Geraldo did cover, the long murder trial
Marcia had evidence, that stretched for a mile
He showed his true colors, right there on the tube
A cop named Mark Furman, a racist, a boob

They’re trying to frame him, this is an attack
The cops just don’t like him, because he is black
He couldn’t have been there, arthritis was failin’
They even tried using, his pal Kato Kaelin

She proved he’s a liar, a phony, a loser
Dishonest, a failure, an excessive boozer
Disgraceful, a cheater, a harmful drug user
The infamous suspect, a spousal abuser

Nicole’s blood on his things, and more than a trace
Inside his white Bronco, all over the place
With science on her side, what could they say?
How to explain it? ‘Twas his DNA

Surely they had him, no doubt they would win
This man they call O.J., was guilty as sin
In talk shows they said it, in papers they wrote
To all it was clear, that he slit her throat

Some days were real long, some ended in fury
For more than a year, said Ito, “No hurry”
They did all they could, now O.J. should worry
It took them 3 hours, an impatient jury

But this is in L.A., a different type place
It’s not about guilt, it’s all about race
Freedom will come, it is in the cards
If you’ve got deep pockets, and 2000 yards

They read us the verdict, we couldn’t believe
They said it “not guilty,” he got his reprieve
Outrageous conclusion, the jury conceived
The Browns and the Goldmans, they suddenly grieved

To all those who watched, the verdict seemed weird
For families of victims, the nightmare they feared
On national TV, their eyes were all teared
What bothers me most? The thousands that cheered

A nation that cheers, for spousal abuse
In this guy’s opinion, there ain’t no excuse
Whether you call him, “O.J.” or “Juice”
He don’t need no golf club, but does need a noose

(I wrote this in late 2000 and thought it might make a good addition to this blog)

                       Count the Vote!

Alas with pen and paper near, the yearly anecdote

Pondering the reasons why they wouldn’t count the vote…

Eight years of prosperity and peace across the land

Why we’d change the horse mid-stream is hard to understand

Al Gore served his country well, since he was but a lad

“W” sold his baseball team so he could be like dad

Both campaigned for Clinton’s job, which one should I pick?

The nation’s leading Patriot or maybe Mr. Thick?

Seniors need prescription drugs and worry ‘bout their health

Cut the tax to help the rich or should we share the wealth?

Election Day, the heat is on, the networks cannot stall

It is Al or is it George? Or just too close to call?

Bernie gives the race to Bush, Gore is in a bind

I guess you win, George. I concede. Hold it, never mind!

Confusion lurks in West Palm Beach, where voters aren’t so spry

What’s meant for Al went straight to Pat, thanks to butterfly

Machines save time in counting votes, we trust that they’ll be fair

But if the margin of the race is less than that of error?

Bush enjoys a narrow lead for Al it looks remote

Jackson marches, Baker whines, Gore says “Count the Vote”

Count the ballots, shine the light, see it’s not so bad

Bush’s biggest worry now – that dreaded hanging chad

Chads with dimples, pregnant chads, chads with but a dent

Watch the judges do their best to help discern intent

A month goes by, still no Pres., market takes a dive

All the channels speculate but most of this is jive

Sanders Sauls hears the case Richards beats out Boies

Luckily four justices decide to make some noise

Katherine Harris, public servant, loyal to G-Dub

Certified a bogus count, but really, here’s the rub

What’s fair is fair the judges say, read this and I quote

“The underlying principle is simply Count the Vote”

The high court rules and complicates a convoluted web

Bush says if you count the vote I’ll tell my brother Jeb

The high court rules to stop the count, talk about a crime

Now they say they’d like to count but there just isn’t time

Ironic Bush would call upon the power of the Fed

Contradicts his own state’s laws and all that stuff he said

Maybe it was destiny, for Bush to get the win

The jury’s out but time will tell us, if the fix was in

If justice is alive and well there’s one thing that’s for sure

Gore will be the Chief Exec in year 2004

Every once in a while it’s good to compare the performance of one administration versus another.  If memory serves Republicans were shocked, shocked I say at the handling of the Benghazi incident where 4 Americans were killed.  So shocked that they launched 10 investigations over a 3 year period at a cost of $4.6 million dollars.  Note that this was more investigations than what was spent on 9/11.

Recently Nancy Pelosi announced an investigation into the Trump administration’s abject failure to respond to the Coronavirus with the necessary urgency to prevent loss of life in the tens of thousands.  Predictably, Republicans are aghast at the very thought of taking a look under the covers.  Rightfully so, it won’t be pretty.

Trump went from “hoax” to “okay I’ll play the savior” in three weeks’ time after it was apparent the stock market was going to tank no matter what.  It’s all on tape and makes for great commercials during an election year.

In any case, I welcome the comparison.  Bring it.

What are we as a country going to need hundreds of thousands of? Caskets.

But not just any caskets. You have to be a market differentiator. My idea is caskets made to order with your favorite cult leader logo on them.

You’d have your choice of one or more logos so you could choose between a standard Fox News logo or perhaps your favorite hosts like Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham.

I hope nobody steals my idea. It could be worth millions.

Don’t spend that $1200 right away. Caskets are expensive.

The president will now be fielding compliments.

Now that I’m entering the 5th decade of my career with technology companies – and with Covid19 providing an assist in freeing up my calendar somewhat – lately it’s been a time of reflection.

I’ve never considered myself to be a standout engineer. I’ve done okay in my career, no complaints, but have never worked anywhere that I was the BMOC technology-wise.  Each place has had some real shining stars and it’s been both a privilege and humbling to get to know them.

But there are different ways to add value to your particular engineering organization. I was reminded of this yesterday as I was mentoring a new start on the deployment process for some frontend code. This is a process I only learned myself a couple of months ago, but now I’m mentoring others on it. That’s often how it works. Not long after you learn something, others in the company start referring to you as the defacto SME.

I made a list of some former senior co-workers who have taken the time to mentor me so that I could try to find common traits that made them good mentors. For what it’s worth, here’s what I came up with. If you’re junior on the scale of things, maybe seek people with some of these traits out. If you’re senior, just know that people with these particular traits have made a real difference in my career.

True SME

First and foremost the person needs to be a true subject matter expert (SME) on whatever it is I’m asking about. They either know the answer or know where to find it. At the end of the day, they’ve been helpful in advancing whatever problem I’ve been tasked with resolving.

The little things

Knowlege and skils are great but it makes a huge difference if they are also personable. This is not always the case with those who are considered top of the heap on the tech stack scale. We have all run into the legendary recluse who has marginal social skills but is yet invaluable to the company because they just know so much. It can be frustrating when people with the most knowledge aren’t equipped to help, but that’s just how it is in tech. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

What is most helpful is the very basics, like getting calls/emails returned. Everyone is busy, but the good mentor will at least respond and communicate that while maybe they are busy right now, they will set expectations on when they can meet with you at a later time in a way that doesn’t make it sound like you’re stressing them out with your questions.

Meet me at my level

No, I don’t mean showing up at my desk. I mean asking ME questions to find out what I already know or don’t know so they know where to start. Some people make assumptions that I already know several things I have yet to learn and start talking over my head from the first sentence. Then we have to back up.  The good mentor wants to know where to start and then bring my understanding along at whatever pace is possible.

A real-world example

I once left a fairly stable career in Aerospace in Everett, WA. in order to move the family back to the city where I grew up, Portland, Oregon. I was still writing software, but it was for a small printer company. The underlying technologies of the companies had nothing in common with each other (Flight Controls v. Printers). This change was harder than I had expected it would be.

When I arrived our team of 10 was tasked with reverse-engineering the Adobe PostScript Level II interpreter so that the parent company (Oce’, Netherlands) could avoid paying royalties to Adobe when they shipped their printers with PostScript capability.

I was new so they had divided up the teams in the backroom and then let me know my assignment. I was very fortunate to get paired with not only an extremely brilliant engineer but also a fantastic mentor.

There were only two of us tasked with writing the rendering engine for the printer. The renderer is really where the rubber meets the road in printing. It’s the lowest level. It’s where all of those high-level commands get turned into dots on a page… but not before the boundaries of the image or text are set, and the image is broken up into hundreds if not thousands of trapezoids to fill with dots.

The very notion of that design was fascinating from the start.  Ah, so that’s how they do it.  Wow, I have no idea where to start. My mentor did though. He was a math major and no stranger to figuring this type of thing out. But best of all he was a FANTASTIC teacher. We may have benefited some from small team dynamics, but he set aside about 3 separate 1-hour whiteboard sessions to explain in detail, the design he had in mind. And he stopped to let me ask questions. He figured out where I was starting from (ground zero) and we went from there. His ability to put the right thoughts and images in my head was off the charts helpful. When I talked he listened.  It was… fabulous.  And I learned it.  And if memory servers I performed pretty well after that and held my own.

The pace of change at work has gotten even more frenetic since the 1990’s when I transitioned to printing.  I just hope people can be made aware of how valuable this level of mentoring can be.

Breaking: Jerry Falwell tests negative for Christianity. @travisakers

There are few things I can imagine that would be much harder than telling 300 million people “Nothing to see here” in the midst of a global pandemic, so I have to give the Trump administration credit for trying at least.  Just a minor blip to my booming economy.  We’ll be fully open for business by Easter.