Start Walking

Posted on 31 August 2024 by Wayne Cook

Have you ever woken up and feel overwhelmed by all there is to do that day? I have. For me to accomplish something, and to do it well. I have to choose one task to complete and do it well. To accomplish something important, I choose a direction and just start walking. This morning, there were errands to run with Diana. This afternoon, I want to translate some notes I took at a Church conference to this blog.

We are all blessed with challenges. Some may be more difficult than others, but we are presented with challenges to help us grow. I personally would be bored not having opportunities to grow. In life, we have joyous times, challenging times, and growth times. It is great when joyous and growth come together. Too often it is the challenging times that bring about the growth.

“Wrong” choices lead to better choices

Early in his career, Kenny Rogers’ mother told him: “Always be happy where you are, but never be content to remain there.” Start walking. I know that God will never give up on us, if we do the same then there will always be a bright spot ahead. If you start walking, is there really a wrong decision? We may realize that we need to walk in a different direction, but if we had not started our journey, we would not know that. It is from our choices that we learn to make better choices.

Inspiration comes from Asking

We all come to roadblocks reaching our chosen destination. This may be in our studies as well as in our lives. Find trusted sources. Read and ask lots of questions. The only dumb question is the one that is not asked. I teach and I guarantee each of us will be thinking about a question we have and looking for the answer. We will not pay attention to what is happening around us and we may miss the answer. We can read textbooks, internet articles, scriptures, or a combination. Studying diligently helps us come up with our best ideas. Then we need to take those ideas to a trusted source, Family, teacher, God? It may not happen instantly, but a different perspective will help us develop a far better plan.

Start Dancing in the Rain

Many victories may come when you least expect it. As Vivian Greene said: “Lif isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It is about learning to dance in the rain.” Challenges come to all of us. Even in those trying times, we can choose out path and walk with the joy that grace will give us.

Develop Grit

Everything will not be easy. We need to develop our own grit to get through tough times. It is really nice when everything falls in place. I believe this will happen more often if we just start walking when we have choices to make. The more we make decisions, the better decisions we make. It is like hitting a fastball in baseball. The more you start walking the easier it is to choose the correct direction. Start walking. The baseball fastball video emphasizes the importance to reduce the number of decisions we make, hopefully down to only one. When we only have one decision to make, it is so much easier to start walking.

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Letters from the Past

Posted on 4 August 2024 by Wayne Cook

Introduction

Have you ever come across a box of letters saved by your parents? I just did. I am not sure what to do with these letters. Do you have suggestions. This is only the start of what I need to go through for my parents. This does not cover everything I have saved. Moving often has its benefits. But we have moved here since 1988 and added to our “stash” when my parents passed away in 2002. I do not look at these items too often, but they bring back many memories when I do. First of all, the first box with letters:

The letters are divided into various categories.

Government Envelopes

These envelopes are from United States Government sources. Notice the values of the stamps. Most government envelopes have preprinted stamps.

My father retired as a Captain in the Army at the end of World War II. He was also a lead scientist at the Naval Las Vegas Nuclear test site, so he had correspondence with the Department of the Army after the tests were completed.

Members of Congress receiving franking privileges. This envelope was sent to my father by Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas. All the envelope needed was Lloyd Bentsen’s name to be stamped on the envelope for it to be delivered to the specified address.

This is the third type of government envelop sold by the United States Post Office. For thirteen cents, the purchaser received the envelope and the postage to send it (assuming the weight was one ounce or less).

Aerogrammes (Via Airmail or Par Avion)

Sending letters via airmail used to be relatively more expensive than it is today. Most countries provided 0.5 ounce envelops that could be easily used, then folded and mailed. To have one language for postal services throughout the world, French was the chosen language. Par Avion was required to be printed on every air mail envelope. Most countries usually had their language also. France thought that the same should be done for all aviation, but Boeing, Lockhead, and McDonald-Douglas refused to put all of their instrumentation in French. Thus, English became the default language for flight training and instrumentation. The envelop has two sides.

The envelope is designed to be processed quickly. The “second fold” is the top of the back of the envelope when folded. The last section is folded inside the other two sections. Some people write on this last section, since it is inside the envelope. You can see the three flaps folded onto the first section so that the letter can be more easily processed without part of it catching on the machinery and being torn. The message is written on the inside of the envelope, thus keeping it a bit more private than our emails are today. I used to enjoy writing and receiving letters. Living on Guam for four years, I used these envelopes quite a bit. Most people on the island did not have phones, and phoning the “states” was really expensive. I will include the message part of this letter. Everyone wrote cursive then. You may or may not have the content interesting. It is messages between friends.

It was hard putting everything within such a small format. I think most people have been “Twitter-sized” and would probably have a hard time filling up this much space.

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Give up Something Good for Something Better

Posted on 23 June 2024 by Wayne Cook

We each have a given number of years on earth. It is hard to know how many that will be. There are many choices we have in how to spend our time. There are many good choices, but what are the best choices? We all need to choose wisely!

What I am Starting

I enjoy playing Solitaire each day. Articles say solitaire is good for “older” people. But there are better uses of my time. I decided to relearn Danish, even though I do not know where I will ever use it. It may be confusing, but I am also learning Spanish at the same time. Hopefully, it will not be too confusing, but after 23 days, it is going well. Also, one son is also learning a language, so we can compare how we are doing. Maybe there will be opportunities to use these languages in the future. We need to make sure we are ready, as much as possible, when these opportunities arrive.

What Started this Thought Process

In church today, we heard a beautiful song, His Eye Is On The Sparrow Lyric Video • Keith & Kristyn Getty • Heather Headley – YouTube. We all have challenges in our lives. It is what we do with those challenges that really matters.

Work

There are so many important tasks I what to accomplish. At work this includes getting ready for two classes I am teaching this fall semester, relearning LISP with one student, and organizing a seminar in July. The seminar is to introduce Front Range Community Colleges Computer Science students to the Computer Science Department at Colorado State University.

Family

I also want to spend more time with Diana, Matthew, Aaron, and Aaron’s family. It is hard to eliminate activities that are fun but do not contribute to this goal. If you are old enough to have grandchildren, what activities would you like to do with them. How about time with your own siblings? When you live in two different states, or even two different parts of the same state, that can be difficult.

The House and Yard

Then there is the house. After living in a place for over 30 years, it is hard to get rid of items. This is especially true about items that my parents gave to me. I am trying to scan several of my father’s articles so that I can share them on his Facebook page. I have posted several to the Dr. C. Sharp Cook Facebook page. I plan to post several more.

Then I have my slides from my trips around the world. Digitizing those slides, three slides at a time, would also be a good use of time. Fortunately, they are mostly Kodachrome slides, which do not fade over time. I also have my father’s slides from his trips. How will I decide what is to be digitally or physically preserved? What do I not need to preserve for my family? I am getting old enough that some of those items I do not want may be worth some money. What should I do with those items?

Conclusion

The final thing to prioritize is ensuring I have enough income to sustain our lifestyle for a few more years. Everything is getting more expensive. Having a good side business can bring in extra money, but it takes time. I really enjoy my business and value the products. But all businesses are not for everyone. If you do want to hear more, leave a comment and I I will send more information.

There are enough tasks for me to do. How do I prioritize all of them? What are your top priorities? How do you organize them? How do you decide which good activities you are doing that need to be replaced with something better? Good luck. If you have ideas, I would love to hear from you.

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Jumps and Calls are not the Same

Posted on 30 April 2024 by Wayne Cook

I have programmed with several languages. This semester, I am teaching students x86 assembler. The 8086 was the start of the x86 family for Intel. The University of Virgia has a great introduction to x86 codding.

Introduction

Intel x86 processorFor all programs, jumps and calls have some similarities, but they are not the same. In most programming languages, code execution goes from one statement to the next statement. Sometimes a user might want to switch the execution of the program to a different location. The new location is usually labeled through either a function or a label.

Functions

Functions are separate code that has an entry point at the start and a ret (return) at the end. It can be called from other functions in your code. Since I have several examples of Fibonacci sequence generators in other languages, I will use a simple function that adds together two numbers and returns the result in the EAX register. All x86 assembler functions start with PROC and end with ENDP.

; Next Fibonacci Number Calculator
; Add two numbers on the stack and return their sum in registeer EAX
; For all routines, the last item to be pushed on the stack is the return address, save it to a register
; then save any other expected parameters in registers, then restore the return address to the stack.
fibonacci PROC near
_fibonacci:
    pop edx                              ; Save the return address
    pop eax                              ; Save second number in register EAX
    pop ebx                              ; Save first number in EBX
    push edx                             ; Restore return address
    add eax, ebx                         ; Add them together and store in EAX
    ret                                  ; And return with result in EAX
fibonacci ENDP

Calling a Function

Calling a function is simple, the instruction call followed by the name of the function. When the function finishes, it returns control to the instruction immediately after the call. A calll might look like:

_fibLoop:
    push number2                         ; Second parameter.
    push number1                         ; First parameter.
    call fibonacci
    mov ebx, number1                     ; Move the previous high number into EBX
    mov number1, eax                     ; Move the new high number into number1
    mov number2, ebx                     ; Store the second number for recursion

In assembler, and thus in all programming languages, parameters are put on the stack in the reverse order. On the return from fibonacci, the next statement to be executed is “mov ebx,” which directly follows the “call fibonacci” statement.

Jumps

Programs usually progress from one statement to the next. The exceptions are function calls and jumps. Jumps just change the execution from one statement in the program to another statement within the program. The two statements do not need to follow each other. Only jump to a label. Never jump to a function, as when it tries to return somewhere, it does not know where that new location is located.

The tail end of the _fibloop in the sample above would look like:

    cmp  eax, maxNumber                  ; This will exit loop when EAX = 0x63D = 1597
    jg   _fibRecurse                     ; It will drop through one more than printed.
    push eax
    call writeInt
    jmp _fibLoop
_fibRecurse:
    push ebx

The first line is a comparison the max number I specified for the loop. If the number is greater than the maximum number, the program jumps to _fibRecurse. If the number is less than the maximum number, the program continues and then jumps back to _fibLoop.

Conclusion

Jumps and calls are not the same. Their start is each a location to which the process can transfer control. Labels can be accessed by jumps. They just continue to process one instruction after the next until something changes the program counter.

Functions are called by a statement. Functions have a “ret” statement at the end. When that statement is reached, the program returns to the statement immediately following the call. If you jump to a function, the return address has not been pushed onto the stack. Therefore, there is no guarantee where the program would go when the top item on the stack is popped.

Calls return to the statement following the call. Jumps just change which code is being executed. Choose wisely on what you want to happen.

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Change “Why Me” to “What Now”

Posted on 25 March 2024 by Wayne Cook

Sometimes we face really tough times. Those times come with life. The worst are often when we learn the most. I know I often do not enjoy those times, but they have opened up interesting opportunities for me. When hard things happen, it is too easy to say: “Why Me!” I learned that if I ask “What now” instead, many opportunities arise. It just takes me to change my “mindset” so that I can see those opportunities.

For me, to get out of the “Why Me” mindset, I must turn away from activities that waste my time. My downfall is Solitaire. My great excuse is that it is keeping my brain “sharp.” This time could be better spent planning a lesson for my class, relearning Danish (or some other language), or developing skills that will generate an alternate stream of income. Once time is spent, it never comes back. What do you do to overcome the “What Me” mindset?

Exercise is also a good “relaxer.” It gives me time to put my planning on the back burner. Often this leads to breakthrough ideas. It has so many other benefits. How do you transition to a state of mind that you are open to new ideas? Do you evaluate those ideas and then act on the ideas that are interesting to you? Not all ideas will pan out, but trying always eventually pays off.

I wish you all the best in changing your Why Me to What Now!

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Don’t Act, Be!

Posted on 31 August 2023 by godaddyadmin

I recently saw an interesting movie with a good, but previously used, plot. It had one good actor, mostly adequate actors in supporting roles, and one actor in a major role who tried too hard. When someone has read books on acting and tries to act the emotion required for a scene, it just does not work. If she had just thought about how she would personally feel in a particular scene instead of forcing the emotions, it would be a much better movie.

I was thinking about how that relates to us in our lives. Sometimes we act a certain way because we imagine that is the way those around us would want us to act. This rarely works. People who know us know when we are being authentic. Even if they may not notice, or do not say something, we know deep down that something is not right. It is best to be honest with ourselves and be true to our core principals. Any act might succees for a short amount of time, but it cannot last.

Being ourselves requires a sincere attitude and consistent actions, No one can maintain a facade for any length of time. It is so much easier to be ourselves and treat others with the love and respect we would like for ourselves. We must remember to “Be!” Acting requires too much energy.

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Teach for Subject Mastery

Posted on 26 July 2023 by Wayne Cook

Too often courses are taught in a way to have students go for the grade instead of mastering a particular subject. As teachers, we need to teach for subject mastery for each course’s particular subject before building on that mastery to understand further aspects of the chosen subject. For example, in computer science it is important for students the general purpose for telling a computer what to do before learning the basic syntax of any computer programming language. After learning the basic syntax of a particular language, students can then progress to learn progressively more complex constructs.

To teach a student how to master a subject, the teacher needs to master each concept before it is taught. Students are intelligent, they know when a teacher is spewing untruths or exaggerations. Middle school students are usually more honest and will say something to the teacher. Just because a student does not say anything does not mean they do not notice.

Teaching How to Learn

Teaching students how to learn is just as important as teaching the material. If students know how to learn, it makes teaching so much easier. The only downside is that some subjects learn quickly, so teachers need to at least keep up with the student. When one student masters a topic that needs to be taught, if they would like to do so, I sometime let them coteach that particular topic. It gives that student confidence and provides another person from whom the students are able to learn.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy is a good way to help students achieve a higher level of learning. Vanderbilt University has a good history of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The taxonomy can be considered a pyramid with remembering the facts as the first step and going up to the Create stage. The diagrams from the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching is:

The higher we can get ourselves up this pyramid, the more opportunities we have to help our students progress as far. In an ideal world, out students will progress far beyond what we teach them.

Knowing can Lead to Mastering

Salman “Sal” Amin Khan is an educator who started tutoring his nephew and posting these videos to YouTube. When he realized that more people than just his relatives were watching his videos, he created the Khan Academy where people can go for tutoring help on a growing number of topics. His concept of mastering material is a shift from the typical semester-based teaching which is done in most schools. Schools are limited by the calendar, so the key is to modify courses to help students master the subject in the given amount of time. The teacher cannot do all of the work of helping each student, so students need to be encouraged to help each other master the material. Sal Khan gave an informative TED Talk giving his ideas of how this might be accomplished.

Sal Khan TED Talk – Let’s Teach for Mastery

Communication and Personal Responsibility

We are each responsible for our own mastering of any topic. We must have passion for a topic and perseverance to teach it well. This sometimes referred to as “Grit.” Having passion for a topic makes helping students internalize the material so much easier. Another aspect to helping students to master a subject is to show you care. Remember: “things break, “Things Break, People Matter.” Helping student gain a love for the subject and gain mastery on their own helps the class and the instructor. When I have some students who know the material and are willing to help other students, this frees up my time to help those who may be struggling to understand what is being taught. Use all available resources wisely.

Responsibilities

In each class, there are teacher responsibilities, student responsibilities, and mutual responsibilities. It is best to plot out these responsibilities. I used a column chart to do this. It could also be done in a Venn diagram. Creating a diagram like this does help us teach to subject mastery.

Assessments

Assessments too often require memorization of facts that do not help the student learn for subject mastery. It is important to assess learning, but I do it through an additional assignment for each lesson that the student should be able to do on their own. Teaching for Subject Mastery should limit memorization for the purpose of “regurgitating facts without understanding what those facts mean and how to use them. Eric Mazur created a interesting video entitle “Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning.”

Conclusion

Much of the material in this article is based on what I have been recently learning. This knowledge has been supplemented by a class for teachers about Online Learning., taught at Front Range Community College in Colorado.

When we teach for subject mastery, students earn better grades in the current class. They will have the knowledge base to do well with future classes in the same or similar subject areas. Be patient but expect much. High expectations paired with good communication skills and transferring a deep understanding of the course material achieves wonderful results both for the teacher and the students.

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Things Break, People Matter

Posted on 29 June 2023 by Wayne Cook

I heard this phrase a few weeks ago in Church, and I have been thinking about it since then. People are far more important in our lives than things. It may take some of us a while to realize that, but the sooner we understand the importance of other people in our lives the better our lives will be. Treating things (or an organization’s budget) as more important than the people.

Organizations

There are good leaders and bad managers. I have seen both. Good leaders care about the people and do everything they can to make each individual succeed. Bad managers look at the bottom line and if that means letting members of the team go, they do not hesitate. Good leaders may struggle with their budgets, but there are things that they can change or eliminate to keep the people who help the organization succeed.

Families

In families, especially with young children, things fall and break. That happens. Accept it. Most of the time, it is an accident. My reaction is what is important. How do I treat the children in my home when something breaks? How do I react? What lesson did I learn? What lesson did the child learn? Things Break, People Matter. I believe that families are important. It is painful if there is an empty chair around the dining room table. Part of the People Matter part of that phrase is raising children to become adults with whom you want to associate. Helping each child to choose their own path and to have the tools to succeed is even more important than working with people in an organization.

Conclusion

I know that taking care of others and helping them to succeed has to start with myself. I cannot help others unless I am in a place where I have the tools and means to do so. It is difficult, but making sure that people are more important than things is vital for any family or organization to succeed.

Things Break, People Matter

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Good Leaders Guide, Bad Managers Dictate

Posted on 15 May 2023 by Wayne Cook

The terms leader and manager are too often used interchangeably. They may be complimentary responsibilities, but they are not the same. Both should know where they want their team to go, but leaders get to know the members of their team and motivate each member to do his or her best to help the team reach the desired goal. A manager is more interested in the tracking process details. The ideal leader can combine both aspects well.

In all my years in the work force, I have seen both good leaders and bad managers. A good leader always knows the people on their team and each member’s strengths and weaknesses. Good leaders learn what they can delegate to each individual and know the task will be completed well. A bad manager tells subordinates exactly what to do and how to do it. Even then the bad manager may not trust the team member to actually accomplish the task. Even if the task is done well, the bad manager might curtly thank the person for the work and then proceed to tell the team member all the things the team member needs to do differently. Changing the goals without buy-in from the team member is a quick avenue towards the failure of the team.

1775

1775 is a good year to demonstrate the difference between good leadership and bad management. In the short term, bad management will often win. In the long term, good leadership will usually win. Leading up to 1775, Great Britain kept raising taxes without giving the colonists any say in how those taxes would be spent. After too many poor decisions, bad management leads to revolts. In the case of the colonists, it led to the slogan “Taxation without Representation” and eventually the American Revolution. People always want a say in their own future. That is still true today, especially on any team. In contrast, George Washington was willing to listen to those around him and give people (most of the time) input into any major decisions. He was good at this. That is one reason why he was asked to be the General of the Army and eventually President of the United States. The bad management of Great Britian, their use of fear, led to the rise of George Washington as a great leader.

Differences

Good leaders serve those on their team to develop skills needed to create a better product and efficiently complete any project. A bad manager likes to be in total control and believes they know more about any problem than any member of their team. To keep control, the worst manager often rules through fear. Think of the British in the 1775 example. Both good leaders and bad managers identify the strongest members of their teams. The best leader helps that person develop those skills and talents to best serve their team. The worst manager recognizes those skills and considers the team member a threat to the manager’s control and makes sure that person receives no credit for any of team’s success.

Remember “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A good leader treats all team members with the respect they would like for themselves.

Team Member Responsibility

Team Members are a vital ingredient to the successful completion of any project. As was presented earlier, each person brings their own experiences to any project. A good leader should know each team member’s strengths, capabilities, and growth areas. A leader knows the goals for each project. Members are usually assigned parts of the project for which they excel. If a team member wants to learn new skills, a good leader can provide opportunities on small pieces of a new project. If a team member has done similar assignments before, they may need little help. For new areas, the team member might need a mentor to progress past the member’s comfort zone. The mentor usually is assigned a related area of the project so that they can work naturally together.

The bad managers I have seen appear to think that team members are interchangeable. The worst managers tell each team member what they must do and how to do it, forgetting that each team member has expertise in particular areas and may even have more experience than the manager.

Team members need respect and to be given assignments that will allow them to succeed. Often the assignments are based on the team member’s experience. Occasionally, with team member’s agreement, the team member may be given assignments expanding their field of expertise to help them grow and innovate.

Processes and Tools

All teams that need good leaders. I am most familiar with teams that develop products (and students). Using a company’s preferred set of tools, a good leader develops plans to fully utilize the people available. At Tektronix we used processes that eventually evolved into the Agile Manifesto. One of the most used implementations of the Agile Manifesto is the Scrum Methodology. Tools are aids to complete projects. Tools may vary from sticky notes on a large wall in the office to online project tracking tools. Using a combination of these tools is the most effective. Every time we came into our team area at Tektronix, the sticky notes reminded us of where we were exactly on the development of our project. As reached the release date, it was exciting to watch the last few sticky notes being marked as completed.

Conclusion

Team pulling project to completion with Leaders/Managers deciding the best way to help or control
Leaders/Managers watching team formation and deciding if they are a leader or a manager.

A team consists of a group of individuals pulling a project forward. A leader is a member of that team and works with the team members to move the project forward. The organization chooses who would be best to lead the development of the project. A good leader leads from the front and guides the team to a successful conclusion. A bad manager often sits on the block and tells the team members what to do and where to go. The results of these two types of direction are usually similar to the results from the 1775 example. It is far better having a good leader for an important project than a bad manager. A good leader should always strive to be the best possible leader for the success of any project.

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Teams Provide Platform for Individual Innovation

Posted on 8 May 2023 by godaddyadmin

From my experiences at Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard as a team member and team lead, I find that bouncing ideas around in a team lead to some spectacular individual results.Too often, something said in jest triggers some very creative ideas. Good engineers produce good work, good engineers in teams, produce excellent work.

We often used brainstorming meetings at the beginning of projects.As long as we did not make fun of any comment, the best ideas would slowly rise to the top. Brainstorming is a great tool to start off any project. We then started to identify and prioritize tasks that needed to be completed for this project to go well. Often this was accomplished through an Agile Methology tool. There are an array of tools available, from CDC Cards through the Scrum Methodogy.

Sometimes each task goes smoothly and there is not much channge to the initial plan. As roadblocks and other occurences happen, achieving the next goal can become very difficult. Good communication is a slight plus to any project. Data collection during the process is a vital part of each projects success. Reviewing that data leads to more efficient processes for the current and future projects.

A good example of a project with a team goal and the opportunity to allow individual to shine was the Apollo missions to the moon. The goal was to safely get atronaunts to the moon and then back safely. One of the early divisions of this project was to independently produce the Saturn memory modules and the lunar lander software. These worked spectacularly well.

Teams provide opportunities for members to help each other succeed in ways that were not envisioned at the start of a project. Good engineers produce good work, good engineers in teams, produce excellent work.

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