Bill Miller's chuck bucket!?

Hey parents! There seems to be a rather large lack of "proper parenting" going on in the world and I thought I'd comment on it with a suggestion.

Don't train your kids to be stupid!

I'm sure you've all seen it. A parent that is not correcting a child for something that is a really horrible idea. Things like giving in to their every whim, supplying their unpleasant habits, or just generally not ensuring that children know "right from wrong".

For instance: I just read an article about a restaurant that has a sign that indicates that parents with unruly children will be asked to leave the restaurant. Think about this. If my parents had ever taken me to a restaurant and I misbehaved then I would have been removed LONG before any other patron would have had a chance to comment or even complain. What's with people being so lazy that they can't be bothered to ensure that other people on the planet are not being adversly affected by their children. Sheesh!

Just remember when raising your children that they will mimic your behaviour and not learn anything that they don't see or at least have explained to them (repeatedly). I once mentioned to a friend that he shouldn't start doing anything that he didn't want to do for the next 20 years when his first child was born. If you give them everything they want, they will learn that Mom & Dad will supply them with everything that is needed in life.

• They won't learn that it takes hard work to get those things.
  
• They won't learn that you can't believe everything that everyone says.
  
• They won't learn that there comes a time when you should "cut bait and run" meaning some "friends" aren't really friends they're just mooching everything they can out of you.
• and (unfortunately) they will be at a complete loss when one or both of their parent pass away.
  

Now is that someone you'd be proud to "let loose on the world"?

Just think about it. If you train your kids to be stupid, you can't be surprised when they are actually stupid and "don't get it". Remember my motto: Stupidity is billable, if you're going to be an idiot, it's going to cost you in the end. This isn't just a simple platitude, it's an important life lesson. If you don't ensure your children understand the basics of life (e.g. You can't get much for nothing; You should treat others like you wish they would treat you), you will undoubtedly be unhappy with them as adults.

That's it for this rant. Stay tuned for futher questionable thoughts, and remember Stupidity IS billable.

Bill

A coworker of mine posted the following on Twitter... and I just had to respond, and since the link site didn't allow for a response I added it to here:

@DDame Debate continues: Split development and maintenance teams? Or have a single project team? http://bit.ly/azwu0r

Here is my response:

You are soooo right. Devs really need to "eat their own dogfood" in order to become better devs. It's amazing how fast they get better when they actually have to run that software as well. When they discover that nothing useful is put into the logs until it's put into Debug mode, they figure out that a 2am call will not get fixed by 2:10am unless they put some thought into it while they code it the first time.

All Devs need to walk a day in their users life to ensure that the decisions they make are ones that will last and not just band-aids that fall off very quickly.

I've said it in the past, and I'll say it again: If you aren't forced to maintain your own software you are only half trained, and are guaranteed to only create half-assed solutions.

I have just read an awesome set of blog entries about Resume writing, reading and some interviewing notes that are probably also reasonable for a lot of other job types as well.

In the last couple of years I was involved in a number of interviews (giving and getting) so when I read these I discovered that I "passed" these interviews by essentially "passing" what is mentioned here. The people I participated in interviewing I didn't know this information, and had I known things may have gone better/easier during the decision process (and the fall out from that as well). I think it's useful information ... maybe you will too.

Have a read:

How to create a resume (that get's you an interview), or How they read your resume:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/09/ten-tips-for-slightly-less-awful-resume.html

How to conduct/survive a phone screening interview:

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-screen-questions

How to recognize a good programmer (in an interview):

http://inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

Yeah, I still haven't purchased a new set of glasses. Here is the old content just because it doesn't belong over in the Photo Gallery.

A link to the glasses subset I extracted from one of the sites... which one(s) do you think would look good on me?

Here are links to more recipes:

Meatloaf

Scalloped Potatoes

Here is a link to the best/fastest/simplest pizza dough recipe ever!