Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts)
Hello everyone,

I am a Project Manager for construction projects, and I have just been hired to help with the planning and oversight of a $100 million construction project. My primary task at the moment is to make sense of the schedule, milestones, critical path, and, in general, make a very complicated project more comprehensible.

Yesterday I received the current schedule, which was done in MS Project (Gantt view), and is now 770 lines (18 pages). Gantt charts have a lot of good qualities, but at this size they are very hard to read.

After thinking about it for a minute, I realized I have never seen a construction schedule that I would consider an "excellent visual diagram."

Does anyone have any ideas for me?

Hella good discussion by (the Man) Edward Tufte and a dozen or so really good experts on GANTT and PERT charts and managing large projects.

[ Fascinating. I find myself struggling with this all the time. I'm glad to know i'm not the only one who can't seem to wrangle MS Project into something approaching complete. Project management is non-trivial in practice and the IT toolset really just isn't there (even now, four years after this discussion began). -k]

Ask E.T.: Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts)

Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies -- ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each other.

While this is filed under humor at the parent site, I find it deeply insightful (which lends something to the humor).

[Agreed. I see a good deal of truth here. -k]

Five Geek Social Fallacies

By a 20-13 vote Thursday that partially followed party lines, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would require broadband providers to abide by strict Net neutrality principles, meaning that their networks must be operated in a "nondiscriminatory" manner.

About time.

[ Agreed. It's preposterous that this is even under debate. -k]

House panel votes for Net neutrality

This essay and the responses look like very interesting reading. Despite my creative editing here I think after a quick skim we actually address many of the concerns that he has with this kind of system.

[ Decius' commentary above seems accurate now that I've read the article.

Lanier is essentially discussing the value of authorship, of content *creation* and personal, individual intellect (or lack thereof, as the case may be).

Memestreams doesn't completely solve authorship in the sense that we still hide behind user id's and don't have to expose ourselves. However, those id's do, in a very real way, expose a personality, and the collected writings of any of the users here do undoubtedly comprise a body of authored work, amateur though it may be.

What I've said fails to be the case if the user treats memestreams purely as a link aggregator. To have a voice, per Lanier, you must speak.

There's a great deal of stimulation in the article, but I'll touch on a few points.

The first isn't directly tied to his thesis, but it seems that fairness ought to have implied a mention, at least. To me, among the greatest features of Wikipedia (and wiki's in general, i suppose) is how well they capitalize on the concept of linking. I have frequently found myself spending a substantial amount of time clicking through chains of entries out of pure curiosity. Obviously, the web itself is founded on this principle, but never seems to deliver quite satisfyingly. Thus, as an authoritative source, or even a voiced source, wikipedia may fail, but as a tool for intellectual stimulation, experimentation and inquiry, I think it succeeds brilliantly.

Secondly, Lanier briefly ties his conception of online collectivism to the state of our traditional media, outside the web. With these points I agree wholeheartedly. There is such a tremendous pressure to appear unbiased that nobody ends up saying much of anything. Or, worse, they hide behind a facade of egalitarianism while being quite clearly otherwise.

I'm not as worried about this situation as Lanier is. In fact, I have argued in the past that aggregation will produce wisdom. I have since softened on that view and Lanier presents a number of compelling arguments to counter my prior feelings. At least, we agree that aggregation can not mean anything without a vibrant body of producers.

Edge; DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism By Jaron Lanier

This is troubling to me.

Certainly, I have no compunction about calling web postings public. Anyone who wants to view them most certainly can. What I have a problem with is the assumption that certain behaviors in the private sphere are necessarily related to those in the professional sphere.

When your private life becomes relevant to your ability to get or stay employed, I think a dangerous level of conformity has been required of you. I'm against drug testing for this reason, among others. The only reason I find the practice even marginally concionable is that drugs are, in fact, illegal. Getting completely drunk and passing out on a saturday night isn't. Your opinion of what such an act says about a person may or may not be valid, but if they can pass out on saturday and still come in on monday and do their job, then I think that's the end of the conversation.

It sort of moot however, since the tools and the will are both available. I certainly don't think it should be illegal for employers to search public forums. The fact is that despite all the power the internet has to expose the *real* you and connect you to other people, the *real* you won't always work in the business world. There's a reason most of us act differently at the workplace than at the club. The extension of that is going to have to be that we don't discuss such things in public arenas, or that we anonymize ourselves. Unfortunate? Probably. Necessary? Also, probably.

[edit] It turns out that I have a pretty minimal google footprint. You can find out that i was affiliated with a group called SNAP at Vanderbilt, that i made a few posts on the ALE mailing list and that there are a number of people that probably aren't me, but have the same name. I found no results past the first page.

For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume - New York Times

I remember fielding telephone calls on Election Day 2004 from friends and colleagues anxious to talk about the exit polls, which seemed to show that John Kerry was beating George W. Bush and would be the next president.

As the afternoon faded into evening, reports started coming in that the Bush camp was dispirited, maybe even despondent, and that the Kerry crowd was set to celebrate. (In an article in the current issue of Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes, "In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.")

I was skeptical.

The election was bound to be close, and I knew that Kerry couldn't win Florida. I had been monitoring the efforts to suppress Democratic votes there and had reported on the thuggish practice (by the Jeb Bush administration) of sending armed state police officers into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando to "investigate" allegations of voter fraud.

As far as I was concerned, Florida was safe for the G.O.P. That left Ohio.

Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Mr. Kennedy, in his long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the Buckeye State. Mr. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.

Mr. Kennedy's article echoed and expanded upon an article in Harper's ("None Dare Call It Stolen," by Mark Crispin Miller) that ran last summer. Both articles documented ugly, aggressive and frequently unconscionable efforts by G.O.P. stalwarts to disenfranchise Democrats in Ohio, especially those in urban and heavily black areas.

The point man for these efforts was the Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who was both the chief election official in the state and co-chairman of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio — just as Katherine Harris was the chief election official and co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida in 2000.

No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Mr. Bush.

For example, the shortages of voting machines and the long lines with waits of seven hours or more occurred mostly in urban areas and discouraged untold numbers of mostly Kerry voters.

Walter Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University, did a statistical analysis of the vote in Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus. He told Mr. Kennedy, "The allocation of voting ma... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Those Pesky Voters - New York Times

If phone companies thought they could get away with it, you’d have this: “I’m sorry, all circuits to Domino’s Pizza are currently busy. Would you like to be connected to our preferred pizza provider instead?”

I think that states it pretty effectively. How much longer until AOL is redirecting sites to "preferred" providers?

[ agreed -k ]

Why the net _should_ be neutral

Americans still have some way to go to catch the Germans, but apparently nearly 4 out of 10 people think it's okay to talk on a cell phone in the bathroom. While that may seem like a lot, it's actually down from 62% in 2003, the last time the company did this survey.

This makes me want to bludgeon 4 out of 10 people with their cell phones until either a) they are incapable of speech, b) their phone is broken or c) they understand civility.

And, yeah, I understand that beating someone with a blunt object doesn't fall into the canonical definition of "civil", but they started it by forcing me to acknowledge their existence while in the bathroom -- the one time I prefer to believe that I am alone in the entire universe.

Techdirt: People Think Talking From The Toilet Is A Bunch Of Crap

The U.S. Congress on Wednesday sent President George W. Bush a bill to boost fines tenfold to $325,000 on broadcast television and radio stations that violate decency standards, a victory for conservative groups.

The legislation, which Bush is expected to sign, caps fines at $3 million for continuing violations. The House approved it by a 379 to 35 vote on Wednesday, while the Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent last month.

[ This is one of those things that both the Dems and Repubs get completely wrong. I can't fucking understand why this is considered such an important issue. It's just plain not. I think lying is 1000000 times more offensive than the word "fuck". Are we gonna fine people for lying?

What shite. -k]

UPDATE 1-US Congress sends Bush bill hiking indecency fines�|�Reuters.com

Coulter writes in a new book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” that a group of New Jersey widows whose husbands perished in the World Trade Center act “as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them.”
She also wrote, “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”

I find that so tacky. In my head, I'm calling her a very bad word, and it ain't the "b" one.

~Heathyr

[ Tacky is the politest word I can think of to describe this creature. I don't even begin to understand how a single human can possess so much real hate and fear. It's astonishing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Ann Coulter is evil by any definition of the word you care to use. She's hateful, discompassionate, egocentric, xenophobic, exploitative and utterly false. That she can stand before the public and claim righteousness speaks volumes about the unconcionable hubris of such ideologues. That people allow and accept such behavior speaks volumes about how ignorant and backward we can be.

Coulter is an archetype of evil. She's a shining example of one who rejects, gleefully, all the precepts of decency and civility in the service of her own glory. She is a destroyer. Maybe God will forgive her, but I certainly won't. She has my enmity, has earned it, every bit as much as the terrorists she claims *I* am ideologically supportive of. Another lie so abominably far from the truth that it seems inconcievable, a lie so much worse for the fact that she has turned her own sins on me. She wishes to destroy the decent, compassionate, *free* America I love.

There is no excuse for it.

-k ]

Coulter lambastes 9/11 widows in book