A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students, “Is the jar full?”

They agreed it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again, “Is the jar full?”

They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous, “Yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand.

The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided,”I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – Family, children, health. Friends, and favorite passions –Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter. Like your job, house, and car. The sand is everything else — The small stuff.” And he shook the jar.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. So… Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play With your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.”

“Take care of the golf balls first — the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled.

“I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

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Cecile hid her tear-swelled eyes behind her long black hair.

“Have a great time!” bubbled the park employee as she took the ticket. Cecile muttered a “thanks” and struggled through the turnstile. Dusk’s light peeked behind her, framing her slender silhouette.

At the midway, Cecile closed her eyes and immersed herself in the surroundings. The amusement park had always been her escape. The dazzling lights, smell of cotton candy, and roar of machinery — they filled her senses and muted her sorrows.

Rejuvenated, Cecile strolled into the carousel’s line. The ornate mirrors and incandescent light-bulbs gleamed. As smiles and laughter accompanied the disembarking ones, she noticed a twenty-something boy stayed behind on a Pegasus. He had curly, brown hair and wore a retro varsity jacket. She met his gaze and he smiled. He looks familiar. Curious, she weaved her way to a glittering pony next to him.

“Your face’s longer than these horses’.” The boy winked.
Blushing, Cecile closed her hair curtain.
“Apologies for my pathetic attempt at humor. Name’s Henry. You’re Cecile?”
“How’d you know?”
Henry pointed to the embroidery on her bag.
“Oh. Thought maybe we’ve met before.”
“Maybe! I’m always here.”

The pony and Pegasus began galloping to the calliope music. Henry flexed and flapped his arms, pretending that he was really flying a Pegasus, along with a million other silly poses. Cecile watched and cracked a smile.

“Aha! The princess’ smile’s brighter than the carousel!”
“Is your middle name ‘corny’?” Cecile rolled her eyes, still smiling.
“That, and ‘swell’, and ‘charming’. By the way, the Ferris wheel said we should go ride it.”
“Oh really?” she scoffed. “The rides talk to you?”
“When you spend eternity here, you resonate with them.”
“You need to add ‘poet’ to your middle names.”
They laughed, adding to the sense of wonder in the air.

Henry leaped off the carousel just as it stopped, even before Cecile could dismount. They meandered together to the Ferris wheel. The white gondolas were adorned with golden carriage motifs; the operator wore a top hat, a long black coat and white gloves.

“Here ya go, ma’am.” The operator tipped his hat and opened the waiting carriage’s door.
Henry sneaked in before Cecile. “Hope ya don’t mind a stowaway,” he smirked.
The operator did not react. Cecile curtsied in jest and followed Henry. The wheel then started turning.

“My mom passed a year ago today. Haven’t been back here since.” She turned away to admire the setting sun. “I couldn’t stop crying at the grave today.”
“I’m sure she’s at a good place.”
“You wouldn’t know.”
Henry smiled like the sunrise, “But I do.”
Cecile believed him.

They spent the rest of the evening gallivanting around the park. They conquered the ferocious Matterhorn and stomached the dizzying Teacups. Even the Pirate Ship was no match for them. The park was almost empty when midnight crept up on them.

“Cinderella needs to head home soon?”
Cecile forced a smile. “Either that or I turn into an ugly gremlin.”
“Better that than the horse face earlier.” Henry cackled.
Cecile laughed and swatted at him, but he glided away.
“Come on, you can ride the train back to the entrance.”
She huffed but smiled again.

The train station was devoid of visitors. Only the distant sound of roller coasters punctuated the silence. Cecile boarded the last car.

“You’re not coming?”
“Nah, gonna stick around a bit longer.”
“You really do like this park, don’t you?”
Henry grinned, “I just can’t leave.”
The train started to roll away.
Cecile tightened. “Wait! Will I see you again?”
“Just bring the brass ring,” he winked.

The train horn drew Cecile’s attention. When she looked back, Henry was gone.

Brass ring? Bewildered, she fished out an old photo from her bag. The shot was taken at dusk, with her and her mother in front of the carousel in this park. Reflected in a mirror of the carousel was a twenty-something boy with curly hair; he wore the same varsity jacket as Henry’s.

Cecile’s heart skipped a beat. Henry took that picture decades ago! Afterward, he gave her a brass ring so she could ride again. Instead, she saved it as a keepsake and had been carrying it with her ever since.

Rhogar reached out and traced the unknown language on the sarcophagus with his scaly claw. He retrieved his ritual book and flipped to the back pages of the volume where they were filled with sets of five horizontal lines. Without hesitation, he bit into his index digit. He winced a little at the slight pain. A small bead of blood oozed from the wound. Then, he started tracing the unknown symbols at various positions on the horizontal lines with his blood. He let his mind navigate the musical stave. To the untrained eyes, the symbols were static. To Rhogar, they drifted and shifted along the musical lanes. Inside his head, the unknown symbols echoed and resonated a cacophony. He couldn’t help but hum along with the music formed in his head.

When he’s done tracing all the symbols, he licked his finger and the wound closed. He then took out his lute and started playing the tune he heard. First, it was rough and primitive, like a novice learning to play his first song. As minutes go by, it grew in complexity. Rhogar’s fingers danced up and down the lute, traversing the string highways. Finally, with one final pluck of a particular high note, the symbols on the pages glowed a crimson red momentarily and washed the room with sonic energy.

Rhogar put the lute back on his back. He took a deep breath, gleaming he said, “I’ve got it!”

1. I received a “Resurrection Scroll” from my friend to reactivate my account for 10 free days since it’s expired for over 90 days. But before then, not wanting to waste time downloading and patching, I decided to go ahead and download the WoW client first. The free trial client is freely available, so I figure I would just download that.
2. After fidgeting with it to get best download speed possible, I left it running on my Vista box before I went to bed. I was going to do it while I was doing something else, but because of lack of a throttle system, it sucked up all my bandwidth so I couldn’t let it run while I was working.
3. The next morning I had to rush out the door so I didn’t check if it finished. I came home from work late that night, only to find that it had crashed and only downloaded 810 MB of the 3+ GB.
4. So I restarted it again before I went to bed, luckily, it picked up where it left off.
5. The next night it’s all done downloading, so I went ahead to install it. It’s a heavy process that took about 30 minutes, probably mostly I/O. It made my top of the line machine crawl but I sat through that while doing some casual browsing.
6. Now that I see the familiar login screen, I typed in my username and password (still not reactivated) to see if I can get any patches before I do so. To my disappointment, yes I had to patch, the client I downloaded was not the latest. I had to patch from 2.0 to 2.2.
7. Downloaded the patch through the P2P downloader as usual. I don’t remember how long it took. It’s around 500MB. I didn’t sit through it. So goes another night.
8. Next night, at least the patcher started automatically after the downloader, so 2.2 patch is all done. I logged in, and oh noes, another patch. Luckily it’s a small one, only 8 MB, I sat through that, applied. And then I got another small one. I logged in and no more patch. I got the “account not active” message. So that means I am all patched up!
9. So convinced that I can reactivate and get in game right away, I clicked the link in the reactivation invite. Great execution on the web part. No fuzz there, very easily, just a few clicks and my account is reactivated with 10 days free.
10. During the process, I was told I needed the Burning Crusade client in order to play BC. My heart sank. But I tried logging in anyway. I logged in, and of course, it said my account is flagged to be able to play BC but I don’t have the BC client. So I clicked the link on the reactivation page to get the BC client. Another 1 GB+ download.
11. After it’s downloaded (it’s the weekend, so I sat through it doing something else). I had to sit through another install process, which took around 30 minutes. Then, I logged in and OMG, a patch. I restarted the client and the downloader started. Luckily, it just wants the 2.0 to 2.2 patch that I had previously downloaded (and good thing I didn’t delete it). It quickly gone through verification and went ahead to apply. My guess is that the previous time, since I didn’t have the BC client, it skipped all the BC stuff so now it wants it again.
12. And then of course, I had to restart again, for it to apply the 2.2 to 2.2.2 patch for the BC portion.
13. I logged in, and confusingly, I had to click on “Suggest Realm” in order to get to my characters. I suggested the realm that I have characters on. I know I had characters on Hyjal, they should have a button that let me pick it. For a moment I thought my characters were wiped!

In any case, I am finally at the character selection screen, and we will see where BC takes me. I have learned a lot of “what not to do” in this process, hopefully I can apply them! Overall, it’s a lot of waiting and patching. I can’t imagine a not-very-motivated user doing this. In the end, the process wasn’t hard, it’s just very tedious and frustrating. And if I started my trial the moment I got my email, I would have wasted at least three nights on it. If the resurrection email contained a direct link to download the complete and latest BC client, all of this would have been avoided and I would only have had to sit through one download and one install.

You can view the whole lecture on Google. A transcript and other information are available on his university website. You can also read more about him on his Wikipedia entry.

There needs to be a healthy tension between the ScrumMaster and the Product Owner. The ScrumMaster focuses inwardly, beating the drums of Scrum and guiding the team on the agile path, while protecting it from changes. The Product Owner, quoting an excellent article on Scrum Alliance by Roman Pichler, needs:

• a thorough understanding of the customer needs
• an active stakeholder management
• a basic knowledge of how software is developed and deployed

By me trying to fulfill two roles, the friendly tension and accountability between the two roles disappear. I am ending up not performing both at my satisfaction level. To compound the issue, being the functional manager for the team as well makes it even less effective, when the tendency is look at me for decisions.

I have come to the conclusion that at my current role in the organization, I am better fitted to the Product Owner than the ScrumMaster. I am most accessible to the team, and I have vested interest in the effectiveness of my team’s products (as a functional manager, I am most concerned about departmental resource allocations and utilizations). Now I just need to find a suitable person to be the ScrumMaster…