This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This blog is about technology, as well as some of my personal interests. I am the CEO/CTO of Virtual Photons Electrons. I was the CTO for MEMEX for three years, the President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute from May 2010 to January 2014 and prior to that I spent 23 years at Sun Microsystems.
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Today, February 3rd is the one year anniversary of me and Slim picking up my new 2011 Corvette Grand Sport and driving it back to VA. It was such great memories, then I thought is worth reposting. Would I do it again? Absolutely! Would I be worried as hell about the Goodyear F1 Second Generation Supercar tires? Yes. At the time we picked up the new Grand Sport last February, I had no idea just how much of a hot weather, dry only ONLY tire or Max Summer as they like to say, those tires really are. I am looking forward to putting the Michelin Pilot Sport 2 (PS2) tires on the Grand Sport. At $500+ a tire, I am not in a REAL hurry though :-)
My father, who I nicknamed Slim in 1976, and I took the perfect three
day mini vacation together this past week. First, why I call my father
Slim. The nickname Slim came about because I was working for Fairfax
County Park Authority (FCPA) my senior year in high school. During
that time period the generic term in the gym was not "hey buddy", but
"Slim" when you wanted to talk to someone you did not know. Everyone
called everyone Slim in the gym. I started calling my father Slim and
it stuck :-)
Last fall my perfect wife, Julie, says to me, "Dave it has been ten years since you got your Corvette, isn't it time for a new Corvette?" That is just one reason why she is perfect. As luck would have it I was taking my 1998 Corvette into Tony's Corvette Shop for some minor work the next day, so I told Tony what Julie told me. Tony then said, "you know Dave, Julie is right." Tony
then goes on to say that it is starting to get harder and more
expensive to get parts for my 1998 Corvette. GM only has to carry
parts for ten years. He then told that as someone who drives the hell
out of their Corvette, that I should think about a newer one. He then
told me about the other costs of parts rising on the C5s (1997-2004).
The EBCM Electronic Brake Control Module was no longer being made by GM
for the C5s and he had to have them rebuilt - not a cheap proposition.
Something to think about...
After a week or so
thinking about it, I decide Julie and Tony are right. I start looking
around for a used Grand Sport. After a couple of months of scouring
the US for the exact one, I decided I was going to order a brand new
Corvette, take the museum delivery and bring my father along if his
health was up to it. The museum delivery is a $495 option known as R8C. Corvette
owners refer a lot to the order codes. Everyone who I talked to said
it was well worth it and a once in a lifetime experience. I decided to
first go to Pohanka Chevrolet because that is where my buddy John Meyer purchased his new Corvette and had a great experience there. I went in the day after Thanksgiving with a printout of
the
best internet price I could find on a similar model of Grand Sport I
wanted. The salesman David Coggin went and ran the numbers and they
beat it by $3,000. I just looked at the numbers and said let's do it.
The schedule I was told would be early to mid March for the actual
pickup. That was a good schedule because my father's chemo would be
finishing up by then and it the weather should be less of a factor
between here and Bowling Green, Kentucky where they have the GM Assembly
Plant for Corvette and the National Corvette Museum (NCM).
First, I was going to get one way flights to Nashville, then drive in
from there. With my father's health, sitting in a germ filled airport
and germ filled plane did not seem like a good idea. I decided for a
one way rental to Nashville airport and then the NCM had a special
one-way rental to the NCM from Enterprise.
The driving
factor on why and how I decided to time this new purchase of a brand new
Corvette Grand Sport was the one year anniversary of my separation
package from Sun/Oracle. HUGE thanks Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Andy
Bechtolsheim and Vinod Khosla for having the foresight to have a change
in control package for Directors and VPs! Besides buying a new
large screen Sony, I did not spend any of that large check. So, I
decided that part of that check would be used to purchase new Corvette
Grand Sport with the museum delivery option. I timed it almost to the
exact day of Sun being purchased by Oracle.
As
luck would have it, I got a call that my Grand Sport would be ready to
be picked up on February 3rd. This was great providing my father's
health (finished four rounds of chemo for his CLL
and is getting treatments currently to get the good white blood cells
back up where they should be) was up to it and the weather was not an
issue. Driving a new Corvette back through the mountains of Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Virginia is not anyone's idea of fun. We obviously had
to play it by ear. The week before, my father told me that he felt he
would be fine. Great! However, the weather was looking to be a real
disaster. It was literally looking like the perfect winter storm.
There was a huge arctic cold front coming deep into the south that would
meet with a gulf front to create the mother of all winter storms. I
was monitoring the weather and thought I saw a window on Tuesday
afternoon and Wednesday early where we could get out in an SUV and deal
with any light snow that might hit. The weather was just north of us on
Tuesday and Wednesday. Returning, it looked like Thursday would
provide a window if we drove the 750 miles back in one day. I called
the NCM and they said I should reschedule. I said I would make a game
time decision at 2pm on February 1st. Slim and I looked at the weather
forecast and thought there would be a small window we could hit - if we
were really, really lucky....
Above
was the first day of driving from 2pm on. We put in almost 400 hundred
miles that included a nice long dinner with my two oldest sons. I knew
my father was looking forward to spending all of this quality
son/father bonding time when the first thing he does is pull out his
audiobook
We had dinner with John and Michael at Sal's in Blacksburg before continuing on to Bristol to spend the night.
It was about 750 miles door to door.
Pulling into the National Corvette Museum with our one-way rental from Enterprise. It was actually 11:48 Central time.
Above is one of the photoshop pictures you can buy when you go through the tour.
These were just two of the many welcome screens they had with our names on them.
The sign in front of my new Grand Sport Corvette.
My
new Grand Sport in front of the NCM Delivery Offices. They can do
about 8 deliveries a day. Mine was the only that day with weather and
the slow sales for Corvette right now. Normally 35,000 Corvettes are
sold a year and it is down to 12,000 in the current economy.
Below is from the 2011 Corvette brochure on the Grand Sport:
The best combination of all-out performance and efficiency . Grand Sport coupe beat
every other production car with the exception of the Corvette ZR1 (very limited availability)
and a special $460,000 Lamborghini Murcielago in the 2010 edition of the Car and Driver
Lightning Lap at Virginia International Raceway. It lapped the circuit with a time of 2:58.8,
faster than the Audi R8 V10 and the Porsche 911 Carrera S. On the test track, Grand Sport
coupe delivers 1g of lateral acceleration and goes from 0 to 60 mph in less than four
seconds. Yet it does all this with an EPA estimated 26 MPG highway 1 and without a gas-guzzler tax. That’s what engineers call bandwidth.
What makes a Grand Sport? Start with a wider track, wider tires as well as wider fenders and
quarters. Add a high rear spoiler and special five-spoke Grand Sport wheels. Under the skin
add aggressive dampers and springs, large stabilizer bars, performance gear ratios, additional cooling, and six-piston front and four-piston rear brake calipers engaging cross-drilled rotors.
Slim in front of my Grand Sport at the NCM Delivery area.
Me
sitting in the Grand Sport for the first time and getting ready to get
an overview on the car's features from Ron. I watched the C6 Owners
Video three times to get ready for the trip. There is o substitute for
hands-on learning. The NCM has cameras so we sent text messages for family and fellow Corvette owners so they could watch on the NCM cameras.
Back view of the Grand Sport that looks down the hall of the National Corvette Museum.
We had the world's best NCM Tour Guide in Ron Barton.
Ron worked for GM making Corvettes 35 years before he started working
at NCM ten years ago. Here you can see that Ron is answering one of
my countless questions that I had. I thought I knew a lot about
Corvettes until I talked with Ron. He spent five hours with us the
first day at the museum and the four days the second at the factory
tour. My father and I took countless photos. Slim took the best photos. His new camera worked great.
Above
is Wendell Strode, the Executive Director of the National Corvette
Museum standing with my father. Both served in the Vietnam War with
Wendell being awarded a Purple Heart.
I can not recommend the Museum Delivery Option highly enough. It is the best investment you will ever make for your new Corvette!
Wendell, Gary
Cockriel, Lori Bieschke and Ron Barton were absolutely fantastic. They
made us feel at home and very welcome. It was fantastic!
This
is me in front of a 1963 Z06 serial number 1. This was part of the
special back stage tour that you get as part of the NCM Delivery Option
for a new Corvette.
Above is Slim lifting an all aluminum Z06 frame at the NCM.
Above is just one example of the exhibits in the NCM.
Above
is the only 1983 Corvette left on planet earth. Chevy made 55 1983
Corvettes. The quality was terrible. Chevy decided to squash the 1983
year and go right to 1984. There were no 1983 Corvettes ever sold.
They ordered all 55 to be crushed. Someone pulled one out and hid it.
That one is the white one above that sits at the NCM. Great trivia
question for your Corvette buddies.
This another of the paid for photoshop photos you can get.
Me
and Slim after the five hour NCM tour and the detailed Grand Sport
features demonstration on Wednesday night. After that photo, we left
my Grand Sport at the museum and had a nice dinner in Bowling Green.
When we drove the Grand Sport out of the museum for the final time all
the museum employees were there clapping in a long line which was pretty
cool.
Above
is the brick that will be forever placed inside the National Corvette
Museum to mark that day Slim and I picked up my new 2011 Grand Sport
Corvette.
Above
is me in front of the GM Corvette Assembly Plant Tour Entrance. It was
pretty cool having your name up in big letters on the entrance. The
tour is fantastic. Three hours watching new Corvettes start off on a 7
mile journey through the 1.5 million square foot plant. The only car
they make here are Corvettes. We saw everything with our VIP Museum
Delivery Tour by Ron. Having someone like Ron who had worked at
Corvette Assembly Plants for 35 years was fantastic. I was also given
the opportunity to "birth a new Corvette" by being the first person to
start one up after it was completely assembled and ready for final
testing. They also showed us a Carbon Edition Z06 that was extremely
cool. No pictures are allowed inside of course.
Our
NCM Tour Guide Ron Barton giving me the FOB for the new Grand Sport
before we drove the 750 miles back home to beat the snow coming up
behind us as we head through the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Virginia.
Failure
was not an option. Slim and I took turns driving the Grand Sport. We
used OnStar to get weather and traffic reports on the way back as well
as messing with the Navigation system and XM. After dinner, I asked
my father if he heard any news on Egypt and the protests going on
there. He responded, "How the HELL would I know, we have been listening to 70s on 7 XM Satellite Radio for the past 486 miles!" My plan for father and son bonding had worked! :-)
The
weather was not a factor for us but a nightmare for others. The
picture above of the US and Canada gives you some idea. Chicago had two
feet of snow and 50mph winds. Chicago Schools were closed for the 2nd
time in 12 years. Dallas had one inch of ice. The south and midwest
were nightmares. Ice storms and massive snows everyplace. The road
between St. Lois and Kansas City (rt. 70) was closed for the first time
EVER. New York City Schools were closed for the first time in 30
years. We REALLY had to find the right window and the right path to
drive both there and back. Going there I had an SUV. Coming back we
were in a Corvette - not exactly known for its winter driving :-) Check out these amazing photos of the winter storm of 2011 here.
We
made great time heading back and got very lucky. I dropped my father
off at about 11:15 pm and then got home around midnight. Julie and Tim
got up to check it out. It was good to be home and not have to worry
about any weather issues.
Back at home with the snow still on the ground. I now have the "Steve Ferry Problem", which is "Which Corvette Do I Want To Take Today?" :-)
With my two Corvettes and my wife's Mini Cooper S, we have over 1,000hp of sports cars in our garage.
I stated it earlier, and I can not recommend the Museum Delivery Option highly enough. It is the best investment you will ever make for your new Corvette!
With the weather, my father's health, it could have been a real disaster, but instead it turned out to be like one of the MasterCard commercials:
Price of new Corvette Grand Sport after discounts - $55,000
Price of three days of rental cars, hotels, meals, and Corvette souvenirs - $1,500
Spending three days with my father who is beating cancer - PRICELESS
That is why I called this blog entry: Three Perfect Days With Slim.
I found this commercial on YouTube. This is the commercial for my first car a 1970 Firebird Formula 400. Since my car was highly modified it came with 363HP and was well north of 450hp when I got it. My blue 1970 Formula 400 had an Iskendarian (Isky) cam, HUGE Holly four barrel carb, Hedman headers, traction bars, quadrophonic 8-track and every option you could think of.
Its' mpg was also well south of 8mpg as my father explained to me in a classic story. He asked me, "Dave, how many hours do you have to work to pay for your gas for your Formula 400?" He might as well have asked me the difference between Einsteins' special and general relativity - because I did not know that either. When he showed me the math on 7mpg highway, and that I had to work four hours to pay for the gas, I came to the conclusion a 1972 240Z might be a better bang for the buck...
"Beginning
in the 2012-2013 school year, the Department of Education will accept
100 students into the new Academy for Software Engineering, opening on
the campus of Washington Irving High School in Manhattan’s Union Square."
Mr. Dave Edstrom, President and Chairman of the of the MTConnect
Institute will be providing a presentation at the AMT Manufacturing
Technology Forum to be held March 7-8, 2012, in Orlando,
Florida. This forum brings together manufactures to discuss
new and innovative trends and technologies in manufacturing.
The Forum is held every other year and this year the theme is
"Exploring the Forefront of Industry Innovations". The
keynote for the event is Dr. Don A. Kinard. He is a Senior
Technical Fellow for Lockheed Martin and Deputy Director for the
F-35 Fighter Production System. His presentation is entitled
"Innovative Technologies,
Manufacturing and How the F-35 is Made". If you are
interested in reviewing the full agenda:
The Fiat 500 Abarth (above) has been getting lots of press.
Audio R8 Spyder
Above is my father with the founder of Freedom Behind The Wheel which is a great organization that is helping wounded warriors drive with hands only controls. This is from their homepage: "Freedom Behind the Wheel is a
nonprofit organization developing a unique program to provide wounded
soldiers the experience of participating in precision driving
activities. In a controlled environment with the support of professional
drivers, our goal is to present an opportunity allowing them to regain
their freedom behind the wheel. Our approach will offer personal
resourcefulness to respect and honor those that have sacrificed so much
for our Country."
Shelby GT 350 above
Lotus Evora above
The Super Bee is back :-) Below is a modified Mustang Shelby
Two years have gone by and in some ways it seems like an eternity and other ways it seems like it was yesterday....
Subject: Thanks for a great 28 years Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 From: Scott McNealy To: all@Sun.com
Gang,
When I interviewed many of you for employment at Sun over the years, one commitment often made was that things will change above, below, and around you faster than any place you have ever been. Looks like this was one area we exceeded plan for 28 years. While it was never the primary vision to be acquired by Oracle, it was always an interesting option. And this huge event is upon us now. Let's all embrace it with all of the enthusiasm and class and talent that we have to offer.
This combination has the potential to put Sun, its people, and its technology at the center of yet another industry and game-changing inflection point. The opportunity is well-documented and articulated by Larry and the Oracle folks. Not much I can add on this score. This is a very powerful merger. And way better than some of the alternatives we were facing.
So what do I say to all of you, now this is happening?
It turns out that one simple message to the large and diverse Sun community is actually quite hard to craft. Even for a big mouth who is always ready with a clever quip. The community includes our resellers and customers, our current and former employees, their friends and families who supported our employees on their mission to change the industry, our investors, our supply and service partners, students and educators, and even our competitors with whom we often collaborated.
But let me try. Though nothing I could write comes close to matching the unbelievably strong and positive emotions I have for you all. See, I never was able to master dispassion. I truly loved starting, running, and living Sun. And the last four years have not been without serious withdrawal. And the EU approval rocked me more than it should have.
So, to be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company.
And I sure "hope" America regains its love affair with capitalism. And except for the auto industry, financial industry, health care, and some other places (I digress), the invisible hand is doing its thing quite efficiently. So I am more than willing to accept this outcome.
And my hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison. He will do well with the assets that Sun brings to Oracle.
What we did right and wrong at Sun over the years might make for interesting reading. However, I am not a book writer. I am a husband, father of four, and a builder and leader of people who want to make a difference.
But spare me a bit of nostalgia. Not of the mistakes we made, and lord knows I made a ton. But of the things we did right and well.
First and foremost, Sun innovated like crazy. We took it to the limit (see Eagles). And though we did not monetize our inventions as well as we could have, few companies have the track record in R&D that we had over the last 28 years. This made working at Sun really cool. Thanks to all of you inventors and risk takers who changed how we live.
Sun cared about its customers. Even more than we cared about our own company at times. We looked at our customer's mission as more important than ours. Maybe we should have asked for more revenue in return, but our employees were always ready to help first. I love this about Sun, which I guess makes me a good capitalist, if not a great capitalist.
Sun did not cheat, lie, or break the rule of law or decency. While we enjoyed breaking the rules of conventional wisdom and archaic business practice, and for sure loved to win in the market, we did so with a solid reputation for integrity. Nearly three decades of competing without a notable incident of our folks going off course morally or legally. Not all executives and big companies are bad. Really. There are good companies out there. Special thanks to all of my employees for this. I never had to hide the newspaper in shame from my children.
Sun was a financial success. We paid billions in taxes, salaries, purchases, leases, training, and even lawyers and accountants for devastatingly cumbersome SOX and legal compliance (oops, more classic digression). Long-term and smart investors made billions in SUNW. And our customers generated revenue and savings using our equipment in countless ways. Many employees started families, bought homes, and put them through school while working at Sun. Our revenues over 28 years exceeded $200B. Few companies make it to the F200. We did. Nice.
Sun employees had way more fun than any other company. By far. From our dress code ("You must!") to beer busts to our April Fools' pranks to SunRise to our quiet enjoyment at night of a long, hard, well-done day of work, no company enjoyed "work" more than Sun. Thanks to all of our employees past and present for making Sun such a blast.
I could go on for a long time reminiscing about the good and great stuff we did at Sun, but just allow me one last one. We shared. Not the greatest attribute for a capitalist. But one I could not change and was not willing to change about Sun while I was in charge. We shared in the success of Sun with our resellers. With our employees through stock options, SunShare, beer busts, and the like (for as long as Congress would allow) and through our efforts to keep as many of them on board for as long as possible during the inevitable down cycles. With our partners through the Java Community Process, through our open-source collaborations, and licensing strategies. With our customers through our commitments to low barriers to exit. Sun was never just about us. It was about we. And that may be a bit of the reason we are where we are today.
But I have few regrets (see Sinatra's "My Way") and will always look back at Sun and its gang with only pride. Enormous pride. You are the best this industry ever had, though few outside of Sun recognized it.
And what we are about will live on in Sparc, Solaris, Java, our products, and our spirit. Well past everyone's recollections of what we did together. I will never forget, though.
Oracle is getting a crown jewel of the technology industry. They will do great things with Sun. Do your best to support them, and keep the Sun spirit alive and well in the industry. Our children will be better for it.
Thanks for the off-the-charts support to everyone who ever carried a Sun badge, used our products, or helped our company through the years.
And thanks to my wonderful wife, Susan, who gave this desperado (see Eagles) a chance to choose the Queen of Hearts before it was too late.
Someday, hopefully, you will all get to see or meet her and my other life's works named Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. If you do, perhaps you will understand why I stepped back from the CEO role four years ago. And why I feel like the luckiest guy in the whole world.
My best to all of you, and remember:
Kick butt and have fun!
The White House issued a statement this past weekend stating "we will not support legislation that
reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or
undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet". President Obama is right and congress is wrong on this.
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are examples of Congress and the Senate trying to do the right thing but not understanding either the law of unintended consequences or the fundamentals of technology.
SOPA and PIPA is analogous to is having a surgeon show up for brain surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel. The bottom line is that one small infraction of copyright violation would be enough to block out the entire domain (all of the nodes at a given site).
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are the most brilliant satirists of our time. This video below clearly demonstrates just how much the Citizens United Supreme Court Ruling will change politics for the worse with Super PACs.
It is interesting to read the disclaimer at the bottom of Citizens For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow Super PAC site. I highlighted the unlimited contribution aspect of this.
"Contributions
to Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow ("ABTT") are not
deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
ABTT may accept unlimited corporate contributions, unlimited individual
contributions, unlimited labor-union contributions, and unlimited PAC
contributions. Contributions from foreign nationals and
federal-government contractors will not be accepted. *Federal law
requires ABTT's best efforts to obtain and report the name, address,
occupation, and employer of any individual who contributes more than
$200 in a calendar year."
I was at a Sun Microsystems reunion a few weeks ago ( I worked there for 23 years) and the most popular question I got was, "Dave, is this stuff I am seeing on 3D printing and additive REAL?" There is so much excitement out there right now around additive it is just amazing. The open source aspect of additive is particularly exciting and reminds me of the early computer industry when PCs started to take off. Additive will open up manufacturing to the masses.
It is great news that the industry thought leaders at Gardner Publications are doing this. I know it will be absolutely first class!
In all industries there are seminal books that are in the must-read
category as someone is learning their trade. In manufacturing, one of
these must-read books is The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldblatt and Jeff Cox.
In the computer industry, there are numerous must-read books and certainly Frederick P. Brooks The Mythical Man-Month, written in 1975, is in that category.
Personally, I prefer the updated version of Brooks’ book as it sheds
more light on the topics and he updates his thoughts toward the end of
the updated version. My favorite computer book that deals with the
challenges of getting a product out the door is the Pulitzer Prize
winning book by Tracy Kidder called The Soul of a New Machine.
The lessons from Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month can also be applied
to manufacturing. This is especially true as software becomes more
important in manufacturing each and every day. I’d like to discuss
“Brooks’ Law,” which is the focus of his book, but the point he brings
out is implicit in the other two books as well.
When management makes the decision to throw more people at a software
project that is running late, they do so under the firm belief that
adding more people is the right and obvious decision to make at that
point. The problem is that it is usually the wrong decision. “Brooks’
Law” states “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”
At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive. The reasons Brooks’
Law is usually right are multiple. I use the term “usually” here because
there are exceptions to Brooks' Law. The reasons Brooks’ Law usually
holds up are when you bring new software developers onto a project,
there are a number of tasks that simply must be done. These include:
Bringing new developers up to
speed on the project. This typically involves current software
developers and project leads investing time with these new developers.
There might be training for the
new developers because the software tools or practices the project is
utilizing are different than what they have previously worked on.
The remaining work must be prioritized so the experienced developers are taking on the most difficult parts of the project.
There is also dividing the work among the existing and new software developers — often a daunting task.
This partitioning of work can be
extremely difficult if the initial architecture was not cleanly laid
out separating out interfaces from implementations.
What I mean by an “interface” is how one communicates with a piece of
software. This is typically at a high level. For example, let’s say I
want to verify that when a prototype part is being created on a specific
machine tool, it is being created by one of our very best machinists. I
also want to make sure that these machinists are using a cutting tool
that meets certain quality requirements my company has determined will
be used by for all prototype parts. What is the software interface that I
program my client application to in order to make this happen? Side note - this is where an open and royalty-free protocol such as MTConnect® provides simple interfaces to get information.
The “implementation” is the low-level set of specifics on what happens when that above request is serviced.
Here’s another way to think about the interface and implementation
definition in layman’s terms. The interface for me to get the yard mowed
on a Saturday is to yell at one of my three sons, “Get the yard mowed
tonight before it gets dark.” If I do not hear anything from them in
14.896 femtoseconds, I then yell, “Are we clear?” If I hear a positive
response, then I consider the task done.
The implementation is my son going out to the shed, checking gas in
the John Deere tractor and the Honda push mower, then deciding whether
they want to mow the front or back yard first and finally getting the
yard mowed. I don’t care HOW they mow the yard; just get the yard mowed
before it gets dark. If time was tight, I could ask John to mow the
back, Michael to mow the front and have Tim trim. However, if I needed
my ½ acre mowed in less than three minutes, the partitioning and
coordination to make this happen would be an interesting exercise. This
partitioning can be easy to do when it comes to a simple task such as
mowing the yard when you can simply yell at one of your sons to get it
done, but it is very hard for a software project that could require
hundreds of thousands of lines (or more) of code to be written.
It also can be a challenge integrating the new software developers into the existing communication framework.
Brooks also states in his book, “the man-month as a unit for
measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth – it
implies that men and months are interchangeable.” It is well known that
your gifted software developers can literally be 10x as productive as
other software developers. This makes the dividing up of work even
trickier.
A humorous statement that Brooks would make to drive home this point
is, “The bearing of a child takes 9 months, no matter how many women are
assigned.” This does drive home the point that some things just take
time to make and software is certainly in that category.
Have things changed since 1975 with software development? Absolutely.
It used to be that everyone thought software should be developed like a
boat going down a gentle waterfall. In other words, one went from
planning to coding to component test to system test and finally to
deployment in a nice logical fashion. Today all the realists know that
software development needs to be agile, lean, a clear partitioning of
tasks and most importantly, interactive with the end customers. The type
of computer languages have also changed a great deal, enabling more
partitioning of tasks. When you think about the time frame of 1975 and
computing, it is pretty remarkable to realize that even 37 years later,
Brooks’ Law is still true many more times than it is false.
My 17 year old son Tim (youngest of three) is dunking with ease now on ten foot goal with an official basketball. Tim is now 6'1" All three of my sons dunked on ten foot goals before their 18th birthday AND all were selected to the National Honor Society, so now my job as a father is finished :-)
System Insights is the company that Will Sobel and Athulan started specifically to provide MTConnect products and services to the market place. Systems Insights is going great. Both Athulan and Will are tremendous thought leaders in the MTConnect community and it is very cool that they are sharing their knowledge with this new blog!
Julie and I took John, Michael and Tim to the funniest play, event you-name-it I have ever been to - The Book of Mormon play at the Eugene O'Neil Play House. Julie surprised all of us with this great trip. I happened to mention when Matt Stone and Trey Parker were on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart discussing The Book of Mormon back in the spring that I would love to go to to NYC and see that someday. Thanks to Julie, we did.
We went up on Amtrak and stayed at the Hilton at Times Square. Huge thanks to Joy Warfield (and to Cathy Doucette) for her great suggestions on what to do and where to eat. We carried her list with us throughout NYC.
Above is the list of 9/11 Memorial Board Members. Notice Jon Stewart's name as the second name on the second column.
Above is Phil Rosenzweig who was a Sun Microsystems employee who lost his life on flight 93.
Above is the 9/11 memorial chopper by Paul Jr. that is being auctioned off for charity.
Inside Ellis Island's main building.
We enjoyed a quick pizza at one of NYC's thousands of great pizza joints.
Above is Julie and John in front of the apartment building on 93rd street where Julie's dad, Ray and her uncle John crew up in Brooklyn.
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was visible from Julie's Grandfather's apartment window.
Above and below is the high school that Julie's dad, uncle as well as Bernard and Albert King went to.
Above is Lincoln Center.
Above is the Brooklyn Bridge.
Tim, my only son who is into cars, spotted this $150,000 Audi R8 in NYC.
Above is the Guggenheim Museum.
Of course we had to go to Zucotti Park. NYPD had kicked everyone out.
Above is Julie and I in front of The Dakota at the exact spot that John Lennon was murdered.
Below are the boys in Central Park at night as we walked to the Imagine area.
Above is the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem.
The Book of Mormon was HILARIOUS. Tickets were not cheap, but well worth it. .
It was COLD when the 30mph winds and 30 degree temperatures and you are on top of a tour bus.
We were on the 42nd story on 42nd street in Times Square with amazing views from our room.
This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This is the same name of the blog I had for Sun Microsystems for many years. I am the CEO/CTO for Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC. More info is available at http://VirtualPhotonsElectrons.com I was the CTO for MEMEX for almost three years. More information on MEMEX is at http://MemexOEE.com
