Seeping Matter

This week Yamaha announced a scale-back of their factory racing efforts in North America, specifically, for AMA Supercross, AMA Motocross, and AMA Road Racing.  Yamaha partners, or “satellite teams” in racing vernacular, will carry forward Yamaha’s racing efforts in these areas.

For AMA Supercross and AMA Motocross, L&M Racing will carry the Yamaha torch along with other satellite teams (think Mach3 or Yamaha of Troy or the like).  This makes sense; Yamaha’s factory team this year was a bust, whilst James Stewart for L&M won the 450 Supercross title.  Satellite teams with factory support have proven to be extremely competitive in these series and in fact have won quite their fair share of titles.

Not so in AMA Road Racing.  Satellite teams in AMA may have varying degrees of success, but the factory teams have historically pretty much ruled the roost in AMA Superbike, for example.

Last year, when it was announced by the AMA that the Daytona Motorsports Group was going to destroy AMA road racing once and for all, Honda followed with an announcement of their own, stating a new plan wherein Honda would no longer have a factory team, but instead would let the satellite team Corona Honda carry the Honda torch.

Gee, this sounds an awful lot like Yamaha’s announcement this week that Graves Yamaha will be the primary Yamaha road racing team in North America.  In fact, you could almost accomplish this press release with a little bit of simple find-and-replace word substitution (Honda->Yamaha, Corona->Graves).

Where does this lead?  Well, in Honda’s case, one year later they announced that they were pulling out of AMA Road Racing indefinitely, because the DMG has screwed up AMA Road Racing so badly.  Of course, this is my interpretation; here’s exactly what Honda said:  “Regrettably the current AMA/DMG racing environment does not align with our company goals.”

In other words, “NASBike is not really what we had in mind.”

It isn’t like Honda doesn’t know how to win in road racing.  It was just a few years ago that Nicky Hayden won the MotoGP title for Repsol Honda, and a handful of AMA titles before that.  Even more recently, James Toseland took the World Superbike title for Ten Kate Honda.  When they pulled out, Honda was very competitive in AMA Road Racing also.  This isn’t Kawasaki we’re talking about here.

The move to from full factory effort to pure satellite support was prompted by DMG’s promise to ruin AMA Road Racing.  After a one-year trial, that immediately led to them pulling out of AMA Road Racing altogether.  It is important to note that they are still fully involved in World Superbike and MotoGP.  It isn’t that they don’t believe in road racing; they don’t believe in NASBike.

Now it appears Yamaha is on a similar path.  Eerily similar, in fact.  Their AMA effort was beyond competitive — some might say “dominant” — toward the end of the season this year.  And of course, Yamaha took the World Superbike, World Supersport, and MotoGP titles this year.  Yet they are pulling back in almost the exact same way Honda did last year.

Fast forward one year, and I will be completely not surprised to hear that Yamaha, too, is pulling out of AMA Road Racing.  In fact, I’ll be surprised if it takes that long.

So, with Honda gone, Yamaha on their way out, who is left?  Not Buell, the American make that the whole messed up class structure was presumably created for, since Harley-Davidson has announced the discontinuation of that make.  Ducati, incredibly strong in both World Superbike and MotoGP, has hardly any presence in AMA Road Racing.  And now that Mat Mladin has retired, you have to wonder how much longer NASBike can last.

Will DMG finally realize their stupidity and repent of their grievous sin?  Or are they too proud to change, and instead they will continue to drive AMA Road Racing into oblivion?  Perhaps I should have more faith, but I’m a realist, not an optimist.  If I were you, I wouldn’t buy my tickets too far in advance, if you buy them at all.

Ooh, that title has a nice sound to it.

Ben Spies Tipping It In. Image Source: www.superstreetbike.com

Yesterday in Portimão, the last stop on the 2009 World Superbike tour, Yamaha’s Ben Spies came from ten points behind to clinch the 2009 World Superbike title from the clutches of Ducati’s Noriyuki Haga.  I had to skip recording the afternoon NFL game just so I could get the World Superbike broadcasts right away.  I had to skip the Sunday evening sports get-together with the neighborhood buddies in order to watch the races instead.  And I must admit I cheered, jumped right out of my chair and clapped vigorously when Haga low-sided in Race 1.

You could say that it pleases me that he won.

In his rookie season, Spies took a record 11 poles, including a record seven in a row, and 14 wins.  I was at Miller Motorsports Park last May when he broke the record for consecutive pole positions.  It was dang awesome to be there, at the only American stop in the World Superbike tour, cheering on the only American in World Superbike.

It’s something we miss here in America.  Sure, there’s some American things that are fine, like college football, and some that are just flat-out lame, like NASCAR.  Regardless, we get so wrapped up in our own little world here that we miss out on the really great things going on in the rest of the world.  It’s too bad we are so lame like that.

I have bittersweet feelings about Ben moving on to MotoGP.  I think he could be a dominant force in World Superbike for many seasons to come if he would stay.  At the same time, MotoGP is the pinnacle of motorcycle road racing, and he definitely deserves this opportunity to take a shot at the very best the world has to offer.  Tech3 Yamaha is not exactly a factory MotoGP team, but it is probably the best satellite team in MotoGP.  Hopefully this is just the beginning.

One year ago today I was sitting there at work in the afternoon, trying to decide what to listen to.  I knew I wanted to listen to something, I just wasn’t sure what.  I knew I wasn’t in the mood for any of the old standbys.

Do you ever get in a mood like that?

Anyway, right then and there I decided I would listen to my entire music collection in alphabetical order by artist name, based on the way iTunes orders it.  And pretty much that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

When I started out, some people mocked me and said I would never be able to finish.  And here we are, one year later, and I’m still going strong, primarily on pure defiance.  And look what it has become!  Every month, you have these very intriguing posts to look forward to!  And let’s not forget the highly lucrative and controversial facebook contest!

Anyway, here’s where we stand today:

• Current artist/album/song: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark/The Best of OMD/Forever Live And Die
• Songs listened to: 6329
• Total songs: 10324
• Percentage complete: 61.3%
• Estimated completion: June 2010

This was a good month for music, which included the previously mentioned definitive industrial band (Nine Inch Nails), definitive grunge band (Nirvana), definitive new wave band (New Order), definitive 60-year-old ladies band (Neil Diamond), and obscure hair metal (Mr. Big, MSG) all thrown in.  I must admit, though, I think the best surprise was when the Oak Ridge Boys came up.  My dad used to listen to those guys all the time when I was little.  I’m no country fan, but those guys were pretty great songwriters.

Anyhow, despite all the excellent clues, hardly anybody won the contest.  Are you guys even paying attention?

Tell you what, I’ll help you out:  Coming up next is the section where I give out clues to the bands coming up soon.

So, if we hold pace here, we might make it clear through the Ps this month.  That means Pearl Jam is on the way, and some Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins.  Nothing else coming up, however, can compare to Pink Floyd, a band I absolutely love.  But before we get to the Ps, it seems like there might be some heavy metal in there.  It just seems likely.

Last week marked three months that I’ve been working at Microsoft.

As I’ve discussed before, making the decision to leave Mozy for Microsoft was not an easy one.  Let’s face it:  I’m not exactly a spritely youth anymore.  I’ve worked at a lot of different companies — and when I say “different,” I also mean, “different from each other:”  Small companies you’ve never heard of (Spillman Technologies), large companies you’ve surely heard of (IBM), companies whose politics continue to keep them from succeeding (Novell), companies who manage to succeed in spite of the politics (Mozy), and companies that just frankly exist only as dark, ghostly nightmares in the frightening nether regions of my mind (Enterasys Networks).  Yet as different as these places are from each other, one thing mostly remains the same:  the process of creating software is the same everywhere.

So that makes a decision to leave hard.  Since the process of creating software is the same everywhere, it is the intangibles that end up mattering, such as whether you like your boss, whether you get a nice computer or monitor, how comfortable your chair is, etc.  When you consider leaving, you wonder what unidentified intangibles you’ll be giving up and what you’ll be getting, and whether you will feel like this was a good trade a year later.

Leaving Novell for Mozy was like this for me.  I got many, but not all, of the intangibles I expected when I went to Mozy.  I gave up all of the intangibles I expected I’d give up from Novell, like five weeks of paid vacation and a beautiful window office on the 7th floor looking directly north to Mount Timpanogos.  Some things at Mozy ended up being worse than I expected, e.g. the 5% pay cut last spring.  Of course, I do realize that it is not Mozy’s fault that I didn’t get all the intangibles I expected; I set that expectation, not them; I failed to assess the situation accurately.

Nonetheless, as I contemplated leaving Mozy for Microsoft, I thought about this.  “Well, software engineering is the same everywhere.  So since the in-and-out of the job function is mostly the same, I wonder what intangibles I’m gaining and what I’m giving up?”

Well, I failed to assess the situation accurately again.  I made one key error:  Software engineering is NOT the same everywhere.

In particular, it is not the same at Microsoft.  At Microsoft, software engineering is more… uh… yeah:  more.

More better.

Have you ever worked for Microsoft?  If you haven’t, you don’t know anything about us.  I know you think you do.  You don’t.

Never in my career have I ever worked in any organization that took software engineering as seriously as Microsoft does.  I was very surprised to see how seriously we consider things like security and software quality.  I’m aware of the reputation Microsoft has received over the years for bugs and security issues.  Maybe things are different now, or maybe that whole thing was just a function of being the world’s largest, most powerful, and most widely used software company.  At any rate, I can tell you from personal experience that security and quality are very important here — important enough that we will delay shipment if we don’t feel like it meets our standards.  While this may seem obvious, I’ve never seen this commitment to quality permeate throughout an organization like it does here.

It has been incredibly refreshing to see a company take software engineering as seriously as I do.  I love that I’m free to require explanation or justification from my management when I don’t understand something.  I love that I’m supported in insisting on perfection in software design, code, and process to the degree that I can help us deliver it.  I love that people can communicate with me honestly and openly without worrying about my feelings, and that I can do the same with them, because, unlike some places I’ve worked, there is an undercurrent of trust and mutual respect between me and all of my peers wherein we know and believe that, despite having different opinions, we are each talented and capable professionals with the best interests of the company at heart.  I love being surrounded by incredible talent that makes me feel both humbled to be a part of the group and inspired to improve myself every day.  I love working for a company where, instead of feeling like my career has topped out and has nowhere else to go, I feel I have broad, wide-open vistas of learning and advancement just laying before my feet; opportunities sitting before me just waiting for me to seize them.

I had no idea a software company could be that much better than what I’d experienced in the past.  It is really awesome.  It may not be for everybody.  Not all software engineers care enough about delivering quality software that they will do whatever it takes — write unit tests, participate in code reviews, follow rigorous and time-consuming processes, be a small fish in a big pond — in order to do it.  But if you care about delivering quality software, like I do, I must say I highly recommend us.

After only three months I find myself saying something I never thought I’d say:  I love working at Microsoft.  I really do.  Intending absolutely no negative to any other company I’ve worked for (with the exception of Enterasys Networks, I have fond memories of great talent, great people, and great product deliveries at every company), working at Microsoft is unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced.

Once upon a time, there was a nice young man named AMA Superbike.  He really looked up to his big brother, named World.  In fact, AMA really wanted to grow up to be just like World.  So he tried to emulate his big brother in every way.

His big brother had some great friends, with names like Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki.  AMA also made friends with these people.

World was really into motorcycle racing.  AMA was really into motorcycle racing too.

World Superbike worked with his friends Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki to create a racing series based on 600cc and 1000cc production sport bikes.  This helped his friends to produce more powerful, better handling, higher quality motorcycles for their customers.  And it helped World create a great racing series that racing fans not only loved but could identify with, because they knew they could go out and buy bikes almost just like those to ride themselves.  When AMA saw how great the World Superbike racing series was, AMA worked with those same friends to create a racing series too.  The AMA Superbike racing series was great also.

Everything was great.  World Superbike had a great racing series, and so did AMA Superbike.  World Superbike had millions of great fans, and so did AMA Superbike; in fact, they shared many of the same fans.  World Superbike had many great riders, and so did AMA Superbike; in fact, some riders used to move from one series to the other.

Then, one day on his way home from school, AMA met a very bad person named DMG.

At first, he tried not to be friends with DMG.  After all, he knew DMG’s reputation.  He knew that DMG was responsible for turning NASCAR stock car racing, which used to race cars that were actually based on stock cars, into such a pathetic form of racing that it was the laughing stock of the auto racing world.

But DMG was persistent and persuasive.  DMG kept telling AMA that it wouldn’t hurt to be friends.  DMG kept saying how many fans NASCAR had, and conveniently avoided the fact that most NASCAR fans are drunk redneck alcoholics that don’t even pay attention to the race.  DMG kept saying how many racers NASCAR had, and conveniently avoided the fact that none of them really had that much racing talent.

AMA knew he should not be friends with DMG.  But despite knowing better, he gave into temptation.  He started hanging out with DMG even though he knew he shouldn’t.

World said he should not do this.  ”Don’t be fooled by DMG,” said World.  ”He doesn’t know anything about racing — especially motorcycle racing.  He will ruin your life!”

Suddenly, AMA reacted in a way he never had before.  ”You are not the boss of me!” he shouted.  ”You can’t tell me what to do!  I can do whatever I want!”

AMA stormed out of the house.  With nowhere to go, he went over to DMG’s house.  ”Wow, World must not be that good of a friend to treat you that way,” said DMG sympathetically.  ”I would never treat you that way.”

“What should I do?” asked AMA.  ”I don’t understand why World doesn’t want us to be friends.”

DMG replied, “He just doesn’t appreciate you.  You’re better than him!  Trust me.  You don’t need that dumb old World Superbike!  I’ll show you how to make a really great racing series!”

Unfortunately, AMA listened to DMG.  He changed his entire racing series from a proven successful formula to something most of his former fans now refer to as NASBike.  He turned his back on his friends like Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki.  In fact, once he moved away from World Superbike and started hanging out with DMG, Honda said that he could not be friends with AMA anymore.  AMA’s three-time champion left to race for World instead, and AMA’s former seven-time champion said he wouldn’t race anymore if AMA didn’t quit being friends with DMG.  A year later, he retired for good.

Despite all of this, AMA wouldn’t stay away from DMG.  Before, AMA looked up to World and wanted to be like him; now, for some reason AMA thought he was better than World, and felt for some reason like this was important.  So AMA wouldn’t race at the best tracks if World was also there at the same time.  AMA would sometimes wait a month or more to show television coverage of their races.  And the new race format was so confusing and ridiculous that nobody could understand it.

Before too long, everyone who used to be friends with AMA forgot about him.  Everyone except DMG.  Everyone else forgot about him, because he forgot about all of them.  They all just became friends with World instead, and forgot that AMA was even there anymore.

And that was how AMA went from being awesome to nothing in just one year.  And he lived miserably ever after.  The End.

Moral

The moral of this story is:  DMG bites.

Update:

I sent a link to this post to the AMA with the following message:

To Whom It May Concern:

Thought you might be interested to read my latest blog post on AMA Pro Road Racing (http://blog.mvryan.org/2009/10/the-sad-tale-of-ama-superbike-a-bedtime-fable/), which was written not so much as a bash session, but more as an interesting retrospective.
I learned one very interesting thing about myself writing it.  I’ve lived in Utah for over 9 years.  I’ve attended every single AMA Supercross in Salt Lake, as well as others nearby.  I’ve attended every AMA and World Superbike event at Miller Motorsports Park since the track opened.  I watch every AMA Supercross, AMA Motocross, World Superbike, MotoGP, and Formula One race on TV.  You could say I’m a racing fan.
I also used to watch every AMA road racing event on TV.  That is, up until this year.  I watched the first event, but when I couldn’t make any sense of the classes, had to wait for (sometimes several) weeks to watch the events on TV, and when you refused to come to Miller’s this year, I completely lost interest.
That’s what I found interesting:  Between you and DMG, you messed it up so much, in fact, that I, a true racing fan, completely forgot the series was even going on.  Note, I did not actively choose to boycott in protest of the changes.  The changes you made had the effect of causing me to lose interest.  I don’t care about the series anymore – it is as uninteresting to me as a club racing series in another part of the country.
So there’s some feedback for you.  If your intent was to gain fans, well, it seems what you did was exactly the opposite.

I’ll let you know if I hear from them.