But I’m a Night Owl

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Since I was a teenager, I’ve always stayed up late. Working over 50 miles away from home leaves me to not wanting to spend any more time in traffic than I need to. As a result, I head in to work early in the morning to beat the majority of traffic. That requires me to get up early to be able to get in early. No biggie, I’ve been doing it for years and it works out great. The problem is, I like staying up late. Having to get up so early for work, I only get the chance to do that on the weekends. That makes Monday mornings particularly challenging.

In addition to that, I’ve noticed that while I typically only get about 6 1/2 hours of sleep a night, the times I get 7 or 8 hours leaves me feeling more tired rather than more refreshed. Sleep studies have long busted the concept that 8 hours is required for everyone. Different people need different amounts so it isn’t terribly surprising that I generally get by with less.

Studies have also suggested that keeping the same sleep schedule helps which leads me to an experiment. For the next month, I’m going to get up at my normal time seven days a week. I’m not thrilled with the idea about getting up earlier than I need to, but this could work out well. Heck, the last time I did something like this I greatly reduced my Google Reader, Facebook, and Twitter consumption so part of me is looking forward to it, kinda.

I’m getting smarter by the minute

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While I believe that someone’s intelligence should be measured by the amount of useful information they possess, insight to their character can be determined by the amount and type of useless information they can recall. I’m not sure where I rank on the first measure, though to be well-rounded, I do occasionally need to work on the useless part. Fortunately, one of my podcasts, The Podcast About Nothing by Jimmy Jett, highlighted a source of Unnecessary Knowledge. I’ll be all set for the next lull in a conversation.

Here are some examples from a few minutes of studying:

  • More than 10 percent of all the salt produced annually in the world is used to de-ice American roads. (#2588)
  • Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. (#114)
  • The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they can be easily confused at a crime scene. (#557)
  • The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate. (#51)

The quiet before the storm or the cheers?

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This coming Monday, we will be launching new service desk software at my company. The launch represents about 18 months and literally thousands of hours of effort by the IT department that I am a member of. I can honestly say that it is the single largest project I have every been directly involved in. I almost cannot count all of the things I learned about enterprise software, planning, proposals, evaluations, consulting, support, project management, and on, and on. It has been a long and rough road that was longer and rougher than anyone imagined at the beginning.
The problem is that I want it to be perfect and for everyone to be thoroughly pleased with it. We thought long and hard about what would make a good system. We interviewed our users, we tested, we tweaked, we debated, and, in some cases, outright argued, but, most of all, we really tried to work towards what we felt was best for our users and our business. At some point, however, you have to “ship it.” Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Some would argue that if it isn’t perfect, it isn’t done. The reality is that rarely do you have the resources (usually time and money) to achieve that ideal. We will be launching with our best effort 1.0 and fully plan to continue to improve the service in the weeks and months ahead and to listen to the feedback from the users.
The part that really concerns me is the “double jeopardy” my team is in. If it isn’t well received, that will reflect poorly on our larger IT organization (which includes us). If it performs poorly, that reflects badly on my team specifically as we are responsible for the system itself (the servers). As anyone in the software/IT business knows, the variables are plenty when it comes to performance and you don’t always have control over all of them. Some performance problems are inherent in the software and we can’t change them. Our users don’t know and don’t care about that. Is that a pride problem that’s making me worry? I don’t think so but it still nags at me.
Change is tough and most everyone deals with it less-than-perfectly. No matter what happens on Monday, I know that there will be a number of people that will complain if for no other reason than because it’s “different.” I have a thick enough skin to take that. I’m a people pleaser and since I see the imperfections, I worry that others won’t be able to look past them.
Sorry for the rambling and the disjointed thoughts, but it’s my blog and my prerogative. G’night.