Over five years ago, Jeff Atwood wrote Fail Early, Fail Often. Since that time I’ve seen two wildly different interpretations manifest themselves. From application developers and from VCs pushing products two strategies have seemingly been developed.

I am not a fan of holidays. I don’t really want to dislike them. I’m just not excited. I want my kids to grow up with fond memories of holidays and have an excitement even when they’re older. Leading up to this Christmas, I thought for a long time on how to do this.

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Steinbeck said that. It definitely starts a conversation up. I don’t want to talk about politics. I want to talk about products.

I’ve climbed to the summit of a proper mountain once in my life. It was an enjoyable experience and I’d like to do it again. I sat at the top for a fraction of the time it took to get there. Then I had to descend. It didn’t make sense to sit on the top of my mountain peak any further.

First, the context of this is a consulting agency out in Tennessee that wrote about evaluating job performance and providing immediate feedback and rewards.

The idea is very simple. During a bi-weekly evaluation they earn badges for above-and-beyond. Badges can be redeemed for small monetary rewards. This is a very good idea, and I don’t think it’s incredibly unique.

Coaching started somewhat accidentally. As an avid -football-soccer fan, I obviously wanted my own son to play soccer. He always enjoys watching games with me, at least for 15 minutes.

I register him and shortly after this get a notice that they’re short on coaches. I wait a few days and they still need coaches so volunteer. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I was excited. I don’t think I’m particularly good with kids.

One of my all-time favorite movies is War Games. Any respectable geek will understand why. I wasn’t old enough to see it when it came out. I’m not even really sure how old I was when I saw it first. I know I was already programming.

Every so often in life I learn something that hits very hard. It becomes painfully obvious. Even worse, I question my sanity and intelligence. I ask myself,

How can I be learning this just now?

It’s hard to ask that and answer it in a constructive way. I think I must accept the inevitability it will happen.

Recently we went out for Tapas. The server had an accent I couldn’t place. It sounded familiar, but quite different. It reminded me almost of a Romanian accent, except latino and speaking Spanish.

Today I dealt with a problem. A silly problem that was easily avoidable and largely inconsequential. I even wanted to deal with it. A business indiscriminately attacked good customers (us). At the core, the problem really could be my wife’s fault. She wasn’t punctual enough. It’s forgivable, we were busy.