Bryan Mann's, Life or...'' It's life Jim, but not as we know it. ''

I recently attended a remote viewing seminar with former StarGate operative,  Dr. David Morehouse.  While I find much of what he had to say rather  (yawn)  passe .  I have, however used the techniques with much success.  Alas, this was before I realized that a seminar existed to teach me the proper way to 'remote view' my subject.  It was interesting to see all those who attended and talk to them during the breaks.  So, if you are wondering whether I have been remote viewing you as you read these pages... I have not.    Lately I'm too busy working on world wide domination, just as the real aliens are too busy working on universal domination to bother with yet another anal cavity search of a random homo sapiens sapiens. 

But remoting for work or work related activities is something I do everyday.  Sit in one location and project my thoughts into some other remote location.  When asked what I do I once responded, I project my thoughts onto computers, in precise and neatly written instructions, that they may do my bidding, long after I no longer see them, perhaps even after my human life has expired.  Ala the Matrix, I am the architect.

I've been doing it for decades.  Some of the rest of you may have been so lucky too.  Remember the good old days of 75, 110, 300, and ultra-fast 9600 baud?  I skipped over 4800 for some odd reason.  There's something special about hearing the clicking of pin-wheels or dot-matrix rat-a-tat-tat'ing your characters into images on paper.  Not only were you typing locally, onto the paper, the mini or main frame computer miles away was receiving your input.  As I think about it I used, write, or talk, to IM others on the computer, to ask to load a tape, bring up my printout, re-boot my server etc.  This was way back in the early '80's.  And this causes me to spiral into thoughts about what has changed in 25 years of computing.

When I first heard of ebay I thought, what moron would re-invent usenet?   And even more what idiot would give him $5 million to do it!!  We've been buying and selling world wide on usenet for years.  E-mail over TCP/IP was a novelty.  Personally, I thought uucp was the coolest thing.  For those too young or too new to know, uucp stands for unix-to-unix copy.  In fact it was so inspired that at TSI we actually ran a file system protocol over a 9600 baud telephone wire stretched between buildings in the desert just outside Las Cruces NM.  This was circa 1985, '86.  Talk about networking and file sharing the hard way. 

One of my first jobs at ICL, then CCI, was to debug some problems one of our customers was having with uucp on a Power-5.  This was my first introduction to the guts of a 'work-file'.  The idea behind a work file is that you define the work that you want the computer to do in a file, the computer then, at some later time, picks up the work file and does it's best effort to make the work disappear.  Think to-do list.  I re-used this idea later in the design of my raison-d-etre, the services delivery platform or SDP, known at IBM as e-Utility computing or e-Business on demand.  In the SDP each computer contains a software agent that periodically contacts a local peer or remote parent/mother ship to retrieve a work file.  If the file has work-to-do the agent hibernates, like the best parasitic or viral agents, and then at it's own pre-determined, pseudo-random, time begins the work specified in the work-file.  In the case of a modern computer this work might be downloading a new data file, updating a license key, upgrading itself to achieve it's ultimate perfection or updating your BattleStar Gallactica scores on a central server.

These days however remoting is mundane.  At least for some of us.  I've been remoting for decades so I tend to take it for granted.  Several friends of mine have asked, so, what's it like to be remote?  The first thing I have to say about remoting is that it's main difference is in the effort required by you to be local.  You have to really work, in some organizations, to stay in the hearts and minds of your teammates and management.  To the programmers I say, commit everyday.  You should be doing that anyway.  Why keep work hanging out on your workstation.  If you can't commit it because your changes are too big and far reaching, or you need more time to unit test then at least upload to your remote server.  Create a batch job, run it out of your own $HOME/bin at the end of the day so that your code isn't just on your workstation.  Yes you should be backing up your workstation too, but then you should do a lot of things.

The second main difference in remoting is the problem of dealing with time zones.  I find that the best way to cope with this is to arrange my life into the time zone of the majority of the team.  If lunch time turns out to be 2:00pm in my time zone then I eat lunch at 2:00pm and plan to end my days somewhere around 8:00pm.  What can I say, it's just easier that way.

Finally, cultivate a close relationship with your team members.  Get your manager on the phone or skype, www.skype.com, at least once per week.  Be available via IM.  It doesn't mean you have to trade face time with IM time.  One organization I worked at was so concerned that their remote employees might be out having fun during work hours that they actually forced you to report your 'whereabouts' via your IM status, as busy, programming, out-to-lunch, doctor's appointment, or worst of all suppose you're in the bathroom or reading documentation and you're IDLE.  Needless to say, programmers being problem solvers it wasn't long before someone, no names mentioned to protect the guilty, wrote a 'look busy' plug-in.

And that is the ultimate issue with remoting.  Your management must trust that you will get the job done.  They must have confidence that when you commit to hitting your deadlines you'll hit them.  I guess most people are wired to believe that if I can't see you busy then you ain't workin' but remote employees never look busy.  So your management must have faith.  Why it requires more faith I don't know.  I've been on plenty of in-office teams where one or two people never pulled their weight and they may have even sat in the cube next to their manager.  Proximity to management doesn't equal work output.

Publish or perish.  I started obsidian yesterday.  Each professional project begins with an evaluation.  Consider it opportunity/cost analysis.  I could work on anything, like re-modeling the bathroom and I will, but, we begin by examining the opportunity and the cost.  Perhaps the best book I've read on the matter is New Venture Creation, which reminds me, I want to integrate my amazon.com id with my website.  So, after performing the analysis, charting a course via a business plan, and implementing the business so that myself and others might profit we move on to decisions about which merlot to have with dinner. 
At present I am in the throes of business analysis, planning and infrastructure.  More about all of these as time goes by.  In the meantime one of my former employees has some software you should check out, visit Mr. Saikat, as Sera calls him and his company at www.valleyspeak.com.
Additionally, several have asked or wondered how to "syndicate" this website.  If you are lucky enough to run Linux as your desktop OS you probably have access to Ximian Evolution.  If you do you can simply add my rss.xml file to your Summary.  If you have to use an alternate choice of operating system I recommend OWL .  There are other news readers and I'm sure a search will reveal something to your liking.  Try searches on rss, or news readers.
Finally, it's been a long week.  I've recently started playing a Switch guitar.  As I get further into it I will write a review.  At the moment my immediate feedback is it's heavy.

600 lbs for reps. That's the latest on the good old leg press sled. Perhaps I'm doing the exercise wrong because 600 sounds like a lot of weight. But ala Beavis and Butt Head... "Cool, huh huh, huh huh huh, I did 600lbs, without blowin' chunks, huh huh, huh huh huh. I am Corn Julio!!" I want to know, or at least I wonder if anyone else works out with "That 70's guy" you know the one. He shows up to the gym wearing something that's just wrong. He's usually got his hair moussed up ala [insert current star of Summerland here], and invariably has a gold chain and a pinky ring. I don't know why but he usually wears the $500.00 italian leather loafers as his workout shoes of choice, or he's got on a pair of expensive designer jeans with his Nike Air Jordans, or he makes it a point to keep checking his ultra expensive watch. And of course he sees every woman as ... a target. Mainly I'm learning how not to approach women in the gym. Maybe he watched Napolean D. and figured the 'you probably think you're fat' line would work in the gym.

Yesterday he hopped on the rowing machine beside me while I was on the treadmill. As the pungent odor of cheap cologne began to nauseate me I wondered if there have been any studies done to determine the cologne to open space ratio that 70's guys have to use. I mean is there a book of tables? Going to the gym, use ¼ bottle of cologne, going to a nightclub use the whole bottle, going on a hot date, be polite to those who might also be eating at the expensive restaurant of your choice, use only ¾ of the bottle. I suddenly felt like I was back in the toxic brown that is the real Orange County California. Of course if you're living in it you can't see the brown. You only get a real view of it flying in from somewhere else. Although as I recall from back in the days of windsurfing at Long Beach there was a lot of brown floating in the water too.

Lucky for me that 70's guy saw J and a bit later MB and he was off to teach me more lines thou shalt never use. "Hey, have you ever ridden in a Hummer?" If you are that 70's guy please consult with me on proper public scent etiquette :-).

Zen koans for the Muscle and Fitness gang:

   Before enlightenment lift weights,
   After enlightenment lift weights.

   If a power lifter drops a weight in the gym,
   does anyone hear the sound of bones crushing?

   Can a bodybuilder achieve enlightenment?

It's amazing how much time being un-employed consumes. Awakened this morning at 5:00a.m. Bad tacos from the night before. My schedule is somewhat shredded by the necessity of looking for a job. Or shall we say preparing to look for a job. I attended my career assessment workshop yesterday. It turns out that ... I was right!! Long ago I chose computer science over electrical engineering and my Birkman scores bear out that I did the right thing. It's interesting that it also identified my interest in music. I studied classical guitar while in college at NMSU, gave myself 2 semesters, then later while at ICL I attended night classes where I continued my studies with Michael Giraldin. Later I applied to and was accepted at MIT's guitar program. Of course these days they just call it MI.

I recently heard one of my songs on the radio!! The song, "My Love" being performed by Little Texas. The interesting story behind the song, for me at least, is that I had just graduated from MI and was contacted by a songwriter in Orange County, that's the OC to you in TV-land. She needed someone to “workout the chords,” basically write the music. She gave me the words to several songs and a tape of her singing the songs. It was my job to come up with the arrangements. Anyway, it was strange to hear a song from the past come blasting out of my boombox the other day.

In the meantime I'm at work on my 30 second commercial, aka elevator speech, and have decided that I'm going to start doing my ideal position work. I'm thinking that I may codename the project rialto and start a separate blog to track my daily progress, report on interesting technology and solutions to problems inherent in creating a new paradigm.

Alright, I know this is pushing it but I just wanted to add that I went to see the movie Hitch. Being a guy who has very little luck with the fairer sex (where does that idea come from, most of them aren't fairer), I figured, I really enjoy Eva Mendes, though her acting is as bad as her looks are good, that I could probably pick up some pointers. I got one!! How to get the really hot looking babe to think you're a complete idiot, ask her to get you a beer and give her $20 bucks. But I digress. The interesting thing to me is that these guys may or may not google girls. The idea is that you go to google and enter in the name of the girl you're currently seeing or want to see and something interesting that you can use in your favor will come up, like she loves chocolate, she sleeps with her blanky etc. etc. Of course being a geek I went straight home, pulled up my Mozilla web browser running on FedoraCore-2 inside a vmware virtual machine running on the horrible, evil Microsoft's Windows XP professional and, drum roll please, entered my name!!

Lo and behold I'm net famous, well at least if you're hacking an InterJet. Check out this website, for Whistle lore. Who said they couldn't get this kind of info. Pretty scary that someone somewhere managed to find out about our internal network all the way down to machine names.

Ok, off to polish, or is that chrome, my resume.

Just returned from my second meeting with the Right folks. Today's class was about resume writing and coming up with our 30 second commercial. You know, your elevator speech. When asked, "Why would you hire you?" I replied, "Because I'm the guy you call when you need to get things done." Well that seems to be a repeating theme in the jobs I get, or that get me. My eventual response was: "Well I'm one of perhaps 50 people in the valley that's ever played a pivotal role in selling their company for more than $100 million." Or better yet, I can turn $5 million into $500 million.

Interesting, as I explained to my daughter when asked, "Well dad, then why aren't you rich?" Simple, I found people, executive staff who could correctly value my vast skills and allowed me to use them to their fullest extent to assist them in seizing an opportunity and taking fullest advantage of it. Those who see opportunity and can convert it to money are the ones who typically get rich. Someone else asked, "Aren't you bitter about it, they got the gold mine and you got the shaft?" No, I played my role, they played theirs. We used each other, played each other to our strengths. Will I ever knowingly put myself in that position again. NO.

An uncle of mine, hello Carl, used to see me standing holding a shovel staring at the pile of rocks or dirt that he'd hired me to move, one shovel full at a time, and yell, "What are you DOING?" My response, "I'm thinking." Usually, it was that we should use the front end loader and the dump truck instead of the shovel, we could save 4 Mann hours of shoveling. And his response, "I'm not paying you to think." Thankfully, I've been paid approximately 1,000,000 times my manual laborer earnings precisely for my ability to think.

My Right consultant urged us to think about what we'd like to do, where we'd like to go from here, come up with our ideal day. I've given it considerable thought and the best I could come up with is: I don't want to work anymore. I want to be a trust fund baby, spend my days piddling around, inventing silly contraptions like, solar ovens, telemerase re-sequencing machines, nano-bots, micro bikes, environmentally friendly heating and cooling, systems of equations governing the birth, life and death of galaxies, that sort of thing. So, if anyone out in Net land knows anyone with a large trust fund looking for a fully grown somewhat used baby. Please do put them in touch with me.

While I wait for my "daddy" or "mama" to appear I figure I need an income and so I continue my job search and have started to develop a couple of great ideas. More about those later. In addition I've finally bitten the 'affiliate' bullet and registered to be an amazon.com affiliate and gotten my ebay account up and running. I expect I can sell a majority of my worldly possessions, live on the proceeds while I wait for my trust fund to appear. How much money can an affiliate make? How much could I earn if I sold all my stuff through ebay? Will it come to that? What about health insurance, will my doctor accept my all vinyl Beatles collection as payment for my uh, treatments. Inquiring minds want to know.

Jobless..., Jobless Again, (sung to the tune, Jealous by the Black Crowes)

Hey before I get too far in this entry let me stop and wish my brother, Coach Mann, a very happy birthday. The check's in the mail dude.

In other news...

Well, it's official, March 31st was my last day at Quantum. For those who may be curious we were working on a continuous data protection appliance. They've given me separation services with Right Management Consultants a placement agency. I've been surfing hotjobs.yahoo.com and can say that for the most part I find nothing of interest. Hmmm, perhaps it's time to write my own job description and see what turns up. After all isn't that what Oprah and company urge us to do? Live to our intent. It's certainly in keeping with Carlos Castaneda's writings, whose first book I'm currently reading.

I have a few ideas about what I'd rather be doing than a job. I have numerous technology ideas, a few intellectual property ideas, some stock trading ideas, real estate investing ideas, small business development ideas and a couple of tantric ideas, and well...

The parameters of my ideal job: I just completed reading Code Complete, and realize that I've been doing many of the practices therein for years. It may be elitist but I really don't want to do work for an organization that doesn't follow these practices. In addition I've been reading sections of Test Driven Development By Example, the main idea being that you create the test before the code. Finally, I've just finished reading, The Essential Buffet. I have a hard time believing that people can't follow Buffet's principles. They seem pretty obvious to me, but then I don't really want to gamble, where money is concerned. I suppose the off-putting part may be the work involved in deciding which stocks to buy. I have a solution to that gets rid of all that work but it requires you sign up for my stock picking newsletter :-). I guess it bears mentioning that despite what Carelton Sheets, Robert G. Allen, and Rich Dad have to say, after a thorough search I have yet to find a method to achieve wealth without work, save one! For my report on how you too can achieve wealth without work send $3.95 to BR549... there is a way but it's got to be kept completely secret! I'll write the full article and post it to my website along with a paypal button :-)

My ideal job is one where I call the tune and the world plays along :-). At the moment I'd like to get paid a decent salary to complete a set of web services and yet retain the IP(intellectual property) rights to them. If I were successful I've guesstimated that it could earn something on the order of $3-4 billion, yes, that's billion with a 'B' over the lifetime of the product, approximately 10-15 years. I don't know the realities yet of using Buffet's discounted cash flow model but ... damn I'd sure like to have the challenge of dealing with all those zeros after the 3 in billion.