Despite what you think, I am not going to write about a certain four-letter word (Look it up on Wikipedia). The “F” word I am referring to is “friend”.

With the advent of social networking the term friend has become completely devalued. We now have “friends” on Facebook and Myspace, but there is now way to define the person as a close friend, acquaintance, or person you feel semi-obligated to connect with. Besides the copious amounts of spam from friends I get via Facebook, I really am trying to figure out a better way to define “friend” in the social network age.

This was really brought to the surface this evening. Hazel and I were walking around the neighborhood, just her and me1. While on our walk, we were pestered by a neighborhood child known only to us as “the fat kid”. This child is a boy about the age of ten, who doesn’t have a lot of parental oversight, if you get what I mean. He is the kid who has no limits. He is, unfortunately deemed by the style of pants he wears, also husky. At a block party, where parents who had children of similar age, who I have seen interacting with said child, don’t know his name. So we concocted a way to refer to him, is it mean? Yes. Do we say it out of our home? No.

“The fat kid” has a friend, who’s name is also not known to me, so his moniker is “the fat kids skinny friend”, also unfortunately, but he is less portly than the boy he associates with.

These two boys conned me into letting them mow my lawn for money. That was a disaster. In the 45 minutes it took them to cut the grass, I was interrupted more than 25 times. Needless to say, I could have done the project for less, with less aggravation and much quicker. So, these two hooligans are not on my good list.

Back to this evening interaction with these two boys: The boys were riding bikes around the neighborhood, while having a pillow or some other objects, stuffed under their shirts. As they rode by, they where talking amongst themselves “Look at how fat I am!”, “Whoa! I’m really fat from dinner”. We are near the end of our walk and Hazel is getting fussy, so I’m trying to get home. The boys stop riding their bikes and ask “Do you want to see us go from fat to skinny?”

Hazel was genuinely fussy and I knew that if I responded to them, I would be dogged all the way home, which I really didn’t need. So I chose not to respond, essentially pretending they did not exist. Cruel, but not unreasonable given the situation.

As they figured out that I was ignoring them, “the fat kid” said “Aww, come on! I thought you were our friend.”

Let me go over the facts again:

I don’t know either of these boys name
I don’t know where these boys live, or who their parents are
They have previously wasted my time and money

What makes them think I am their “friend”. Now apply that to Facebook, does everyone who has the label “friends” really deserve it?

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• What Does “Friend” Mean?

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This is a reworking of a previous post, originally titled Kelly Johnson’s 14 rules of management. I had originally written this when I was working in graphic design and it was directed at that line of work, but I think the concept is easily molded to any job.

I had originally made this list the Skunk Works of Design (SWD), that has been changed to Skunk Works Analysis (SWA).

The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.

SWA 1. The analyst must have control of the project, from schedule, to needs gathering, to overall cost (with in limits).

Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.

SWA 2. Small, competent teams should be provided by the customer, picked by the analyst.

The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).

SWA 3. A project does not need everyone’s input, especially on the client side.

A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.

SWA 4. The project management system should facilitate that changes be made and communicated easily.

There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.

SWA 5. The project management system should not get in the way of the analysis and research process, this include progress meetings and status reports. The analyst should document their steps to better explain the process to the customer.

There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program. Don’t have the books ninety days late and don’t surprise the customer with sudden overruns.

SWA 6. Project costs should be reviewed regularly by the analyst-client team, any changes or projected changes in costs should be reported to the client immediately, with justification and explanations.

The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.

SWA 7. If you have to subcontract out, make it for less than you charge and make sure you are willing to take responsibility for the results.

The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Don’t duplicate so much inspection.

SWA 8. It is important to get a solid list of requirements before starting a project. Getting new requirements halfway through the project means you should restart the analysis or rework the entire project timeline.

The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn’t, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.

SWA 9. The client should be kept up to date with the analysis and research, to ensure that the analyst is on the correct path1

The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to well in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a specification section stating clearly which important military specification items will not knowingly be complied with and reasons therefore is highly recommended.

SWA 10. Specifications for the project must be spelled out well in advance. They need to be agreed up on by not only the client, but the client’s boss.

Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn’t have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.

SWA 11. Billing, invoicing or charging should be quick. Don’t leave the client guessing what the bill will be.

There must be mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.

SWA 12. There must be trust between the analyst and the client. If daily updates are needed, they should be given to cut down on misunderstandings. If they are not needed, don’t do them.

Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.

SWA 13. Clients should not interact with the analysis and design team, they should interact with project managers. Maintain a sense of team security.

Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.

SWA 14. Rewards should be based on performance, those who consistently hit the mark should be rewarded more.

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WeatherBug

Six word review: Local weather with radar, cams included

The weather app that is included on the iPhone is great, if you like to see the extended forecast. I worry more about what the weather is going to be like tonight or tomorrow, and I love looking at the radar images, probably due to a distrust of meteorologists. Weatherbug does that for me, with several local stations, providing not just the radar, but local webcams showing off the current conditions. The only downside is a limit of three saved “favorite” locations.

WeatherBug is free [iTunes link]

Datacase

Six word review: Use your iPhone as external drive

There are several “store files on your iPhone” apps, Files, FileMagnet, and there are probably more to come. Datacase is by far the slickest implementation so far. No client on the computer required, Mac and PC ready, with a great user interface. Datacase has a slick system of getting the files on the iPhone, using Bonjour on the Mac and FTP on a PC. When transferring my files from my Mac, I launch the app and it appears in the finder, I simply drag and drop, abra-ka-poof, the files are on the iPhone, viewable and everything. Simply sexy.

Datacase is $6.99 [iTunes link]

Feeds

Six word review: Well done, cheap, standalone feed reader

I am always looking for a good way to manage my feeds. I use NetNewsWire, but feed management is my Moby Dick. Feeds is cheap and offers a directory of feeds to choose from, which is a great bonus. The feed rendering is the same as Safari, with the options of opening in Safari. The nice thing about Feeds is that is has a “star” function, allowing me to save an entry for later reading. I would love if Feeds would sync with Google Reader, the star function indicates that is would be moving in that direction, but that could be reading in to things too much.

Feeds is $0.99 [iTunes link]

GuitarToolKit

Six word review: If you play guitar, buy this

As a guitar player, I am always looking up a chord that I don’t commonly use. I also need to have a tuner. GuitarToolKit is a gorgeous implementation of both of these, combined with a metronome and open neck tone representation. There are other tuners, and other chord libraries, but GuitarToolKit is the comprehensive package. If you play guitar and you own an iPhone, this is an app that should be on your phone.

GuitarToolKit is $9.99 [iTunes link]

Evernote

Six word review: Like elephant: never forget anything again.

I am a fan of the Evernote service. I can keep track of notes and to text recognition of photos on Macs, PCs, the web and now my iPhone. Evernote was available from the first day of the App Store, but I couldn’t recommend it until it had the ability to edit notes on the iPhone. Version 1.3 has given us this vital function. Keeping track of everything is important, not only random notes, but business cards that I need to search for later. That is the cool thing about Evernote, it does the text recognition on the photo of a business card, allowing me to pull it up at my desk later. The elephant logo is not a misnomer, it truly lets you never forget.

Evernote is free [iTunes link]

Instapaper

Six word review:Easy to use, read it later

I read a lot of things on the internet. A lot. There are somethings that I want to read, but don’t have time to. Instapaper is an online service that allow me to save items for reading later. Instapaper originally came to my attention as a purely web-based application that was iPhone friendly. It has a very simple look and functions well. That simplicity has been translated to Instapaper for the iPhone, which syncs with the web service and allows offline (read on an airplane) reading. It even converts webpages into text-only, so if the formatting on a website makes it difficult to read, you can read in peace.

Instapaper is free [iTunes link]

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Wednesday is now officially iPhone App-stravaganza. I will download some free, some paid applications for the iPhone and give them a short review. In this first Wednesday App-stravaganza, I am going to recap the first set of apps I have and use regularly and then review the applications I downloaded last night.

The Essentials

OmniFocus

Six word review: mobile GTD with location awareness goodness

I am a hard-core OmniFocus user. It keeps everything that I need to do organized. The only problem that I have had is that I can’t take my tasks with me. I had a convoluted sync that involved some AppleScript, some Automator actions, some FTPing, generally it wasn’t super reliable. But that only kept the home and work computers in sync. Now with OmniFocus version 1.1 and OmniFocus for the iPhone, I can keep my shopping lists, errands, and all of the other projects I have close at hand. The syncing features require either a WebDAV account or MobileMe’s iDisk, but the syncing itself is flawless after setup.

Reviews in the App Store are mixed. It has a high learning curve and it can be used independent of the desktop application but if you aren’t a full-time OmniFocus user, it may not be worth the investment of time. There are plenty of “to do” applications for much less, heck, Notes are free.

OmniFocus costs $19.99 [iTunes link]

Jott

Six word review: Simple voice powered reminders, transcribed automagically

jott.com is a free reminder / call transcription / email service. To reduce the head scratching let me walk you though how I use Jott. Things should be come clearer.

Jered is walking from his car to the grocery store and remembers that he needs to email a coworker about a project. Jered pulls out his phone, taps one of his favorites, is asked who he wants to jott. “Doug” *beep* “Doug, we need to meet tomorrow to talk about the signage project.” and then he hangs up. An email is sent to Doug and Jered with the message transcribed.

The iPhone app takes a slightly different tact focusing more on creating lists and to do items. I use it mainly to remember things that will evaporate before I have a chance to write them down. The jott service is great and I still use it to communicate with coworkers and friends, and it is a pity that the iPhone app doesn’t allow for messaging. Fingers crossed for the next revision.

Jott is free [iTunes link]

Zenbe Lists

Six word review: Sync capable, web editable, sharable lists

Zenbe lists is a list management program that syncs to the Zenbe web services. This allows for editing at any computer that has a browser, meaning data entry isn’t nearly a tedious for those of us with fat thumbs. I know you are thinking: Jered another list program? I use Zenbe as a checklist which is wholly different than a task list. These are things that reoccur, so when I check them, they stay on the list and I can uncheck them later. The thing that is great about Zenbe is the ability to share lists with other Zenbe (and non-Zenbe) users. My grocery lists is shared with Esther, so is a list of things to pack for the baby.

Zenbe Lists is free [iTunes link]

2 Across

Six word review:Slickly implemented crosswords without newsprint smudges

I have never been a fan of Sodoku, maybe it has to do with my semi-irrational fear of numbers, who knows. One thing I do love to keep the grey matter performing well is a good crossword puzzle. 2 Across is just that: a well done application on the iPhone that lets me spend countless hours trying to figure out 38 down. If I were a New York Time subscriber, I could do their puzzles using the premium subscription features, but the list of 11 news sources for available puzzles are fine for me. 2 Across is a well done implementation of something that I had written off as being purely paper and pen (yes, I’m that daring).

2 Across costs $5.99 [iTunes link]

NY Times

Six word review: Pocketable version of the Grey Lady

I used to read the newspaper everyday. My uncle says everyone should read two newspapers everyday. Unfortunately, time is scarce, newspapers are bulky and I prefer to skim to the articles that are of greater interest to me. The NYTimes app makes skimming through the entire paper easy as well as being easy on the eyes. Photos that expand to the page width, the text is well rendered, making reading the news of a dreary world a joy to read.

NYTime is free [iTunes link]

NetNewsWire

Six word review: My feeds synced across all computers

I use NetNewsWire for the Mac and NewsGator when on Windows (read about my feed journey here) and they sync very well, including a iPhone optimized web version, but with the release of NetNewsWire for the iPhone, I now have a nice option to sync my feeds with my iPhone. There are a few features that are missing from the current implementation, but I am sure they are coming in later releases. The most important of which is the ability to mark a story as new. It is nice to have a system that syncs all of my feeds so I don’t have to worry about leaving feeds on a device. Yes, I know there is an iPhone optimized Google Reader, but there is something desirable (I can’t really put my finger on what it is…) about having a client on my desktops.

NetNewsWire for the iPhone is free [iTunes link]

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I eluded in my last post that I there has been a point in my life that I changed from being Catholic to being Buddhist. That point has been a long time coming and I want to explain how I came to that point.

When I was getting ready to be confirmed in as a Catholic, the leader of the confirmation class goaded us to ask questions. This lead to long debates over spiritual topics and how church dogma related to modern living. This lead to long Socratic sessions on the role of faith, the church and religion. Most of the answers I got were satisfactory, but a number were not.

This was the same time I was in biology and chemistry, learning the physical nature of the universe and the spiritual and physical did not seem to be able to coexist. This was solidified by when I took physics in my junior year of high school.

I was not happy with a purely scientific view of the world, there are still things that are unexplained and there will always by the larger questions of “Why are we here?” and “What is the meaning of life?”, I was simply not happy with the responses I got to questions regarding the intersection of science, faith, and scientific ethics and morality.

These unsatisfied answers sat and festered. I was not religious in college, I can count on one hand the number of times I attempted to go to church. Emphasis on attempted. The things I did learn in college were continuations of things my parents had taught me. I took a sociology course with Gary Wilson, one of the best professors I had, in which he forced me, through introspection and well chosen reading, to really think about what I believed in. Themes of social justice, a person’s self worth and equality were prevalent. I don’t think this was his intention, but it really pushed me into a place of discomfort with my relationship with my Catholic upbringing.

After graduation, when Esther and I moved to Virginia, we moved in together against the wishes of my parents. It was an economic decision, and after we assured my parents that we intended to get married, they dropped the subject, although I knew it did not sit well with them.

As we picked a date to get married, we tried to go back to church, knowing that a Catholic wedding was the only way both of our parents would be satisfied. We tried five of the seven local churches and I was disappointed in all of them. Fire and brimstone seemed to permeate the ground around the pulpit. Homophobic and chauvinistic messages spewed forth from most of the priests, while the book they read from spoke of loving all of mankind, regardless. This clearly was not the place for me.

But the wedding, oh yes, the wedding had to be Catholic. There was no way around it and as I started to understand that a wedding is not about the people getting married but about the people attending, I knew that I would have to bite the bullet. We found a priest who we thought would help us through the process of getting married, but instead he insulted our choice of venue, grilled us over our living situation and made both of us feel generally uncomfortable. Not our guy. In desperation, a friend of a friend who knew a priest in a town 65 miles away introduced us to the priest who would marry us. Finally, that hurdle was over.

Esther and I were married. But something was missing, not between us, but for me. I was angry a lot of the time. Not at any one thing, but in general, a level of tension filled my life and lead to a few blow ups at home. Eventually I realized that I need to ask the larger questions again, but I need to do them in a framework that didn’t conflict with my inner compass as much. So did was I always do: research.

I looked at every religion, Judaism, Ba’hai, Islam, the varied flavors of Christianity, and the only one that I found that I could really believe in was Buddhism. It seemed to quell the festering questions of my youth and gave me a new outlook on the way I live my life and how I treat those in it. I felt like I had a things to reach for, enlightenment to attain. And even the more esoteric parts of buddhism, like reincarnation fit well with my desire for the natural to be explained by science. Energy is never created or destroyed, merely transferred from one state to another. The total amount of energy in the universe is constant. - The law of conservation of energy

Am I saying that being Catholic made me an angry person? In some instances, yes, but for the larger part, no. I am saying that being Buddhist has given me a framework to deal with my anger more effectively that before. I am more content with what I have, I am okay with my losses. I don’t hold grudges, I am more generous than I ever was before. I have found a sense of equanimity with myself, my relationships and my universe.

My choice has created a weird tension with my family. People has referred to my decision as having “issues”, which I am okay with, although it sounds like I have a rash on a sensitive body part. I would like to talk with people about my “issues”. I found a book which explains Buddhism in the least mystic terms and gave it to my parents, I don’t know if they are reading it. I know my grandparents are probably weirded out. In the end, I guess this post follows the theme of the previous. I am available in multiple ways, including the phone If you need my number, email me first. If you have some lingering weirdness in regards to my choice to be Buddhist, contact me.