on perseverance

I am feeling tired... This past weekend was Labor Day -- a 3 or 4 day holiday for most folks... I was supposed to go visit my mother. But we are sitting waiting for the federal govt to release an RFP and we expect to be given only about a week since the govt has to award the contract THIS MONTH due to their fiscal budget. So I worked all 3 days... And today is Wednesday and still no RFP. :-( Anyway, we have been having lively discussions about Enterprise Architecture and Service Oriented Architecture and their boundaries -- talking about such things as it is wise to plan a large SOA project without considering EA? (no of course its not wise but how much do you need to elaborate?) And is it practical to adopt a SOA methodology that requires you to consider (or lay the groundwork for) EA (no its not...there are many projects out there which are candidates for SOA but the organization doesn't want to hear anything about EA) and how much groundwork is enough and how much is too much? Anyway, one of the folks involved in this discussion sent out the following quote (he was angry because he felt unfairly criticized -- he was and he also took it too seriously--sometimes its best to just let things roll off your shoulder).

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."


"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910