Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Tonight I will describe what happened at work today. But it doesn't really count as discussing work, because it isn't technical and isn't at all related to anything I normally do at work. The purpose was to foster community among employees and make it a friendler place to work.
I am also betting no one close to this community will read my blog, so they won't figure out where I work or what I do. Not that I intend to discuss technical stuff here anyways.
Today, employees were invited to take their kids with them to work. I think this started as a national girls to work day. The national day was held in April timeframe and its intent was to expose girls to a variety of career choices and encourage them to pursue higher studies. However, it's discriminatory to invite girls only. And an April date conflicted with school.
My company puts on a major production. We have keynotes for the kids and workshops and other fun sessions throughout the day. There is a special kid-friendly menu in our cafeteria (it didn't look much better than the normal fare) and the kids round out the day by running amok among our cubicles.
In addition, kids from the community can get volunteer hosts to escort them, so not all the kids were the offspring of my coworkers. Or, rather, employees without children can borrow a kid to escort for the day. Either way.
My group hosted a workshop called the "Lemonade Stand". It's roughly modeled after "The Apprentice" and the computerized lemonade stands I played on the old Apple computers in grade school.
The kids are broken up into small teams. They are given "seed money" with which they must purchase an advertising banner (more colorful banners sell more lemonade) and glasses of lemonade to sell. At the start of each day, they get a weather prediction (based on a die roll) and decide how much lemonade to buy based on this prediction. Another roll of the die determines the accuracy of the prediction, and there is a formula that determines the actual number of glasses sold. This simulation continues for a week. The volunteer leads guide the kids through the banner creation and helps work the math on the whiteboard.
As I told them this morning, there are three goals:
1. Make a profit. They must recoup the money spent on the banner and initial lemonade purchase.
2. Make more money than the other team.
3. Make as much money as possible.
It looked like the kids had fun. There were a few who couldn't stop talking about it afterwards. We could hear them telling their parents all about how much money they made. If I do say so myself, I thought I designed the rules rather well. The session had a mixture of activities that required all sorts of skills: creative (team name selection and banner creation), physical (die rolls), and analytical (computing profit and determining how much lemonade to buy).
The volunteers had fun, too. The sessions were fast-paced, involved lots of teaching and coaching, and the computation was just complicated enough to be challenging for the adults. Well, the math wasn't so complicated, it was having to be accurate in a short amount of time.
I learned several things:
1. If the team is large enough, it helps to designate one kid to do whiteboard duty.
2. It helps to write out the formula in a "fill in the blanks" format on the whiteboard.
3. The kids have more fun if they take turns rolling the die. Also if each gets their own marking pen when drawing the banner.
4. One really good extension to the algorithm is to allow the sale of hot chocolate on nasty weather days. There would be a second formula for the hot chocolate sold, which would be almost the inverse of the lemonade formula. The profit margins might be slimmer on the hot chocolate. And all the weights would be adjusted to make it more difficult to make a profit.
5. The weights could be made more complicated by rolling a pair of dice instead of a die.
6. The banner options could be expanded to include more colors, or even the option of not buying a banner at all. Nobody bothered to add colors during the simulation, so that option can be eliminated.
7. Maybe there should be a fixed rent/insurance/utilities fee charged every day. This makes it tougher to decide whether to buy lemonade to sell or just sit the day out.
8. The options can be slimmed down to make the algorithm easier for a younger audience.
All in all, this was a fun experience. But we'll have to come up with something different for next year.
I am also betting no one close to this community will read my blog, so they won't figure out where I work or what I do. Not that I intend to discuss technical stuff here anyways.
Today, employees were invited to take their kids with them to work. I think this started as a national girls to work day. The national day was held in April timeframe and its intent was to expose girls to a variety of career choices and encourage them to pursue higher studies. However, it's discriminatory to invite girls only. And an April date conflicted with school.
My company puts on a major production. We have keynotes for the kids and workshops and other fun sessions throughout the day. There is a special kid-friendly menu in our cafeteria (it didn't look much better than the normal fare) and the kids round out the day by running amok among our cubicles.
In addition, kids from the community can get volunteer hosts to escort them, so not all the kids were the offspring of my coworkers. Or, rather, employees without children can borrow a kid to escort for the day. Either way.
My group hosted a workshop called the "Lemonade Stand". It's roughly modeled after "The Apprentice" and the computerized lemonade stands I played on the old Apple computers in grade school.
The kids are broken up into small teams. They are given "seed money" with which they must purchase an advertising banner (more colorful banners sell more lemonade) and glasses of lemonade to sell. At the start of each day, they get a weather prediction (based on a die roll) and decide how much lemonade to buy based on this prediction. Another roll of the die determines the accuracy of the prediction, and there is a formula that determines the actual number of glasses sold. This simulation continues for a week. The volunteer leads guide the kids through the banner creation and helps work the math on the whiteboard.
As I told them this morning, there are three goals:
1. Make a profit. They must recoup the money spent on the banner and initial lemonade purchase.
2. Make more money than the other team.
3. Make as much money as possible.
It looked like the kids had fun. There were a few who couldn't stop talking about it afterwards. We could hear them telling their parents all about how much money they made. If I do say so myself, I thought I designed the rules rather well. The session had a mixture of activities that required all sorts of skills: creative (team name selection and banner creation), physical (die rolls), and analytical (computing profit and determining how much lemonade to buy).
The volunteers had fun, too. The sessions were fast-paced, involved lots of teaching and coaching, and the computation was just complicated enough to be challenging for the adults. Well, the math wasn't so complicated, it was having to be accurate in a short amount of time.
I learned several things:
1. If the team is large enough, it helps to designate one kid to do whiteboard duty.
2. It helps to write out the formula in a "fill in the blanks" format on the whiteboard.
3. The kids have more fun if they take turns rolling the die. Also if each gets their own marking pen when drawing the banner.
4. One really good extension to the algorithm is to allow the sale of hot chocolate on nasty weather days. There would be a second formula for the hot chocolate sold, which would be almost the inverse of the lemonade formula. The profit margins might be slimmer on the hot chocolate. And all the weights would be adjusted to make it more difficult to make a profit.
5. The weights could be made more complicated by rolling a pair of dice instead of a die.
6. The banner options could be expanded to include more colors, or even the option of not buying a banner at all. Nobody bothered to add colors during the simulation, so that option can be eliminated.
7. Maybe there should be a fixed rent/insurance/utilities fee charged every day. This makes it tougher to decide whether to buy lemonade to sell or just sit the day out.
8. The options can be slimmed down to make the algorithm easier for a younger audience.
All in all, this was a fun experience. But we'll have to come up with something different for next year.
Monday, June 21, 2004
And one more thing. I'm in a good mood after working out, despite being horribly embarrassed at how out of shape I am. (Not going as fast on the elliptical trainers, having to move the peg up on the weight machines...) My project at work is still frustrating, and will still be frustrating tomorrow, but it feels all right now.
Now, if only I could get motivated to do this more often, we'd be set.
Now, if only I could get motivated to do this more often, we'd be set.
I believe the electronic speed limit sign previously discussed displays your speed if you are driving over 25 MPH, and the limit if you're not. I think the sensor is about 0.5 blocks before the sign, maybe 20 meters or so from the corner. Its range seems to span a fair distance. Of course future study is required.
About the engineering drama. Let me bounce off episode ideas. First episode: upper management, along with marketing guy, pick a toy idea (DIY tie-dyed teddy bears?) based purely on data. Kids like teddy bears. Kids like colors. Kids like tie-dye and doing it themselves. Misguided product ala "Big". (Remember the toy robot that turned into a building? And the Tom Hanks character saying he didn't get it?) Tension brews: the EE folks have nothing to do and are blocked out of the development cycle at any rate. Some incompetent, lazy designer picks toxic dye and the focus group turns awry.
Sounds more cynical than dramatic, huh?
About the engineering drama. Let me bounce off episode ideas. First episode: upper management, along with marketing guy, pick a toy idea (DIY tie-dyed teddy bears?) based purely on data. Kids like teddy bears. Kids like colors. Kids like tie-dye and doing it themselves. Misguided product ala "Big". (Remember the toy robot that turned into a building? And the Tom Hanks character saying he didn't get it?) Tension brews: the EE folks have nothing to do and are blocked out of the development cycle at any rate. Some incompetent, lazy designer picks toxic dye and the focus group turns awry.
Sounds more cynical than dramatic, huh?
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Recently, on a street near my place of employment, they installed an electric sign that for a while displayed the speed limit along that road. The other morning, I discovered it also tells you the speed at which you are driving. I have not yet figured out the algorithm for this sign, so I do not know if it tells you your speed only at certain times or if you have exceeded the speed limit, as California drivers are wont to do.
This sign is incredibly fun. It will take a lot of willpower not to go and play with it this weekend. To avoid playing with the sign this afternoon, I took a nap.
Now, I feel guilty for taking a nap and I don't know why. I purposely left my calendar empty this weekend to make up for last weekend. I didn't miss any prior commitments. I still intend to clean the bathroom tonight. I'd hate to think it's societal pressure making me feel guilty for taking a nap.
This sign is incredibly fun. It will take a lot of willpower not to go and play with it this weekend. To avoid playing with the sign this afternoon, I took a nap.
Now, I feel guilty for taking a nap and I don't know why. I purposely left my calendar empty this weekend to make up for last weekend. I didn't miss any prior commitments. I still intend to clean the bathroom tonight. I'd hate to think it's societal pressure making me feel guilty for taking a nap.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Diverging off the topic of engineering dramas for a moment...
...but staying on TV.
I love to cook and try new recipes. I love to watch the Food Network, especially "Good Eats", "Iron Chef", and "Unwrapped". My favorite PBS shows are the cooking ones with Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Martin Yan, and the America's Test Kitchen. For some reason, I also enjoyed "Supersize Me" and "Fast Food Nation".
There is a show on the Food Network called "30 Minute Meals" dedicated to showing us how to cook a good healthy meal in the time it takes to finish one show. It's not hard to cook and eat healthy.
Now hear me out. I think the reason why we (collectively, as a consumer society) love fast food so much is not because it tastes good or we were enticed by the toy.
No, the reason we love fast food and restaurants and junk food so much is we hate to clean. Of course it's easy to cook a healthy meal in little time. It's a pain in the butt to clean all the dishes, pots, and pans afterward, especially if you just spent another hour entertaining your guests/friends/family. Have you tried cleaning the pot in which you've just made caramel? Now try it in a non-stick pot and come back in a week when it's clean.
Therefore, IMHO, food shows should be more realistic. "30 Minute Meals" does a respectable job, since the hostess Rachael Ray actually does a fair amount of chopping, cutting, and cleaning during her 30 minutes.
The food show I'd design would last maybe an hour, and in this hour, my host (not me, goodness no, I only have 10 fingers to sacrifice on camera) would do all food prep, cooking, and cleaning. The camera would cut out while people ate the food, then cut back in for the cleaning.
On a vaguely related note, my ex-roommate N and I came up with another food show concept: "grad student cookery". The food prep and dish cleaning are all in there, with an added twist: nearly everything is prepared in the microwave. Occasionally we would use the stove to boil something. Hah, let's see Emeril make something of that.
...but staying on TV.
I love to cook and try new recipes. I love to watch the Food Network, especially "Good Eats", "Iron Chef", and "Unwrapped". My favorite PBS shows are the cooking ones with Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Martin Yan, and the America's Test Kitchen. For some reason, I also enjoyed "Supersize Me" and "Fast Food Nation".
There is a show on the Food Network called "30 Minute Meals" dedicated to showing us how to cook a good healthy meal in the time it takes to finish one show. It's not hard to cook and eat healthy.
Now hear me out. I think the reason why we (collectively, as a consumer society) love fast food so much is not because it tastes good or we were enticed by the toy.
No, the reason we love fast food and restaurants and junk food so much is we hate to clean. Of course it's easy to cook a healthy meal in little time. It's a pain in the butt to clean all the dishes, pots, and pans afterward, especially if you just spent another hour entertaining your guests/friends/family. Have you tried cleaning the pot in which you've just made caramel? Now try it in a non-stick pot and come back in a week when it's clean.
Therefore, IMHO, food shows should be more realistic. "30 Minute Meals" does a respectable job, since the hostess Rachael Ray actually does a fair amount of chopping, cutting, and cleaning during her 30 minutes.
The food show I'd design would last maybe an hour, and in this hour, my host (not me, goodness no, I only have 10 fingers to sacrifice on camera) would do all food prep, cooking, and cleaning. The camera would cut out while people ate the food, then cut back in for the cleaning.
On a vaguely related note, my ex-roommate N and I came up with another food show concept: "grad student cookery". The food prep and dish cleaning are all in there, with an added twist: nearly everything is prepared in the microwave. Occasionally we would use the stove to boil something. Hah, let's see Emeril make something of that.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Taking the cell phone example, the trouble I see with such a format is the storyline drifts towards the people using the cell phone (product) and not the engineers, when the intent was to focus on the engineers in the first place.
Another problem is any decently built product has more than a few main players. You might have whole teams designing each component or taking over a certain design step, like the board layout. Most shows I've seen focus on a handful of people. It would be impossible to get everybody in, and it would be boring just to focus on the team deciding the color of the case. ("Red! Green! No, it should be blue!")
It would be more realistic to have 5 managers as the main characters. Notice I didn't say it would be exciting. But let's run with it a moment.
5 managers, each of whom has 2-4 direct reports. The reporting structure is fairly flat; I'm sure the CEO is lurking around here somewhere. This leaves a cozy company of about 20 people.
One team does sales and marketing, one does case design and human interaction, one does the software, and one does the circuitry, leaving one team open. How about reducing the number of teams by two and replacing them with individuals: a sales/marketing person, an HR person, a clerk, and an accountant. I don't think such a small company would have its own lawyer.
It would be more interesting to have each episode be self-contained, with a new product every episode. Needless to say, our employees are exhausted. Clearly this is a private company.
Oh, I know, they would manufacture toys. Those annoying electronic computerized toys that make a lot of noise. Those should be sufficiently different to make each episode interesting. A heart monitor or cell phone requires more than 20 people.
Another problem is any decently built product has more than a few main players. You might have whole teams designing each component or taking over a certain design step, like the board layout. Most shows I've seen focus on a handful of people. It would be impossible to get everybody in, and it would be boring just to focus on the team deciding the color of the case. ("Red! Green! No, it should be blue!")
It would be more realistic to have 5 managers as the main characters. Notice I didn't say it would be exciting. But let's run with it a moment.
5 managers, each of whom has 2-4 direct reports. The reporting structure is fairly flat; I'm sure the CEO is lurking around here somewhere. This leaves a cozy company of about 20 people.
One team does sales and marketing, one does case design and human interaction, one does the software, and one does the circuitry, leaving one team open. How about reducing the number of teams by two and replacing them with individuals: a sales/marketing person, an HR person, a clerk, and an accountant. I don't think such a small company would have its own lawyer.
It would be more interesting to have each episode be self-contained, with a new product every episode. Needless to say, our employees are exhausted. Clearly this is a private company.
Oh, I know, they would manufacture toys. Those annoying electronic computerized toys that make a lot of noise. Those should be sufficiently different to make each episode interesting. A heart monitor or cell phone requires more than 20 people.
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