President Barack Obama takes the Rudyard Kipling test of Manliness©®™:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;      — Check!

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;      — Check!

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,      — Check!

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,      — Check!
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;       … Fuck.

For those of you not familiar with Woot, they are an online retailer that usually sells cool electronic stuff at great prices (for the most part). Their MO is in their own words, “One Day, One Deal”. They sell only a single product each day, and sell it only for that day. They also have other sites which sell t-shirts, wine and kids items the same way. If you need to know more, check out what the hitchhikers guide has to say about Woot, or let Woot do it in their own words. In any case, we will talk about Woot in more detail as we go along.

In today’s piece, I’ll show you how you can borrow tips from the way Woot goes about its business, and then adapt them to getting your own stuff done. (A good start would be to stop procrastinating, but you can do that later).

Lessons Learned in Getting Things Done from Woot:

1. Do One thing at a time:

Woot’s defining factor and shtick is that they sell one product per day. And they do it well. This, in my opinion, is the core principle behind getting things done. Concentrating on one main task at a time, and doing it well. This means you will have fewer distractions, and fewer things that divide your attention and bandwidth. This will also streamline your process to a great extent. For Woot, it means that all orders coming in on a particular day are all the same. Just slap a shipping label on each one, and off they go.

Given the nature of most tasks, you will have new related things popping up that need to be done — for instance, while cleaning a room, you might come across papers that need to be filed, or while programming, you realize that you need to write another sub routine to process something along the way. The best way to deal with these is to add them to your task list based on their priority, and then take them on when you are done with the current task. Going off on tangents every time something comes up is a great way to make sure that things never get done.

2. Know when to quit:

Not all tasks can be completed in one sitting, and not everything can wait while it gets done. When you get to the point where the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in, and you stop making any real progress, its time to drop that activity for the time being and come back to it later after you take care of other important things. Woot features each product on its site for exactly 24 hours, and even if it has not sold out by then, its time for a new product. The idea being, that almost everyone who was going to buy it right now has already bought it. If it has not sold out, they will typically bring it back again the next month.

If you find yourself re-reading the same paragraph 10 times without making sense or trying to track an inexplicable bug for 2 hours without finding it, you probably should take a break at the very least. You can either move on to something else for the time being, or if the work is important enough, come back to it after a good break. It generally works wonders. I have often left for lunch after trying in vain to get some stupid code to work, only to come back with a full stomach to spot and fix the bug before I was even done with checking the mails.

3. Get smaller things done in a bunch:

The essence of 1 and 2 is that you divide your work up into functionally independent parts, and go at them one at a time in reasonable time slots, and if additional items pop up, add them to the list and tackle them later. Generally when you do this, you will end up with a number of tasks that do not take much time to finish off. Or there might be some small finishing touches remaining to your bigger items that are 90% done. So once in a while, round up all these little ones, and run through them in one fell swoop.

In an occasional deviation from its usual way, Woot has what are called “woot-offs” where it will feature one product till it is sold off, and then immediately feature the next product. This goes on for a day or two, or until all the inventory has been cleared. This is a great way for them to sell off smaller items, left overs from previous sales, or just items that are in small enough quantities to sell out in a matter of hours. They don’t have to dedicate a full day to those, and as an added benefit, the fans go into all sorts of hysteria.

4. “Good enough” is good enough:

Ever got anything done that was simple, elegant, and almost perfect? And then decided to make it just perfect? And then ended up spending hours on it trying to get it right, and in the process breaking something and complicating the rest? Yeah, we’ve all been there. Apparently, perfect is the enemy of good. And most of the time, your work only needs to be “good enough” and not perfect, and you could have spent those last few frustrating hours actually getting more work done. If something is simple and works well enough as per the requirements – stick with it.

I asked Woot about their shipping strategy (yes I research my posts, even the ones as bad as this one) and how it works out for them. The main site provides a flat shipping rate of $5 for all products, regardless of the price, size, weight or distance. Sometimes during woot-offs, the shipping costs more than the product itself. And HDTVs cost more to ship than the USB drives. So this is not the most ideal way of doing things, but still, it is very simple and consistent.

The Woot rep told me that basically, they more or less break even on the shipping costs. They have a single carrier alleigiance going that lets them offer cheap rates. Given their already low base prices, it is often still a great deal even after adding in the 5 bucks for shipping. The repeat customers know that they’ll basically save money on bigger items and are cool with a slightly more tax on the smaller items. Also, once they are hooked, its not like they’ll have a choice anyway (He seriously said that!!! Well okay, not in so many words…) So the gist of it: Even though their system is not “perfect” for each individual product, it makes up for it with simplicity and consistency that lets them break even on shipping AND does not cost them business either. Nicely done.

5. Consolidate then build:

All the tips before this deal with how to get work done. This one is more about how to achieve larger goals. Ever decided to lose weight/cut expenses/exercise more/learn a new skill? In doing so, ever gone at it all guns blazing, only to run out of ammo in a week? Everyone has done some variant of this at some scale. Sure, it gives great results if it works, but it is not _sustainable_. To make lasting changes in our lives, the changes need to be sustainable. And for this, we need to start small, and build up slowly, as we get used to the small changes.

It is much easier for our mind and body to accomodate cumulative small changes, than to absorb a drastic change. For instance when your goal is to lift 100lbs, when you have not done any heavy lifting for a long time, going all out at the 100lbs is not going going to help. Instead you need to start with lifing 10lbs and doing it till it just feels natural. Once you start thinking of 10lbs as ‘light’, move on to lifting 20lbs, and so on till you reach 100lbs. At that point, lifting 100lbs will feel like no big deal at all.

When Woot started out, it started as a single site selling a single product per day. Since then, it has grown and launched sister sites that sell t-shirts, wine, kids’ stuff, and even more random crap. They did not do it all from Day One. They first consolidated their base, and then one at a time, added new ventures.

And it works the same way for life too. Take it one step at a time, plan ahead, but still live in the present. Everything happens in its own time. Don’t worry too much about the future, nor obsess over the past. Take a deep breath, relax, and you’ll get there in due time.

So these, ladies and gentlemen, were the lessons you can learn from Woot about getting things done. We are running out of time today, but I will be back after the weekend with five more lessons on Life that we can learn from Woot.

[1] Which seemingly has two main schools of thought: “you are perfect just the way you are” and “you are doing everything wrong”. A third one exists, which essentially says “we are boned, so why even care”. Unfortunately no one has bothered to write up any literature regarding the third school of thought, because quite frankly, we are boned, so why even care.

When gay marriage has been legalized in enough places for long enough and enough kind of people have been married enough number of times, you can bet your ass, this is going to happen:

[Person 1] “My first husband would always get annoyed when I brought up my first wife in some conversation”
[Person 2] “You mean your second husband…”
[Person 1] “No, my first husband. He was the second person I was married to, but he still was the first husband. My last husband would be my second husband.”
[Person 2] “Last husband?”
[Person 1] “Yeah, after two men, i decided that i really just liked women better.”
[Person 2] “So you are with your fourth partner now?”
[Person 1] “No, I got back together with my first wife. Also, we do not use the word ‘partner’… we think it is a discriminative term from the ‘defense of marriage’ days.”
[Person 2] “… Thank god i am single.”

Summer is upon us. It’s camping time! This is also the time when geeks and nerds agree to go on camping trips with whatever friends they have left, just to prove once and for all that they arent vampires and that they wont spontaneously burst into flames if exposed to direct sunlight. As pointless as the exercise is, it is also very dangerous. Do not fear though, for I have your back. From experience, I have put together a handy 10 Item Wilderness Survival Kit that should help you save your ass long enough for it to get rescued.

1. Knife: Comes in handy to tighten/loosen screws in any abandoned shafts that you might find.

2. Screwdriver: You could stab someone with it.

3. Compass: Not just any stupid compass that points north, but a special one that points towards the raptors. A fulctuating compass means theres more than one of them out there. If it starts spinning, it means you are surrounded. And screwed.

4. Fire Wool: You will need this to start fires. Fire is a very useful power, but has its pros and cons.
Con: Tiny fires can tip off your position to the raptors.
Pro: A fire big enough can be used to scare the raptors off.
Con: A fire big enough can burn down the whole goddamn forest.
Pro: All you can eat BBQ.

5. Laser: Raptors are like cats: Stealthy, deadly, jumpy, and make a funny purring noise when you rub their bellies. And they are mersmerized by lasers. Just point one to the ground in front of the raptor and watch the fun for hours. You can literally hypnotize them with it. Though soon they get a bit aggressive and start viciously attacking the spot. Thats when you point it on another raptor and watch some cold blooded raptor on raptor action. They’ll even willingly follow it into the tar pit. Just dont brag about it after you are rescued. PETA will hand you your ass if they find out.

6. Condoms: Getting stranded in a forest and being hunted by raptors is, quite honestly, plain bad luck. The law of averages demands that there be something to level that off. And to level something like that off, you need to get lucky. Like really – really lucky. Just get a 15 pack is what I’m saying.

7. Tranquilizers: You’ll need these to make your own DIY ghetto hipster darts. I strongly recommend the new improved stronger faster acting longer lasting formula which comes in re-inforced vials… basically, the best you can afford. Tranquilizers are not something you try to cut corners on. And lets face it, if you go anywhere without these babies, karmatically speaking, you deserve to die.

8. Change. You know, dollar bills and quarters. “I am fraking stranded in a fraking forest teeming with fraking raptors!!” is no excuse for being a miserly tipper. And last thing you want when eating an unevenly roasted swamp reptile BBQ is someone else’s spit in it.

9. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: When you finally run out of wits and tranquilizers, do not despair, for there is one last hope. The raptors will typically work as a team to corner you, and one of them will go for the kill. He will get the yummiest part of you while the others devour your less palatable parts. You can work this to your advantage. Simply convince the raptor that caught you, that by having to give up the barely edible parts of you to the loser raptors, whose only contribution to the hunt was to corner you so he could have the best parts of you, he is being punished for being totally awesome. Which is totally unfair. And that to protest against such radical communism, he should go on a strike and not take parts in any hunts.

This works in two ways. First, you will have one less raptor hunting you, and second, selfishness is rather contagious. Just give it time, and the concept will spread to other raptors. Anyone who reads Rand is bound to act like an asshole for a month afterwards. Without the team work, the raptors will only be fractionally effective, and dodging them should be fairly easy. Also without any hunting for a month, they’ll be starving and will invariably devour each other. A month should also be fairly long enough to get you rescued. Unless the contract gets renewed for one more season.

10. Cyanide Pill: For when you run into Reavers. Unless it was River in #6.

Ofcourse, all these measures are moot if there is no search and rescue operation out for you. And lets face it, very few people in real life are going to realize that you have been gone for a month. Your only failsafe measure in this case is what you do before you leave. Configure multiple “Dead Man’s Scripts” to execute on multiple servers, which would alert your forums, wikis and social networks that you are quite possibly in grave danger, and update them with your last known coordinates. Someone somewhere should care enough to get the ball rolling towards rescuing you. If no one cares even that much, I say its time you start making friends with the raptors.

Here is the poem in its entirety.

We all came out to Middle Earth
Under Lord Thenegel’s bloodline
To make records with the mankind
We didnt have much time.
Prince Theodred and Eomer
Were at the best place around
But some stupid Ring of power
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky

They burned down Theoden’s house
It died with an awful sound
Funky Shark¹ was churning armies out
Pulling trees out the ground
When it all was over
We had to fight another place
But halfling’s time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky

We ended up at the Gondor’s gates
It was rancid gloom and dread
But with the massive orc host thing just out side
Skew’ring our armies there
With a few ring wraiths and a few orc bands
We make a fight to death
No matter what we get out of this
I know we’ll never forget
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky

[1]: Saruman, “Sharkey of many colours”.

This poster warns the corner cutting code minions about the dangers of using “goto”. Remember kids, if you use goto in your code, you will die a horrible and painful (albeit spectacular) death… which really will be the least of your problems. If you use ‘goto’ you’re going to burn in a very special level of hell. The level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

I used the font from the famous ‘got milk?’ campaign for some iconic effect and the blood splatter for the gruesome death part.

Here is a quickly put together word cloud from last night’s Presidential Address. It was a good speech, inspiring and grounded, signature Obama. The word cloud shows some of the more important words in his speech, by the frequency of their usage.

Detailed Cloud:

This is the more detailed cloud I got after running through the whole transcript and weeding out white noise. “America” and its variants were the most frequent words, with 60 occurrences, and “Economy” came in second with 30.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking and let you get an idea of the rest yourself.

(Frequency Table)

(click for a larger image)

In Soviet Russia, Code Reviews You!

The phrase featured here is an example of “Russian Reversal”. Wikipedia has an explanation of it here. The joke itself (which by the way died a painful death, the moment I had to explain it) is about programmers having to do code reviews. Sometimes, they don’t like their code being reviewed, and much less having to review others’ code. But it is an essential practice which will save them a lot of time and headache later on.  This take on it is more along the lines of “Eat your veggies, there are millions of kids in India and China who don’t get enough to eat.” [Yes, even Indian mothers use that line...]

Its all in the name:
Though the parental instinct is to pour your own thoughts, ideas, ambitions, eccentricities, geekiness, likes and dislikes into the kids name, you really shouldn’t. Give your kid too clever a name, and invariably, it will be shortened to something really embarrassing, and half the class will make fun of it. Its more or less a no win situation. You might give your kid a beautiful name like “Satyam” or “Hussein”, and it works like a charm for a while, but invariably, decades later, some corrupt company or some dictator comes along and totally ruins it for them.

Its okay to give them geeky nicknames, but do not forget to null terminate them. You don’t want to call your kid Exemelle_#$%#0*&^%HkG^!. And I’m telling you from experience, please do not use nicknames that just BEG to be slaughtered by evil siblings. That is just cruel.

Everyone is equal:
It is important to let your kid know that there is no difference between guys and girls. They are the same. Despite what the girls say. Girls aren’t really bad at driving — except when they are on the phone, and guys are very much capable of cleaning up — when they feel like it. Never let them feel that they are bad at something just because of their sex. Also, contrary to what some people would lead you to believe, you are judged you for who you are, and not what demographic you belong to.

Women do not always get what they want just by shedding a few tears, or simply by looking all cute and folksy. And when it comes to it, prejudices that you think to be too deep might not be all that deep after all. All it takes is hard work, competence and a healthy disregard for conventional wisdom. Which brings us to the next point…

It is okay to break the Rules:
Rules and conventions are for the weak. So Kids: you should know that rules are meant to be broken. Especially the ones set by your parents. You should always listen to your uncle though. Uncles have your best interests at heart. Your uncle isnt going to screw with your head simply because your mom was mean to him as a kid. And he isnt asking you to destroy mommy’s favorite dress because she always got better grades, it is because mommy loves the dress more than she loves you… and it has to be taken out of the way.

So basically, when it comes to rules, its a matter of knowing which ones to break and which ones to follow. Its more of a judgment call. Of course, your uncle is always there for you in case you cannot decide on your own. Also remember: Watching too much TV wont hurt your eyes, or your brain. Eating a cookie right before dinner wont kill your appetite either. And if it does, there’s always one coming along right behind it.

Facts of life:
Getting back to the parents again. Kids grow up faster than you think. And sometimes, they ask questions to which you have no easy answers. Sooner or later, they are going to start asking about the birds and the bees, the macs and the PCs. I suggest you wash your hands off the matter and let them find out on their own.

Just like names, its a battle you cant win. You tell them too soon, they are scarred for the rest of their lives. Tell them too late, and its… well, too late. Though its never too early to start telling your kids about how Open Source is so much better than closed source.

Always have a contingency plan:
I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Even if you do everything right, even if you follow all the advice I gave down to the last word, theres always a chance that something might just go wrong. In these cases, you need a contingency plan. You cannot just make it up at the last moment. You need to have this stuff planned from the begining. I suggest starting early, and sticking to the plan.

Depending oh how effective her uncle is, you will almost certainly face a situation where she — and others — need to be protected from herself. At that point, you will need to make some tough choices. On second thoughts, I should not have let that plan slip.

So there you go. Five solid tips about parenting from your brother. And remember, your brother has your best interests at heart. He would never screw with your head simply because your husband called him names.

I went ahead an analyzed all “those” conversations to get some good insight.  After removing the usual noise words (“love”, “school”), proper nouns (“Satyam”, “Summer Glau”, “Orlando Bloom”), words that sounded too dirty without context (“nibbler”), words that did not sound dirty enough (“yes”) and words that could torpedo my bid for Senate, I got this word cloud:

 (click for a larger image)

Pretty much says it all, doesnt it. Have fun buying overpriced stuff.