Deck Party
- Written by Roger Kovack
Changes keep happening in my life. First there was the voltmeter. Now there's the deck.
But let me explain. I was passionately interested in electronics when I was about six. My dad encouraged me with wires and switches and books and even a tutor. He was a manager at one of the big defense contractors back then and brought home everything including an engineer. So with that background at an early age, the voltmeter he brought home for me became my touch stone to knowing about what was going through the wires.
And, eventually, that voltmeter became one of those things like a power animal in Shamanism or a favorite phrase in writing. I couldn't do without it even though sometimes years would go by without me even seeing it. Just to know that it was there, somewhere buried in my mother's garage or hidden in a box in a storage room across town was reassuring to me. It was not only a way of knowing what is hidden in wires, it became a symbol for what is hidden in my life.
These days, my decrepit deck has finally caught my attention and I don't need a voltmeter to know that it needs some restoring, or remodeling, or flat out replacing.
What's worse is that it isn't even my choice whether it gets repaired or remodeled. It's up to the local building code officials. But there is a kind of sadistic pleasure in knowing that people far and wide might read this story and some of them may just be building officials. I imagine them wondering if I live in their town and if they'll get a chance to pounce on me.
But trifling offices aside, my real question is if I should just repair the deck as it is, or maybe move it a bit this way or that so it actually fits in the right place next to the living room. It will either end up being a nice piece of carpentry with a new purpose and a new position in life, or some new wood in a really stupid place with the rail abruptly ending a couple of inches away from the front window like it does now.
It's hard to describe what that looks like or how it happened in the first place but if you saw it and you weren't the person swinging the hammer and doing the work, you wouldn't have the slightest doubt about just where the new deck is going and it certainly is not where it is right now.
Our living room is the sweet spot of the house and the deck right outside of the windows is an ugly and old thing with rotting wood and sagging boards. From the living room, it's something like a grand view of a dead carcass. Even the turkey vultures don't want it. If that wasn't bad enough, just beyond the reviled rail is a wide open view of a pretty little group of redwood circles of substantial trees.
"We could have a nice little wrought iron round table with two stools and a vase of flowers," my wife said, imagining the new deck. I could just see the deck and it's new rails (and the new French doors in the living room) sparkling in her eyes.
And I'll have to admit that I've been quietly planning a modest extension to the existing deck. The problem is that one corner will have to be clipped off at a diagonal. "It would look like a piece of a crow's nest," I said.
"What would the deck floor look like in that corner," she asked, but she already knew the answer. "Could it be laid on a diagonal to match the rail?" She was excited, painting the scene with her hands. "Then the little table and stools would fit perfectly against the rail and have it's own little floor space."
I know she likes small spaces that have their own meanings. The flowers on the table would always be fresh and this corner doesn't get the blasting noontime sun. Now even I can imagine that scene with her sitting at the table with glasses of lemonade and wearing a wide brimmed hat. But the whole scene is new and I have to stop to consider all the ramifications.
I have to stop to think about the stresses and forces in the new under-structures of the deck and then I have to think about all the carpentry details down to exactly how many of what size nails to use. I have to think about all the hidden stuff and what it will do through the years and decades to come.
I know about how I plan these things. It usually ends up with several months or years of chin pulling and half completed, mumbled sentences, and reaching back into my old experiences. And I'm not really a carpenter.
I know myself and then after all that deliberation, I'll end up building the new deck and the crows nest in about three days. But until that happens, I can somehow feel that old voltmeter my father got for me when I was six. I can feel a need between my shoulders and at the back of my head to want to know something that I can't quite put my fingers on, just like wanting to know what is going on inside the wires I was playing with.
I can't go on with the deck project without that knowing and without my old voltmeter that was given away when my mother's garage was finally cleaned out.
"Didn't you find a new voltmeter that you really like?" my wife asked.
"Yes and they were $4.00 so I bought two of them," I admitted to what I think is just buying toys to try to fill the hole in my soul that was left when I wasn't a kid playing with wires anymore. "And they are so much better than my original voltmeter, too," I said. "But they're not satisfying," I added.
Voltmeters are not satisfying anymore because I no longer wonder about what is happening in wires. My life has moved on and my wondering about what can't be seen and and can't be understood has moved on with age. There is no more satisfaction in knowing about voltage anymore than there is in knowing about 2x4's and nails. As time moves past, the intriguing satisfaction is in the not knowing, in the unknowable, and in the very fact of life, not just my life.
As my wife watches me, I catch a deep, quiet look into her sparkling blue eyes. It's as if it is a glimpse into a dark pool and the very surface of her eyes both reflect the light and recess deeply into the past, into the history of our lives together and into the lives of all lovers.
In that moment I see that if my choice is to sit next to her at that adorable round table on the crows nest corner or to spend another few decades with a stupid close-up view of a deck rail, my choice is as obvious today as it was the day we married.
Power Points
- Written by Roger Kovack
I've been back to working at the software factory for the past few weeks making a slide presentation for people who aren't software developers. You know, the real people that really use software and would rather not know anymore than they have to about it.
This isn't easy for someone who works alone in his head which is where most of the real technical work is done. I need some real people that really use the software but they don't exist yet. The next best thing is to put some placeholders on the slides to represent real people so I do that with star people. I use Photoshop to make these little graphical creatures. Of course star people aren't real people but they do things on the slides that are the same things that real people do in their offices.
I learned about star people from a guy I was working with back in the dot.com heyday. I was scrawling a diagram on a white board when he asked me where the people fit into my diagram.
"Just draw a star where the people should be," he told me and he was right.
People do need to have their places around software and software is worthless without people, although Twitter and Facebook would like you to believe the opposite is true too. Some parts of software are just too geeky to talk about, but there are some parts of software that work together with people such as web pages and buttons to click on.
So using the lesson from that dot.com job, I started out putting just one star person on a slide but he wasn't very flexible so I made a couple of other star people in different poses. Then they started to take over the whole show. "Just what do you think I'm supposed to be doing here, Roger," one of the most excited looking star people asked me.
Now I know that they don't have conversations with me because if I think they do then I might be going over the edge. However, putting the question of my sanity aside for a moment, if star people are going to be the representatives of real people using this software they would get their message across better if they did talk.
"I think you're supposed to introduce the image you're standing on," I answer.
"I'll try that," he said. "Roger, I'd like you to meet Mr. Diagram. Diagram, this is Roger, the guy who is under the delusion that he created all of this, but don't listen to him."
"No, no," I object. "That really isn't a diagram. That's just an iconic image for the whole subject. Don't try to explain it. It's just a pretty box on the screen. It doesn't mean anything important."
"Well maybe that's the way it looks to you, Roger, but those people in the audience that are watching me want it to be a real diagram," the star person tells me.
Now this is getting absurd, I think to myself, but then if I wanted a representative for the people in the audience I guess I've got to let him have his say.
"Not only do you dismiss this diagram as just graphical eye candy when it's not, another star person really gets into the details of this diagram on slide 19," this star person tells me.
"That isn't a different star person on slide 19, it's you. It's a copy. You know. I selected you, then hit the copy button and moved to slide 19 and hit the paste button," I explained to him.
"Again, Roger, that may be how she appears to you but let me assure you that she isn't just a copy."
"She?" I ask. I'm starting to wonder if the star people have a water cooler to hang out around that I'm not aware of. And even if they do, how could they possibly have gender and if they do have gender what other kind of mischief can they get into when they're supposed to be standing around by themselves on their own slides.
"Yes, she, Roger. Didn't you know that? If she is just a copy of me, then you're getting a little more addle-brained than I thought," he told me. "You can tell by the way she wiggles her star points," he points out.
No, these aren't animated graphics. No one is wiggling her star points and I just don't know what he's talking about. I move the slide previewer over to slide 19 and indeed there is something slightly seductive about her points.
Oh no. Now I'm calling the star person on slide 19 a 'she'. This human personification of graphical images is all fine for getting the people in the audience to feel personally connected to the software but this is on the verge of getting completely off the point.
"Her points are the point," I hear a muffled voice say. "Move back to slide 1 and stop leering and listen to me." Now whatever these star people are doing when I'm not watching has become their own little private affair. I hope they're not using office hours to get to know each other better. I move back to slide 1 and the muffled voice gets clearer.
"Now this intro graphic has to be a graphic, not a complicated diagram," the first star person says. "I expect that to be fixed in the morning," he goes on with the voice of a hard-nosed boss.
"And I would redraw you with your hands on your hips and tapping your toe," I say with a smartypants voice, but it didn't work.
"No, you won't," he says. "Star people are nice and social, unlike some hide-in-the-closet software developers with no social skills."
"Oh, get a life," I snap back at him.
"I do have a life," he says with a fake sweetness. "What about you?"
Use Case
- Written by Roger Kovack
My job these days is to be sure that software does what people really want it to do. Now please bear with me here because this isn't technical and, besides, everyone already knows that software never does what we want and it's so frustrating for everyone.
Take Twitter for instance. What people really want Twitter to do is make us very popular among the masses. Kind of thumb peck your way to rock star status without even knowing how to play a guitar. But like so much other software, it just doesn't deliver. What actually happens is our kids and our old friends that we never see or talk to all follow our mindless tweets so they know we are still alive and that we still don't have anything interesting to say so there isn't even any point to giving us a call just to check in.
The real final effect of Twitter is to make the cell phone useless as a way of having any real social contact and make us all suckers to that added digital package the cell phone carriers charge us for. They don't charge us extra for talking but Twitter has made talking so, like, totally yesterday. Maybe Twitter is just a big cell phone plot to make us stop using the expensive voice bandwidth that comes with the service and charge us extra for the cheap text bandwidth. Its the same tricky con as bottled water. They've got us believing bottled water isn't tap water even when we know its just the same.
So trying to really figure out what we want software to do and how we use software could be really useful now that we spend a very considerable part of our day just trying to cope with it. One of the popular ways of doing this is to consider 'use cases' which is simply how people use software and what they hope to get out of it. Now I'll admit that use cases does sound about as empty as my tweet about checking the weather report on the Web, so an example might help here.
Take for instance the use case of getting some cash from an ATM. It turns out that this is the standard use case example that was used back in the '80s when the idea first emerged. The concept needs an actor, which is a human, a system which is the ATM and a goal which is grab the cash. Since it helps to have real people in mind along with a real system and a real goal, I'll use my wife as the actor in this example because I know what she does.
In this case, though, the actor (my wife) doesn't have an ATM or a debit card but she still has the goal of getting some cash before she goes to do lunch with important people. So she goes to the nearest ATM-like system which happens to be a small wad of cash I take out of my jeans pocket and dump on the dresser before I go to bed. This works out great for her. The actual steps she takes are 1) she rifles through the cash carefully pulling out the biggest bills and 2) she leaves me with the one's and small change.
However, like all software, there could be glitches in the system. Kind of unexpected things happen that the people that make software have to think about. For instance, maybe I didn't leave enough cash on the dresser or maybe I didn't empty my pockets so the cash will have to go through the laundry first. This kind of thing is called a 'scenario' in use case lingo and scenarios have to be taken into consideration.
In this scenario, the ATM-like system could include my wallet which the actor (Wifey) has to first find and then pillage. Here it is best to realize that actors aren't stupid and can figure out interactions that will achieve their goal even if the default pile of cash doesn't exist. Now to be fair to her, I must say that when she hits the real system jackpot (my wallet), she usually leaves a post-a-note something like, "What depression? I took a $20. I love you." So this scenario works fine, too.
At least it works for her but things could get complicated for me. Consider this next scenario which is where I become the 'actor' and want to 'use' the 'system' which is My Friend Joe, the espresso stand in the downtown quad. Again, in software parlance, this could be considered a 'critical path', or at least I consider it that way. It means that if I don't get a triple espresso right away, I could end up sleeping on the lawn instead of going for another maniacal run. It turns out that they won't take my plastic for the triple espresso and the last $20 isn't in my wallet. So has the 'use case' covered this scenario?
Again, actors aren't stupid and will find more ways to use the system if the system has been designed right. So I whip out my cell and start Twittering, suggesting that everyone following me up to this point immediately donate to the cause of developing even more pointless software – Pay By Twitter - by putting money into my PayPal account. If I'm not going to be a rock star or another Bill Gates, can I figure out a solution to this use case that will support this software cowboy when he's fresh out of coffee-powered brilliance? Surely everyone will want to cash in to the next big thing on the net by sending money now.
But are all my fans going to p(l)ay along? Again, actors aren't stupid except when they are use case designers on a caffeine panic.
Mardi Gras Mop Up
- Written by Roger Kovack
I went to a Mardi Gras dance at the local bar last Saturday and that was a first for me. I don't know what Mardi Gras is all about really. I live a sheltered life but what I found out was that Mardi Gras is about drinking, and honestly, I've never considered that. I don't want to say I'm a teetotaler because I'm not, but then, I'm not a big drinker either. Usually, when I go for an evening of dancing at this bar that doesn't even have a cover charge, I have a beer or two so I can feel like I've paid my dues. I'm just not a dedicated boozer so I don't really know what getting drunk is all about. Mardi Gras was going to be a lesson for me.
The whole scene was pretty sloppy and maybe that's just because it had been going on since two in the afternoon. I got there just before midnight because I heard that there was going to be some really hot jams at the end of the usual rock 'n' roll play list. The truth is that I'm just not enough of a party animal to spend twelve hours of crazy crowds and dancing. I'd like to think I'm still thirty-something and I can boogie until the sun comes up, but I'm also realistic about just how much fun I can stand in one day.
But as I said, the place was sloppy with beer being served in plastic cups that have been spilling everywhere because they kind of squish in your hand if you're laughing and dancing and drinking all at the same time. I was lucky enough to finish my one beer without collapsing the cup but a girl lost it completely (her beer cup, I mean) when she tried to get into some dude's lap. I just reached down and picked up the dumped cup and added it to my own. As far as the spilled beer goes, well, it's a carpeted floor and I'm not barefoot so who cares. As I say, the place was sloppy and on top of that, someone had dumped a whole box of condoms in their foil pouches on the floor. I guess this is Mardi Gras confetti?
Not only was the floor sloshed, but one big guy at the bar just slumped over and ended up flat on his back, but I live a sheltered life so I've never seen that happen before. My one beer that didn't spill was enough for my entire night. The guy on the floor either couldn't or wouldn't stand up even after three dudes tried to get him back upright against the bar. It looked like they were trying to get a giant, overcooked rigatoni to stand on end. Eventually the three dudes got this totally overdone party animal upright again and carried him out by the armpits while one person pulled his jeans up over his crack. And despite all this, I think this little tavern is an upstanding place, even though its named the Pink Elephant.
But my turn to help out with the mop up was coming. The final music jam started at 1:00 AM and it was a very cool and danceable new sound. The place was starting to empty out so there was plenty of floor space to dance on, carpeted stale beer, condoms and all. I managed to stay stoked until 2:00 AM when the places closes and I was feeling pretty good as I ran through the rain to my car that I had been lucky enough to park almost in front of the joint. I jumped into the car, a fifteen year old pickup from the days of tiny trucks, not the flashy, jacked up gas guzzlers of current times, and tossed my stuff on the bench seat next to me. The dome light in the cab is out so the only light in the car was from the flickering, half burned out Pink Elephant neon sign.
It was at that point that the bench seat next to me gave out a sigh and snuggled it's head against my shoulder. Now I want to assure you, dear reader, that this isn't fiction and, in fact, I needed to assure myself of that too. A shiver went through my body as I tried to hold on to the imagination that the seat next to me would just naturally curl up against my shoulder. But that little attempt at self delusion wasn't working out for me so I immediately assumed that because it was so late and the place was so rowdy that my very concerned wife had walked down to the bar, didn't want to go in to that debacle, and decided she would just wait for me in the truck.
Unfortunately, that fantasy wasn't working out for me either and my shiver collapsed into a "Yuck!" as I realized that it wasn't my wife and the car seat had not become animate and there was a drunk male in my car that was happy to have a warm shoulder to rest his head against. I wasn't sure which of the two of us was going to puke first.
"You have to get out of here," I said in a loud, disgusted tone.
No luck. He just got himself more settled in against my shoulder, just like a cat that has no motivation to leave a warm lap no matter what the lap has to say about it. He was a stranger to me and probably young enough to be my grandson. I considered my alternatives. He was certainly docile, maybe harmless, and I suspected he couldn't stand up either, just like the guy that was carried out of the bar with his crack hanging out.
I didn't know exactly what to do, it being Mardi Gras and all, but I knew for sure that this drunk had to get out of my car. I wasn't taking him home and I didn't consider just driving him to the sheriff's office or doing anything else that would make both of our plights worse, so I reached over and opened the door next to him.
"You've got to get the f--- out of my car," I said, spitting out the f--- this time as if that would mean something to him but it didn't. So here I am about 40 pounds lighter and nearly that many years older than this party-hardy trying to figure out how to make good on my faux tough talk. Even if I got out of the truck, went around to his side and could yank him out, what good would that do? I can't make him sober and I can't make him stand if he can't stand up by himself, so any attempt to be gentle and considerate just seemed worthless.
I had no choice. I was danced up and worked out and was completely full of myself. Now nothing about being a refined 'golden-ager' with unflappable dignity or any other compassion for my fellow human sufferer made any difference so I just shoved him out of the open door into the rainy gutter. He landed like limp spaghetti, rolled over with his legs up and I ended up banging the open door against his knees until he got out of the way so I could slam the door and lock it.
And that was enough Mardi Gras for me for one night.
Back home, as I told my wife all about my Mardi Gras adventures I decided that I now know that it's all about drinking. I may never figure out anything about how to down serious booze but I'm learning that it must be okay for people to do that, if they can still stand up, and at Mardi Gras, how could it be any different.
"So what else can you say about Mardi Gras?" my wife asked. She is always so patient with me, no matter how idiotic I am.
"Well, I guess I learned that maybe I still have a tad of an issue about drunks curling up in my car. I guess I should lighten up on that negativity, like, chill, y' know." Okay. I was just winging this conversation and I didn't know what the right answer was, but maybe I could get off easy?
"And did you learn anything about locking your car?" she asked.