Agile Tip: Blog Scrum Minutes with Actions, Use Comments

Agile Tip: Blog scrum minutes with actions only for the coming iteration (ours is 7 days) then while focused just on those action, without too much thought for what comes next, have the team leave comments in the blog related to accomplishing just those actions. Seems obvious and simple. (Isn’t that the definition of Agile?) Gives a great chronological log as well as provides insight to other teams facing same tasks.

I’ll have the, ummm, health care please.

I am in no way a health care consultant or professional, just a father trying to game the system as much as anyone.

Recently I went to New York with my wife. We enjoyed eating out. But there was one restaurant that just didn’t get it.

A meal to remember, and forget

We arrived at our reservation time but were told we needed to wait, but not for how long. “We’ll call you,” said maitre d’. We waited another 15 minutes before they sat us at a nice table next to some colorful New Yorkers celebrating a birthday party. I was sure I had seen two of them on T.V. before. We enjoyed people watching while waiting for our waitress.

“Are you two actors?” she asked.

We were new to that type of cuisine and seriously needed some expertise, so we asked the waitress for her recommendation. We figured the lack of prices on the menu just meant that it was a fancy restaurant and gave it no mind. We were confident we could pay. She was happy to give her recommendation and insisted it was the best for us. We took her advice.

We enjoyed our meal and paid with credit card. The waitress brought back the bill to sign for payment. It just had a spot for a signature, nothing more, no listing of items purchased, nor even a price. We signed trusting the price to be around $100 and left a $20 tip since the waitress was helpful.

We went to the theater and returned home. Days later we received several strange bills in the mail in separate envelopes from different people apparently:

• $5 for the waitress, noting the cost of recommendations, paid by card
• $10 for the bus boy, paid by card
• $10 for the maitre d’, paid by card
• $5 from some NY City restaurant association, unpaid, pending payment
• $500 meal for two from the cook, unpaid, first installment due

In all, $550 for restaurant services including the $20 waitress tip. The bill from the cook included 0% financing terms and a due date for our first $50 payment.

We were shocked. What kind of restaurant is this? How do they stay in business?

None of our frustrations or confusion did anything about the ridiculous bill. We had to deal with it or face collection agencies, or worse, a ding on our credit. We could pay but we were not going to just pay for this without understand first. We obviously wouldn’t have paid had we known the price in advance, even though we were very hungry and had made reservations. Then again we did eat and we did sign for payment. Something just wasn’t right, but who’s fault was it?

We decided to call the restaurant having already long returned home. After several calls back I was able to get the waitress on the phone, who normally never takes calls. After several attempts to explain the problem, it became apparent she did not see how this involved her since she was completely paid up.

“Sounds like you have an issue with the cook,” she said trying to be polite. She didn’t realize how ridiculous that sounded. She really did not understand that we should have had one bill, in advance, with everything listed before we agreed to dine. How could this not be obvious to her? It seemed as if this had been ingrained in her from years of doing it that way.

I tried to explain. “But don’t you see, we took your recommendation. Had we known your recommendation was going to cost almost $600 we would have considered something else, maybe even a different restaurant.”

“Well there’s no way I could have known it would cost that much. We generally don’t consider price in our recommendations. I’m sure you understand. At our restaurant thinking about price too much would affect the quality of our service and affect our ability to give customers what they really need. I’m sure you will agree often the customer does not know what they really need–especially when fine cuisine is involved.”

Her words infuriated me. Yes these elitists knew more about fine cuisine than me, but the decision was still mine. It was my money after all. I resented being made to feel a lesser person for bringing up cost, but $550? I don’t care how fine the cuisine or how hungry we were or how special an occasion, it was not worth $550 and Alicia and I did not want to pay it.

So I got the cook on the phone, spending most of a remaining vacation day doing so.

“What on Earth was in this meal to cost $500?” I asked.

“For that I can mail you an itemization of your dinner, would you like that? If so let me transfer you to …”

“NO!” I cut in, “Just tell me what was in the dinner that cost that much? You made it. Tell me. I don’t need another letter in the mail–especially since the first payment is apparently due in four days.”

“There is no need to raise your voice, sir. I see the problem, your waitress insisted on saffron and other expensive spices, quite tasty and, might I add, a great choice. Clearly the best.” His voice sounded like his head had taken a ponderous turn while he reflected on the recipe, ignoring me.

I broke in again. “Just curious, sounds like there’s a way to make that recipe without those fancy extras. Would that be correct?”

“Oh yes, yes, I make this at home all the time and have a wonderful substitute for those spices. Every bit as good but only the most discerning palette would know the difference.”

“Why didn’t you give us that version then?” I asked naively.

“Well, your waitress shows you insisted on the best.”

“WE DIDN’T! We didn’t, ” getting myself together. “We would like to have known about that option.”

“Well why didn’t you SAY you wanted the ‘budget’ option? We have customers all the time that tell us that. After all, we are a restaurant of fine-cuisine with a reputation to maintain, but we understand those on budgets. Indeed, without those on budgets eating here with the others we could not afford to keep the doors open and no one would enjoy our services.”

“So you are saying this is my fault because I didn’t ask for the ‘budget’ option? I didn’t know such a thing existed.”

“Well, you didn’t ask if it did or didn’t exist. You could have at least mentioned you were ‘on a budget’ to the waitress. She regularly responds to those words and adjusts her recommendations, even has a different menu. Also, I see you paid with credit card, which we assume means you have the money and are not ‘on a budget’. We usually ask people who pay cash if they would like the ‘budget’ version of the meal.”

“How does paying with credit imply I don’t want the budget option? Just because I have it doesn’t mean I want to use it to pay more.”

Feeling frustration and some self-critical depression settling in. I closed the call giving in to the fact that no amount of calling and ranting would fix all the misunderstanding, bad assumptions, and confusion that led to this ridiculously high bill and horribly bad memory. One thing is for sure, I will never eat at that restaurant again. And no matter what, I won’t eat or do anything until I have in writing how much it is going to cost me. I could care less what people think now.

So it wasn’t a restaurant, but why couldn’t it have been?

You may have figured out that not all of this really happened, not in a restaurant anyway.  In fact I had a great time in New York, it was coming back to a $896 ‘lab work’ bill,  and the real events following, that pushed this post out of me. Long before our vacation she went in feeling flu symptoms that persisted (like any box in the medicine cabinet suggests one should see a doctor about). The doctor visit cost $100. The lab work to “make sure something else isn’t going on” cost $1000 and we didn’t know that until the bill came. Calls to the doctors office and the hospital that did the lab work went just like the dialog of that bad restaurant story. It got us no where.

Restaurants really do understand service, customer, and reputation. Those that survive anyway. Why? Because they are one of the most direct examples of free trade and market economy. Only one person sits between the consumer and the producer. In stark contrast, centuries of bureaucracy, litigation, fear and politics have built one of the world’s most advanced, bloated and absurdly inefficient Health Care systems in the world. There are so many layers between producer and consumer, even though they often are in direct contact with one another, that the health care market is completely out of whack.

Beat the system, drop your health insurance

Recently a friend shared a story that provides an interesting insight into how to beat this incredibly screwed up health care system of ours. It boils down to one thing: drop your health insurance, completely. That’s right, don’t hang onto that glimmer of false security a high-deductible HSA seems to offer. Drop it all. Here’s why.

Insured and Uninsured

Of all those boxes and blanks on that form you dutifully fill out at the doctor’s office are mostly to answer, “Can you pay for this?” You might think this question is the same as “Are you insured or uninsured?” Guess what, it’s not, at least not as much anymore. A recent experience from a temporarily uninsured friend demonstrates this.

“Uninsured, O.K. I’ll drop bill 60%”

My middle-class, intelligent, married friend with three kids recently passed through a short stint of unemployment and found that by telling people he was uninsured that they surprisingly did not deny him or his family treatment, but instead knocked %60 off the bill and did everything directly, even providing 0% financing. It seems the not-so-secret secret is that the people doing the work, many of the individual doctors, optometrists, pharmacists, and some of the hospitals are already quite adept handling the non-insured, even catering to them as a growing part of their customer base. There are simply too many uninsured out there–many with plenty of money–that health types cannot simply turn them away because it would affect their bottom line.

By the way, we found out you can’t hold onto any insurance at all for this to work. We thought we’d try the middle of the road with a high-deductible HSA which worse. It prevents you from invoking whatever systems your health care people have set for helping the uninsured and also does next to nothing, in effect, to help you.

You are not a dead-beat for not having insurance

The waves of uninsured blowing in from all directions are breaking down the reef of a long-held stigma about them. Not having insurance does not mean ‘you suck’ (as in you suck everything you can from any welfare and government subsidies you can find).  In fact, choosing to not have insurance can demonstrate your intelligence and responsibility, not unlike savvy investors make conscious decisions to go with companies that have proven market value and attention to what the consumer wants. No one wants to spend money on a bad product, which is what health insurance has really become, like savings and loan investments and variable-rate mortgages.

You think health insurance has some value still?

Combine the ridiculous cost of even a high-deductible, company-subsidized HSA, with the general sleaze, unresponsiveness, and all-around foo-bared state of large, bureaucratic insurance companies and you start to see what a bad product health insurance is, despite the flood of advertising they spew to the contrary. Health insurance has no future.

The biggest health insurance clients, big companies, like IBM, are increasingly unable to make insurance workable for their employees as insurance companies struggle to contain the unchecked inflation for medical goods and services driven by the disconnection of such goods from the consumer. It is just a matter of time before corporate health care, like so many other company benefits (pensions, training, etc.) gets dropped as an employee entitlement and with it insurance company revenue–unless they figure out a way to sell directly to consumers instead of by way of their company.

More and more ‘free agents’ (see Pink’s, Free Agent Nation) are taking their chances on their own, 25% of all workers, going it without insurance and, according to Pink’s stats and conclusions, no visibility into the system designed from its roots to function in conjunction with employers under failing Organizational Man models.

Unless health insurance companies radically change they will fail as big and noisily as did Fanny Mae, GM, and the savings and loans long before them. Insurance companies seem to define the very oh-that-will-never-happen ideas and decisions behind such things as the credit default swaps, which tanked some of the biggest financial institutions in the world, and some might say governments. Yet their resources are being hurt by a failing economy while the number of claims increase as the fattest country in the world ages into needing that insurance.

Then there are the healthy people who are catching on to this mess and just taking their money and playing elsewhere. They save on their own, stay healthy, and thumb their nose at insurance companies. Ironically, these healthy people are the life blood of insurance companies, which suck that blood from them to pay for claims from the sick who too often got that way from years of irresponsible living. That blood is drying up.

Be prepared. Save it.

Get out now. Use that money for life and saving it someplace as safe as you can rather than throwing it away to insurance companies. That is the only way the market will respond enough, as it has already started to (see my friend’s case) to meet the needs of individuals.

Before you go lumping me with Michael Moore or any FUD-throwing doomsday prophet. Consider the very real circumstances of those around you, virtually and physically. Two of my friends come to mind, one was completely dropped from insurance after they discovered he had cancer, preferring to let him fight it out in court rather than pay for services he had been paying for. What did faithful insurance payment get him? Another dear friend, eventually lost his wife after of years battling insurance companies and hospitals and pharmacies for condition she faced which eventually bankrupted them and robbed that family of wife and mother. He has a remarkably positive outlook on life despite that painful experience. He did his best to make ends meet and played the insurance game. He maintains it did help, but I can’t help wondering what he could have done differently. Like the insurance companies infer in their advertising, this is the last thing you want, “we’ll be there” blah, blah. I say, show them the money. Insurance IS fraud.

Here’s the horrible reality, if something big happens to you, you are likely going to go bankrupt anyway. No modern insurance company is going to cover you enough, because they themselves are failing. Don’t let that scare you. Take control, get fit, prepare, and promote the doctor-patient economy we need to get people well. The sooner you start building your own personal health savings, the more prepared you will be if and when something big hits. We don’t need no stinking insurance companies.

This write up about internet addiction h …

This write up about internet addiction has some very valid, very interesting points in it–for everyone, moms and dads. It both explains the obvious benefits of social connection the internet affords more now than ever, while outlining the dangers of ‘escapism’ which I certainly have done and seen others do.

Disney World cleared my head a bit. Going back to making nightly 5:30-9:00 PM ’sacred’ time again. No screens of any kind unless I am sitting one foot from my child or wife. (We love watching Penguins of Madagascar.) Also, no screens from 11:00-3:00 Saturdays.

Generally I have been following this self-imposed rule for some time. But the weeks leading up to Disney World had me breaking it more than usual.

Recently I was reminded that Second Life …

Recently I was reminded that Second Life is still the best first experience for any teen or adult coming to virtual worlds for the first time. It came after speaking with new virtual worlders who came to OpenSim before Second Life. From their description I realized OpenSim is still far from being suitable for anyone’s first virtual world experience, unless of course that person is too young to participate in Second Life.

As long as it remains free, Second Life, even with its steep learning curve, offers more return on a beginner’s time and learning investment. Both offer about the same in terms of creativity. But Second Life offers more potential for most to make that essential connection with a real life community or interest that will hold their interest. Second Life is the yard-stick against which everything else is measured. Anyone becoming involved with virtual worlds must understand and participate in Second Life and so might as well start there.

Combine these realities with a personal goal to help the most people get the most out of their first virtual world experience and a recent influx of newcomers to SL, from work and elsewhere, as well as word of Nebraska and Linden Lab’s renewed efforts to connect with and help beginners and you will understand my decision to redirect my limited free and volunteer time from OpenSim to Second Life initiatives, more to VUC greeting, mentoring, community building, and development. Introduce Second Life first then OpenSim later for those who are ready for it.

OpenSim remains my favorite way to preview content from my desktop and participating with my kids, but Second Life has already given me years of creative outlet, real friendship, and community involvement any OpenSim could not match for some time to come, perhaps in the next few years, but even then SL will remain the best experience for any beginner provided it is a guided entry, which happens to be the focus of the renewed VUC Greeters effort.

If your Second Inventory loaded items no …

If your Second Inventory loaded item is not appearing after “restoring” (uploading) them to OpenSim or Second Life just remember to clear your cache and restart your viewer. They seem to consistently appear after that.

Love Seth Godin’s presentation to Goo …

Love Seth Godin’s presentation to Google, “You end up not trying to find customers for your products, but products for your customers.”

1. make something worth talking about
2. tell it to people who want to hear from you
3. they do the marketing
4. get permission from them to tell them next time

Great presentation although I disagree with some of what Seth says. Here’s the YouTube.

Skull attachments, like hair, in wrong p …

Skull attachments, like hair, in wrong place and Sacha on IRC explained how to get around this quirk. It seems that attachment points are only saved when you detach and take something into inventory. If you don’t do that, when you relog the attachment will be on your skull but too high. If you really want to get specific look for ’saving attachment on point UUID’ in your OpenSim console when you remove it. Like others, I keep the console up when running my preview OpenSim instance on my desktop, often while viewer is not full screen so I can see what every viewer action is doing to my sim.

I finally figured out how to get rid of …

I finally figured out how to get rid of the black bars in the current SL or Hippo viewer when first connecting to an OpenSim. The clue the tipped me off was that when first connecting to my desktop sim the “Uploaded asset data for transaction …” would scroll across implying that something cached or available in the viewer was being uploaded as the default skin or shape. If I used a viewer that did not have the info cached for some reason it would upload a corrupted shape or skin and that would become the new default. So here’s what I did.

1. Drop the desktop db
2. Restart OpenSim
3. Delete the Application Data/Second Life directory entirely
4. Startup SL browser pointing to SL itself
5. Load the Test Avatar from the Character menu under Advanced
6. Strip
7. Create a new skin and shape in inventory
8. Wear them from inventory.
9. Log out of SL
10. Log into desktop OS using same viewer
11. Watch for the “Uploaded asset data for transaction …”
12. Notice bars gone now

Rough, but that seems to have done the trick.

Learned an obvious lesson in productivit …

Learned an obvious lesson in productivity recently. Don’t even look at any email or IMs or Twitter or Facebook until lunch or even the end of the day. I always review before going to bed anyway which makes me enjoy it more and not waste good brain time in the morning on fragmented interests and curiosities pulling at it.

If you want to communicate with me today you will have to have written something to me yesterday. Either that or IM me directly. I imagine this is the why Twitter is so popular. It is when-i-can-get-to-it instant messaging instead of in-your-face instant messaging.

Beware of llGetObjectDetails() is my les …

Beware of llGetObjectDetails() is my lesson for this week. I ripped it all out of MoPose 5.0 after getting all excited about using that over corrections to buggy sit target values. Turns out you cannot get a reliable capture of the avatars position when it sits–especially if the object being sat upon is moving, as this script also concedes even though it uses other detection methods.

I did leave this function in AnimAdjustmentFinder, which I am still fleshing out and will add a HUD to rather than typed commands soon. This has made getting extremely accurate animations adjustments very easy for items with multiple animations, the bane of multipose animation in general because no two animations start in the same place.

Besides, I don’t think OpenSim yet supports llGetObjectDetails() so this renders MoPose 5.0 much more OpenSim compatible.