Entries from September 2005:
September 30th, 2005 — Professional
David Heinemeier Hansson, a well-known software developer, claims that when faced with the trade off between “done right” and “done right now,” you should always choose to do it right. I find this interesting and actually disagree with his viewpoint.
Realize that “don’t have time right now” is a self-fulling prophesy. You will never have time right now if you don’t take it today. The business is not going to slow down to allow you to clean all these things up one wonderful day.
I admire that thinking and would love to be that committed to the “perfect” design. But in the real world, it doesn’t always work like that. There are a lot of places where the business will slow down and let you complete the unfinished work. Many companies’ business is seasonal and driven by external factors. An online retailer needs to be ready for a rush of Christmas customers, but can be confident that sales will let up a bit in January and February.
My current project is an online service that’s also very seasonal, used heavily in the summer. We had to rush to get a few things completed before we went live in May. Of course there was a trade-off between “done right” and “done right now.” But when we negotiated that trade-off, we made it clear that we couldn’t eliminate the work, we could just postpone it in order to launch on time. Now that things have slowed down, we’re taking the time to clean up some of the inelegant hacks we had initially made. Maybe I’m unusually lucky to have such enlightened customers, but for us, this has worked reasonably well.
I’m sure this won’t work well for everyone. If you’re a very small shop or an independent software vendor, I wouldn’t rely on this. But with the right negotiation and the right commitment level, this strategy can succeed.
September 30th, 2005 — Politics
September 27th, 2005 — Personal
I was busy last weekend! Friday night, I went to see Flightplan with Jodie Foster. In the movie, Foster and her daughter are travelling from Germany to New York on a brand new, giant airplane, when her daughter just disappears. The movie was great. There were a couple plot holes, but nothing too egregious, nothing that abnormal for these kind of action-suspense movies. The acting was great, especially from Foster, Sean Bean (who played the captain), and the various actors who played the flight attendants. If you like the suspense genre, you should definitely catch this one in the theaters.
After Flightplan, I went out to Herndon to see Lloyd Dobler Effect in concert. I saw LDE open for Kansas in July, and was really impressed. They’re a young band from the DC area, playing pretty typical pop/rock music; maybe you’d call it “party rock.” They’ve got a saxophonist/flutist (!) and a really great percussionist. I’d kinda compare them to Matchbox 20 and the Dave Matthews Band. Their songwriting is really good, the songs are all catchy and fun to listen to. Anyway, the first set of the show was great. But toward the beginning of the second set, I got kinda bored and the crowd got kinda annoying. It got better, but I don’t know that I’d keep driving all the way to Herndon to see ‘em.
And on Monday night, I went to see Porcupine Tree at the 9:30 Club. Porcupine Tree is a progressive rock band from England. Their music is definitely very “progressive” in the old-school Pink Floyd sense, but they also know how to write killer, catchy rock songs. With good label promotion, they’ve really been doing well in the U.S. This was their second leg of their 2005 tour; I caught them last May at the 9:30 Club as well. Every time I’ve seen them, the crowd has grown larger and larger, and the club seemed packed last night. They were certainly on top of their game, and played a lot of my favorites, including a couple great songs from their new album, and some older songs they hadn’t played in a while. But again, for whatever reason, I just wasn’t into it that much.
September 27th, 2005 — Professional
Everyone’s been talking today about Startup School , Paul Graham’s one-day event for software “hackers” with an entrepreneurial spirit. Acceptance emails were sent out last night, and I got in! 
So I’ll be trekking up to Harvard University on Saturday, October 15.
I bought my airline ticket last night. The only cost-effective option was to fly up and back all on the 15th. (Cambridge hotels are starting at $269 that weekend! And the rest of Boston isn’t much better.) Fortunately I got a pretty decent airfare, so it looks like it’ll work out OK. I just hope the event is over by 7:30 PM or so — I’ll miss whatever’s after that.
Keith Casey, another DC-area resident (and Joel on Software fanatic) was also accepted. Keith has put up a page for people to coordinate travel plans. I suspect Keith’s page will be usurped by the official Startup School Wiki.
September 18th, 2005 — Personal
I have a few items for sale on eBay and Craigslist if anyone’s interested:
