"You’ve probably heard that next week’s MIX08 conference in Las Vegas is sold out. But do you know what that actually means? Does it mean that we decided months ago to cap registrations at an arbitrary number of attendees? Or perhaps we picked a mystical date? Or a financial target? Or the cynical among you might believe that “sold out” is just a way for us to create buzz around the conference. It might surprise you to learn that it’s none of these."
I never read the sports page. Except for those stories talking about the business of sports or rule changes or such. That is the reasons for certain decisions.
Part of my job as a software developer is to deal directly with the clients to figure out what they want. And how to make the UI easy for them to use. Thus I find the reasons for doing things a certain way quite interesting.
As a result of spending a lot of time working at clients sites I've been in the cockpit of a medium sized airplane making a landing at a major Canadian airport. I was doing work for the airline in question and the cockpit crew knew me. So they let me sit in for the landing. Very, very interesting view. Especially the rubber tire marks at the ending of the runway. Of course, as the tension level in the cockpit rose as we were getting closer to landing the quieter the crew got. And I made sure I never asked a question then.
I've been underground in a mine for half a shift with a foreman. Very, very interesting. The number one safety rule for a visitor is if I get separated from the foreman and my lamp battery goes out to sit down and wait. They know there is a visitor underground and they'll send someone in after a while.