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Author Archives Cary Millsap

A Lesson in Writing from 1944

I watched the Presidential debate tonight. One of the candidates mentioned a pair of letters that General Dwight David Eisenhower wrote in 1944. He wrote one letter that he would use in the event of a victorious Normandy invasion, and he wrote another …

Posted 27 September 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Miracle Open World 2008 presentation

Have a look at the video abstract for my Miracle Open World 2008 presentation, “Millsap’s Grand Unified Theory of ‘Tuning’.”

Posted 17 September 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Business of Software 2008, day 2

Greetings from the second and final day of “Business of Software 2008, the first ever Joel on Software conference.”Yesterday was a hard act to follow, but today met the challenge. Today’s roster:Steve Johnson, of Pragmatic MarketingTom Jennings, of Sum…

Posted 05 September 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Business of Software 2008, day 1

Greetings from Boston, where I’m attending “Business of Software 2008, the first ever Joel on Software conference.”It has been fantastic so far. Here’s a featured presenters roll call for the day:Seth Godin, author of ten bestselling books about market…

Posted 04 September 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Hotsos Symposium 2009 Call for Papers

The Call for Papers for Hotsos Symposium 2009 is now open. To submit an abstract proposal for the event, please visit the Call for Papers page. The call will remain open until 24 October. This is your chance to get your name on the agenda and earn a co…

Posted 26 August 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Messed-Up App of the Day

My family has a cat. I don’t like to talk about it, because I really don’t like cats that much.One thing our cat does that’s kind of interesting to me, is that she brings “gifts” into our garage near her food bowl. Here’s a picture of one. She climbs t…

Posted 22 August 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

So how do you FIX the problems that “Performance as a Service” helps you find?

I want to respond carefully to Reubin’s comment on my Performance as a Service post from July 7. Reuben asked:i can see how you actually determine for a customer where the pain points are and you can validate user remarks about poor performance. But i …

Posted 11 July 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Christian Antognini’s new book: Troubleshooting Oracle Performance

I learned from a friend yesterday that Chris Antognini’s new book, Troubleshooting Oracle Performance, is available now. I just checked at Amazon, and the product is listed as temporarily out of stock. That’s good: it means people are buying them up.If…

Posted 10 July 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Performance as a Service

I’ve mentioned already that, for the second time in ten years, I’m starting a business. It’s a lot easier nowadays than it was back in 1999. I know; it’s supposed to be easier the second time you do something, but what I mean is different from that. It…

Posted 07 July 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Multitasking: Productivity Killer

A couple of years ago, I read Joel Spolsky’s article “Human Task Switches Considered Harmful,” and it resonated mightily. The key take-away from that article is this: Never let people work on more than one thing at once. Amen. The nice thing about Joel…

Posted 01 July 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °