In my younger years, I viewed a lot of best practices, standards, processes, procedures and documentation as superfluous and corporate annoyance.  Part of it was my inexperience working in diverse teams.   I was also dealing with small projects, that had little to no longterm maintenance requirements.

With age and larger, longterm projects and added collaboration requirements, my opinion changed.

Managing scope creep.  Mitigating the unexpected. Minimizing the effects of adding a single feature, another developer or environmental (software) change.  Testing.  Security.  Release management. etc, etc…

Add customers, marketing and business goals into that mix and you have a lot going on.

I often see employers advertising job opportunities for web people who think “outside of the box”.

Besides being one of the most overused clichés and inaccurate replacements for “creative”, it is also a bad ideal to have for a web professional in 99.99% of the cases. There are too many constraints and variables for most teams to work effectively when they can’t generally predict what page other members are on.

Unless “thinking outside of the box” means, “constantly analyzes, learns, relearns, and creatively produces the next iteration with the goals in mind”, look for people in or around the box.

You can’t.

“Years of experience” only implies that one has had the exposure and opportunity to learn, refactor and progress.   It isn’t a measure of success and understanding.

Especially when you are referring to software developers, years do not equate to increased skill level.

In a phone interview once, I was asked the question:

How many years of XML experience do you have?

• None.
• 1-3.
• 3-5.
• More than 5

I couldn’t contain myself. I laughed.

Who keeps inventory of every piece of knowledge like that? Fun trivia, I guess.

I know so many web developers that can say, “I’ve been doing this for ten years”, that are working the same way they did ten years ago.

I know dozens of poker players that can say “I’ve been playing this game for thirty years”, that get crushed by studious players who started the game a few months earlier.

Your current skills have an expiration date.  You can either actively develop them or insulate your spoiled perceptions from criticism.

My suggestions?

• Find humility
• Get a role model
• Read a book

My goal was to create 2 months of content on this site to motivate bofe to resuscitate his personal blog.

I struggled through it, at times, with some less than coherent content.  But, relative to my goal, I was successful.

After a brief media timeout, I intend to resume writing for this domain.  I need to get reorganized and set some new goals.  Without some metric for measuring success, regardless of how trivial it may be, I never feel like I achieved anything.

This site needs some long term objectives.

• Grow an active readership of 100+ users
• Develop a consistent content theme
• Post three times a week for a year

I will have to consider where I am taking things, but until then, frequent random posts is the status quo.

I would like to make website reviews a weekly post.  Craig tells me no one cares about my opinions on religion, politics and the meaning of life, even though I know I’m fully qualified to disseminate the truth.  So, I will keep those to a minimum.

What do the other four readers of this site want to hear from me?

I like to eat.

I am downtown St Louis a lot.

Does this make me qualified to suggest places to eat in downtown St Louis?

Of course.

Mango Peruvian Cuisine

I just tried this one for the first time and I will definitely be going back.  The service was a little slow, but it was really amazing food.

Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse

I know its a chain, its expensive & you can’t exactly eat there for lunch.  But, its so good.  I mean, steak with butter.  Sweet potato casserole.

I’d wear a Ruth’s Chris t-shirt ever day if they’d deliver sweet potato casserole to my office for lunch.

Lucas Park Grille

It’s a really cool atmosphere.  I haven’t tried much of their menu, but everything I have tried was promising.  It’s also right next door to my favorite place to eat, so if I’m in the neighborhood, they usually lose out to sushi.

Wasabi Sushi Bar

I’m a sushi noob, but I like everything I’ve tried at Wasabi.  Spider roll and dragon roll, especially.  There menu is really easy to order from, with a lot pictures. Perfect for novice sushi eaters.

Sen Thai Asian Bistro

I wish I could tell you that everything on the menu is good, but I only order Drunken Noodles with Chicken every time I go there.  I would eat it for every meal, every day if it wasn’t such a trek or near Wasabi.

Other places I like to eat downtown:

• SanSai Japanese Grill
• Planet Sub
• Rooster

Places I’d like to try:

• Pappy’s Smokehouse
• Harry’s Downtown
• Kemoll’s
• J Bucks

Place I wish existed downtown:

AUTHENTIC MEXICAN CUISINE.  Zuzu’s, the only mexican place within walking distance open during lunch hour, is pathetic.

I would even settle for a Qdoba.

This was recorded in a room that was formerly known as my bedroom at my parents’ house.

My brother has some skills. I’m glad he’s started sharing them online more frequently.

http://drumn41.wordpress.com

Notice all the 1999 St Louis Rams gear littered throughout the room. ha

The elevator adds an interesting dynamic to my day.  I feel that you can learn a lot about a person by how they conduct themselves before, during and after riding on an elevator.

One trend that is consistent across all executives where I work is they all feel obligated to or maybe genuinely interested in small talk while in or near an elevator.  Every time.

This always catches me off-guard.  I tend to keep to myself and rarely chat it up with people I don’t know.

“It’s cold out there, huh?”.

I have no flippin’ clue, I haven’t been outside in 6 hours.

“Yup, sure is” and I immediately go back to pretending I’m reading some interesting, work-related email on my phone.

The last time this scenario played out, I got off the elevator wondering who just had the pleasure of an awkward elevator ride with me for 5 floors.  So, I hopped on the intranet and looked around.

It didn’t take long.

I had a feeling it was someone important and it was.

The president of our company.

Add “Researching company executives” to the 2010 To-Do list, right next to “Develop social skills you effing nerd”.

If a person put on an anti-gravity suit in St Louis, MO, where would they be 5 minutes later?

Thanks.

I had a procedure a few days ago to improve nasal breathing.

There was some pain, mostly just discomfort from a nasal splint stitched into my nose.  In any case, they prescribed vicodin to me.

I barely feel any different after taking a pill, but it wildly affects my dreams.

I don’t have serial killer, crazy dreams.  They just go off on insane tangents.  Here’s last nights episode.

Four of my fraternity brothers and I are riding on a flatbed train.  We are informed that we have 48 hours to build an oil rig, using the parts and equipment on the train.  After taking inventory of everything, we realize we have no torches for cutting and no welding tools.

One of the guys I was with jumps into a lake to swim back to his truck to get his acetylene torch. We decided to play checkers and wait for him to get back before we got started.

There Will Be Blood, Part 2?

I could probably stretch that storyline out two hours, if anyone in Hollywood is interested.

Managing a large codebase with inline styles and javascript is a pain in the ass.

Retheming a site becomes impossible.

Print and mobile versions are difficult to implement.

Inconsistencies appear between views.

All changes must be duplicated throughout the site.

It’s a mess.

I have been using Inline Code Finder for Firebug and Find/Replace in Komodo IDE to identify all the similar inline code instances.  Then, I am grouping the styles together for reorganization later.

I would love a tool that finds all the inline styles and groups them together by selector for me.

I tend to attract the worst service possible in a lot of situations.  I always thought it was ridiculously unfair, given the fact that I rarely, if ever, complain to a restaurant server or a Charter customer support person directly.

I realize that the employees in these situations are just people at a job.  I appreciate the role they fill.

But sometimes it gets so bad it seems like I’m on a hidden camera show.

When good customer service happens to me, it seems miraculous.  I tell everyone I know immediately.

Here is two fairly recent examples.

Tiffany.com

I got the last minute idea to buy an additional gift for my girlfriend.  It was the night of December 22nd, so I knew shopping online might be risky, if not out of the question.  I was looking for earrings.

Tiffany’s had guaranteed Christmas Eve delivery and my sister gave the thumbs up to the jewelry I had picked out.  I’m fairly clueless when it comes to buying most things that don’t fall under the electronics category, so I seek approval of those with some knowledge.

Hundred-fifty bucks. Buy now. Done.

I had already bought her a digital camera and a few other small things, but I wanted to step outside the realm of electronics and surprise her.

On Christmas eve, I was expecting to receive the package.  They sent an email instead.

Our apologies – Late holiday delivery

… As a gesture of our appreciation for your patience and patronage, we will be sending you a
Tiffany gift card valued at $100 …

That is amazing.  They guaranteed delivery and when they realized they couldn’t follow through, they warned me and threw me a bone.

Sure, the gift card is really 40% off of $250, but the perception and execution was a great marketing plan on their part.

They earned a happy customer who is willing to tell others and it essentially cost them nothing.  They messed up and were honest about it.  That twisted a major letdown into a huge positive for all involved.

Well played.

Lone Star Steakhouse

My girlfriend and I decided to go to Lone Star.  She is a fan of the place, I never really have cared for it much.

We order appetizers and steaks.

Hers medium.

Mine medium-rare.

The server delivered our meal and asked us to cut into them and ensure they were correctly prepared. Mine was well done, but I refuse to complain.  After he left, I asked my girlfriend, “Does this look medium-rare to you?”.

A few moments later, the manager of the store came over and asked us how things were.  I repeated my previous story, “Everythings good”. He replied, “well I understand that your steak wasn’t cooked according to your order”.  Apparently there is microphones in the booths.  That’s a scary possibility.  He offered to replace our meals, which I politely refused.

“Well your meal tonight is on us”.  Our $35 bill evaporated.  That was way more than I would have ever expected.  We both explained to the manager that we really appreciated the consideration.

As we were getting ready to leave the restaurant, another man showed up at our table.  He introduced himself as the general manager and he gave us a gift card for $35 off our next visit, as well.

I hope this above and beyond customer service is a growing trend that catches on everywhere.

Thanks Tiffany’s and Lone Star.

This is a reminder that if you successfully develop a customer, your cost is actually zero.