Time Management for Unicorns

Time and Resource Management For System Administrators

Giulio D'Agostino

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781952538834
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Time Management

This book presents time and resource management lessons and tips from senior system administrator Giulio D'Agostino and aims to help increase time management skills and raise questions on how to possibly improve them.

Time is one of the most precious commodities, especially if you are the system administrator of a ''unicorn company'' (a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion). In the 2018 year alone, more than 50 startups around the world attained unicorn status with a valuation of $1 billion or more, according to data from venture capital trackers like PitchBook. The nature of time has always been a subject of interest for various disciplines, from neuroscience to economics; now more than ever, with the increasing level of technology in our lives, proper time management has become a fundamental aspect of any successful project.

This book presents time and resource management lessons and tips from senior system administrator Giulio D'Agostino and aims to help increase time management skills and raise questions on how to possibly improve them. Learn from more than 20 years of experience in project management working for companies like Google, Apple, Salesforce.com, and Hewlett Packard.

CHAPTER 1

A Brief History of Time

To know how we perceive time and how we experience time, it is crucial to have a brief journey to the history of calendars. Everyone uses calendars to keep tabs on significant dates and occasions; calendars would be equal to maps for direction in space. Dates on a calendar are the coordinates of our travel through time.

1.1 A Brief History of Time and Calendars

The cycle of day and night regulated the lives of our ancestors. The story of the calendar begins with the Moon, the Sun, and the Earth, with astronomy. The cycle of the seasons was known to astronomers as the tropical year, and it could be measured accurately. The stages of the Moon measure the lunar month: New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, Last Month, and New Moon again. It is 29.5305888531 days long, but becoming longer by a little less than a 50th of a second per century.

You will find 12.36826639275 lunar months in a tropical year. The history of this calendar principally concerns the attempts of astronomers and mathematicians to force the tropical year and the lunar month to stick into a plot composed just of whole numbers. Most new calendars, such as those of Greece, were based upon 2 months; yet, to keep the calendar in step with the seasons, it has been necessary to insert more months now and then since 12 lunar months are 10.8751234326 days short of a tropical year. Each of those Greek city-states kept its calendar; however, along with the insertion of the months has been abandoned to the public government. Callippus, a century later, made 940 lunar months equal to 76 years, all 365 days. Hipparchus, the astronomy father, suggested a different cycle that made 304 years very similar to 3760 lunar months and 111035 days. The Metonic cycle again became prominent in the ancient Christian Church, which attached the date of Easter to the phases of the Moon. Nonetheless, it is significant that although the Greeks made immeasurable contributions, their calendar isn’t one of them.

1.1.1 Ancient Egypt

The culture of Egypt left to posterity a few of the wonders of the world. The pyramids and the sphinx of Giza, the Valley of the Kings, and Tutankhamun’s enigmatic tomb still confuse us. The pharaohs search for immortality, show us Egyptians unique view of time, and search for immortality. The ancient Egyptians also bequeathed the idea that’s at the center of our calendar. Contrary to the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the early Romans, they based their calendar upon the Sun. As the oldest high-farming culture, Egypt was dependent upon the yearly flood of the Nile, which brought water and fertile silt to the river’s floodplain. Life in Egypt was ruled by the seasons, and hence by Sunlight. The Moon played no part in the calendar. The Egyptians had 12 months, all 30 days, plus an extra 5 days at the close of the year. These 5 days were given over to celebrations and were correlated with the birthdays of the best gods of the Egyptian pantheon. The year was 365 days. They accepted the seasons would become later and later to the calendar, in a cycle that would take to finish. The Egyptians assessed the relation of their calendar to the straight year, not by observing Sirius’s heliacal rising. Usually, Sirius rising was the ruler that defined Sirius’s first sighting every year in the morning sky before sunrise.

Until the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was the sole calendar in which each month and day was defined by external rules instead of being determined by priests’ discretion or by the astronomers’ observations.

1.1.2 Julian Calendar

The calendar of ancient Rome was mainly a lunar calendar with an extra, or intercalary, month occasionally inserted to maintain the weeks more or less in step with the seasons. You will find 12 months, and they were termed as follows: Januarius, Februarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maia, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. In over 2500 decades, these titles have come down to us almost unchanged, apart from Quintilis and Sextilis. The Romans were quite superstitious. They considered odd numbers as blessed and even numbers as unlucky. So all months except February had an odd number of days: March, May, Quintilis, and October 31; February 28; and the remainder 29. This gave 355 days, approximately equivalent to 12 lunar months. When required, at the end of February, and on occasions, February itself was shortened to 23 days, the month was added. The new moon was the day of the Kalends (source of the term calendar itself), the moon’s first quarter was the day of the Nones, and the Ides fell on the day of the full moon. The Ides was the 13th, exception made for months in which it was the 15th. You will recall that Julius Caesar was warned to beware of the Ides of March. The Romans did not count the times of the month in the way that we do. Instead, they counted toward the following of the three days called.

In a 31-day month such as March, the “Nones” fell on day 7. The day before the “Nones” was Pridie Nonas Martias, which translates into “the day before the Nones of March.” The Nones itself was contained in this countdown, which is why the fifth is known as the day before the Nones rather than the second. After the Ides, the dates had been counted down to the Kalends of the following month, so that March 16 was appointed ante diem XVII Kalendas Aprilis or even “the 17th day before the Kalends of April,” although it was known as part of the month of March. The Romans believed that certain days were more reassuring than many others for carrying out significant events such as business contracts, religious rites, and battles. The priests, led by the Pontifex Maximus (the chief high priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome), would inform a Roman citizen if a specified day was not included in the calendar, and naturally, they left a fee for each query to add a day to the official Catholic calendar. The priests decided when months were required; therefore, they had total control over every aspect of personal and public life throughout the calendar. They had no formal rules to tell them when intercalation was needed. In any case, they were somewhat dismissive, so that by the time Julius Caesar became Pontifex Maximus, the calendar had slipped by nearly 3 months in relation to the seasons. To be able to bring the calendar back into line with the seasons, Caesar ordered that 3 intercalary months must be added at the end of the year, which we know as 46 BC. However, Caesar’s most important reform was to reject the lunar month entirely and embrace a solar year whose average length was 365.25 days. He introduced the cycle of leap years, and that we use today. The extra day was added at the end of the Roman year. Once again, carelessness prevailed. The intercalation was not employed by the priests every 3 years, maybe 4. It originated from the superstition that four is an even number, and hence unlucky. Augustus Caesar fixed the mistake by omitting leap years before AD 8, and also, the Julian calendar was retained without further change before the substantial reform of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.

1.1.3 The Week

From the Bible, the creation of the Earth takes 6 days, and God rests on the seventh. It is difficult to follow the ultimate source of the 7-day week, but in the calendar, the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of every month were set aside for rest. After the Exile, the Jewish calendar adopted the titles of the Babylonian months, and likely, the week was also introduced into Judaism at this time. There was an 8-day cycle involving market days. It was only in the second century BC that a 7-day cycle became predominant, which may have owed to more than Hebrew or Babylonian influences. Astrologers recognized seven planets (like the Sun and the Moon) and assigned a single planet to rule each of the 24 hours of this day, at a constant sequence. The planet that ruled the very first hour of the day was taken to rule over the whole day, and this gave rise to a 7- day cycle. The Romans started to name each day following its ruling planet: Saturn’s day, the Sun’s afternoon, the Moon’s day, Mars’s day, Mercury’s day, Jupiter’s day, Venus’s day. From the Romance languages, the link is evident. In the Germanic languages, the names of the Norse Gods Tiu, Woden, Thor, and Freya were replaced by Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus.

Jewish tradition initially had no names for the days of the week. It is not possible to say whether the cycle of times of the week has lasted without interruption since Roman times. The Gregorian calendar reform, even though it removed 10 days from the calendar at a stroke, preserved the sequence of times of this week.

Anno Urbis Conditae is used to refer to a given year in Ancient Rome. A Roman date would give the names of the two people who functioned in that year as consuls. The year of the reign of their king or queen dates British Acts of Parliament. In the United States, presidential decrees are dated by the year because of the foundation of the republic in 1776. It appears natural to measure the passage of years from some event. In about the year AD 530, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus — “Denis the Small” from Scythia in southwest Russia, introduced the Anno DominiOffsite Link (AD) era, which is used by certain people to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the (Christianized) Julian calendar. As many scholars of the time, Dionysius was worried about the exact calculation of the date of Easter, and he built a table of Easter dates for 19 years. At that time, years had been quantified from the start of the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, centuries earlier. Dionysius determined that Anno Diocletian 248 was 532 years since the birth of Jesus Christ. And because Easter commemorates the most significant event in the Christian faith, Dionysius invented the Anno Domini dating, which was used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar. Dionysius discovered its first winner in the 18th-century historian, the Venerable Bede, who used it in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Several versions of Anno Domini were used: Anno Incarnationis Dominicae, from the year of “Our Lord’s incarnation”; Anno a Nativitate, in the year following the “Nativity”; Anno a Passione, in the year following the “Passion”; Anno Gratiae, from the year of “Grace”; Anno salutae Humanae, from the year of “human redemption.” Historians and theologians agree that Dionysius made an error in calculating the year of Christ’s birth. The historical evidence makes it hard to know whether the Nativity happened later than roughly 4 BC, because that was the year in which Herod the Great is known to have died.

There’s also astronomical evidence on a date in 7 BC that connects the Star of Bethlehem with a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, an event that would happen to be of the maximum significance to astrologers because it meant that the two planets approached one another at the sky three times in just 6 months.

1.1.4 The Christian Calendar

In the calendars, years are counted from the birth of Christ, celebrated on December 25. The other significant events in the Christian religion are the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ. This is the event that gives each Christian meaning and hope. The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are celebrated at Easter. From the early Church, these were the events that led Christianity irrevocably away from Judaism. Also, for almost 700 years, the date of Easter was the subject of debate and potential schism. The Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar, the month’s beginning was marked with the new crescent Moon; therefore, the 14th day belonged to the Full Moon.

Additionally, Nisan was the first month of the year, which was organized such that the new year started at the Spring Equinox. The Christians, recalling their Jewish origins, continued to celebrate Easter at the time of Passover. They, just as the Jewish community itself, couldn’t say in advance when Passover would occur. There were two opposite views: The Jewish heritage still strongly influenced one group, that is, the Passover must fall on the 14th day of the lunar month. Their insistence on the importance of the number 14 led to them being named Quartodecimians. The other group believed that the party of Easter must follow the events of the Holy Week, with the Crucifixion on Friday and the Resurrection on the following Sunday. The Western Church observed Easter on Sunday, no matter the numerical date of the month. The Eastern Church observed Easter on the 14th day of the month. This quarrel threatened to lead to a schism, and it was one reason that in AD 325 led Constantine the Great to summon the leaders of both the Eastern and Western Churches to the Council of Nicaea. This council is best remembered for the Nicene Creed, the significant announcement of Christian belief, but also, it agreed on the formula for determining the date of Easter.

The council decreed that Easter must be the first Sunday after the complete Moon after the Spring Equinox, March 21; however, if that Full Moon fell on a Sunday, then Easter should be the Sunday after. The final phrases hint at the depth of this disagreement, for it was possible that Easter could be celebrated at the time of the Full Moon, the 14th day of the lunar month, which had been the Quartodecimian opinion. Even after the Council of Nicaea, the issue was not settled. The astronomers knew of at least four cycles that connected the year, and the lunar. There was a bi-cycle, which equated 8 decades to 99 lunar months. There was the Metonic cycle, which made equal to 235 lunar months, 19 years. One thousand thirty-nine lunar weeks were matched to 84 years by the Roman cycle. Finally, the cycle devised by Victorius in AD 457 took the 19-year Metonic cycle and the 28-year cycle of times of the week within the Julian calendar and created a cycle of 532 decades. Rome utilized the Victorian cycle, but the Church in Ireland and Britain, which had always looked to its Celtic roots, preferred the Roman cycle of 84 years.

The calendar of Julius Caesar has been an attempt to make the length of the calendar year match the period of the seasons. Its simplicity—including an excess day to February—has been its virtue. The monk Dionysius Exiguus calculated the year of the Nativity in a manner that leap years Anno Domini are those that are divisible by just four, and this is an easy rule to remember. But this simplicity comes at a price: Four years of the Julian calendar are equivalent to 1,461 times, so the average length of the year is 365.25 days. This is 11 minutes more than the suitable period for the tropical season. It may not seem significantly less long than the time it takes to boil water in a kettle and make a cup of tea, but each season is 15 minutes, and the discrepancy builds up. After just 128 years, it turns into a whole day. The seasons start on the calendar. The ancient Egyptians lived very happily with a calendar that allowed the seasons every 4 years to slip by a day. The Romans and the Greeks were satisfied to live with the random intercalation required by a lunar calendar. Even the Christian Church had fought bitter internal battles over the calendar, especially over the date of Easter.

As early as the 8th century, we no longer fell on the day allotted to Easter by the Council of Nicaea. By the early Middle Ages, astronomers agreed something must be done, but to alter the calendar was not a measure that could be dismissed. Successive popes researched the problem and declined to act. It fell to Pope Gregory XIII to fix the error, to ensure that future generations wouldn’t face the same dilemma. Pope Gregory XIII was born Ugo Boncompagni in 1502. He studied law and became a judge and a lecturer in his native town. In 1549 he had been sent into the Council of Trent, an ecumenical council that met fitfully to talk about matters of significance to the Roman Church. In 1565, Ugo became pope and was elected a cardinal. Gregory sent a letter labeled Compendium novae rationis restituendi Kalendarium, describing his suggestion for reforming the calendar. From 1582, aged 80, he was prepared to act. He also issued the apostolic letter “Inter Gravissimus,” which ensured his place alongside Julius Caesar as a man who might enforce his will on the very course of time itself. The title of the apostolic letter means “one of the most serious” and is removed in the first sentence of the letter. In total, this reads as follows: “Among the most, jobs that are acute continue perhaps but at the least of these which we have to attend to, would be to finish with the assistance of God what Trent’s Council has reserved to the Apostolic See.” In December 1563, the final session of the Council of Trent had completed the reform of the Mass along with the breviary. The latter included a provisional calendar reform, intended to fix the calendar’s forecasts of the dates of the New Moon, which by then were four times out of step with the real Moon. New discrepancies were prevented by the addition of a leap day from 1800 onward. Among its most assiduous members was Christopher Clavius. TThe council had recommended that the pope be embraced in the Inter Gravissimus. To restore the date set by the Council of Nicaea, for March 21, was omitted from the calendar in October 1582. Times of this week’s cycle were not disrupted, but October did not exist in the year 1582.

In order to draw the average length of the calendar year into closer agreement with the length of the year, 3 leap years were to be omitted in every 4 centuries. Every centurial year that was not divisible by 400 would not overlap the year. This was a smart ploy. The next year that was centurial was 1600, only 18 decades away at the time of the Inter Gravissimus; also, it might be a leap year in the calendar and the older. Nobody living through Gregory’s calendar reform would need to be concerned about the guideline for leap years. Yet, it had the impact of making 400 years equivalent to 14,6097 days, providing an average calendar year of 365.25 days, just 26.8 seconds longer than the tropical year. This difference would amount to 1 day in 3,200 years.

As the leap year rule meant the days of the week could repeat every 28 years, the cycle of Victorius could no longer be employed to construct tables of the dates of Easter. A new way of calculating Easter needed to be devised, and it took a set of corrections that are arcane to permit for the fact that the proportion of the length of this calendar year to that of the lunar month had changed. The dates of Easter in the calendar would also be changed to repeat every year cyclically.

The calendar was accepted without delay in Italy, Poland, Spain, and Portugal, all of which embraced it in the Inter Gravissimus, on the date stipulated. France and Belgium moved into the calendar in December 1582. The areas of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland moved through 1583 and 1584; some regions of those countries waited until 1701. From the Church of Rome, memories were still fresh in 1582 of Henry VIII’s split in England. A pope had excommunicated Elizabeth in just such an apostolic letter as the Inter Gravissimus. The calendar reform met a similar attitude on the part of the secular authorities. The queen referred the issue to John Dee, a noted mathematician, who responded favorably.

Dee’s ver...