Interruptions on hold

Quickly rising on my A-list of pet peeves: “advertising” interruptions and intrusive music on telephone hold systems.

Sometimes it’s necessary to wait on hold. I can live with that. I would, tho’, like to work while waiting. Recorded messages frequently repeated are irritating. As is any music that doesn’t disappear into white noise. I can be a real bitch when it comes to bad customer service: don’t give me a head start on a head of steam.

Yet another desktop calendar

Seems I’m always looking for a desktop calendar…I’ve tried too many to even mention. I haven’t even been certain of what I want. It needs to be unobtrusive, but give me a quick overview of the month, plus let me drill down into details. Since I use Outlook, I want them to be linked.

I may have found just the program. I’ve always rejected others within an hour or two, this one has been installed now for 24 hours. So far so good.

Gurus, wizards, and just plain smart people

Rick Strahl wrote about being described as a guru by colleagues.  Aside from finding the description to be somewhat embarrassing, Strahl says:

I also found this statement rather ironic, because the developers I’m working with on this assignment are particularly sharp and have an interesting and well designed application and architecture.  Working with them has been a joy because of their skill level and the architecture which is extremely flexible. It’s allowed us with only very minor modification to build a new front end Web application interface of an existing desktop platform. So what business have these guys, who are obviously top notch at what they do, calling anyone a guru?

Strahl’s post prompted me to consider what the choice of the word reflects about both the speaker and the subject, and what the choice may say about how technology consumers have matured.

The choice of guru implies something different from the description wizard, commonly used in the past, for anyone with skills in computer technology. Have we matured from slavishly accepting magic from wizards to learning from gurus? When we called technologists wizards, we were admitting there was specialized arcane knowledge beyond an ordinary person’s grasp. Wizardry is a calling only a special few can answer. If technologists were wizards, then users were acolytes, and is it any wonder IT departments seemed to so often become self-serving, autocratic, and moribund?

When we call someone a guru, we communicate the same awe we feel for wizards. However, the choice also says that we expect the guru to teach us. Learning may be painful, but it is possible. Wizards are not expected to teach, certainly not just anyone.

Teaching separates Strahl from other smart, capable people and from wizard status. Strahl has freely shared his knowledge for at least eight or nine years that I know of. He’s made his expertise available to anyone, not just his customers. That alone doesn’t make him a guru, in my opinion. The top quality and significance his information, is the extra “oomph” of guru.

Practice makes…better

Surgeons practice medicine when they perform triple bypass or remove an appendix. But surgeons also practice new techniques before operating on patients.

I blog, in part, to practice writing.

Professionals of all kinds practice techniques of their work in order to improve the quality of their work.

Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror points out that programmers, good programmers, practice, too.

To convince yourself, consider a programmer you admire, and you will see that they are always stretching beyond their current abilities to learn something new or do something better.

Atwood considers the ways in which programmers practice. He omitted one  very important one: newsgroup posting. I’m sad that newsgroups have become less vital than in years past, because they’re are a great way for new programmers to practice reading other people’s code and to practice techniques.

I started answering newsgroup questions because I’d gotten good help from posts, and the protocol was to post responses, too. I kept on posting, though, because it was excellent practice.

I’d pick questions I didn’t know the answer to. In order to post a reply I’d first have to write an example illustrating the problem, to see if the right problem was being identified, then I’d write an answer that solved it. If I couldn’t find a solution, I’d be sure to watch the thread that developed. I’m indebted to my peers in the newsgroups, for helping me become a better programmer than I would have on my own.

Atwood’s article prompts me to wonder if I still practice as effectively as I once did since I don’t post in newsgroups any more.

Good reminder.

CSS: resources, users’ Windows setting

More on CSS…

Smashing Magazine has a great collection of CSS information.

The Web Developer’s Handbook by Vitaly Friedman, one of the folks at Smashing Magazine, has a link to CSS Creator, which looks promising.

Ben Swinney at ScriptDaddy lists CSS filters system color keywords. I didn’t know why he calls them “filters” since that seems to refer to CSS hacks.