resistance to persistence

I’m heading outta town today. Jenn has surprised me with a trip away. It was supposed to be for my 30th birthday last weekend, but since my passport wasn’t due to arrive, she planned it for this weekend. I’m really excited. I think I know where it is, but I’m not 100% certain. She’s pretty tricky at keeping me fooled and I can’t call her bluff. Anywhere we go, it’ll be good to get away. We haven’t taken a trip away together since Vegas a few years ago. But this all comes near the same time. This little trip, then Whistler in April, honeymoon in May. I’ll be all travelled out by June. I’m bringing the camera to document everything.

Today is my birthday. Creaking around the corner to 30. Do I feel old? Heck no. I feel the same way as I did when I was in university. I still like cool toys, playing Playstation, drawing, skateboarding, snowboarding and dressing below my age. Not much has changed in the past 10 years. But I think I did see a couple gray hairs in the mirror today.

Most common question today: Do you feel old?
Most common answer: No.

I’ve actually been ignoring the fact that my birthday has been coming up. Jenn has been asking me repeatly for the past 2 weeks what I wanted to do for my birthday and I really haven’t given it any thought. I think I’m mostly just ignoring it.

Tonight, to celebrate, my friends have planned an evening at Rinx. This should be really fun. We went there for my company Xmas party and I had a blast.

Sharing this birthdate: DJ Jazzy Jeff, Olivia d’Abo (Kevin’s sister on Wonder Years), Linda Blair(Actress), Michael Hutchence (INXS, R.I.P), Mike Bossy (NHL), Bill Bixby(The Hulk)
Interesting events on this date: 1987 - a blizzard in New Jersey, as 334 attend the Devils-Flame NHL game, New Jersey wins 7-5. 1982 - 75% of North America is covered by snow. I wish I was snowboarding then. 2004 - Chinese New Year - The year of the monkey. Wear some red and party for the new year.

I found yet another useful (there’s tons of useful ones out there already) photo gallery creator. Most are browser based ones (php, etc) but this one is a Java thick client. Through-The-Lens Gallery Constructor makes easy work of creating a photo gallery for a website. I’m currently using Gallery for my photo site, but I find it painful to do the uploading and creation for new images. Too much configuration on the server side and the upload client Gallery Remote frequently chokes for me. I might check this out, and I also found out about spgm.sf.net which is another promising php gallery.

Badgers, mushrooms and a snake!. Why do I find this funny? Rated PG (safe for the office), but throw on some headphones or turn down your speakers.

You like it? You got it. Download this font and install it on windows and have fun with it. Sorry no linux or mac versions - if you wanna convert it, please do so.

I slapped this font together in less then 5 minutes. I spent about 1 second on the name…that’s why it sounds so lame and generic. I sketched out my writing, Fontifier.com did the hard work. A simple quick printed font. I want to redo it so it comes out clearer and the font size is larger. At 12 points, it looks like about 8 points.

Use it, love it, hate it…whatever. It’s free, but leave me some comments if you like it. Good karma will be returned your way.

2nd week of NBC’s The Apprentice. I love this show. It’s hilarious! Sam is my favorite because he’s a born loser. He’s been up to be fired 2 weeks in a row and has squeeked out of it again. The Donald is awesome. His straight faced delivery of firings is priceless. I couldn’t hack working for him though…I’d be a heartache case and my stress levels would be through the roof. Nick impressed me at the end of the show. I hope he’s on there for a while.

The Omarosa vs Ereka (or should I say Omarosa vs everyone) battles are annoying. I hope Katrina and Kristi get more airtime and stay on there for a while - hot! Is Jessie even allowed to talk? They haven’t showed her at all. Probably not missing much. Mark Burnett, you’re a genius. Survivor, Eco-Challenge and now this. Keep ‘em coming.

I was reading a usually funny dilbert-esque blog (Richard Saunders, a recently appointed team lead who doesn’t want the lead role) and his latest posting really irked me. Richard weaves a delightful little story about how a new hire “has been wasting his time writing JUnit tests instead of coding”. Wasting? I don’t think many people consider writing unit tests wasting time. Granted, as a new hire, this guy should probably be focussed on producing mostly new code with some unit tests, instead of writing tests for older code. This percentage of code/tests could maybe be adjusted to keep the guy on schedule instead of “wasting” time.

Another quote: “I do see some value in what he is doing but I’d rather him not do any of that and just meet our deadlines”. I agree, deadlines are very important, but the future stability of the product demands unit tests.

This next quote is what drove me crazy enough to post this entry. “Quality is a luxury which is not in the project plan”. Geez. I’d hate to work there. Quality should never be looked at as a luxury…it’s an essential buildng block to a stable product. The attitude seems to be - Let’s produce a piece of crap just so we can meet our deadlines. Don’t worry, we’ll fix everything later. Have you ever looked at the economics of software development? The cost of fixing further along the project cycle exponentially increases. Freeze the project now, re-evaluate the schedule to include steps to build in quality and then set achievable goals. How can people not see how essential this is and build in quality from the start. Granted, I have no idea what their schedule is, the reasons why they have such a strict deadline and why they aren’t including any quality steps so I’m speaking from an outsider’s viewpoint.

Kudos to Tool Boy for trying to inject some quality in this product. Richard, as the new team lead you should be responsible for leading the team in producing quality code and making a stand to adjust the schedule. Take a look at some (not all, I’ll admit) XP practises while you’re at it.