Trail blazing

I spent time this week blazing a trail through our wooded property.   The forest is typical coastal PNW with cedar, fir, madrona, ocean spray, salal, ferns, creepers, and vines of many sorts and heavy patches of moss.   Some parts of it you can stroll through, while in other parts, you need a machete to make any progress.

I’ve built several trails during my life, starting back as a kid in Shawanaga Bay.   The process is always similar:

• Set a clear goal  — where is this trail trying to go?  Seems obvious, but building a trail is a lot of work, and you should really want to achieve the goal, so it is worth thinking about and being explicit.
• Do a first walk-through with clippers, a handsaw, and a compass/map/modern alternative (I use GAIA GPS, which helpfully shows property lines).  Find the natural routes and seams along the way — thankfully, the deer before you will have done some of the work.  
• Do a second walk-through with all the same gear and marking tape.  I never mark on the first walk-through, as there are so many fits and starts.  The second walk-through allows me to avoid the various retracings and mark out a more direct path.
• As needed, do a 3rd walkthrough with a chainsaw to clear out any heavy obstructions.   We have a lot of downed trees in our forests, and I try to use them as guides, but sometimes you just have to get through something.
• Do walk-through 4-10 with a mix of clippers/saws to clear out above-ground brush, and a heavy rake/shovel to work on the ground.

By this point, you should have a trail that someone with good balance and good shoes can handle.   There will be marshy spots and scrambly parts, but it will be clear where to go and easily passable.  Healthy dogs of all sizes will be pleased with it.

We have senior dogs, and we are getting along in years ourselves, so there is still more work to be done to make the trail compatible with the senior crowd.  I may cart in some gravel or other finishing materials to even out the trail.  I can also use the plentiful downed wood and rocks in the forest to fill in low spots, create clear trail boundaries, and even create some steps in areas.   Finally, I make signage from driftwood and a Dremel.

What I get from trail blazing

Trail building reminds me of lessons about any project – about starting out, focus, iteration, and persistence.

• You just need to start.  The woods are a mess, thick, and it seems daunting, but you need to wade in.  No progress will be made if you avoid the task.
• You really can’t think about much else when you are bushwacking through thick forest on uneven terrain with sharp tools in your hands; you need to be entirely focused on the job at hand.   
• No trail is built in one pass; you have to return time and time again to find the correct route, clear the brush, smooth the path, etc.   Iteration is what moves the trail from idea to reality.
• Sometimes progress is slow — thick brush, marshy ground, bad weather, bugs.  Progress may not be evident.  But you just need to persist.

I’ve used these lessons over and over again in the rest of my life.   Every topic I’ve learned about has seemed like an impenetrable thicket at the beginning — I’ve just had to read, read, read and prototype, prototype, prototype to learn anything. Every successful software product I’ve worked on has been a trackless waste at the beginning when the first git repo was created — it has required iteration and focus and constant bitwhacking to build something of value. Every successful startup I’ve worked with has focused, persevered, and iterated, and always with a clear goal in mind – I’m excited to see where Artemis and Pacific will be in a year or so, they are early in this journey. 

Glass Making

Over the past weekend, we visited Raven Skyriver’s and Kelly O’Dell’s studio during the Lopez Island Artists’ Studio Tour.  They are two great glass artists, and the studio tour really helps you understand the effort and persistence required to make great glass art — starting with chopping a ton of wood for their fires.  The final work is fantastic, and you can’t get there without a ton of effort, persistence, and trial and error along the way.

We got to talking with Kelly about work, and she reminded me of some books I love about work — Bird by Bird and How to Write One Song.   Both books remind you that creating anything of value requires slow methodical iteration, one step at a time, and that the value is not so much in the final product, but in the process itself.  

I don’t write this newsletter because I expect some reward or glory for the words I publish.  I write it because it is an integral part of how I learn and think, and I write it because I value the connections and feedback I get from friends and associates.  The value is in the process of creation, and the process of talking about with people.

Job Growth

Switching gears to policy and economics, there was another bad job growth report this week.   And an excellent opportunity to look at some visualizations about jobs. A great visualization can drive home a point, and it is worth working hard on visualizations.

First, a chart about US manufacturing employment, asserting that we’ve lost 100K manufacturing jobs over the last year, from Joey Politano.  Initially this chart seems attractive, but I'm unable to understand what it's saying.  I need the subheadline to tell me what it means. And even with that hint, I still have problems parsing all the elements of this chart.

Second, a chart about job growth over the last month, from Noah Smith, who credits Heather Long, who credits Marc Goldwein.  And this is a great great chart:

It is visually striking, and I immediately understand how job growth has been positive in some sectors, but offset by losses in others.   And the big problem for the country is apparent — all the job growth is in health care, hospitality, and retail, and none of it is in the areas that we really want to grow — manufacturing, construction, materials, energy, information.   It is interesting to imagine what we want this chart to look like, and what policy changes we would have to make to achieve that goal.

VW Buzz Update

We got rid of our Tesla this summer and got a VW Buzz. (Yes I know the brand is VW ID. Buzz but that is so clumsy). We mostly love the Buzz so far — amazing cargo room which works great for us.  The software is OK, not Tesla quality, but OK.  There is one thing that is driving me nuts though.

About every second time I try to use the wireless charging for my phone, I get this pop-up while driving:

There are several software principles that this violates, and it just pisses me off.

• One, all systems are always broken; you have to expect that and deal with it gracefully.  There is always some problem going on — connectivity problems, disk read errors, unexpected values, etc etc etc.  Something is always broken.  The system simply needs to continue operating as best it can, without treating the error as a disaster that requires a modal dialog.
• Two, never display a modal dialog about a convenience function (such as phone charging) while the user is driving, obscuring the map, and requiring an active dismissal only to pop up again in 10 minutes.
• Three, there is no way the VW team dogfooded this software.  You can’t own and use this car for a day without this being a problem.  No exec or product leader ever dealt with this, and that is not OK.

The modal dialog while driving is just unacceptable.  Especially because the UI has other places available to show non-interrupting alerts and warnings. It's not the worst design failure I've dealt with in cars, but it just such an annoying irritating glitch.