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The Dimmest Lightbulb
Fri, 02/03/2006 - 12:23 — deadprogrammer
Reading Joel on Software I’ve learned about “rosh katan” and “rosh gadol” - two expressions common in Israeli Army, but very applicable to IT work. “Rosh katan”, literally “little head” is used to describe incompetent and/or passive-aggressive behavior. It usually involves following orders literally, without understanding their goal, or understanding, but actively wanting not to achieve it. “Rosh gadol”, “big head” - is a way of working proactively, anticipating problems that might arise from orders that are not overly detailed, and following the spirit or the order. You really need to grok your task in order to act “rosh gadol”. I asked a co-worker who happened to be an Israeli paratrooper captain in his previous life. He said that they also had a third expression - “rosh nitz-nitz” (I am not sure of the spelling here). “Nitz-nitz”, he told me, is a nickname for an ingenious little device that paratroopers use for identification at night. It’s a little infrared emitter invisible by unaided eye. But when looked at with infrared goggles at night, it allows helicopter pilots to find paratroopers who are ready for extraction.  Popular Articles |
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What's All this Then?
My name is Michael Krakovskiy, and this is my blog.
Here’s what you might find interesting:
100 Views of the Empire State Building project: I try to take 100 interesting photos of Manhattan’s (sadly) tallest building.
My Gastronomic Adventures: I eat weird food - from 13 year old New Coke to Durian and parasitic fungi.
My attempts to grow exotic plants: pineapples, coconuts, etc.
My photos, mostly of New York City.
My musings about architecture mostly illustrated with my own photos. Would you like to learn about a mental patient who died at 103 who served as a model for some very famous sculptures? How about Brooklyn’s ugliest building? How about a wooden skyscraper?
I find myself frequently writing about logos. The most popular article I ever wrote is about the redesigns of the Starbucks logo.
I wrote a series of “Best Sci-Fi You Haven’t Read” posts:
Psywarrior
Yes, Virginia There Is Synergy
Call Time Police - We’ve Got a Time Traveler
Other topics that interest me include NYPD, New York City subway system, Japan, and things made out of titanium. On top of all of that, I seem to be interested in pigeions and Rupert Murdoch.
Dear reader, please browse around. You are sure to find something interesting. I could really use some help in bringing in readership: subscribe to the rss feed, digg the stories (there’s a convenient button at the bottom of every article), link to my blog from yours, write some comments. I put in a lot of effort into writing, and I really appreciate your attention.
If you don’t want all this pseudo-intellectual and want some lolcats? Please don’t go away. Here, I have that stuff too. Here, here’s another. And another. And another. I lied about not posting cat pictures.
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