Ups and downs

The life of a freelancer is like a weatherwane. One minute the wind blows from the south and everything is fine and dandy and BAM! the next minute a cold front is appearing from the north. Just like the weather turned colder today, a client cancelled a training day.

Earlier this week and client expressed interest in further trainings. This is evidence to me that the method works. I haven't doubted it for a second, but future clients always have doubts. It was nice to see how a client who had the guts to order the training even as a test, noticed how useful it can be and wants the rest of their people to be covered too. I happen to believe that that is the right way to go about this thing. Train all your personnel and let the critical mass of quality oriented and capable people do wonders to your productivity. See the number of errors decline and a true quality culture emerge!

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Visited a couple of printers today. One was hidden almost in the countryside, while the other one was in the middle of large industrial/commercial area here in Bochum. Both firms can do what I need, and now I'm eagerly waiting for offers. Next year, with growing numbers of trainings, we'll need more training material. There were a few good suggestions in making for example the Certificates even better than they currently are.

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Suomeksi: välillä onnistuu, tulee lisätilauksia, välillä taas varmana pidetty koulutuspäivä peruutetaan. No onpahan syitä keskittyä asiakkaiden hankintaan ja kirjallisen materiaalin kirjoittamiseen.

Koulutusmateriaaleille löytynee piakkoin saksalainen painotalo, ainakin pari tarjousta pitäisi postiin kolahtaa huomiseen mennessä.

H to Become Architect!

Yesterday another group was exposed to Tick-the-Code. Now I'm excited about the written response, the response on location seemed to positive regardless of me going on twenty minutes overtime. Because the training overlapped with the usual lunch time, I was happy to notice when somebody brought a large plate of cookies into the room.

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A friend of hours, who you know from his adventures as H, has a life outside of this blog, too. Today, he is graduating as an architect. We'll be so celebrating tonight! Most likely with Tequila. If you want to wish him luck in his second life career, you could leave a comment in this blog. H will notice, I'm sure.

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Suomennos: H valmistuu arkkitehdiksi. Opiskellessaan hän lukitsi itsensä usein kellariin tekemään pienoismalleja. Kutsunkin häntä edelleen Kellarieläimeksi.

The dentist

Yesterday I went to the dentist. It might not be big news for a normal person, but for me it is.

Fact one: I am really scared of dentists.
Fact two: When I get really scared (for example watching a scary movie) the water just runs from my eyes.

Knowing these facts, picture this: I attend the Christmas Party for Finns in Bochum. As it happens, our dentist will be there too, because he has a Finnish wife. I try to have a normal small-talk conversation with him, but the water just bursts out of my eyes!! There's an eejit for you....

And now, when you've stopped laughing at me, I need to tell you that nowadays my fear of dentists is not that bad anymore. Thanks to our nice, tender and understanding dentist - who is still probably wondering why I get so emotional every time I see him. :-)

- - -

Olen havainnut, että tänne laitetaan nykyään myös suomennoksia, joten: "Hammaslääkärin pelko, on viisaudenhampaan alku".

Simple wisdom

Here are couple more learnings from Edward de Bono's "Simplicity":

“There is no natural evolution towards simplicity. In practice things get ever more complex rather than simpler. This happens because additional functions and features are always being added. It is not always feasible to go back and to start from scratch each time a new feature has to be added. This applies particularly in the legal world where a stream of qualifications and amendments is added to the current base. It is not practical to redesign at every step. Even if it were practical there is little motivation to do so.

Some people get so used to the complexity of the existing system that they no longer regard it as complex. So they simply add further bits and pieces in a higgledy-piggledy manner.

It is said, possibly unfairly, that London taxi-cabs have to be high enough to allow passengers to wear top hats, and that they are also required to carry a bundle of hay for the horse. Usually there is no inbuilt mechanism to kill laws when they have outlasted their usefulness. Perhaps every law should be allocated a lifespan at birth.”

and

“Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.”

This strict argument makes you think:

“Complexity is always failed simplicity.”

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Chapter 4 "Technique" is coming along nicely. Today I broke the 50 thousand drafted word boundary. I'm starting to see it all come together. Slowly but surely like the German squirrel.

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Suomennos: häiriöitä kansainvälisessä kuvayhteydessä. Vasemman kaiuttimen pitäisi nyt näkyä merkonomin tikittäessä oikealta. Tähän päättyy television stereokuvatesti. Hyvää yötä.

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Auf Deutsch: Zeit für Episode 15 von Deadwood, Staffel zwei.

Bullied

The peer pressure had been building up for months. Finally we caved in. Only now, a week later on the 19-Nov-06 is the tree on our backyard really in its autumn colors. It took less than a week to turn from a green-leaved tree into this bright yellow sight you see in The Snack. We were bullied into releasing the previous picture prematurely! By my little sister, of all people! Maybe she should play Patience and learn it too.

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It is just in time as here in Bochum they started the Christmas market earlier than normal. We went for this year's first Christmas Glühwein yesterday. Although there's no snow, just the decorations and crowds of cheerful people put you to a Christmas feeling. You'd have to be a cynic not to enjoy it the first time. I'm sure that after a week or so, everybody's had enough of Christmas and it won't even be December by then! Here's a small panorama from two years ago.

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The first review of Chapter 5 "Rules" arrived yesterday. I'll be finish writing Chapter 4 "Technique" before tackling the issues raised. That gives some time for other reviewers to finish their task, too.

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We tried "Architekton" yesterday. A nice, little and quick two-player tile laying game.

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For fun, I googled my aunt and found out that she's just won silver in the Finnish Championship in bowling!

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Suomeksi: joulumarkkinat alkoivat ennenaikaisesti, puukin kellastui lopulta. Pelejä on pelailtu, postia vastaanotettu ja tällä hetkellä korvissa soi J.Karjalaisen tunnelmallinen "Hulmukka" Vanhaa Rautaa-levyltä. Joulumarkkinoiden aikaan olisi tosi kiva saada vieraita Suomesta. Nyt täällä Bochumissa on oikeasti jotain nähtävää. Hei te kaikki siellä Suomessa, ensi vuonna tulette käymään marraskuun ja joulukuun vaihteessa. Näette jotain suomalaiselle ainutlaatuista. Saksan mittakaavassahan tämä ei ole sen kummallisempaa kuin muuallakaan, mutta teille kyllä. Tervetuloa!

Vetoomus: Pihlalle pasianssikortit joululahjaksi!

Myöhäiset, mutta julkiset onnittelut Virve-tädille sekä syntymäpäivän että keilahopean johdosta! Hieno suoritus, melkein Suomen mestari!

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Auf Deutsch: Endlich wieder Weihnachtsmarkt! Fast elf Monate habe ich nur auf diesen Tag gewartet.

Meine Tante hat Silber in der Finnischen Meisterschaft im Bowling gewonnen!

Friday Reflections - Perjantaipohdintoja

I'm at it, still. I'm calling companies and spreading the information about Tick-the-Code.

On the weekend I hope to have some time to reflect on the success of these calls, or the lack of it and make the appropriate changes. At least I'm getting a great hunger to go back to writing. Contacting people out of the blue and telling them about a new way of checking their code, a way which they've never before heard from, is difficult, to put it mildly. It's not that the sold product is necessarily bad. It might be that I'm no good at selling. But I'm trying and hopefully learning. There are some promising leads so far, but for every promise there are ten rejections. It is very hard.

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In between the calls, I do some gymnastics to keep my back straight and shoulder from hurting. Today I wrote six postcards to dear people in Finland. Beware! Written messages are on their way (once I get to walk them into mailbox.)

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Have a nice weekend! Remember to recharge your mental, spiritual and physical batteries so that you can handle whatever next week throws at you. Plan your week! Don't let the week run you! Think about all your different roles and what is the most important thing in each role. As father, friend, brother, sister, mother, employee etc. Put the most important things in your week first and reserve time for them.

In order to do this, you'll have to understand what is really important. That might take some thinking. Do it weekly, for your own good.

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Our insurance agent finally returned my call. During the past six weeks I had left a few messages on his voicemail but he had never called back and he never picked up. Before he used to be almost totally dependable. One time he was in the hospital for an appendectomy and wasn't reachable for a few weeks but other than that he could always be relied upon. We were starting to worry that something might have happened to him and Virpi wrote an email to his employer asking for a status.

Today he called, because he had received the email and had no idea about our messages. There was something wrong with his answering machine or voicemail. At least he is fine, and again at our disposal.

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I finished Edward de Bono's book "Simplicity". Yes, the book is almost pure white and invisible against a white background. Imagine the amount of black fingerprints on my copy, though. Here are some thoughts I noted down from it.

"You have to want to look for simplicity. You have to be motivated to design simplicity. Whose business is it to make things more simple?"

“If something needs doing, then do something about it. Don’t just hope that someone else will. What is everyone’s business also has to be someone’s business.”

“Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy.
There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.”

I found these thoughts great, partly because they support my Crusade for Simpler Software. That's exactly what Tick-the-Code Inspection is all about. Taking simplicity of code as a value makes sense and saves time, attention and mental energy!

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Suomennos: Soittelut Tick-the-Code -katselmoinnin levittämiseksi jatkuvat. Into kirjoittaa on palannut palavana. On pakko saada julkaistua artikkeleita aiheeseen liittyen. Tiedonvälityksen täytyy tehostua.

Puheluiden välillä jumppaan ja tänään kirjoitin neljä postikorttiakin rakkaille ihmisille Suomessa. Odottakaahan vain! Postia on tulossa. Ihan ilman sähköä.

Muista ladata patterisi viikonloppuna. Suunnittele viikon kulku etukäteen. Ajasta ensin tärkeät asiat kustakin roolista. Tiedä, mikä on oikeasti tärkeää.

Suomennos

Enkä muuten todellakaan käännä tuota "Random Thoughts..."-postia suomeksi!

Saldo for Today

Grand total for today: 19 phone calls, cost: €5.44.

Random Thoughts between Calls

Yesterday I tried to inform a person of the Tick-the-Code Inspection training, who had had the training already. A year ago he had been as external subcontractor in an internal training I had given in Helsinki. He was still working with the same subcontractor company, but his tasks had changed somewhat. It was a nice coincidence, which might start happening more once the method really starts spreading.

I've started opening eyes for next year. I'm sending emails and calling contact persons to let them know that a thing called Tick-the-Code Inspection exists, and you can buy it and it will help your software quality improve and makes your programming staff better at the same time. As such, much more publicity is needed. I definitely need to finish my book, get it published and make sure it sells a lot. A few articles in the right magazines and websites wouldn't hurt, either. And I have to start using my networks on OpenBC (soon to become XING) and LinkedIn.

Breaking into the Canadian software market seems difficult. Maybe it is just different from the way things are done in Finland. Our plan is to try and get some companies interested in the Toronto and Vancouver regions, so much so that it pays off for us to travel there. It remains to be seen if we can manage to realise this plan. The first thing is to have a plan, and then act accordingly. Although it seems terribly daunting and difficult at the moment, because of the language, the culture, the distance and the time difference, I'm giving it a shot.

I'm after the big companies, but truly getting a company-wide ok, is probably impossible. In order to make the ultimate change, the revolution of software quality, that's exactly what is needed. I cannot do it alone, but by then I will have a legion of licensed and qualified instructors helping me. For now getting people aware little by little of Tick-the-Code is the main thing. Spread the word if you can. It benefits everybody: me for I can then buy my bread; the companies, whose revenues go up with their quality; the people in the companies, who get better at what they do and get to work in better-running companies; and you because the companies will produce better-quality products, which you might one day use. Everybody wins.

It's time to make another phone call.

..., one phone call, and an email and 18 minutes later...

And another.

...about 9 minutes pass...

Mostly these calls lead to rescheduling of calls. Like this one. Moving to a new office is bound to cause some turbulence. One whole day is too short a time for most to read a lengthy email from an unknown party (me). I make my calls two days after I've sent an email with information about Tick-the-Code. My idea, well-intended, is to give the recipients a chance to read about my offer beforehand to be able to reject or show interest in it when I call. I call in order to show that I mean business. I intend to ask them for their opinion, for which they need information, which I've hopefully sent them.

I know I am offering something useful, something practical, all they would have to do is seize the opportunity. But how can you know a genuine opportunity from a fake one? What if this guy, too, will let us down? What if his training doesn't solve all our problems like he promises? It has happened so many times before. We've learned to be careful.

Getting through that shield of distrust is difficult over the phone. If I could meet these people, most would find me likeable and knowledgeable, I think. That's why one feedback simply said "Nice guy." It didn't say "Wiseguy", luckily.

I like to think that this hard work of digging out the right kinds of software companies, contacting them, re-contacting them and making sure they have enough information to make an informed decision, giving them time to think and making sure they use some time for thinking, not just for other things and then say "No", all that hard work is what I will possibly be paid for. They will hopefully be paying directly for the training I deliver, but for me that's just the visible, the simple part. The real work, the real nasty and hard labor happens during selling.

Time to call a CEO. My guess is that he won't answer and I'll have to leave a voicemail.

...3 minutes later...

Although I went through the switchboard, I ended up in voicemail and rescheduled. He now knows my email will be followed up personally and that he has one more day to read it. I hope he finds the time to do it. It was Henry Ford who said that he'd "check each and every opportunity, for anyone of them might be the opportunity of a lifetime."

I did some cruch-ups and back-ups(?) to keep my stomach muscles and back muscles in check. All this sitting is killing me.
Virpi has waken up. She was up half the night doing some elf-things (suomeksi: tonttuili) and it shows in the morning.

I just went into another voicemail. Without leaving a message, I'll call back again in five minutes. I allow for slight tardiness (how gracious of me). Maybe the person at the other end just needs a few more minutes. I have twenty minutes reserved for each call, and normally I only need 5-15 minutes, so I can try again in five minutes without upsetting my schedule. If I don't reach a person on the second ring, I'll leave a voicemail rescheduling for tomorrow.

Five minutes is up, I'll start ringing. My bet is on the voicemail again.

...6 minutes later...

No, this time I got a clear rejection. The reason was that there is no problem in quality at the moment. It might seem logical enough a reason, but if you think about it, it isn't. If you always wait until there is a problem before you do something, you'll pay heavily to fix it. If you don't take your car for inspection (!) regularly, it will break and cost a lot. Why wait until you have a problem? Improve your quality skills every now and then and avoid problems and crises altogether!

Two more calls before I break for lunch. Then I have seven rescheduled calls to make and then we go shopping.

The next guy I'm calling might be a sales person who doesn't understand much about coding and software development. I've tried to contact the CEO for ages, but he never picks up, with or without caller id, with ot without reservation email, so I'm trying this person. My goal is to get the right quality contact, who understands technical aspects and importance of quality, too.

...7 minutes later...

Another rejection, and a suggestion to contact the unreachable CEO. He also hinted that the fact the CEO isn't answering might correlate with his feelings of need for the training. It might well be but I'd like to hear him say that.

One more call and it's break time. I hope I'm not interfering with people's lunchtime already. There's a one hour time difference between Finland and Germany, you know. It might be 10:35 here, but in Finland it is lunchtime for some.

Virpi just send me an aforism: "Miracles do happen every now and then, but, boy, you sure have to work hard for them." Fits.

...Call and rescheduling agreed in less than four minutes...

Time for a break. According to Skype records I've made today 11 phone calls spending €2,31.

Autumn

It IS autumn. I know you've been checking our Snack page from day to day, waiting the summer photo turn into the autumn photo, but no. Explanation: I really wanted to wait and show you how the tree in our backyard turns into the beautiful colours of yellow and red, and even might drop some leaves. Well, I've waited long enough. Today I took the newest picture in the series of "Seasons in Bochum", check it out on Snack page.

And don't worry if the winter photo doesn't appear in December.

Links to Neil Gaiman

This post contains only two links to Neil Gaiman's blog. He is one of my favorite writers and I follow his blog practically daily. I've tried to emulate him in the frequency of mailing, but lately I have been sadly failing.

Here's a link to his post today, which is appropriate enough for a Finn like me.

Another coincidence is the Egg with Attitude we found and photographed one day. With some makeup you can really see Eggie has character.


Neil found a Devil Tomato in his crop last year.

Goodminton and Downhill Skiing

After a long, long break in playing badminton, today I did. I usually play against Yrjö and he was my opponent today, too. Normally he wins, or maybe it is more like 70% of the time. Today was not his day, though. Perhaps he had done too much in the workout before the match, but I beat him fair and square in two sets. Afterwards he was out of steam, and I could have played a third round. One reason might be that I have less to carry around compared to last summer. I've probably lost about four or five kilos and I can see and feel it.

In today's match I had more time to fetch the ball and think about where to fling it. And most of the time it worked. It is a bit unfair that if you are not in good shape, you get the second problem of not having time to think tactically. You can't get to a ball in time and even if you do, all you can achieve is a sad attempt of a hit that moves the ball right into the racket of your opponent. Then you're out of luck, usually.

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I'm planning a skiing trip to the Alps in January. I'm excited already! Can I still ski? Do my equipment still work? Will I fit into my skiing overall? Are the 80's back in style?

To orient yourselves better, we'll be taking a bus to the Alps. Can you imagine? A bus!

To tell you the truth, I'm not at all sure where we are going. It's a group of friends and there's been an email exchange and one particular website has been presented, but whether we have decided on that or are we going to Austria instead, I don't know. We might be going to Portes du Soleil (Gates of the Sun, I imagine) in Switzerland. I hope somebody tells me before we go. On the other hand, I don't care as long as there's snow and a slope.

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I'm adding a "Downloads" page to the website. I intend to put in some writings of mine for interested people to download and perhaps get even more interested.

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Suomennos: Sulkapallo sujui, tammikuussa taidan taiteilla telemarkilla Alpeilla. Kirjoitussivu lisätään näinä päivinä.

Veil of Mystery

More companies have agreed to let me mention their name on the Customers page. The veil of mystery surrounding them has almost completely been lifted. If you scan the list, you'll see small and middle-sized companies, but also some really big ones.

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The first written feedback arrived today. It was mostly positive, although apparently Silent Grumpy attended one course. On one hand, I appreciate the fact that he hasn't complained during the session, but judging from the feedback, he got absolutely nothing from the whole session! On the other hand, he should have said something and I could have maybe changed something. For my own sake I have to believe that perhaps his job doesn't involve dealing with software, or he doesn't create errors at all and couldn't possibly use a method to prevent them, either. I might never know for sure. I have to believe that I did the best I could, he was the one to have his mind closed. I believe that even if you consider the method unworthy (which you shouldn't do too early at least), you should still be able to learn a few new things when you meet a new and knowledgable person. Unless you consider everybody else to be on a lower level than yourself. Then you couldn't possibly learn anything from just anybody.

It could also be a taste issue. My style is to draw a lot of graphs on the white board and later just erase them as they have only been temporary tools of communication. Some trainees would probably like these to be more permanent and handed out later. But Silent Grumpy seems to have not learned anything new from the graphs either.

Interesting how you can spend three hours on training course and not learn anything useful. Nothing, at least according to the feedback. Perhaps Silent Grumpy was forced to participate, that's one way to shut one's mind, perhaps there's another reason. If he is acting perfectly efficiently in his work, how can you justify the wasted three hours. I like to think that the trainee has some responsibility in making a training session successful. It isn't all up to the trainer. Maybe there wasn't a possibility for enough dialogue?

It is good to get feedback, even better when it is constructive, but what can I do with a comment like: "Do we really need trainings like this?" It would be nice to get some details.

Overall the feedback was encouraging, and we shouldn't forget the fact that internalizing the real thinking change takes time, practice and experience, and once the thinking changes, it might dawn on more participants how really wonderful and powerful the Tick-the-Code Inspection method truly is.

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Kaj is coming back from a holiday in China. Just in time to receive the next chapter of my book to review ;-)

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We plan to come to Finland next time for Christmas on Dec.13th, probably. One idea was to do a week's business trip in November already, but it was a bit too sudden. The rhythm of companies and training is a little bit slower than I thought. I'm sure we can arrange very full and fulfilling training weeks in Finland again in January. New year and new tricks, like they say.

Business, games, music and writing

I've updated the Customers page of the website. If you'd like to get on this expanding list, contact me. See contact details. Some of the companies don't want their names and logos shown, for whatever reasons. In those cases, I just mention the location and number of participants. As you can see, I've trained over two hundred people this year and I'm only starting. Theoretical maximum would be about 3000 trainees a year, but 500 makes a good target for next year. Per trainer, of course.

The two-week trip brought with it six new companies to my network of contacts. And remember, this was just one city in the world. I started with Tampere, because it was like going home. Just the selling part was new and difficult enough for me and I didn't need any other confusion from the language or travelling arrangements or who knows what. Tampere was a safe choice and with this success I can open my eyes to the rest of the world.

Selling to Finland will still be the easiest choice, but using English opens the world so much. I even sometimes dream of doing business and the trainings in German. And I know that if I even dream about something, there is at least a slight chance of it becoming reality down the line. I'm not counting my chickens yet, but there are many eggs hatching...

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I finally finished going through all the comments for the Chapter Symptoms of my upcoming book about code inspections. The word count went from the initial 9.000 to about 14.000, an increase of over 55%! If that happens to the rest of the chapters, the book will be more like a monument than something you'd keep on a shelf.

With one finished chapter and clear plan for the whole book, it might be time to start looking for a publisher. Having an agreement could also give me much needed discipline, focus and a goal.

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I had the goal of getting published in a magazine this year and this dream is becoming reality. I won't go into the details until I see black on white, but some of you readers will be pleasantly surprised, I hope. BETTER keep your eyes open, SOFTWARE professionals!

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"Beyond Good and Evil" is the game I'm currently tackling with my Playstation 2. No wonder it received good reviews when it came out, the game is addictive and the gameplay is enjoyable. I never buy the latest games, because I don't have the time to play too much anyway and I shouldn't buy anything to play 'right now'. My 'right now' will be more than likely 'next year if not later'. So I buy classic games with low prices only and then I don't need to stress about when I have time to play. If I don't find the time, maybe the game wasn't good enough, but it isn't a big loss either.

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My friend Julien ordered a bunch of board games for me. More on those later.

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I received my new iPod Shuffle on Thursday. It is small and weighs next to nothing. It works just like the old Shuffle and was terribly simple to take into use. It fits my profile and needs perfectly. MisPod makes walking in the crowds of Bochum an lifting experience. With just the right music, it is like walking on air. You don't hear the crowd, you hear what you want to. All the music is yours, but it keeps surprising you with the randomness and wideness of selection. In my case I fill the 240 songs randomly from a library of exactly 5124 songs. I'll never get the same combination of songs twice. There are about 250 different artists in the library, so chances are that some artists appear more than once, if I were to listen through all the songs on MisPod, which would take about 12 hours.

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Suomennos: Suomen reissusta olisi vielä paljonkin kerrottavaa, mutta bisnespuolella matkaan voi olla erittäin tyytyväinen. Kuusi uutta yritystä sai esimakua Tick-the-Code-katselmoinnista ja seuraava matka on jo työn alla. Seuraavassa vaiheessa fokus siirtyy jo Tampereen ulkopuolelle, kenties Suomenkin. Kanadan matka pitäisi saada järjestettyä, siskoni lähtee oppilasvaihtoon vuoden vaihteessa.

Kirjani ensimmäinen luku "Oireita" on nyt korjattu. Jäljellä on vielä yksi läpikäynti ja muutaman idean aukikirjoittaminen. Kommenttien tarkistaminen ja tekstin korjaaminen kasvatti sanamäärää noin puolella, mikä on tässä vaiheessa ihan hyvä juttu. Sanoja on lopussa paljon helpompi pudottaa pois kuin keksiä äkkiä uusia ajatuksia lisää.

MisPod on mahtava vekotin. Applen uusi, toisen sukupolven iPod Shuffle on juuri sellainen soitin, jota kaipaan. Yksinkertainen, pieni, mutta tilava ja helposti mukana kulkeva.

Taking Care of Benjamin

I think we travel too much.

This became apparent today when a friend of mine, who has been mentioned in this blog under the guise of H. and in connection with tequila, started talking about Benjamin. I don't know anybody called Benjamin.

Now, H. is a trusted friend and during our absense he waters our plants. Most of our plants we leave at home, because they only require watering once a week. But two weeks ago as we were leaving (on a jet plane) we had a basil plant. Basil is a thirsty herb and needs to be watered every day. That's why we took the basil over to H.'s house and left it at his mercy.

Today he brought the plant back and it was doing fine. Later, at an Irish music concert to honor the tradition of Halloween, we started talking about a possible skiing trip to the Alps and H. asked if anybody will be taking care of Benjamin, meaning the basil plant.

You know you travel too much when your housesitters start naming your plants.