Archive for December, 2007

As a software programmer, one of the things you learn early on is, “Correlation does not imply causation.”

Just because you added something, or made a change somewhere, and something else occurs, it is dangerous to immediately conclude that the changes you made is the cause. Oftentimes things just occur at the same time, without necessarily being related.

On a project I work on for a client, we deployed a small change that added a popup calendar to some date fields in the HTML. That was pretty much the extent of the changes we made. Soon after the deploy, the client discovered a date-conversion bug in the application, and made the implication that the popup calendar we added was the cause of the bug. When in fact, they had nothing to do with each other. It just happens they discovered the bug, which had been there in the code for a long time, at the same time we deployed this update.

And what does the title of this blog have to do with what I’ve written so far? Nothing. I just was going to mention that I’ve just noticed now that when I’ve moved here to Minneapolis, I’ve been having a lot more dreams, far more visual dreams, than I ever had when I was in DC.

Correlation does not imply causation.

As some of you might have learned in high school physics class, objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

I was sitting at the dining room table with my mother last night. She asked me when I was planning on leaving for California. “After christmas.”, I told her.

She gave me a pained expression and said, “You could stay here one or two more months. It’s really nice having you at home.”

“I can’t. I need to move on.”

“Why do you need to leave after Christmas? You could just leave a month later.”

“That’s exactly why I need to leave. If I don’t leave now I’ll never leave. I’ll find a house I like, buy it, and settle down. Ill get a dog or something, and before I know it, I’ll be rooted here.”

*laughing* “Is that so terrible?”

“It’s not terrible. It’s actually something I think about everyday. And that’s the scary part. I left DC with the intent to move out and make a life in California. I left DC with an amazing arrangement with my boss to continue working while I travel. I can’t waste this opportunity by just settling down here. I need to stick with the plan.”

We moved on to other subjects – however after I had left my parent’s house, I thought about it while driving back to my brother’s place. It was all about getting comfortable. People like to build little comfort zones in their lives.

Right now I’m purposedly denying myself any comfort, so I don’t get sucked into staying here. I’m living out of my brother’s guest room. I’m traveling around doing work at various coffee houses. My stuff are still in boxes. I haven’t unpacked.

That state of mind is as necessary as a firm deadline ahead of me. The need to keep thinking that this is all just a stop along the way. An extended one, but still just a stop.  Just stopping for a cup of coffee.