That pleasant busy-ness would normally just lead to a nice "sore" feeling of needing a bit more sleep and things would be fine. However, now it's combined with my primary contract ramping up to some pretty high levels of stress and another project that originally came up in July went through enough delays that it landed on the exact same batch of weeks as everything else.

And, much like the real-life soreness and pain, if you're a bit stressed out, things can combine to take a pleasant soreness into some more genuine pain. If I'm not working my primary contract, I'm working on the 2nd one. I'm still making those in my family a priority (and would rather drop a project if that was going to be compromised), but things like this site are suffering a bit in the mean time.

Over the last few years, I've discovered that my working on this site is driven in large part by pondering and curiosity and reflection: all things that tend to end up in the stranglehold of stress first. I can be otherwise doing just fine, but I just don't have the energy to sit back and just "wonder" about stuff.

I've been through these cycles enough to know that it *is* just cyclical. Things will calm down, I'll dig back in to some books and online reading and will revisit some of the ideas and notes in my notebook. Eventually, the stuff that I enjoy doing will feel the blood returning and things will cycle back to the other side of the swing.

See you on the other side.

If They Come, How Will They Build It? is one of those articles that feels like someone's been watching me. For years. I have had that very conversation something like 10-15 separate times.

Because of the kind of work I do, wholesale consulting, I'm pretty much never in on the beginning of a project. It's been a near universal truth that by the time I come on to a project, not only has the entire project been set up, it's frequently in trouble. That's when projects often turn to outside help.

And, I have yet to be on a project where you can actually jump in and start working without first wrestling with repository URL's, environment variables, IDE settings, missing build tools and about 10,000 assumptions. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that nearly every one of these conversations started out with the exact same statement he quotes:

"Just check it out and you'll be right to go."

That sentence hides this giant pile of assumptions and contains one of my least favorite words: "just". Nearly every time you hear it or it's friends: only and "all", as in "all you need to do", someone is leaving out a huge part of what's really involved. Sometimes they don't know what they're leaving out, but other times, people are doing it on purpose.

Regardless, it's filled with all of the crap that you'll only find out the hard way. Or, if you're in the kind of environment I've been working with lately, the entire staff that came up with the build procedure for every one of dozens of software projects is long gone. The only thing that's more frustrating than having that long conversation with the existing lead developer is having it with one who isn't there.

Like he says in the article, it only takes a couple of days and less than 10 pages to write this stuff up. Then, instead of every developer who comes on wasting 1-2 weeks before writing a single line of useful code, they can spend a couple of hours getting started and start contributing right away.

Or, you can keep having those conversations. I know I have been for the last month or so.

Photo: Daniel Lobo

For the past week, I've been on vacation here at home. We've been helping Laurin ease into American society, exposing him to our favorite foods, showing him around, etc. As part of that, we spent a day at the Minnesota State Fair. We had a good time, but I couldn't help but notice something that bothers me. Everywhere I turned, there was this deep obsession with the superlative.

Vendors had staked out their territories and all were drawing lines in the sand to show in exactly what ways they were the first, best, only, biggest, fastest, smallest, lightest, heaviest, etc. In some way, every one of them was trying to plant their flag at the top of some heap, even if they had to pile the heap themselves.

Decades of marketing books and programs (as well as consuming the results of said marketing) have taught everyone that you need to be number 1 in some way or you should just go home. And, if you aren't number 1 in some natural way, you need to redefine the criteria. If you can't actually be the first to market, you can be the first in the state or the first at the state fair.

We see this everywhere. If your hamburgers can't win in taste tests, but still sell well, you can't advertise them as "best tasting", but you sure can market them as "America's Favorite*" (*based on number sold). That fine print next to a claim is a sure sign that someone has redefined the criteria.

On the stock markets and in nearly every discussion of business, there's an assumption that if you can't be the market leader in your niche, you're a failure.

The thing is that I don't think that number 1 is necessarily the optimal place to be. My favorite recent example is in watching the aftermath of each of the finales for The Apprentice. After those final shows, there were 2 people out doing interviews about the result.

One of those people was the winner, who received a job working for Donald Trump on one of a handful of projects. The other came in 2nd and many of the interviews focused on how it must feel to not be the winner.

Then, in the middle of those interviews, you'd hear a question about what the "loser" was going to do after the show. The answer was telling. They pretty much all talked about the piles of job offers coming in from around the country.

In other words, the person who "won" got a job working for Donald Trump (a prospect that would require far more compensation for me than the "prize" offers) while the "loser" was offered a buffet of choice jobs. That person could choose to work for their ideal boss in their ideal job. As far as I'm concerned, coming in 2nd on that show is the ideal game plan.

Actually, we all do this all the time. It's highly unlikely that for someone like me who participates in a collection of hobbies like: playing guitar, writing fiction, keeping fish, drawing, photography, collecting movie memorabilia etc. will ever perform or possess a collection that is genuinely world class. That doesn't mean that pursuing those interests is futile or that I couldn't reach an admirable level, even make a living with some of them.

We all decide a level of effort that (to some degree or other) matches our expected return on that effort. And, for most of us, that mechanism works extremely efficiently for nearly everything in our lives. However, at some point, nearly all of us fall victim to the sales pitch that an endeavor is only worth pursuing if we can devote our entire pool of resources to it.

Horse pucky. I'm not the world's best software developer. However, I believe my track record points to me being a *good* software consultant. Because I am not killing myself in pursuit of being good enough that the entire software world beats a path to my door, I have time to write, play music, draw and enjoy spending time with my family.

It's a pretty good balance as far as I'm concerned. It may not be for everyone, but I think the obsession with the superlative is just hollow to me.