Passing On The Turkey

Excited to be taking a short holiday jaunt to Ireland for Thanksgiving. I continue to be fascinated and joyful at how better sleep and nutrition have improved my willingness and ability to interact with the world.

As a bit of extra fun, I'll get to check off three new countries during this trip. Ireland, obviously, but a four hour layover in Toronto will technically give me Canada, and we'll be spending a day in London on our way back.

Now to spend some time using my recent trips to see about upgrading my travel kit, updating my packing lists, and looking for other ways to sand down foreseeable friction points.

Checklist Or Pink Slip

My protocols for the office are basically check lists, sometimes with options and branching, describing how a task or set of tasks should be performed.

Originally, the office didn't have any, which was way too few, now, after looking at the list I posted a few days ago, I may be going too far the other way.

Still, I find having protocols useful in several ways:

  1. Codifying how a given process is successfully completed gives a better understanding of what the process is trying to achieve, where it works well, where it has frictions points, and where it doesn't work at all. The process also helps highlight edge cases, decreasing the likelihood we'll be caught off guard.

  2. Giving my employees a clear understanding of their job responsibilities and how they'll best achieve them. Protocols are always updatable, and if they have better ideas, or identify problems we improve them.

  3. Clear goals, expectations, and processes mean increased efficiency, easier collaboration, and generally reduced stress for everyone involved.

  4. A double edged promise: If you follow the protocols I've approved and something doesn't work, that's on me, and I'll take full responsibility. However if you don't follow them and you make a mistake you otherwise wouldn't have, that's all on you.

This is why it confuses the heck out of me when employees ignore the protocols, make overt mistakes, and are then confused why they're in trouble. We've been doing this for almost 15 years, and it feels like everything we've learned we've learned the hardest way possible. All that learning has gone into the protocols our current employees are asked to work from, and when they ignore them to make the same painful mistakes we've worked so hard to solve, and worse make a habit of those mistakes, it's deeply aggravating.

So the final use of protocols: Firing people with cause.

Just Stop Lying

Two weeks ago we saw an excellent adaptation of Ibsen's 'An Enemy of the People' at Centenary (excellent performances of terrible characters left me incensed). Last week it was an adaptation of Orwell's '1984' at Kilgore (impeccably performed, but not a very good adaptation). This week we'll be seeing 'Urinetown' at Bossier Parish.

Arguably, many plays are about the struggle against types of totalitarianism and power abuse, but that all three of these colleges are opening their current season with overtly politcal pieces portraying governmental corruption has caught my attention.

None of the plays are specifically liberal in terms of current US politics (though the dark mindsets portrayed in them tend to be harbored more among conservatives, in my experience), but I can't escape the feeling they're being performed at least in part as a response to Trump's presidency.

That the leaders of these departments, adults like Micah Goodding and Logan Sledge, would tend to have a liberal bent wouldn't surprise me at all, but what I'm really wondering is how things are playing out behind the scenes with the young East Texan/West Louisianan theater students, particularly the white ones.

Hope And Patience

With the recent release of macOS Catalina, I'm eager to start experimenting with SwiftUI and the new code based interface construction available with Xcode 11 and the new OS.

I've been watching some tutorials for it, chiefly Paul Hudson's, and while what I've watched are all for iOS not macOS, there is plenty enough crossover to get me started.

My problem is twofold, however:

1) Catalina breaks programs I need to do my job (one of them's a bit of abandonware I'm rewriting myself, but with things like Hazel, I'm forced to wait.

2) Apple's track records with the latest release of iOS and iPadOS is terrible, and I'm worried Catalina's gonna be delivered in the same broken fashion.

Even assuming SwiftUI allows me to deal better with interface elements and gives me opportunity to write cleaner, more powerful code, at this point it would take months to port the office programs over, and my plate's already overflowing.

So I do have hope of improvement for my design problems, or at least a bit of help, just not terribly soon.

O' Checkbox, Where Art Thou?!

Xcode's auto constraints are chapping my hide this morning.

There's no arguing I should've learned how to deal with constraints more thoroughly earlier on, but when I started working with Xcode it was pretty reliable about leaving interface elements where I placed them in the storyboard views at run time. Since at least Xcode 10, though, I've had to take a lot more time locking elements down with constraints manually lest they go wandering all across the screen, particularly on machines running older versions of macOS.

The nature of my programs means there are generally a lot of checkboxes, labels, and text fields in a given view, and while I'm sure there are better ways to handle visual design than the one's I'm using, Xcode's current methods of automatically locking down elements in relation to one another is causing me all kinds of grief.

Cleaning Up My Playlist

Faouzia's voice is almost miraculous. Unlike Fenne Lily, I feel her lyrics do betray her youth, but I'm more than happy to just be wrapped up in the powerful warmth of her voice.

This song hits me hard and deep, and has become something of an anthem for me.

Neither deep, nor wide, but very sexy and it makes me want to dance. Just have to overlook the line "like sweat drippin' down our dirty laundry". Seriously, Niall, you couldn't do a bit better than that?

Another one that makes me immediately want to dance. I'd never heard of WILD before, now I'm desperate to see them live.

Tender, uncertain, honest, hopeful, trusting. Ms. Shark catches it all up in a wonderful story that makes me smile.

Protocols In Swift Are Much More Straightforward

Focusing on my actual task list this morning, but it turns out having an item like:

Redo all Front Desk protocols

Isn't as helpful as I thought it would be when I put it on the list as it took the morning to turn into:

Identify all the protocols which need to be re/written

  • Check in Process
  • Check out Process
  • Phone Protocols
  • Lab Prep and Check in
  • Cleaning
  • Opening and Closing
  • Reminder Calls
  • Returned Mail
  • Screening New Patients
  • Visit Scheduling
  • 3rd Party Interaction Protocols (drug rats, shredding co, etc)
  • Emergency Situation Protocols (fire, power outage, internet outage, belligerent patient)
  • Sending Faxes
  • Receiving and processing faxes
  • Handling voice mails

Do the Re/Writing

Put them all together in an easy to reference digital file

Put them together in an easy to reference printing document

Put together a set of protocols for updating these protocols in both their digital and printed forms.

That last bit about writing protocols for updating protocols has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever written . . . but I probably still need to do it.