Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
I heard about how the VA has various challenges, one of them being Project Management. It says a lot about me that I wanted to find out more about these, and wondered how I could solve them.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.
Have you ever had a sense that you don’t know what’s going on?
I’m not talking in the general sense (that’s your problem), but on a project, at work, or looking over some report or news article? Yeah, I’m sure you have.
I’ve often wondered over the years as a psych major, engineer, and manager just how people can be so terribly wrong in keeping track of things. Bad articles, incoherent software, senseless status reports all keep adding up to “duh” over and over again. It’s sad enough that whenever I start some new project of any kind, I figure that the reporting involved is going to be wrong as a default.
But there’s something behind every meaningless statistic or confusing game interface.
That is MATH.
Math is what you use to report. Math is what you use to say what things mean. If you don’t have good numbers and do the right math, it’s meaningless.
This may or may not seem like a revelation, but to me it is – because having a science background, having built inventory systems, I’m used to math. I marinate in math. I have a minty math scent.
But not everyone has that experience. Or interest. Or obsession.
So next time you have to communicate data, next time you’re running a status report for a con, remember no matter how good you are at math or how much you like it – not everyone is like you.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.
My step-grandmother passed away at 98.
Those are amazing words to say because few people LIVE to 98. Wanda in fact lived on her own until 96. She only stopped driving a few years before that.
It’s funny, the stereotype of someone who lives to a ripe old age is one of some ornery old person out of a sitcom. Wanda was quite the opposite, polite and genteel and quiet. Strong-willed, but strong more like a flow of water than iron – and very enduring.
She broke a door down with an axe to get to her husband when he had a heart attack. I was young then, and it was a reminder of just how much there was to the woman. The admiration stayed with me.
She got to live to 98, see her great-grandchildren grow to adulthood. She was alive through wars and moon landings, the internet revolution and the Civil Rights movement. She got to see the century that made the US what it is. Quiet, and unassuming, loving wife and mother, she saw all of that, and kept going, raising a family and their families, keeping it all together.
I feel sad seeing her pass. I’m on the other side of the country so I feel like I should have been there. I feel sad for everyone missing her, the huge family that she was matriarch of. I feel sad to see a life end.
But what a life. What things to see. What a remarkable woman, wife, and mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.
Here’s to you, Grandma Hinkle. 98 years, and every year worth it.
– Steve, your loving Grandson