Month: May 2017

The Blind Squirrel Theory… or Blind Pig Theory?

I have heard this saying thousands of times “Eventually a Blind Squirrel finds a nut.”  But even as I say this, I know the saying is wrong.  The original saying was even a blind pig finds a nut.  Blind Pig I remember the origin of when i learned the saying.  I was in high school, and was playing tennis.  I had to play a girl Sandy Stein.  All I heard was that she was going to beat me etc.  Well somehow I managed to beat her, and my friend Scott said “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut”  Yep it might be true, but for that day, I had a blind squirrel day.

I later heard Dennis Conner use the line “Eventually a Blind Squirrel finds and Acorn” was he was able to managed to win the 4th race against the Aussie’s winged keel boat in 1983.   Liberty (Dennis’s boat) won the first 2 races because of equipment failure against Australia II.  Australia easily one the 3rd race.  The forth race Liberty managed to win by under a minute, and led to Dennis Conner making the quote.  He knew they had a far superior boat.   It also led to Dennis Conner to saying sailing was on it way to becoming more of a science then an art.

There are dozens of other variations and stories I heard about blind squirrel/pig, and some compare the saying to a broken clock is right twice a day.  To me this is different, the blind squirrel gets lucky, the clock has the exact right combination, its just waiting for the world to come to it.    To me being right or victorious once does not mean much, but it definitely can make some interesting results.  What make march madness (for those who don’t know what it is, just google it ) so exciting is that anyone can beat anyone on any day.   My dad used to say this to me all the time.  And in March Madness, you do not need to be the better team, you just need to be the better team for that one game.  Sports that have the best of 7 series, its harder for a lessor team to win.

Being good or great means consistency.   Having a great game or great year is wonderful, but strive to be consistently good throughout your career.  This truly will make you the opposite of a blind squirrel.

My world famous disclaimer…  so, this blog has nothing to do about my current employer.  I provide the information without warranty blah blah blah. I make no money from this blog, there is no advertising, or charges to anyone.  I do this as a brain dump, to leave something behind.  If you want to support me, instead of doing that support one of the charities i care about, the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Hockey in Newark.  I do moderate all comments, and try to remove anything that is not in the spirit of the site.  Thanks for reading

Sometimes you paint the fish, Sometimes you paint the car..

When I was in college i heard a story about one of my favorite cars, the Mako Shark corvette.  In particular how the paint job was finally agree upon.  You can see the story here  The jist of the story, Bill Mitchell the head of the team, wanted the car painted like the Shark he had on the wall, and the team tried.  Each time Bill would compare the fish to the paint job, and say it wasnt good enough.  At one point the team took the fish, painted the fish and the car the same.  When Bill went to compare the two, they were a perfect match, and he said “finally you got it…”

What does this mean, any time you are asked to compare two things, make sure you are changing the right thing.  Know your target, and sometimes you need to change your target.  One example was we once built a new system, and we were told that we need to compare it to the output of the old system.  For days we were struggling, but then we took a step back.  We looked at the code and calculations of the old system, and realized the calculation was wrong.  Getting the business to compare the old versus the new, would be useless when one is completely incorrect.   We finally were able to convince the business to start comparing it to what the answer should be, not the old data, and got back on track.

My world famous disclaimer…  so, this blog has nothing to do about my current employer.  I provide the information without warranty blah blah blah. I make no money from this blog, there is no advertising, or charges to anyone.  I do this as a brain dump, to leave something behind.  If you want to support me, instead of doing that support one of the charities i care about, the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Hockey in Newark.  I do moderate all comments, and try to remove anything that is not in the spirit of the site.  Thanks for reading

 

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