A Call for Application Portfolio Management

And now with a huge portion of the COBOL workforce retiring (i.e. baby boomers) there is a sense of panic as the ecosystem is threatened by a looming shortage of staff and a scramble to snatch up those few green screen programmers remaining. So here are my questions: Did nobody see this coming? Was anybody paying attention? And what lessons will we learn from this that we can apply to our own little ecosystems of java, PHP, Ruby, and .NET?

The mainframe one is unique, mostly because the web ways (full of web governance, web 2.0, social media, and open source) don’t compare to thing like COBOL, a 50 year old language that still accounts for 80% of the currently active computer code (i.e. 250 billion lines of it) worldwide.

That's where APM (Application Portfolio Management) comes in. we must apply such management technique to understand whether we are in balance, or whether our applications will go the way of COBOL with that sudden threat to their existence and a need for immediate reaction.

According to NASA's Office of the Chief Information Officer :

"[APM] is really about implementing a repeatable process to assess what we have, and, if an application is not performing or does not meet our architectural requirements, eliminating it and replacing it with a better performing application. We're doing it to try and reduce the money we spend on maintaining existing applications (that don't perform well) and freeing up that money to invest in new and better performing applications."

The Incredibles (2004, Movie)

Every story begins with a superhero who is invincible, but who soon faces total defeat.

On the surface, "The Incredibles" is a goof on superhero comics. Underneath, it's a critique of modern American uniformity. Mr. Incredible is forced to retire, not because of age or obsolescence, but because of trial lawyers seeking damages for his unsolicited good deeds; he's in the same position as the Boy Scout who helps the little old lady across the street when she doesn't want to go. What his society needs is not superdeeds but tort reform. "They keep finding new ways," he sighs, "to celebrate mediocrity."

The Lives of Others (2007, Movie)

He sits like a man taking a hearing test, big headphones clamped over his ears, his body and face frozen, listening for a faraway sound. His name is Gerd Wiesler, and he is a captain in the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany. The year is, appropriately, 1984, and he is Big Brother, watching. He sits in an attic day after day, night after night, spying on the people in the flat below, after they implement wall-to-wall surveillance on a successful playwright and his actress girlfriend. That angle is in itself unusual: a thriller that follows the villains.

Wiesler is a fascinating character. His face is a mask, trained by his life to reflect no emotion. Sometimes not even his eyes move. As played in Ulrich Muehe's performance of infinite subtlety, he watches Dreyman as a cat awaits a mouse. And he begins to internalize their lives -- easy, because he has no life of his own, no lover, no hobby, no distraction from his single-minded job.

The government minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), develops a lust for Christa-Maria and orders Wiesler to pin something, anything, on Dreyman so that his rival will be eliminated. But there is nothing to pin on him. A loyal spy must be true to his trade, and now Wiesler is asked to be false to prove his loyalty.

The Berlin Wall falls in 1989 (the event is seen here), and the story continues for few more years to an ironic and surprisingly satisfactory conclusion.

"The Lives of Others" is a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires. It reminds us that, for millions of people, that happy ending came too late.

Goodnight, Mister Tom (1998, Movie)

This is a wonderful movie. John Thaw plays a tough old man in WWII England who takes in a sad, troubled boy and together they learn to heal their wounds, and find hope again. A very touching story. Well worth watching.

范蠡與西施 夢會太湖

What a night of glamorous performance! What a life time experience!

Thanks to Tak Lau (劉德麗) for this rare opportunity for me to participate in this famous Cantonese Opera 范蠡與西施 夢會太湖.

It turned out to be a heavy chore for someone like me who doesn't know Cantonese. You can imagine all the guess work and laughs occurring in our practices and rehearsals. I played one of the four angels living by the lake side with the main lady who died there, according to the legend. This opera piece is taking place at the lake for those two lovers reunite. However, they won't be able to be happily there after. You know the rest.

The four angel performers were easily identifiable by their flamboyant costumes and stage makeup. It has marked an unforgettable threshold in my dancing career.