A Boy and his Toys

I always have a few toys in the office. I've been reminded you have to get older, but you don't have to grow up. I like to have fun. But that's not the only reason I keep some of these in my office. You see, I work with some brilliant people, the kind of people that have incredible memories and amazing cognitive skills. Their minds work faster than mine. So when I have a complex topic to discuss with them, I ask them to stop over. And then I make sure some of the toys are out in plain sight. This has worked well over the years for several people. Damian Osisek is my favorite target in this respect. He'll start working on the maze or a puzzle while I quiz him about some aspect of architecture, cache congruency classes, super scalar processing, or SIE implementation details. I liken this to knee-capping a processor to lower the capacity rating. The amazing thing is, Damian will solve puzzles during the discussion. While I own some of the puzzles, I can't solve them even when focused solely on them. I'm fortunate to work with people that need to be knee-capped. Oh, that sounds bad, but you know what I mean.

I appreciate vendor give-aways at conferences and trade-shows, some of my better toys. You might be able to pick out the Sterling Software Yo-Yo in the picture above. Carol Everitt recently found it and gave it to me. It used to light up. We're working on restoring that aspect of it. :)

I also have had some LEGOs in my office from time to time. (No surprise to some of  you.) These have come in handy as well. I once used them to illustrate a point back when there was some discussion about how to rank or appraise individuals, and the whole idea of measuring contribution. I handed a single LEGO brick to the manager and suggested they build something. They caught on quickly that you can't build anything too interesting with a single brick. But a set (team) of bricks is what allows greater things to be built. Last I looked, the manager still had the LEGO on their desk.