Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I create software for people that create software and I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

News and Commentary

September 11 entries

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 22 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

My entires on September 11th were short and somewhat disjointed. I have combined all of them into a single post for archiving purposes - 9/11/02.

Eric Raymond: "It is arguable that the lawmakers who disarmed all the non-terrorists on those four airplanes, leaving them no chance to stop the hijackers, bear part of the moral responsibility for this catastrophe."
- O'Reilly Network: Attacks on US: Weblogs Tell Personal Stories

Jason Kottke has lots of links to photos of the crashes and the aftermath.

Wired News: "At a Duane Reade drugstore in Chinatown just north of the Financial District, shoppers wanting to capture the sight of the burning buildings rushed to buy cameras. 'The only thing I sold today was cameras. Within an hour of the first initial hit, we sold 60 to 100 cameras,' said James Jack, manager of the Duane Reade store."
- Tower Tchotchkes Hot Souvenir

I think that Ashcroft meant www.ifccfbi.gov.

Of the first 400 firefighters to reach the scene at the WTC today, half may be dead according to MSNBC

John Ashcroft just mentioned that the hijackers were armed with knives. He also gave a web address to use if you have information about the crimes. the address he gave, www.ifccfbi.com, has an under construction page up right now.

Slashdot: Our New Pearl Harbor - "All around New York City, psychologists are showing up at school bus stops to deal with kids whose parents aren’t coming home."

Earlier I linked to Scripting News. Dave continues to post more links to interesting stories. If you want to stay informed, reload his site every few minutes.

More from Camword: "A friend from the midwest tells me that gas prices tomorrow are going up to $2.65/gallon because some of the gas refineries have closed due to terrorist threat."

The law of supply and demand continue on.

A Google Image search for "World Trade Center" turns up spectacular photos of the buildings as they looked before the attack.

Many times today I’ve heard people marvel at the fact that we had no warning. One would think that with such a well-planned attack our intelligence agencies would have had some idea. It made me think about conspiracy theories of Echelon and the government’s encryption-cracking capabilities. If the government was really monitoring every piece of communication, wouldn’t they have heard something? Doesn’t this cast doubts on the existance of Echelon?

Scobelizer: Starbucks has closed for the day to let employees be at home.

From Camworld: "12:22 PM: Outside the hospital down the street from my apartment there is a guy holding up a sign saying 'We need blood.'"

Some links to the better coverage on today’s horrific New York tragedy...

Recently Written

Micromanaging and competence (Jul 2)
Providing feedback or instruction can be seen as micromanagement unless you provide context.
My productivity operating system (Jun 24)
A framework for super-charging productivity on the things that matter.
Great product managers own the outcomes (May 14)
Being a product manager means never having to say, "that's not my job."
Too Big To Fail (Apr 9)
When a company piles resources on a new product idea, it doesn't have room to fail. That keeps it from succeeding.
Go small (Apr 4)
The strengths of a large organization are the opposite of what makes innovation work. Starting something new requires that you start with a small team.
Start with a Belief (Apr 1)
You can't use data to build products unless you start with a hypothesis.
Mastery doesn’t come from perfect planning (Dec 21)
In a ceramics class, one group focused on a single perfect dish, while another made many with no quality focus. The result? A lesson in the value of practice over perfection.
The Dark Side of Input Metrics (Nov 27)
Using input metrics in the wrong way can cause unexpected behaviors, stifled creativity, and micromanagement.

Older...

What I'm Reading