Virge's blog

Today should be a little bit special.

I'll see if I can get my imagination going later today.

How it spreads! I didn't even know I was infectious four years ago. A few hours of wild abandon had consequences I hadn't imagined.

It happened on a management offsite meeting about four years ago. I wasn't drunk but quite a few of my colleagues were showing signs of dramatic inhibition reduction. You know it's a night for letting your hair down when you see a senior manager demonstrating Irish dancing. You have further confirmation when said manager announces: "Oi'm completely fooked".

I shan't go on to describe the sordid details of the night's entertainment (because to tell the truth I'm a bit hazy on them myself). I'll summarise by saying that the disease I carried was contracted by a visiting manager and carried over to the USA where, in the course of time, her daughter succumbed to it. Now, four years later, it is starting to dominate that daughter's life. The visiting manager told me so last night over a meal.

Don't you hate it when I talk in deliberately vague terms? You've heard me do it before, so you know that I'm not talking about some lascivious activity that the text seems to imply when taken at face value. You're probably thinking, "Come on, Virge. We know you're not going to talk about yourself scandalously spreading a real disease. You may be warped, but you wouldn't do something like that."

Well, if you're going to be so smart and tell me what I will and won't do, then you can tell me what it was that I spread. Go on, smarty.

When I was a lad I got a guitar. It was mine for the princely sum of $10 (if my memory serves correctly). It was clunky, but there wasn't a whole heap of cash to be frittered away on frivolous things like guitars. (Now pianos - well, they were different, weren't they?) I still have that old acoustic guitar, but not for long. If I thought it would encourage someone to learn to play I'd give it away, but I fear it would permanently scar any aspiring musician. I'm in the process of forming some devastating plans for its demise. Let the plans brew for the moment.

During my university years I bought an electric guitar. My primary purpose for it was experimentation. Now before you start dialing up your local guitar humane society, please remember I was young and foolish then (yeah - bring on the witty one-line responses). It was back at a time when acts of brutality against musical instruments were even acceptable as live entertainment. I was a budding electronics geek. It seemed cool to design and build electronic implants and surgically implant them in a live guitar. I managed to convince myself that it felt no pain - or at least wouldn't remember the pain for long.

Over the past few years I've often thought I'd like to have a "decent" acoustic guitar i.e. one that isn't better suited for use as an industrial-sized soup stirrer. Since my birthday was nearing and WifeOfVirge was wondering what to get me, I voiced my desire. Here it is:

Guitar picture.

Another guitar picture.

I got a birthday present today. :) I know it's not my birthday yet, but you can't leave shopping for birthday presents till the last minute, can you? (Okay, I know. I know.) And when you've helped select your own present, you can't pretend it's going to be a surprise, so there's no point in having it wrapped up and saved till the exact date.

I'll take some pictures of it tomorrow.

Sometimes I want to unleash my imagination's dog in the park.

I should set him loose to chase after the seagulls and raise a cloud of panicked wings. He should be free to cock his leg at trees, signing his name on their rooted rigidity. Let him squat and squeeze his abstract art in the middle of the path - another flag for the rollerblade slalom. Let the sun shine and the breeze whiffle his shaggy ears as he bounds after balls and unselfconsciously joins the children's games. He should be free to frighten protective parents with his excited, drool-spraying yelps and unstable exuberance.

Rolling, wriggling and indulging the senses - what other uses could there be for beds of pea straw and chicken shit? Wasn't that flicking sprinkler designed to turn mouthfuls of cold water into frightened game? I want to let him roam out of sight, beyond hearing, open to the distractions of urban environs.

But I won't. I'm too reserved.

I did snap a few pictures while I was away.

The deer wasn't camera-shy.

Curious.

Vineyard.

My company's 2003 offsite conference started on Friday with a full day of Lean training. Lean manufacturing is the current flavouring for the bitter pill of productivity. It rolls quality improvement, customer focus, employee empowerment, the thinking organisation and probably quite a few other business narcotics into a smooth blend that can be sold to minors and managers at a premium price.

During the course of Friday's Lean training I was reintroduced to the buzzwords that pepper the gruel:
Muda - waste effort or clutter; non-value-adding activities.
Kanban - a card system for reordering stock in a JIT (just in time) stock system.
Poka Yoke - mistake proofing - the challenge of idiot-proofing grows harder with each passing year.
Value Stream - all the actions that a product goes through as it is made - from raw materials to customer delivery.
VAM - value adding management.

The buzz-word barrage was sufficient to cause me to pen a little sarcastic filk, but more of that later. This Lean movement was not just a production management philosophy. It was a full blown religion. It had efficacious medicaments for any business ailment from flaccid profit figures to market penetration failure. It all made sense. The upper management team had "got religion" and we were all to be converted - at sword point if necessary - for the sake of our eternal souls.

Did I groan at the prospect of being proselytized? No. I saw the possibilities. I had my pad and pencil. I had my sense of humour. For a whole weekend I had a melting pot of zealots and cynics locked away at a country retreat. This was reality TV material being played out in real time.

The highlight of that first day was a simulation of a production line using corks as the product, desks in the training room as the production work-stations, and a fork to carry tiny pallets of corks around. The Cork & Fork game could possibly have been educational if it wasn't for the fact that the "astounding" improvements that Lean brought to this simulation were bleedin' obvious to anyone with half a brain and no leaning to Lean.

It was at this stage that I realised how vast was the gap between Lean production systems and software development. The changes we were already in the process of introducing held far more promise than Lean, so I wrote some notes in my pad:

We learnt how to process a cork
By trucking around with a fork
I still fail to see
how we'll fix R&D
matching cheesy processes with chalk.

The planning meetings on Saturday did modify my view on Lean. There were areas in which our R&D work environment and processes could be improved by applying its precepts. They lay at the periphery - in the inter-departmental interactions. I won't bore you with details here. Even business religions start with good intentions.

On Sunday night, after much scribbling of notes and manipulating words I decided to add some unplanned value to the conference...

[Enter the bard, posing as a passionate priest with a white paper liturgical dog-collar under his black fleecy round-neck top. The 40-odd managers have eaten dinner after partaking in a few rounds of pre-dinner drinks and imbibing a few glasses of local produce during the meal. They have just started some lethargic after-dinner drinking.]

Priest: [with considerable gusto]
Brothers (and sister), is your process saved?
Are you still mired in muda, a slave to the sin of stagnant standards and sloppy systems? You've come to the right place. This is the all-new, customer focused, value streamed Liturgy of Lean.
[mutters about not being able to find his notes among the mass of papers.]
Brethren (and sisteren) let me share with you a little personal testimony.
[humbly] I too was lost. I was blind but I didn't know it.

[adopts a rhythmic partially-singsong voice (not obviously a filk at this stage)]
I though our production lines were doing well.
Shipments now were higher than before.
But, we needed more - faster than before
so I stepped into the Church of Lean.

[breaks into full song]
Then I saw the waste
Now I'm a believer.
Things were out of place
and slowing my line.
Now I've seen the waste - oooh
I'm a believer
Lean is the lever
to make us shine.

[pauses during general hubbub]
Folks, I'd like you to welcome brother K. He would like to share with us a little of what the Lean training has meant to him.

[Brother K sings the song he'd prepared during Friday's training]
Hello Muda, hello fadda,
Adding value, working harda.
Camp is very entertaining.
We must all start having fun and stop complaining.

Take me home from Muda Fadda.
Take me home from working harda.
Don't leave me out of the process
where I might get even more grey hair.

All the managers hate the workers
and the benchmarks always hurt us.
You remember Edward Demming
He created fads that always keep returning.

Priest: [waits for laughter to subside]
The Gospel according to Value Stream is a religion that'll put a smile on your face. It's fun! Help me out with this next song. There are only six words you need to remember. The first three are "muda", "muda" and "muda". The remaining three are "value", "value" and...
"value". Just watch my hand for when to come in.

[raises hand and starts a filk of YMCA]
Muda! It's a Japanese noun.
I mean Muda! Things that slow your line down.
I said Muda! It's the stuff that you do
that you've done the same way always.
Value! in the customer's mind
is the Value! that we're hoping to find,
and that's Value! that will pay its own way
if we have the faith to find out.

[stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp]
It's fun to chuck out the M.U.D.A.
such fun eliminating M.U.D.A.
Trash the things that annoy.
It's a job full of joy.
It'll help us to stay employed!
M.U.D.A.
We're happy throwing out the M.U.D.A.
No, it's never a bore -
not a difficult chore.
It'll stop us from going off-shore.

[pauses for eruption]
You don't have to be a genius to convert to a lean life. There are lots of easy initials to help you remember the creed e.g. the Five S's - how easy is that? Just count on your fingers... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - oh, and if you're Tasmanian we have an extra S. That's S for safety. When you have the "sixth S" you don't have to worry about "I see dead people."
[pauses to allow film allusion to penetrate... no response... carries on regardless]

Don't worry too much about the acronyms and Japanese words. You'll pick it up as we go. It's easy:
[breaks into song with hand actions]
You put your value in.
You throw your muda out.
You put your Kanban in
[adds a little pelvic thrust]
and you VAM it all about!
You do your Poka Yoke
and your turns abound.
That's what it's all about.

[dives into the next song before the laughter ceases]
Priest: You ready Steve?
K: a-ha
Priest: Craig?
K: a-ha
Priest: John?
K: ok!
Priest: Alright fellas! Let's go!

Oh life's been getting so hard
working with the goals you set for me.
[plays air guitar and sings the riff]"ba ba ba--ba ba, ba ba ba--ba ba"
The way the bar keeps rising -
dashing any hope of victory.
[guitar riff]"ba ba ba--ba ba, ba ba ba--ba ba"

There's a team at the back and they're ready to crack
'cause the odds are a million to one.
And the time keeps a-slipping despite all the whipping
'cause they've flown the project too close to the sun.

Ohhh, Yeah!
It was so humbling.
Everybody was grumbling
as the deadlines were flying
and the bonus was dying.
So we tried other courses
using all the resources
then with some hesitation
changed specification.
Yeah! - Yeah, yeah, yeha, yeah

And the man with the spec. said damn it to heck
we're gonna turn it to a deadline blitz.
And the man in accounts said we're losing huge amounts -
gotta make it through the deadline blitz.
[fades on blitz blitz blitz]

[bows and exits]

Some of you will probably already know that WifeOfVirge and I designed our own house. My engineering background can be blamed for the "this can't be too difficult" approach. What none of you would have known is that this house design embodies a number of arcane arts for increasing the health and wellbeing of the house dwellers.
Since it has become obvious that I can't use these secret techniques to make trailer-loads of cash (because of all the charlatans who have pedalled their bogus new-age novelties and feng shui fictions), I have decided to reveal my gnosis for the benefit of the world at absolutely no cost. You, the intelligent reader, would understand that what I am about to say must be true, since I stand to gain nothing by the revelation. The gift I offer is for purely philanthropic purposes. (Now that I've pumped up the warm and fuzzy feelings I can cope with the shoulder pain that comes from trying to pat one's self on the back.)

Secret 1: Complete Crystal Coverage
I guess you would all be aware that gypsum crystals promote mental focus, growth, luck and immunity. The research already done leaves very little room for doubt of its efficacy. It was with this in mind that we decided to line the inside of our house with gypsum impregnated board. The best way we could think of to reap the mystic crystal benefits was to completely surround ourselves with gypsum - while we eat, while we sleep, and even more so in the smallest room while we meditate on spiritual matters.

Secret 2: Aging like the Ancients
The care needed in designing our roofing angles cannot be underestimated. The roof pitch has been set to exactly Pi/5 times the pitch of Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza. It was during my study of hieroglyphs in the late 80's that I discovered the mathematical error in the Egyptians' biological time-dilation equations. I nearly missed the slip myself until I tried to reconcile their convergence factors with my Sumerian records. (Their design wasn't a complete waste. The pitch they used turned out to be extremely close to the second harmonic of the tomb's wave equation. The resonance they achieved was sufficient to extend a pharaoh's life expectancy by many years.)

Secret 3: Mansion of Memories
In today's society, nobody can afford to neglect the effects of magnetic fields. Magnetite harmonises the ying and yang poles in our bodies. It strengthens the circulatory system and promotes faster healing. What most scholars have overlooked is the effects magnets can have on memory. In our house design we allocated a special alcove in the kitchen for an array of small but strong magnets attached to a 520 litre metal container. The magnetic grid has proven to be an invaluable aid for recalling appointments, council waste collection schedules, and even postcards. This white-enamelled box with its attractive assortment of colourful magnets has become the magnetic pole of the house. The field lines surrounding the magnets draw us at all hours of day and night.

If you're considering building a new home you owe it yourself to explore the design rules. You need not be locked into the tedious status quo of house-building. Just a little care will mean the difference between a dated, draining, tired accomodation and a timeless, balanced, healthy and enlightened home.

I had no idea they existed. You hear about these mutants in urban myths and camp-fire fantasy stories and, if you're like me, just ignore them. Sure, there's a lot of people think they're werewolves, vampires, aliens, and various other fantastic freaks, but you never expect to meet one that isn't acting or deluded.

Earlier tonight I found out otherwise. I discovered that someone I had known for many years was really a hybrid organism with twice as much genetic material as you or I possess.

Of course there were signs. I was too accepting of differences, unwilling to observe the obvious markers, too politically correct back in the years before political correctness became a media cudgel for beating office workers. It was tolerant people like me who allowed her to insinuate herself into our normal human society.

She was charming and effervescent, witty and talented. How was I to know she was an amalgam of two individuals? I knew her eyes were completely different colours but the significance of the mismatch eluded me. If she had sat down and told me "Virge, I am actually a chimera. I'm a fusion of two humans who lost themselves when they became me," I would have just laughed at her colourful imagination.

She is still alive even as I write this journal entry. There is nothing that I can legally do about it. There is nothing at all that I want to do about it. It's time for me to stand up and be counted. One of my friends is a chimera.

I dream of the day when the mass media can publish common sense information about risks and how to deal with them, rather than pedal the panic machine. Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks has a no-nonsense view.

Cuteness: Teddybear Pyramid.

"We have found a way to cure so many diseases and a way to look like you are 17 years old. There will be six to nine months demonstrating and then we will be showing everything," - Dr Brigitte Boisselier. It sounds impressive until you hear who is making the claims. This has been another great step forward in "credible" science brought to you by the Raelians.