Why I live in NC

I went to the beach this weekend with my wife and we got fried. It was a short trip, but a nice break from work, writing, and homework.

Sys Eng Homework done

I completed the first Systems Engineering homework tonight. Five of the six questions were essay style and the other was quantitative. The questions were fair and I didn't have any trouble writing about a page for each.

The quantitative question took a little more time. I installed Crystal Ball and Jason S. was nice enough to give me a brief intro. I fumbled around in the tool for a bit and finally figured it out. Why does it seem like every stats package has a crummy UI? It is as if all the stat companies developed their UIs in 1995 and haven't touched them since. But maybe I just haven't used the right ones. I assume SAS is better. I've used Maple and now Crystal Ball (plus a heinous tool for our ERBA class last term) and they leave much to be desired.

Now I need to get caught up on my editing and writing work for O'Reilly. I have a new book coming out in August and I'm editing a few others...

Vi-de-o Con-fer-en-ce (update)

Video conferencing has been much better over the last few sessions. I've been able to connect without an issue and the video and audio quality have been acceptable. I was dropped a couple of times during class and had to reconnect, but I can handle that. I haven't done anything different, so I can only assume that Expedite worked out their kinks. I continue to hear reports from other students that Expedite is blaming them for connectivity issues (much as they did with me).

Now, my main issue with classroom video conferencing is the mechanics for interaction and participation. For example, the students in the classroom during my last Supply Chain class had a good dialog going. It seemed as if many students raised their hand (I can only guess because I can see the professor looking around trying to determine which one to call on). The "distance" students don't have hand raising capability. I've tried raising my hand a couple of times but I don't get called on. Jason S. from GE said he gave up trying to raise his hand from a remote site. That means distance students have to shout out "Comment from distance" or "Distance question" or some such. Then the professor usually runs over to the monitor to figure out which person was talking and tell the class that he is going to take the distance question. Generally (I'd say at 6 times out of 10) if there is any discussion between the professor and distance student, there is a awkward cycle of interruptions due to the audio delay. One thing this results in is me not being able to respond with witty comments in an effort to make people laugh (I'm still a class-clown by nature). Comedy is all about timing and with a 2-3 second audio delay, forget about it!

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

Steve Jobs recently gave the Commencement address at Stanford. Besides talking about how quitting college was a great move for him, he stressed repeatedly that you've got to love what you do (for a living). I heard this over and over and over again from speakers last term. If you don't love what you do, your success will be limited. I believe it. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, I loved my job. I wouldn't even call it a job back then. People told me that it was unusual to love your job as much as I did. I worked crazy hours (90+ wasn't unusual). Since it had been like that for me since I left college, I just thought your job was suppose to be that much fun.

Then Sept 11th hit and the bubble burst. I don't know if it has to do with a combination of those events plus me moving up into increasingly senior roles (and the resulting politics you have to deal with) and my company suffering growing pains, or just a change in me. I'm still not exactly sure what I want to do when I grow up. I was hoping MIT would help answer that question, but at this point my time at MIT has only raised more questions.

Sam and I recently had a short email discussion about emerging technologies and how to get exposure to them while at MIT. I'm currently on an IT track at MIT. Most of the classes I'm taking are IT related (because I may get a second masters in IT). My current career trajectory is to be a CIO (or maybe CTO). But does that even make sense? The whole IT field is in decline. It seems that it would be a better use of time to explore fields like Biotech or Renewable Energy. Sam laid out a plan for how he was going to turn his attention to these areas. Then he asked me what I was going to do. I never replied....because I didn't have an answer.

Jobs' closing remarks were: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

At this point I don't think I'm hungry or foolish and that is part of the problem.

Back home

I missed classes last week because I had a business trip to San Jose I couldn't avoid. I've watched all the classes on video though and have mostly caught up on my homework.

My fellow SDM bloggers are engaging in a lively discussion about the usefulness of the material in our Systems Engineering class. Here is my take:

I'm not going to argue the value of material presented by professors at MIT. Supposedly they are teaching at MIT because they know a thing or two. Now I may disagree with what they are teaching, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on the overall structure of the class. And when I do disagree on the structure (as in my Web Sys class), I'll work with the professor to change it ;-) Now, I was one of the biggest opponents of our ERBA class in the Spring, but it wasn't because of the material, it was due to how the material was presented. I felt the same way about PDD: the concept was important, the delivery was bad. I'll make a deal with the professors, they can cover the material they think is necessary and I won't complain, but they have to do a good job TEACHING it. If they don't do a good job teaching, that's when I'll start to question my investment. I think Dan Frey is making a concerted effort to teach our Sys Eng class and provide insights.

So back to the question at hand, is material in Sys Eng useful so far? I think so. I'm attending MIT to learn new things--I'm not at MIT to learn only the things I'll directly use in my job/life after MIT. Everything we are learning is building a foundation. I feel some of my SDM classmates are a little too impatient. I don't care that Sys Eng isn't 100% software focus--it shouldn't be. Systems Engineering isn't all about software--it is about a combination of software, hardware, and people. We should spend time on all of these issues. Maybe we'll review methodologies that are flawed, but that's ok and in fact it is a good exercise. We have to be able to think critically and assess topics we are taught to determine if it makes sense to incorporate them in our own methodologies. That means we will cover a lot of material that we may never use (or care to hear of) again. There is a certain inefficiency with college learning. And I can understand why some would be impatient due to the great expense (both time and money) of attending MIT. Perhaps I've just accepted the college way of learning. Perhaps we should expect more. But if you consider the alternatives, I don't think I'd want to learn anywhere else.

ESD.763 Operations and Supply Chain Management

Here is the course description for my Operations and Supply Chain Management class:

"Objectives are to develop modeling skills and to provide new concepts and problem-solving tools, applicable to the design and planning of supply chains as well as manufacturing systems."
Professor D. Simchi-Levi

I have next to no experience with supply chain or manufacturing. I did, however, work one summer at Lucent in Greensboro, NC for my dad on a computer board assembly line. It wasn't that interesting though :-) Most of the students rave about the professor for this course (Simchi-Levi) and so far he seems quite good. This is a class that I wouldn't have probably picked unless it was a requirement, but it is definitely good to take to broaden my knowledge base.

ESD.33 Systems Engineering

Here is the course description for my Systems Engineering class:

"Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem including operations, performance, test, manufacturing, cost, and schedule. This course emphasizes the links of systems engineering to fundamentals of decision theory, statistics, and optimization. The course also introduces the most current, commercially successful techniques for systems engineering."
D. Frey

First week

The first week of the Summer semester is over. It was quite a contrast to my first week in January. I'm at home in sunny NC now (instead of in frigid Boston), taking classes via videocon as previously reported. I originally signed up for "Systems Engineering", "Operations and Supply Chain Management", and "Financial and Managerial Accounting". After attending two sessions of the Accounting class, it was pretty obvious that most of the material was going to be a repeat of a "Financial Reporting" class I took at NCSU a couple of years ago. I spoke with the Director of SDM, Pat, and after reviewing the syllabus from my previous class, we agreed there was significant overlap and he waived my Accounting class requirement. I already purchased the book for the class so I'll take the opportunity to skim through it this summer in case there are any topics I haven't seen previously.

I'm quite happy about taking only 2 classes for the Summer (a significant change from taking 6 classes last semester). I'm back to working my normal schedule at Cisco. That along with my writing/editing obligations, plus some of the other things I have planned makes for a very busy Summer schedule. A third class might would have made it too hectic.

Vi--de---o Con--fer---en---ce

A little background...one of the benefits of the SDM program is you can take some classes remotely. There is a one semester residency requirement at MIT, so some SDM students take classes remotely for the other semesters. Most distance students are company sponsored and use ISDN-based video conferencing technology from their work location.

I'm a bit of an odd-ball (in case you didn't know) because I'm a mix of a distance and local student. I'm on-campus for the Spring 05 and Fall 05 terms and off-campus for Summer 05 and Spring 06. And since I'm not company sponsored, I'm using the more economical video conference method of IP over the Internet. I purchased a ViaVideo II unit from Polycom and intended to use my home broadband connection.

To my great disappointment, video conferencing technology hasn't improved much since I last used it in 1997. It is still hard to configure and still extremely hard to troubleshoot. It is hard to determine if problems are due to my configuration or MIT's video conferencing provider, Expedite. After several days of trying to connect my home videocon equipment to Expedite, I was told that it was a problem on my end. That even though Expedite could call me, I couldn't call them because my ISP was blocking some ports. I was highly skeptical so I called a colleague in the same situation, Ben, and we were able to call each other without a problem.

I gave up briefly and tried to use my employer's videocon equipment (ISDN-based). Once again, Expedite claimed there was something wrong on my end. Considering the lack of troubleshooting tools, it was very hard to combat their claim. I decided to try once again at home since I knew that should work. Sure enough, the next day I could dial right in to Expedite. I know I didn't change anything on my end, but somehow it was an issue on my end previously (yeah right).

Ok, it was finally time for the first day of class. The result? I couldn't connect for the first hour of the 2 hour class. Finally they were able to connect me to a working bridge and I could see and hear the class although the audio and video would be choppy at times. Since then I've had a few more classes and while it has gotten better, I'm not going to hold my breath. During my second class, the Expedite server crashed and it took a while for them to bring up a new one. I received a call from an Expedite sales person later in the day that they are looking into their problems. Not sure why he called me. I never received a followup describing what the problem was and how they are going to prevent it in the future. They seem clueless half the time. Like this is the first time they've ever done video conferencing.

The reason this is so frustrating is that each remote location has to pay $1200 per class! I'm having a hard time justifying the cost. First, I'm going over the Internet so it is not like they need to use a dedicated ISDN connection for me. I connect to a server which a video card or two installed, but I can't imagine there is much additional cost after they initially buy the equipment. I think I need to go into the video conference hosting business.

In between terms

I've taken a short hiatus from this blog in between semesters. It has been nice to relax in the comfort of my home and get back into the working and writing/editing groove. The weather in NC has been wonderful, especially compared to the yucky New England weather. I told my wife that on the bright side, this experience has taught me that I never want to live in New England. Hopefully the weather in the Fall when I go back will be better.

I'm starting to like the Triangle area more and more. I've attended a couple of CED events and met several local entrepreneurs. I also had a nice chat with a local VC blogger: Jason.

I've had a chance to play two rounds of golf since I've been back and plan on playing again tomorrow. A co-worker and I are going to try and play once a week. It would be nice to shoot in the mid-90s by the end of summer. That isn't great, but I don't take it too seriously and haven't played very much, so mid-90 isn't bad considering.

I checked out the local YMCA and played some basketball there on Monday. The Cary Y is a little nicer than the Raleigh Y and they don't take the pick-up games quite as serious, which is a good thing. I was getting tired of the loud guys that get on everyone's back and yet shoot 1-20.