26 October 2015

Been a while hasn't it

Didn't mean to disappear quite that long, 2.5 months it turns out.  Well, I'll be picking up my posting again.  In the interim, I've been on vacation in the Peruvian Amazon, picture below, been a manager at work, and generally running around.

You probably think of piranha when thinking about the Amazon river.   We were on a fishing expedition for piranha.  My wife, the pilot, and our guide all caught piranha -- mostly red bellied, but a couple white bellied.  Above is my one catch.  It is a sardine (about 10", 25 cm).  I'm amused, or puzzled, or something.  I'm happy about it.  It's a reminder of the fact that the world is more involved and weirder than you might think.  And a reminder than if there's weirdness to be found, I'll be the one to find it.

Managing, well, I'll go back to a story from college.  A friend of mine was a highly talented computer science major who went from starting his bachelor's degree to finishing his master's in 4 years.  While we were room mates, he did a group project with the other two top students in the class.  If technical skill were the only issue in doing a technical project, this group would have done by far the best.  Instead, it was a mediocre project.  That's when he, and I by contact, developed an appreciation for good managers.  One of their skills is to get the best out of a group of people.  So that's my aim.

2 comments:

EliRabett said...


Yep, a good manager lets others do the work while taking care of the administrivia and other aggro.

Fernando Leanme said...

Its important to get people to perform..and to make sure they got funding, budgets, permits, & coffee.