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?"
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.
There is an old gas station out on a highway that goes through vineyards and apple orchards near here. It's on my commute route to the gym and espresso and wifi hang outs that are just five minutes further down the road.
There are no curbs on this corner with just a two way stop sign and the highway taking a fast curve past a couple of Christmas tree farms, a berry farm and Mom's Apple Pie which is supposed to be great, at least that's what my barber says. The corner is the intersection of Apple Hill Road and Gravenstein Highway but these days it would be more appropriate to be the corner of Bordeaux and Zinfindel or some such winey sounding names. The corner with it's abandoned yards and an old trailer park hidden away behind a hedge of Junipers is far from the sleek bustle of strip malls and planned communities.
I don't remember how it happened but one day standing around the propane tank in the corner of the lot with the station owner, the subject of spirituality came up. It turns out that he and I had both been studying the same guru. So we fell into a conversation about what that guru was trying to communicate and something very subtle came to pass there on the corner with the cars whizzing by and people wanting to buy $20.00 on pump #4.
If I tried to say exactly what we were talking about, I wouldn't get it right. I just can't remember and even if I could, it wouldn't make sense. What did made sense was that the guru's message was as good right there 50 feet away from the stop sign as it was when I had last seen him give a talk in San Francisco, and that was his last public appearance. The gas station guy and I didn't realize that we were both there in that audience at the same time at that last talk, and I don't even remember how long ago that was.
What I do remember was the stunned hush in that auditorium when the guru finished speaking. There was nothing anyone could do or say or even think about at that moment. It made no difference where we were or that the guru had finished his talk or that the stage was there or that there were croissants and coffee and sushi to be had in the neighborhood just outside. Whatever was outside just didn't make any difference and also whatever was inside my head and my soul didn't make any difference either at that moment.
I can't really tell you what the guru said, but I don't think it makes any difference anyway. Now I know that sounds contradictory. How could anyone go to hear what someone has to say and then whatever was said had a profound effect on them and then say that whatever he said didn't make any difference? That just doesn't add up and maybe that's the whole point.
It simply doesn't add up. There isn't any reason or method or message or goal in what he said. It was just said and I heard it. What I thought about it or what anyone in the room thought about it just didn't make any difference. Maybe the guru said things that were true beyond any possible comprehension or maybe he asked questions that will never have any answers but also were questions that can never be ignored.
It reminds me of the last time I visited my sister on the Mendocino coast in Northern California. She is a photographer from the old school and she had a couple of walls of photographs of things that I can't describe but I would like to describe. In the end, that was the message of her photographs. I say, "In the end," but that is actually wrong. The trick was that the photographs didn't allow me to come to the end. I couldn't understand what I was looking at and eventually decided that it didn't make any difference and all I could do was just take in the images for what they were without knowing what they were images of. That's the end of it, or so I thought.
I turned away to talk with her and I was satisfied that I didn't know what the images were about. Or at least I thought I was satisfied, but I wasn't. I just couldn't look away from that wall of images and give up on knowing what they were. I tried but I couldn't do it. I was forced to look again and determine once and for all what she had taken pictures of. And the same thing repeated. I just couldn't figure out what was in the photos and had to look away in frustration. The photos were alive and bare-faced and just hanging on the wall but they were also hiding secrets that no amount of inspection would reveal.
Back to the corner gas station on a March day, with scattered showers and neon-green grass coming up around the grape arbors under an intense blue and billowing clouded sky. The remains of an old wood fence going from nowhere to nowhere stood in the middle of a grassy side yard. Maybe that fence divided left from right or front from back at one time but now there was nothing remaining that needed dividing. The scene was too magical, or too intense, or filled with too much beauty to take in. "I have to start a gas pump. Please excuse me for just a moment," the gas station owner said as he went back into the tiny store and left me standing next to the white and rusty propane pump as voiceless and thoughtless as we were when the guru stopped talking in that auditorium in San Francisco.
Somehow I knew that there was a secret message right there on the corner of Apple Hill and Gravenstein just like there was a secret message in my sister's art. It was right there in plain sight, on the grass and in the faded and cracked double yellow line where nothing is hidden. Yet there still is a mystery. I will never know what it is, and I will never be able to look away.
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.
I want some rain. I'm tired of this endless summer in the middle of January. The redwood forest wants some rain too. It has been waiting for months for a healthy rain. I'm desperate about rain because without rain there is no future and for me, having no future at all is the very heart of desperation. If I can't look forward to something, its just depressing. If the future is meadows of wildflowers then I have something to look forward to and even if the future is a deluge, I still have something to look forward to.
But at last there is some hope. The weather forecast guaranteed rain and I believed it so I cleaned the rain gutters. That just goes to show how desperate I've been because I wasn't thinking very well about what I was doing and the rain never came. That must have been caused by cleaning the gutters. Everyone knows that. I'm just too desperate to think straight.
Maybe I should have washed the car to compensate for the effect of cleaning the gutters. It's the idea of reverse psychology on the weather. If the high tech weather forecasts don't bring rain and washing the car doesn't work, I can try planning a garden party, or maybe try doing a rain dance with praying and pleading and such.
And maybe God hears my prayers and embarrassing whining and watches me hoofing the dry dirt and has sympathy for me, but He doesn't know any better than I do about how to bring the rain. I would be so disappointed to find out that He isn't the Rainmaker either, but He is compassionate so He goes out to His driveway and washes His car. He uses reverse psychology on Mother Nature too, but doesn't let on. I can just imagine Him washing His car with some gigantic jiffy car wash wand He found in a garage sale after the Flood. You remember, the Flood that Noah got away from with all the animals? Noah probably didn't live in New Orleans back then.
I don't know if His car washing really brings rain either but last night's downpour left the forest clean and sparkling with drops of water on the tips of the redwood fronds, and the tree trunks are dark, soaked poles reaching up through the ground fog and occasional rays of sun. When you live in a redwood forest, the rain comes from the forest and not the sky. That's because the forest is a couple hundred feet high and we lowly humans live at the bottom of these tall trees. Mostly all you see when you look up is endless trees. There isn't much sky to be seen. The forest makes the rain and drinks in the rain. We humans get soaked in the splashing drops, something like getting caught by His hose and car wash wand.
But when it comes to God washing His car, maybe He doesn't really have the Mercedes Benz that Janis Joplin asked Him for. Maybe He drives something else that doesn't have the high maintenance of engine check lights and better-than-your-Porche status (and cleaner than your Porche, too). Maybe He drives a redwood forest and He did wash it last night and these dripping woods are the rain that quenches my hope for a future of wildflowers and the glee of squirting my wife with the car wash wand on hot summer afternoons.
I kind of imagine I've got a little inside deal with Him because I don't drive a redwood forest to the gym (they get horrible gas mileage, but who cares when you're God) and I don't mind driving the muddy disaster that my car becomes when I wash it in our dirt road in July. Thats when there usually is an unseasonable rainstorm that destroys our carefully planned midsummer deck party and also destroys my fresh car wash job. He's standing above His forest with His biblical-sized car wash wand giggling and I have the only muddy car in the gym parking lot.
I don't care, though. It's part of the sacrifice I have to make for the joy of a meadow of wildflowers and the pristine glow of a clean redwood forest and besides, no one would recognize me in a clean car.
