The Start of a Long Day.

Its the very early, but I'm not so terribly surpised by that. I slept in until noon yesterday and then fell asleep around 9:30 pm, so yesterday was (duration wise) a short day. Psychologically it lasted for ages. As a result, I slept for only mumblety-thing-foo (cain't do math yet this morning) hours and am now awake.

Still, that means I have a few hours to eat breakfast, drink coffee, and read LJ and stuff before having to start hauling stuff around in the basement. Later this evening we'll head out to the monthly LJ Meetup where some relaxing will (most hopefully) be done with the knowledge that the plumbers have been summoned and that either Wednesday or Thursday we'll get a new water heater.

The last two nights I have very promptly fallen asleep upon going to bed, which is practically unheard of for me, especially given my mental states at the time. The only thing that seems to have changed is that I had a small glass of Portuguese Porto before retiring each night (a gift from the party). Maybe I've discovered something? Time will tell.

Business Innovation Patterns.

Nothing profound here, but I thought I would write this down before the idea slipped away.

Once upon a time Christopher Alexander wrote "A Pattern Language" about ways of designing buildings that were pleasant to live in. While the book had many omissions and contained much that was apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it had a large friendly cover. It also got people thinking about overlapping patterns in design space. From that thinking emerged, a number of years later, the software industry's current obsession with design patterns. Now, for the most part this is a good thing™ as making people think about the abstract design elements in their code helps make the code better, although many of the books I have read on the subject also follow the tradition of many omiissions, and much that is inaccurate. Lately there has been evidence that this subfield is starting to mature and more competent books are now being written, but that's beside the point.

What I recently noticed when I sat down to write up all of the various business notions that I have had, is that they seem also to follow a set of design patterns. If I worked hard I could probably extract a set of business design patterns and write a book about it. I wonder if it would sell?

Badly Named Products.

Sent to me by my dad:

Say What?

Just overheard on the Home and Garden TV channel:

"The problem with planting vines in your garden is ensuring they use their super powers for good and not evil."

Eeep! Shades of the Metal Men, even.

Chronic Back Pain found to Shrink the Brain.

Here's something I would never have guessed. According to betterhumans a recent study shows that the brain actually shrinks by roughly 1 cc per year under the onslaught of persistent and chronic pain. No one knows yet if it does or does not involve the loss of neurons or if it is or is not reversible.

Stem Cell treatment for MS?

According to an article by Betterhumans, researchers have had some initial successes with turning embrionic stem cells into oligodendrocytes which are the cells responisble for sheathing nerve cells in myelin. When injected into myelin-deficient mice, these cells migrated to appropriate places and started producing myelin sheathes. This is a very encouraging result. It doesn't present a road to a cure, but it means that we may be only a few years away from a regimen of treatment that can halt the progress of MS in its tracks and probably go a long way towards reversing the damage, until such time as a proper cure is developed.

Company-Internal Store Software.

I first had this idea a few years ago when I was doing the old 'If I ever own my own business' type of musing. I have had the frustration (more than once) of dealing with the bureauocracy inherent in trying to buy a new mechanical pencil, ruler or some quad paper while at work. Usually this involves going through one or more catalogs, circling items or adding sticky notes, getting approval for the list and handing the whole thing to a secretary who phones the items in to the store. Then, several days later, it all shows up in a large box with everyone else's purchase and you have to fight for the items you specifically requested because your cow-orkers never imagined they might want a pair of scissors.

It seems to me that this problem has already been 98% solved by online stationary stores. What is needed is a company-internal purchasing portal. Give each employee an online account with some fiddling small allowance -- $10 per month is probably plenty. Then, anytime an employee needs some stationary they just go to the intranet store containing pre-approved items and selects what they want. The cost is subtracted from their account and the order is automatically combined with all other orders that day and the items are ordered from the real website. Then, when the stuff arrives it can be checked against the generated order and folks can get their stuff by internal mail.

This would ensure that folks can get the supplies they need with little or no hassle, and if someone is frugal they can save up for a few months and buy a $35 white board for their office. Why not?