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Word Processing

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” 
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”  – Through the Looking Glass

On June 29th of this year, Washington experienced a Derecho, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/derecho-behind-washington-dcs-destructive-thunderstorm-outbreak-june-29-2012/2012/06/30/gJQA22O7DW_blog.html.

A Derecho, prounounced “de ray cho” is Spanish for straight and per Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, is a “widespread, long-lived, straight-line windstorm associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms.”Word Processing

Sandy and Social Networking

There were two big differences between Sandy for us and many past storms.

First, we did not lose power (yet) which is a real plus. Second, since we continued to have Internet access it was remarkable the active interaction with friends and near-friends who were close and geographically far away.

Our Sandy experience started in Williamsburg, WV, where Ellen and I had gone early to attend the ACT-IAC Executive Leadership Conference (ELC). My brilliant idea was to stay at a B&B rather than the conference hotels since we really like B&B’s and this allowed Ellen to feel like it was a bit more of a vacation from home since she gets to wander around Williamsburg while I go to the meetings.Sandy and Social Networking

Big Data – Is It A Big Deal?

<published earlier by FedScoop, http://fedscoop.com/big-data-is-it-a-big-deal/>

In our increasingly fast-paced world, the buzz-word du jour, Big Data, looks like a winner of the fastest transition from cool, new, vacuous, poorly-defined concept to mainstream acceptance and implementation.

A year or two ago if you had mentioned Hadoop, listeners would have thought you had the hiccups (or had just sneezed). Now even the non-Technorati use the term in casual conversations.Big Data – Is It A Big Deal?

Performing Versus Entertaining

Over the last month or so, we had the pleasure of going to performances by Kristen Chenoweth and Patti LuPone. The first we saw at Constitution Hall, the latter at Strathmore, a facility near us in Montgomery County, MD.

We were on the side at Constitution Hall and in the second row of the Orchestra at Strathmore, so one difference between our appreciation of the two performances was that it was if Patti LuPone was practically in our living room. That is, if we had a sunken living room and could seat a few thousand people.

Both performers are wonderful singers. I was lucky enough to see Chenoweth in Wicked as the good witch Glinda in which she was hilarious and LuPone in Gypsy twice as well as Sweeney Todd where in addition to singing she played the tuba (and triangle).Performing Versus Entertaining

Federal Countdown – October 5th

Every now and again, I get invited to appear on the Federal Countdown, hosted by Francis Rose, Friday afternoons from 3pm to 4pm on WFED radio.

The focus of the show is to have two guests select their three most important stories about the Federal Government. The third most important article is discussed by each guest individually. Then both comment on the two selected second-most and first-most (first-most or just most?) important stories of the week.

Yesterday John Salamone, who is a managing consultant at Federal Management Partners, were the guests. I thought I would provide a brief summary of the three articles I brought in this entry.

The audio for the session is posted on the WFED web-site at:

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/156/3067288/Federal-News-Countdown-Big-data-sequestration-solutions-and-cloud-savings.

Federal Countdown – October 5th

Turning A Page

Last night I had the pleasure of going to a game lost by the Washington Nationals. And, of course, the reason was that in the middle of the 9th inning, we found out that the Pittsburgh Pirates had beaten the second place Atlanta Braves which meant the Nationals had won the National League East.

I am one of those people born in Washington DC and lived in the area all my life. I still have fond memories of my father taking me to see the hapless Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium. For those who never went, Griffith Stadium was sort-of a mirror image of Fenway Park in Boston. Washington’s ‘Green Monster’ was in right field, not like Fenway’s left field one. The other difference was that Washington’s team was ALWAYS terrible and the crowd’s fairly small.Turning A Page

Follow Your Passion

I have learned over the years that doing things that you are passionate about is very important.

This was brought home to me earlier this week when I had lunch with a long-time friend of mine who I worked with during my time at Sun Microsystems. We were comparing job experiences and she remarked that every time she took a job purely because of the money that it ended up being a mistake.

Of course, I recognize that acting on that understanding is not always easy.Follow Your Passion

Using Biological Constructs As Metaphors For Developing System Architecture

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Last week I read about a research team at Harvard lead by George Church that encoded Church’s next book in DNA. As the write-up in the Harvard Medical School web page, http://hms.harvard.edu/content/writing-book-dna, said:

“Although George Church’s next book doesn’t hit the shelves until Oct. 2, it has already passed an enviable benchmark: 70 billion copies—roughly triple the sum of the top 100 books of all time.”

A Wall Street Journal write-up by Robert Lee Hotz, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444233104577593291643488120.html?mod=e2tw, quoted Church as pointing out that:

“A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet”

The articles go on to talk about the issues involved with the achievement, for example currently it is only possible to read the information sequentially and both reading and writing is slow, all of which in the end are engineering issues which will be solved over time.

The interesting issue to me is how it is increasingly useful to use biological metaphors to drive thinking about systems design and architecture and in more recent times of course using actual biology itself. And while we use the words, I am not convinced we have thought through all of the implications.

Using Biological Constructs As Metaphors For Developing System Architecture