Well, there is a very long story behind this, but suffice it to say that I’m getting some firefighter training, probably next week. We’ll be going into a training facilty under live fire conditions and probably learning about smoke movement, and fire behaviour. I’m really looking forward to it.

Of course, you have to have the right equipment, including SCBA breathing apparatus. We were fitted for masks today and tested with computer equipment that makes absolutely sure that the masks work. In order for the mask to work it needs a very good seal with your face. For men, this means that you cannot have any facial hair from the corners of the mouth down.

This required me to shave. I have worn a Van Dyke beard since December 1999, so I was a little put off by this. But since beards do grow back, I decided to go ahead with it. Now my face feels a bit naked, and cold!

Of course, the opportunity is too good to pass up without documenting with photos — some people have never seen me beardless! So here’s me with progressively less and less hair.

Before

Click for the real me!

 › self     2007-11-26 15:45   ...4 comments

Professional recognition is nice, and that’s one of the reasons that companies like to win awards like Macworld’s Eddy Award.

Of course these awards bring corporate bragging rights as well, and for big companies like Apple and Adobe that’s about as far as it goes.

When you’re a software designer at a small company that wins an award it’s a bit of a personal triumph as well. After all, the architecture of PhoneValet is my baby, and lots of the software has my stamp on it too. When you work for a small company you can see yourself in the products in a way that you really can’t when you are a little cog in a big wheel.

So, the guys have their pictures with the thing too, but here I am with my Macworld trophy.

Colin Henein with Parliant’s Macworld Eddy Award

 › self     2007-01-17 15:00   ...4 comments

Well after that great weekend away I’ve come home feeling more stressed than ever. About 4 hours after returning to the house I felt a weight settle onto me… school.

Things have been good with my current project, but I’ve realized over the last year of working on it that it is unlikely that my final thesis project will be along these lines. It’s just too hard to come up with hard cognitive evidence to back up my model, and I think that’s what the project will require.

Although it hasn’t been finalized yet, this tentative decision makes me feel good because it might lead to a more efficacious path to the finish. The short-term impact of it, though, is uncertainty due to the need to pick something to work on.

I wish I had the drive and organization of some of my colleagues who came to the program with such a clear sense of purpose. Seven years into the process and I still don’t have their sense of direction.

 › self     2005-09-07 00:09   ...0 comments

I wrote in my pellet entry about my need to avoid making mistakes, and why it is such a big deal for me; I explained that part of my self-image is that I am a good planner, and when I screw up it’s easy to beat myself up about it. I went on to say that I sometimes take this as far as planning on behalf of others, and left that topic for another day. Today is another day. Another day with the humidex nearing 40° (104 °F) and I’m holed up in the bedroom with the window air conditioner. A perfect time for introspection.

Part of the way that my brain takes in information is by taking incoming facts and connecting them to existing ones. Thus, as people tell me about what they’re doing, or as I review an organisation’s plans, it seems very obvious to me where the pitfalls or potential problems are. It then seems kind of mean to just let the person fall into the traps along the way… of course I should point out the problems and save them the trouble.

The problem is — as you may already have surmised from the tone of the last paragraph — this position is a bit patronising (if well meaning). It’s funny how I haven’t thought of it this way in the past, but trying to help really requires you to take up the position that the other person cannot do it themselves. Stepping in to help when asked is one thing, but jumping in to a situation to give advice can be problematic. It is problematic for both the helper and the helpee.

Why problematic for the helpee? The helpee can go in one of two directions in this case. The first direction is to be frustrated that the helper is not providing the desired response. The helpee, for example, may be upset that something isn’t going well, and instead of providing the desired support the helper starts analysing the situation and looking for a solution. The other possibility, especially in close relationships, is that the helpee steps back from all planning and responsibility — letting the helper take over.

Why problematic for the helper? For one thing it is a stressful life: You walk around seeing the problems in everything, feeling dread for others all the time. With organizations you pass the point of being an activist for positive change, and take setbacks as personal affronts. For another thing it is ultimately a thankless task (no one is asking you to do this, or they are taking advantage of you) and likely a futile one as people do what they will.

Those are obvious helper drawbacks, but what if you become obsessed with this helping behaviour?

You may be familiar with the term co-dependency but may not know its origin. It comes from looking at alcoholics, and is a pattern of behaviour exhibited by partners and families of the addict. The canonical example is of the co-dependent wife becoming fixated on solving the addicted husband’s problems, often winding up in situations she doesn’t want to (like making excuses for his behaviour to his boss) because she feels she has to. It is a complicated issue, frought with circular patterns of behaviour on all sides. (The term Co-dependent is rooted in a sense of being also dependent on alcohol, even if you’re not the addict.)

Why have I brought up co-dependency? Because this type of relationship is the logical extension of the problems of the helper and helpee above.

Consider a scenario where the helpee starts to step away from planning and control, and the helper takes over these tasks. Then what happens when the helper sees that their interests are at odds with the interests of the helpee? If they are obsessed with helping, they may satisfy that obsession instead of furthering their interests.

If that last paragraph went by a bit fast, here’s an example of what I mean: Let’s say the helper has taken over the task of doing the helpee’s dishes, but is tired one night and doesn’t feel like doing them… This is a no-win situation for the helper because if they don’t do the dishes they feel like they are doing a bad job in their self-appointed role (as aggrieved dish doer) but if they do clean them then they are doing a bad job of taking care of themselves.

In short, serious co-dependents do everything because they believe they should rather than doing what they want. They often wonder why no one is reciprocating… and it is because what they are doing is unreasonable. (It’s just that it doesn’t feel unreasonable to them to intervene to avoid the disaster they fear will unfold if they back away.) They also fear backing away from the helper role because it defines their social lives and makes them “useful” to their friends.

So, let’s get back to the case at hand: me me me. I identify with the somewhat disconnected and selective picture of co-dependency that I’m painting. But where does this all intersect with my trajectory in life? It clearly is not coming from contact with addictions, and I think it is coming more from my pellet-fleeing behaviours and the planning system that underlies them. I also feel I’m useful to people and liked because I am helpful to them, which is likely over-simple, but feeds the need to “help”.

Now, there’s loads of information out there on co-dependency, much of it uncomfortably cult-like and it all points to a weird proselytising 12-step program which (at least for me) is taking this whole analogy and coincidence of behaviours way too far. However, it does make me think a bit… will the world really end if I don’t attend the AGM of the co-op? Are my relationships really built on being needed? And is it really true that others are incompetent and need my help all the time? The answer to all these questions is no.

So, just as I am trying to be less self-critical and hyper-careful (I’m trying to settle for self-aware and reasonably cautious) I am also trying to see others as competent and capable. Trying to self-monitor less. Trying to identify things that I like and want, without always trying to identify their felicitousness to the “projects” I have been making out of those around me. It may not happen overnight, and likely won’t ever happen 100% but just being aware of it is changing my outlook. And that’s a good thing.

 › self     2005-06-13 23:35   ...2 comments

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind?
They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.
    — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

A few weeks ago Jen and I were discussing my outlook on life. She has noticed that I tend to get very worked up and nervous at times where a decision needs to be made and the choice isn’t clear. You may think that this is perfectly normal, but I get worked up even over inconsequential decisions like whether to go to a movie or to rent one. The question is: why am I like this?

The answer: I do not like to make mistakes.

More specifically, I don’t like to make planning errors. I live in fear of them. My biggest worry is that I will look back on a decision and realise that if I had made a different choice I could have prevented some bad outcome. Again, my obsession with mistakes is revealed by what counts as a bad outcome; it is a serious problem if I use shirts and shorts in the wrong order and wind up with a pair that doesn’t go at the end of the week. (The previous principal clause should not be interpreted as an endorsement of my fashion sense.)

In order to understand why I don’t like these kinds of mistakes, I have been thinking about what I see as the essential qualities of me. Now, I was an old-school computer programmer from the start. (I decided when I was in kindergarden that I would do pretty much exactly what I am doing now.) It would not be an exaggeration to say that the essential function of a computer programmer is to think through a course of action very clearly in order to achieve exactly the desired outcome, with contingencies for all possible errors along the way. I am an uncompromising computer programmer; in some sense this approach to accomplishing things has come to take over my entire life, not just the digital part of it. In some ways I have become a human programmer of myself. Based on my conversation with Jen I now feel sure that this aspect of my personality is at the heart of my feelings about making mistakes.

Now your average guy is averse to making errors because he knows that he will feel very stuck if he gets into a bad situation and that he will wish fervently that he had seen it coming. The average guy, however, feels that the essential aspects of himself do not include a highly reliable preplanning system which avoids all errors. Thus, the average guy feels bad about making a mistake, but this does not necessarily affect his self-image.

In this case I am not the average guy. As a computer scientist I follow logical principles in planning and analysis of situations, and this carries over into the human programming side of my personality. Accordingly, a mistake not only carries the practical consequences of the error, it provides logical counter-evidence to an argument that says “an essential part of me is that I anticipate mistakes in advance and avoid them”. Because I pride myself on my skills at analysing situations and ensuring good outcomes, a bad outcome is a blow to my self-image as the perfect human programmer of myself.

For reasons unclear at this time, Jen and I introduced the technical term turning into a pellet into this conversation. In our terminology, turning into a pellet is what you do when you become upset, depressed and sad because your own brain is beating up your self-image.

This essay started with the question of why I get worked up over all decisions, however inconsequential. The initial answer was that I do not like to make mistakes. The more fleshed-out answer is that I am scared of turning into a pellet.

So, now that I have come to this realisation what can I get from it? Here’s a list (in order of scaritude): First, preventing problems requires anticipating them; anticipation of problems in life is not as easy as anticipation of problems in an algorithm so I need to let myself off the hook if I miss a potential issue that comes along to bite me later. Second (and from a game theoretic perspective) I need to realise that this preplanning engine has a cost to operate; the movie rental example makes clear that sometimes the cost in stress to make the perfect choice is higher than the penalty experienced by making the wrong decision. Third, I have more to offer myself and others than a correct algorithm for living; if I make a mistake it does not mean that I have to attack myself and turn into a pellet.

The second requires the third. The third requires a broadening of self-image, or the logical equivalent of non-linear geometry. Adopting the second and third — however expensive — could have a big payoff. I am working on it.

There is some evidence that I extend my human programming to organizations and humans other than myself. But that is a tangentially related topic for another day. More on that another time.

We are all scared of turning into pellets — of being forced to confront our self-image. Turning into a pellet means different things to each one of us… it depends on how you see yourself. I suspect that it is related to the fact that we see ourselves as ideal inside, and pellet-inducing events have to do with imperfection. What’s your pellet?

 › self     2005-05-23 15:06   ...3 comments