Mu Satach
May 1st, 2017, 12:41:58 PM
Mild mannered adventures with splashes of snark.
"The Persuasive Iranian"
So, like most social organizations, churches are places where you get to casually meet and know many people. Smiles turn to "hello" which turns to "How are you." so on and so forth. Culminating in a wide variety of people you normally would not interact with but turn into light level friendships. One such relationship that I have is with an older Iranian gentleman. He's very friendly, full of life, and when we run into each other after services a short pleasant conversion always happens.
A few weeks ago during the course of our conversation I mentioned I was teaching myself how to program as I'm transitioning away from computer support to software dev. At the mention of that, his eyes widened and he started getting excited. He said he had an idea and asked if I was open to talking about it. "Suuuuuuure." (I've seen this look before when I use to do web development in the early heyday of Web 2.0) But, it's rude to assume. Maybe, just maybe he has an idea for his business or something that he wants a specific application written for, maybe, yeah and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.
Yesterday we met at our local Barns & Noble. He started off by taking me to the technology aisle and asking me, "What program language would you learn if you want the best program for the next 15 years."
Oh Jesus. "Well, what do you want to do?"
"I'll tell you later. Right now, which one?" motioning to the wide aisle of books.
After several minutes of questioning and whittling down his vague to semi-vague we picked out a few books and sat down in the attached Starbucks to talk.
Over the next half hour we talked about the nature of programing, why I chose the language for him I did, how he could download Visual Studio from Microsoft, etc. we then got to the outskirts of his agenda. He proceeded to tell me about a process of assigning numbers to letters then adding those numbers to create a number for each word. That he had an Excel spreadsheet that did that for him on a word per column basis and wanted to know if *I* could modify the spreadsheet to do whole paragraphs at a time.
Oh @#$%... numerology and he wants me to do his work for him.
"Ummm no. I don't know Visual Basic, which is what is used in Excel programming. I also don't know what the code looks like or who wrote it and I don't own a copy of Excel." Now, granted what he was asking was very simple. Give me an afternoon or two and I could do this. But you know and I know, it wouldn't end there. It never ends right there.
"Well, what about this?" he asked motioning to the programming books.
"Ah, well, yeah, I mean I could..." and there was where I made the mistake. I gave him hope. I then went over a rough outline of the logic to do what he wanted. Just a basic outline of an input, couple of loop statements, containing an array, and output to a txt file. To which he started turning it back around to me doing this work. I'm thigh high in the mire now.
"But to what purpose? What is the purpose of this?" Time for me to gently start climbing out this mess.
"To see this." He motioned to the row of numbers off my outline. From there it went no where. He went on to describe how he use to think marketing and such business practices were meaningless, but now he realizes they are important, very important, so important to the success of any business. Oh God, here it comes. I can feel it. "That's why I need you to do this, so I can focus on that."
Boom, yep, there it was. The assumption of all dreamers but not doers have that anyone who can do things, can do them easily so what's the problem? "But market what?" I ask.
"This," motioning to the number filled scratch pad.
"But what do you expect them to do with these numbers?"
"To look at them."
"And do what?"
"I watch them, I see maybe they are interested in this? Or maybe they are interested in that. You would be surprised."
No doubt. I'm not a practitioner of numerology but I think there's more to it than looking at a matrix of numbers and discovering the mysteries of the universe by osmosis. So whatever he's talking about is not what he's talking about.
"Ok, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do this."
"But you said that you could do this."
"Yes, I did. When I thought you were asking for yourself. If I were you, I would do it this way. But I'm not going to do this."
From there he changed tactics to try and get me to agree. I'm learning programming, so why not zig zag a little to make money. "No, I have too much going on in my personal life and I know myself too well. I won't do this."
Next argument was how he use to work for a boss and he started out at $5/hour and eventually made $20/hour. But then he learned his boss made over a$100k so he asked why he couldn't make more. The boss replied but without me all these people wouldn't have a job. So he learned a valuable lesson about being content with what he had. Which made me think, well that kinda negates your previous argument about making money, but ok. This has nothing to do with my dreams and I'm fairly content right now living in a studio apartment driving a 13 year old vehicle with chipping paint. "Yes," I agree for lack of anything else to say, "it's important to be content with what we have."
On to the next pitch, "There are two types of people in the world, those who are content with what they have and work for something better and those who will not work because it's not enough money. Now I ask you, what group are you?"
Great, I'm being guilt tripped by a grey haired, grey bearded Iranian man. "Nope, I'm not going to answer that. Let me ask you a question instead,"
"No wait, there is a third group. A group that does not want to work but goes, 'Ahhhhh, I'm going to go around the back way.'" Jesus, did he just imply I would take his number idea and run with it? I don't even know what the !@#$ it's suppose to do.
"Dude, my brother, my Christian brother, I love you but no. I will not answer that question. But answer this question for me, would you hire a pastry chef to wire a house you were building?"
"Yes, and I tell you why." he then conveyed a story of some people hiding during WWII in an attic and they somehow made a makeshift hangglider to escape. The critical factor to making it work was solved by a baker who helped them make a paste or something that made the wings stiff enough to fly.
"We are not in Nazi Germany, this is not WWII." Dear God, please let this sink in to him. "Today, here and now, in this place. You are building a house and you want it to be up to code. Do you walk into a bakery and ask a pastry chef to be your electrician?"
Defeated, "No."
"I am a pastry chef," I gently push the scribbled paper towards him, "and this is electricity."
His eyes finally registered that I was not the programmer he was looking for and we parted on friendly terms.
I highly doubt that he'll teach himself how to code, let alone create his numerology app. But, I feel I gave him good advice.
For myself, I have a hard time telling people no. It is in my nature to help others. So much so that I will often destroy myself in order to make their plans work. So I left the meeting feeling victorious.
1 - I recognized that the project was not a project and that it would have been up to me to create a meaningful usable product.
2 - Though not directly stated, the implication was that any money to be made would have been in the form of a percentage of sales. With such a vague idea and no vision of what it does, who the market would be, and why this non-thing thing is needed, any profit would be a downright miracle.
3 - I realized that although I was capable of doing the task, I didn't want to do the task.
4 - I held my ground and did not let myself get talked into something that would end up being pure torture.
The above may be common sense to the world at large, but this is a huge milestone for me. I almost never tell anyone no. My only critique of myself is to be quicker next time. I need to learn to shut down and end the conversation as soon as I recognize it's something I don't want to do.
"The Persuasive Iranian"
So, like most social organizations, churches are places where you get to casually meet and know many people. Smiles turn to "hello" which turns to "How are you." so on and so forth. Culminating in a wide variety of people you normally would not interact with but turn into light level friendships. One such relationship that I have is with an older Iranian gentleman. He's very friendly, full of life, and when we run into each other after services a short pleasant conversion always happens.
A few weeks ago during the course of our conversation I mentioned I was teaching myself how to program as I'm transitioning away from computer support to software dev. At the mention of that, his eyes widened and he started getting excited. He said he had an idea and asked if I was open to talking about it. "Suuuuuuure." (I've seen this look before when I use to do web development in the early heyday of Web 2.0) But, it's rude to assume. Maybe, just maybe he has an idea for his business or something that he wants a specific application written for, maybe, yeah and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.
Yesterday we met at our local Barns & Noble. He started off by taking me to the technology aisle and asking me, "What program language would you learn if you want the best program for the next 15 years."
Oh Jesus. "Well, what do you want to do?"
"I'll tell you later. Right now, which one?" motioning to the wide aisle of books.
After several minutes of questioning and whittling down his vague to semi-vague we picked out a few books and sat down in the attached Starbucks to talk.
Over the next half hour we talked about the nature of programing, why I chose the language for him I did, how he could download Visual Studio from Microsoft, etc. we then got to the outskirts of his agenda. He proceeded to tell me about a process of assigning numbers to letters then adding those numbers to create a number for each word. That he had an Excel spreadsheet that did that for him on a word per column basis and wanted to know if *I* could modify the spreadsheet to do whole paragraphs at a time.
Oh @#$%... numerology and he wants me to do his work for him.
"Ummm no. I don't know Visual Basic, which is what is used in Excel programming. I also don't know what the code looks like or who wrote it and I don't own a copy of Excel." Now, granted what he was asking was very simple. Give me an afternoon or two and I could do this. But you know and I know, it wouldn't end there. It never ends right there.
"Well, what about this?" he asked motioning to the programming books.
"Ah, well, yeah, I mean I could..." and there was where I made the mistake. I gave him hope. I then went over a rough outline of the logic to do what he wanted. Just a basic outline of an input, couple of loop statements, containing an array, and output to a txt file. To which he started turning it back around to me doing this work. I'm thigh high in the mire now.
"But to what purpose? What is the purpose of this?" Time for me to gently start climbing out this mess.
"To see this." He motioned to the row of numbers off my outline. From there it went no where. He went on to describe how he use to think marketing and such business practices were meaningless, but now he realizes they are important, very important, so important to the success of any business. Oh God, here it comes. I can feel it. "That's why I need you to do this, so I can focus on that."
Boom, yep, there it was. The assumption of all dreamers but not doers have that anyone who can do things, can do them easily so what's the problem? "But market what?" I ask.
"This," motioning to the number filled scratch pad.
"But what do you expect them to do with these numbers?"
"To look at them."
"And do what?"
"I watch them, I see maybe they are interested in this? Or maybe they are interested in that. You would be surprised."
No doubt. I'm not a practitioner of numerology but I think there's more to it than looking at a matrix of numbers and discovering the mysteries of the universe by osmosis. So whatever he's talking about is not what he's talking about.
"Ok, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do this."
"But you said that you could do this."
"Yes, I did. When I thought you were asking for yourself. If I were you, I would do it this way. But I'm not going to do this."
From there he changed tactics to try and get me to agree. I'm learning programming, so why not zig zag a little to make money. "No, I have too much going on in my personal life and I know myself too well. I won't do this."
Next argument was how he use to work for a boss and he started out at $5/hour and eventually made $20/hour. But then he learned his boss made over a$100k so he asked why he couldn't make more. The boss replied but without me all these people wouldn't have a job. So he learned a valuable lesson about being content with what he had. Which made me think, well that kinda negates your previous argument about making money, but ok. This has nothing to do with my dreams and I'm fairly content right now living in a studio apartment driving a 13 year old vehicle with chipping paint. "Yes," I agree for lack of anything else to say, "it's important to be content with what we have."
On to the next pitch, "There are two types of people in the world, those who are content with what they have and work for something better and those who will not work because it's not enough money. Now I ask you, what group are you?"
Great, I'm being guilt tripped by a grey haired, grey bearded Iranian man. "Nope, I'm not going to answer that. Let me ask you a question instead,"
"No wait, there is a third group. A group that does not want to work but goes, 'Ahhhhh, I'm going to go around the back way.'" Jesus, did he just imply I would take his number idea and run with it? I don't even know what the !@#$ it's suppose to do.
"Dude, my brother, my Christian brother, I love you but no. I will not answer that question. But answer this question for me, would you hire a pastry chef to wire a house you were building?"
"Yes, and I tell you why." he then conveyed a story of some people hiding during WWII in an attic and they somehow made a makeshift hangglider to escape. The critical factor to making it work was solved by a baker who helped them make a paste or something that made the wings stiff enough to fly.
"We are not in Nazi Germany, this is not WWII." Dear God, please let this sink in to him. "Today, here and now, in this place. You are building a house and you want it to be up to code. Do you walk into a bakery and ask a pastry chef to be your electrician?"
Defeated, "No."
"I am a pastry chef," I gently push the scribbled paper towards him, "and this is electricity."
His eyes finally registered that I was not the programmer he was looking for and we parted on friendly terms.
I highly doubt that he'll teach himself how to code, let alone create his numerology app. But, I feel I gave him good advice.
For myself, I have a hard time telling people no. It is in my nature to help others. So much so that I will often destroy myself in order to make their plans work. So I left the meeting feeling victorious.
1 - I recognized that the project was not a project and that it would have been up to me to create a meaningful usable product.
2 - Though not directly stated, the implication was that any money to be made would have been in the form of a percentage of sales. With such a vague idea and no vision of what it does, who the market would be, and why this non-thing thing is needed, any profit would be a downright miracle.
3 - I realized that although I was capable of doing the task, I didn't want to do the task.
4 - I held my ground and did not let myself get talked into something that would end up being pure torture.
The above may be common sense to the world at large, but this is a huge milestone for me. I almost never tell anyone no. My only critique of myself is to be quicker next time. I need to learn to shut down and end the conversation as soon as I recognize it's something I don't want to do.