I found this neat post today via “Joel on Software” about the difference between Incrementalists & Completionists. According to Rands, Incrementalists are people who will do just what they need to do to solve an immediate problem, even if it doesn’t address the whole problem. And Completionists are people who want to solve the whole problem right the first time. He says Incrementalists are realists and Completionists are dreamers.
I decided that I’m a Completionist but I wish I were an Incrementalist. I feel like I have tons of good ideas for businesses, or software programs, or blizzog posts or whatever, but I spend so much time thinking about how to do them exactly the right way that I never end up doing anything. I either talk myself out of it or end up getting bored with it because I’ve moved on to the next thing. Rands says that it’s good to have both types of people in an organization. He’s right, but I think if you’re an entrepreneur trying to start a business or a writer trying to start a new piece or a programmer trying to start a fake internet rap group - all things that I aspire to - it is much better to be an Incrementalist.
When you’re an Incrementalist you just do things. Some of them turn out good and some of them don’t, but at least you’ve done something and often you can learn from the mistakes you made on the bad things. I wish I could be more like that. There’s a guy I used to work with at Sara Lee who is this way and I’m totally jealous. We didn’t have a .NET User’s Group in this area a couple years ago so he just started one. He didn’t like the way SQL Query Analyzer worked so he just started writing his own at home one day. When it started to flesh out after a month or so he put up a web site to release new builds and eventually started selling them for a few bucks here and there. I just checked in on it the other day and it seems that he’s sold the software to a larger software company in the Triangle and is probably making or made some decent money off of it.
I think both of those things are so cool. I don’t think I could’ve done either of them. I would still be designing the 5th Option tab for the SQL Editor and I’d still be writing other .NET User Group presidents to find out the best way to start a group. I have domain names for business ideas that I thought of years ago that I keep paying money to renew every year just in case I might actually do something with it one day. Ugh.
I want to change but I think it’s going to be hard. At least I have a plan though: as soon as I figure out the best possible way to become an Incrementalist I’m going to do it. 
Just a quickie before I dash out the door. The rest of our vacation was super-fun. I would’ve posted more pics/details but my laptop died almost right after I made my last post. Anyway, I’ll try to get a post together about the trip but this is a busy week. I’m running out to watch some football tonight with the boys. AG and I have a back massage class tomorrow night. Werd. Wednesday I have my HOA meeting. Not Werd.
If anything I feel very refreshed after the vacation. It was much-needed and long overdue. It’s kinda made me realize that even though I feel very busy all the time I’m really not all that busy. If I can just drop everything for a week and come back and have no real consequences, maybe I’m not as busy as I think I am. Maybe I just have poor time management skillz. Maybe I’m just a whiner. It’s probably that second thing.
More later. Out.
Greetings from Charleston, SC! We have been having a great time since arriving here on Friday. After all the back and forth about whether we should come here with the potential hurricane problems, it turns out that we could not have made a better choice. The weather here has been AMAZING for the past few days. There’s been a nice breeze, highs in the mid 70s to low 80s, and hardly any humidity. In other words, the opposite of what the weather is usually like here. Everyone we run in to is commenting on how nice and unusual the weather is. Good times.
We’re staying at the Holiday Inn Historic District. Alright, I know what you’re thinking. Out of all the historic inns and neat boutique places you could stay in Charleston, why the Holiday Inn? That’s what we said too. We actually stayed here based upon some strong recommendations from people on TripAdvisor.com, which is a pretty cool travel site. Most people recommended this place because of the concierge here, a guy named Kevin McQuade. This guy is unreal. He knows this place like the back of his hand and everything he has recommended to do or eat has been nothing short of fabulous.
Tonight is technically supposed to be our last night here. The original plan was to leave tomorrow and go home so we could relax the rest of the week with nothing in particular to do. Since the weather is so great, we’re thinking about trucking up to Myrtle Beach tomorrow and spending Thursday and Friday soaking up some sun. As I write this, we’re still up in the air about what we’re going to do.
I’ll post more later with some pictures and detail about what we’ve been up to.
I’ve been super busy lately so that’s why I haven’t posted. We launched the application I’ve been working on all year into production last week. By all accounts it has been a big success. Our internal clients are very happy because their external clients are very happy. So I feel very positive about the work that we’ve done. Good times.
Outside of work I’ve been dealing with issues related to my HOA presidency duties. Not good times. A word of advice: if you ever have the opportunity to lead your HOA, run.
As of now AG and I are on vacation. The only problem is that we’re not sure where we’re going. We have reservations in historic downtown Charleston from tomorrow into next week. We’ve been waffling all week on what to do because of these freaking hurricanes. We look to be pelted with some water by Ivan, which is no big deal. But it’s now looking like Jeanne will be hitting the Carolinas next week while we’re in Charleston. So who knows.
The important part is that we’ll be together and not working, so though I’m stressing out a little bit I’m thankful to have these next 10 days off of work. I’m going to take my laptop with me on the road. If we end up somewhere with Internet access I’ll get my post on and maybe send a few pictures from wherever we end up.
See ya later.
Must. Stop. Playing. Civ III. You. Guys.
Seriously….late….must…stop….
It’s cold…..so cold………BLARGGHGGHGHGHGGH!!!
In honor of Labor Day, I give you the blizzog’s first article.
I have to actually work today. :( Feh.
UPDATE: I got out of work early. Now I’m chillin’ at home with some leftover BBQ and my best friend….
Werd.
As most of you know my better half and I have been trying to decide for some time whether we want to have kids or not. There are just so many unknowns for us that we don’t want to do it unless we’re absolutely certain. Not high on the list of concerns, but still on the list, is whether our baby would be cute or not. This is admittedly a bit shallow, but I think this is something that every potential parent thinks about at least for a little bit when contemplating parenthood.
Well, thanks to technology we no longer have to worry about this question. This weekend we enlisted the services of a new contraption called “The Gene Machine”. It essentially took a picture of both of our faces and, using advanced face recognition algorithms and other biometric indicators, was able to produce a picture of what our baby was likely to look like.
So now for the first time, I present to you a picture of our unborn son.
Pretty strong resemblence, don’t you think? I’m very proud.
Thanks to my man Scotty G, I’m now the proud new owner of a geek chic Google GMail beta account. I managed to score the much sought-after “jamie.gaines” username. Awesome.
The app itself is pretty cool. It kicks the pants off of crappy Yahoo and Hotmail. The only problem is that I don’t really need another e-mail address. I pretty much rock the jamiegaines.com addy for personal stuff and zig.com address for work stuff. I keep an extra account around that I use for porn….errrrrrrrrr, “online shopping”, and that’s pretty much it. Well, almost. I have a Hotmail account that I use only because I have to have one in order to be on Microsoft’s Passport chumpee that I use for work stuff.
So right now I basically have a cool address that I have zero use for. Hmmm.. I suppose I could get a whole new set of friends besides you guys and have them e-mail me at my Gmail account. That way I could at least keep my correspondence organized between my pre-GMail and post-GMail friends. I could switch that over to be my default address that I use for signing up for stuff online. The only pisser with that is that I open myself up to spammers, though I tend to do a pretty good job anymore of not signing up for crap that I’ll get spam for.
Oh well. Apparently I’m going to have to think more about this. What should I use my new GMail account for?
