Work Oddness

We have a customer that spends a lot of money with us (a high % of our revenue). Consequently, they get a lot of influence (perhaps too much?) on software release contents. However, they may not have used that influence wisely. Several of them went on a 4 week fishing (aka beer drinking) trip. The ones who were left have campaigned for which features they want, but now it turns out those features may not really be the priority tasks, which were being championed by the people who were out fishing. May be a case of "when the cat's away... ". Now little time is left for what might be the real priorities.

Of course, what this really means is that no one is in charge of their priorities and what vendors are asked to do, which is unfortunate, especially considering a budget of millions of dollars.

Couple of good election year books

Have just finished reading Big Lies, the Right Wing Propaganda Machine and and how it distorts the Truth, by Joe Conason. I found it to be well written and researched and organized. Although I knew some of the stuff, a lot of it is very revealing. I think he also has credibility since he does point out mistakes made by the Democrats as well.

Am in the home stretch of reading Fanatics and Fools by Arianna Huffington. She is an interesting read and is a Republican turned Democrat. The title of the book pertains to the Fanatics (Republicans) and the Fools (Democrats). Another good book, but could have used some editing: the last few chapters are more or less redundant with material presented earlier.