We sometimes play an improv game called “1-2-3 WORD”.

The goal is to get 2 players to shout the same word at the same time. Best if played in a group of 3 or more, but the bigger the group, the better.

You start the game someone throwing out a word for inspiration (ex: “pizza”).

To play the game, two players next to each other face each other and simultaneously shout “1-2-3 {WORD}”, where {WORD} is the word/phrase which first comes to mind when each player thinks of the inspiration word (“pizza”).

If the 2 players happen to shout the same {WORD}, the game ends. If the 2 players each say a different {WORD}, play moves clockwise 1 position to the next player and the new inspiration are the {WORDS} which the prior 2 players said. You may not reuse words previously said.

It is a very quick game that can be played on car trips and usually gets a laugh when you finally get a pair that says the same word. It’s also helpful to go AS FAST AS YOU CAN in saying the words. The idea behind the game is to get in sync with the other players so you’re all starting to think alike.

Example: Players - 4 Inspiration word - PIZZA

Player 1 & Player 2 face off: P1 word - “Cheese!” P2 word - “Dominoes!”

Words don’t match, so next round begins: Inspiration words - CHEESE and DOMINOES

P2 word - “Bread sticks!” P3 word - “Board games!” (because “dominoes isnt just a pizza company, it’s also a board game and that very well could be a conclusion someone could draw from the inspiration words)

Words don’t match, so next round begins: Inspiration words - BREADSTICKS and BOARD GAMES

P3 word - “Game night!” P4 word - “Game night!”

Words match, so the game ends!

It usually takes MUCH longer than 3 rounds to match up (unless siblings are facing off - it’s best to separate close friends so the game doesn’t end too early).

This is probably the most straightforward explanation. In many-to-many, I usually have a helper table standing in between which holds the foreign keys

Sucks bro. You’re in good company tho

In the article, they’re proposing a solution to agile (“Impact Development” or something). The quote I listed above is talking about how Impact Development is supposed to provide those things. That said, I don’t blame agile for projects not having those things, it’s the people’s fault. So changing methodologies likely won’t help.

In short: yes, make AI do all project management :P

I would say yes, the problem is stakeholders not having thought critically about what they really wanted from the project.

The motivation for projects were usually “regulatory told us we need to have this new metric for federal reporting”, or “so-and-so’s company can do this, why can’t ours” rather than, “we’d like to increase retention by 6% and here’s the approach we’ve researched to make that happen”.

I ended up experiencing that people in the highest positions weren’t experts in their field, but just people who had a strong intuition. This meant they would zero-in on what they wanted by trial and error rather than logic. Likewise, it meant they were socially adept enough so their higher-ups would never get mad at them when we finished “late and over budget”. People lower on the totem received that blame.

I think humans are just really bad at estimating and keeping their commitments, which is why I enjoy working with agile more. It’s a forgiving framework (imo).

what matters when it comes to delivering high-quality software on time and within budget is a robust requirements engineering process and having the psychological safety to discuss and solve problems when they emerge, whilst taking steps to prevent developer burnout.

I haven’t read the book they’re advertising here, but I’ve found these challenges to be socially created, not caused by agile.

I couldn’t disagree more.

In medical I would end up being apart of endless retirement gathering meetings, then draft up the SOW doc only to have stakeholders change requirements when they were reviewing the doc. Then months later once the doc was finally finished and I could do the development, when UAT time finally came, they’d say the build wasn’t what they wanted (though it matched the written requirements).

Most of the projects I saw executed in the last 4 years either got scrapped altogether or got bogged down in political bs for months trying to get the requirements “just right”.

It was a nightmare. You could blame me, or the company, or bad processes all you want, but I’ve never had fun on a waterfall project, especially not in medical. (Though, in my opinion, we are severely understaffed and need like 4 more BAs.)

I can’t even imagine the heat generated from charging a battery in 60 seconds. Gonna get branded by my bezel

Look, I’ll be honest with you: I don’t know how this is going to go. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to be a fly on the wall.

That said, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to put yourself out there, too. By asking for a dance, you’re communicating “I’m here to have fun”. Try to say that to as many people as you can and you’ll have a blast.

Also, Salsa is so dang easy to do the basic step. 90% of the Latin dances I’ve been to have been just doing the basic step for the whole song and looking at people around me for inspiration of moves to try.

You’re gonna do great.

Bank of America login page

Damn. It’s amazing to read some of the HIPAA and FERPA fines out there for exposing data accidentally. Then you’ve got this kind of breach, which is probably endemic and at a much larger scale.

Great read

Delta is a great app if you have iPhone and a Backbone controller 👀

I think this is neat.

A good read and the principles hold for a lot of hobbies. Lots of small projects are more fun, more engaging, and better skill-building experiences than learning how to make a masterpiece from the get-go (woodworking example: a perfect cherry chest of drawers with all wood joinery and a french polish finish.)

…stop cluckin around back here! We’ve got customers to serve.

Church of Glacier Cherry rise up!

The only remaining use for reddit for me is basically being a Stack Overflow for non-technology stuff (want to find the best bidet, there’s probably a review post on reddit that someone put together).

Now that comments might be well-hidden marketing attempts, there’s legit no trusting that information anymore.

Way to go, Reddit. In a few months, I’ll no longer have any reason to look at a post from 2024 or later.

Real talk: this is an image of one of my favorite Amazon products

At the Occupy meetings, there were no defined leaders, which meant everyone’s voice equally deserved to be heard. As such, people who wanted to speak would generally queue up and then be given a few minutes to address the crowd (which was sometimes in the thousands).

Since PA systems and megaphones were prohibited by police early on (and would often be used as an excuse by police to break up a gathering), Occupy Wall Street gatherings began using the “human microphone” method of making sure speakers were heard.

In short, a speaker’s words would be repeated back by the crowd so that the words of the speaker would project back further in the crowd. With thousands at a gathering, it often took 2-3 waves of repeating the speaker’s words until they reached the back of the group.

If you stood at the right spot, you could kind of hear the sound “roll” back over the crowd. It was a strange feeling of unity to know that everyone at the gathering was truly understanding the speaker, because they weren’t just hearing what was said, but were echoing it back to others.

Here’s a wiki page that talks a bit more about the technique: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microphone

I also remember that the OWS movement had made up some hand gestures which could be used for holding votes among large crowds during their meetings. I can’t recall what they were exactly, but I remember that gaining consensus was important to the group and anyone in the crowd could hold up a “veto” hand signal and be given the ability to address the crowd about why they disagreed.

I was impressed by the creativity of it all.

Was part of a qualitative research study put on by a university and related to a local chapter of the Occupy movement.

My thoughts on 2 reasons why the larger movement died:

1. No unified list of attainable objectives.
2. The physical persecution ended.

While no one in the movement disagreed with the main tenants that the group stood for, when Wall Street came calling to know what the Occupy movement wanted, the distributed leadership model made it hard to form a coherent list that went beyond “overturn Citizens United”. It really was a leaderless movement for awhile there, and that has downsides.

Regarding the physical persecution, I first got interested in the movement because of the news coverage I was seeing from independent channels. US citizens were being beaten, gassed, and corralled in a way that infringed on civil rights and usually without incitement (Occupy was vehemently non-violent). Once those acts of injustice started to fade, I think people lost some of their zeal.

It was a wild time, though, and I’d be happy to talk about it further. From limited news coverage by US MSM, to folks coordinating carpools to NYC and DC, not to mention the unique style of communication at rallies to get around the ban of sound amplification by police… a lot happened.