I just spent the last two hours writing a little under 5 full pages about the fact that today is the 10 year anniversary of my foray into blogging.
Thanks to everybody who’s been here.
It’s raining wonderfully out and I’m really tired.
Boy are they ever.
In the great Facebook purge of 2011, I deleted (truly deleted) my account. I’ve started it back up, but I’ve been positively miserly about who I’m ‘friend’ing. Immediate family (no more extended family) a few friends, and a couple wonderful miscreants from the internet. In fact I have only 14 ‘friend’s.
Yes there are a couple people from teh before time I’d like very much to get back in touch with.
I use no facebook apps other than the thing that cross-posts from here.
I don’t “like” anything other than the odd goofy picture and posts from friends and family.
I’ve never clicked on a facebook ad, other than to click the “remove ads from ___” which I do on every ad.
And I’ve never, EVER clicked on any of that “find your friends!” nonsense.
But when I log in and peek around in facebook, there, on the right hand column is “People You May Know” and for the most part it’s one step removed “friends of friends.”
I click the little “go away X” on all of these.
But I noticed something a few days ago as I was ‘dismissing away’.
People were coming up that I knew. I didn’t think anything of it at first. But it occurred to me… there is ZERO overlap between people I’m in contact with on Facebook and these COUPLE circles of friends that have started appearing, somewhat sporadically.
It took me some thinking. But I’ve figured out what must be going on.
When you click on a “Find more friends!” thingie, it’ll prompt you to do one of several things. Either import a contact list or (God forbid) ask you for your email account credentials so it can log in and get that contact list FOR you.
I think what must be happening is that these people who I used to know (to be perfectly honest) have had their contact lists of yore slurped up and facebook is now trying to make the connection from my side.
It’s truly insidious stuff and while I suppose it’s possible for there to be some other explanation, I really don’t think there is one.
I do wonder if I should click through to some of these though. Life’s gotten a little too predictable lately.
I’d embed if I knew how to do it from wimp. But… You’ve got to watch this:
http://www.wimp.com/englishaccent/
It’s without a doubt the longest wimp.com video I’ve ever seen.
Absolutely hilarious.
I’m going to go buy a set of those good knives, magic knives! It cut a piece of breef!
I’ve been a Test Driven Development advocate for about 8 years now. Pretty much since I’d read Kent Beck’s book. (For those of you who aren’t developers… I’ll post something interesting later. You might want to take this time to go for coffee, have a snack or something.)
For all my cheering about it, I find it positively amazing how difficult it is to actually perform, even after all this time.
As I see it, there are three problems I have:
1) Laziness. Let me just get that out of the way so nobody thinks I’m deluding myself any more than I really am. It’s hard to do it right. Now before all the Bob Martinites jump down my throat, I know. I know ‘you have to go slow to go fast.’ I know that the amortized cost of Test Driven Development over project life is lower than the standard Jackson Pollack methodology most programmers use.
But when I’m sitting there, emacs open and I have something to do, I find it nigh impossible to avoid “just doing it.” I don’t set up my test scaffolding and start a perl script with ‘test();’ then watch it fail.
I write the code. I spend a few minutes thinking about the algorithm then I top-down it. Most of the code I write is small, a few hundred to a thousand lines at a time.
Oh I’ll create tests and I’ll mock out external I/O calls, generally with stubs that print to a log file and return predictable constants results. That’s a long way away from TDD doctrine.
But generally I write the code that does the task I need it to do and check some output, write a couple test functions in retrospect, generally for future expansion and as a platform from which I can test fringe cases.
2) The nature of the problem domain makes TDD tough.
The code in this context is very I/O bound. Most of it is simple data conversions. But ALL of it requires multiple systems, usually at least one database, at least one network connection and a couple external services. It’s very hard to write test driven code with all of those interactions. Well…let me rephrase. It’s very hard to write test driven code that centralizes on those actions. You end up with a bunch of mocks and nothing else.
Best case scenario, which we are struggling towards on a couple fronts, would have these external services canned in decoupled modules. Then, having standardized interfaces we could create mock equivalents that would provide a solid test scaffold.
I suspect though, without an automation responsible for driving the test suite that we’d never reach sufficient momentum to carry us into test sufficiency.
3) I don’t control the team or the codebase
I can’t change policy. Don’t wag your finger at me like that. I can see it. We have standards and idioms that make their own sense to the extent they’ve been thought about. But nobody’s interested in becoming an Agile/XP shop. They’ll contend that the checks and balances built in to those methodologies are for junior programmers and while I’ve avoided being outright contentious in making the point of how blatantly fucking brain dead that perspective is, I’ve gotten nowhere. But that’s par for the course. I’ve gotten nowhere in my last four positions on this particular point.
“But Mikey! Lead by example!” Well yeah. That’s a great idea; and I’m going to do as much of that as I possibly can. The problem is that leading by example means violating internal standards and generally creating a sociopolitical mess. I can’t do it in a vacuum, the software ecosystem (holy shit did I really just type that? *hurl*) is far too tightly entwined for me to venture out with my own style too far.
It is possible, I suppose, to write up a big evangelical case for Test Driven Development and present it to the team while proposing we run one or two projects that way as a trial.
I’ve noticed in a decade or so of trying to pursue XP that people…don’t seem to understand what it’s like in the financial industry. I get a lot of “well just explain it to them!” as if everybody in the company had once worked with one of those Ruby consulting firms who wear matching t-shirts at conferences (Look at us! Look at us! We’re that Agile shop! Are you looking? *SMACK*)
I’m going to use the phrase that makes Agile/XP coaches cringe:
IN THE REAL WORLD.
In the real world it doesn’t WORK like that. Now, I have nothing to say about whether it should or not. Frankly I’d love it if it did. I would. I’ve considered leaving the industry entirely because of it.
But I can sit down with middle and senior management and make the case for tracking success in development as a somewhat Machiavellian method of shining a light on the internal development organization, while having a couple suggestions for how to improve the highlighted weak spots. And sure, perhaps that would take some hold and cascade through the organization.
But it’s harder to get people to care than you might suspect. They like their panics. They like their emergencies. They like their round-the-clock support schedules and call-trees. Of course they’re loathe to admit it. But all that hand waving and running around on fire gives them the impression that something important is happening.
Look I Loved, LOVED the week Mike Hill came to the small firm where I worked six or so years ago and blew the top off my head when he supplemented my minimal TDD understanding with the full palate of Extreme Programming practices. Then the one on one time with Mike Feathers, when he showed me that unit testing existing windows GUI code was an entirely practical notion. Then Uncle Bob himself (whose time I wasted shamefully while I tried to be overly clever out of raw starstruckitude. Unfortunately if I had his time again I STILL don’t know how I’d make good use of it.)
But no matter which way you slice it, the culture of “Big Finance” just doesn’t seem interested in so much attention on the necessary evil of software development practices.
I just don’t see it working.
I go back and forth between Windows and Linux a lot. Generally it’s to make it occasionally difficult to get too in to playing games for too long. It works pretty well.
One thing (aside from Mass Effect and EQ1) that keeps pulling me back to windows is the fact that I use an offline mail client, thunderbird, to manage my email. I have ALL of my email.
Yes even that one.
But when I switch to linux, all my email in thunderbird is inaccessible. That in and of itself isn’t so bad. I mean, how much does one REALLY need to go read old emails on a day to day basis. But more problematic is if I were to start thunderbird on the linux side, it would download latest messages, and then the repositories would be out of sync, and THAT’S bad.
So I was poking around online and didn’t for a minute believe that it could possibly be easy to move it.
But yeah. copy the funny profile folder from one drive to the other.
Done.
All folders, messages and (perhaps more importantly) filters.
I’m going to give it some trial time but this was smooth enough that I may stop trying to sync things and actually move more of the important stuff over. That way Windows becomes only a gaming platform for me. Then I can pull the linux drive and put it in a dedicated box.
But not today.
Read it.
Seriously.
Read it.
If you don’t believe this is happening, you’re at best a rank simpleton.
More likely, you’re a willful fucking moron.
“Who says naughty? no one.”
You sure?
Saw something about an hour ago that sent me for a complete loop. I mean really knocked me off kilter.
On my drive home from chez Bean I was caught in a stream of thought that is still beyond me and I’ll write about it at some point, though whether it makes it here is . But one of the things it really brought into the stark and momentarily unwelcome light is how utterly doomed any attempt at a relationship in the last…call it six years has been; and why I’ve gone on two phoned-in dates in something distressingly close to four years.
Well, it’s too late now.
fuckity crap.
I had a 2T Western Digital “MY World Book”. It was a network attached 2 Terabyte storage thingamabob with everything built in.
Technically I suppose I still have it. It makes a wonderful door stop.
The thing failed and, because it’s a fully enclosed thingamabob, it’s tough to figure out how it failed or how to manage fixing and recovering it, which is one reason I’ve declined from doing so.
The other reason is that even if I get it back up and running, I will NEVER trust it again. So it’s use as a backup drive is void.
What I aims ta do is get a little low-power pc (I’m thinking one of these or something similar) and an external enclosure for a couple 1T or 2T sata drives. Then slap that on the network, put linux on the thing, share the drive space promiscuously and be done with it.
I dunno. Something like that.
I have absolutely had it with mp3 players. They just all suck. I’ve had a few iPods in my day, a couple no-name brand ones and the zune. Frankly I originally bought the zune because fuck apple. But I actually like it an awful lot more than any of the others I have had. (Though that huge honkin’ Archos thingie with the 20g hard drive I’ve got kicking around was pretty solid.)
The thing that pisses me off to NO end is the complete lack of reasonable playlist management on the device. Yeah yeah I know all about the little quick list thing on the iPod and the “add to currently playing” thing on the zune.
It’s just not enough.
I love mixing music. Now I have to take a break and describe what I mean by “mixing music.” I do NOT mean ripping sound bites from other people’s work and layering them over each other then pretending I’m an artist. No, I mean the 1980s practice of creating a list of tracks that flow together really well (if with some nudging.)
So when I’m listening to my library (consisting of about 80g of music) I frequently think that this would follow that wonderfully. And, well, I want to store a playlist snippet with those couple-few songs that, when I sync back to the desktop, will push back on to my primary box.
I want to be able to name these playlists on the device, so that I can tell them apart when I get to two hundred of them.
This isn’t something that occurs to me every few months. It frustrates the shit out of me every. single. day.
So I started looking for a device that would do it. Near as I can tell, mp3 players have been focusing entirely on adding hardware-based features to their toys. So now I can get one that plays full HD video, connects via wifi and bluetooth to headsets and music repositories. I can get an mp3 player that has a built in radio and records music through an OH so necessary mic jack. I can get an mp3 player that has a built in GPS receiver, and one that has two separate cameras because I’m clearly so fucking IMPOSSIBLY LAZY that I can’t turn the thing around.
What I can’t seem to get is playlist management.
So me being me I started thinking to myself. I thought… self? It’s not rocket surgery. Perhaps there’s some open source thingamabob that you can add some features to.
Then after some searching I came across Rockbox, which is tough to describe in layman’s terms. Basically, Rockbox is a piece of software that you can use to replace the built-in software in any of several commercially available mp3 players. The work these guys have done to do this is pretty impressive.
But I really don’t want to spend $250 on a device that rockbox might work on (especially given that it may or may not do what I want it to do.) So that flash in the pan idea has been drifting away. Besides, the list of supported hardware for Rockbox appears to be…almost 5 years old. I have no idea what the list REALLY is.
But THEN I thought…wait… there are those open source handheld gaming devices that run linux! SURELY that would be the way to go. Something like an updated Zaurus. So I started digging around and came across a couple really interesting looking projects. But upon further digging I found that those projects are from 2006 and don’t actually have complete units sold anywhere.
So I’m back to square one.
This CAN’T be that complicated.
Askuze me while I prove that I really come from a planet orbiting The Dorkstar:
If you’re not done playing ME3, close this.
I’ve been a big fan of the Mass Effect games from day one. I’ve played the first two through several times and, about an hour ago, I finished my first runthrough (of many) of the third installment in the series. Now, I won’t spoil anything (much) here.
One of the features of the series is that you can make plot level choices that have far reaching effects. Indeed things I did in one survive all the way through. It’s neat, and it takes some very very clever writing to extrapolate the tree of possible actions. Sure, it’s done for the most part by keeping things isolated from each other and that’s fine.
But people are bitching like… oh I don’t know. I don’t know, whatever. Someone needs to shoot him in the face anyway. But the nerdosphere has their tricorders in an absolute tizzy about the endings.
Now, I grant that I would like to have seen even some cutscenes of the more esoteric members of the final fleet I’d put together.
But the end was well done. The final…say half hour of the game really was well crafted and well written. Far better than some (perhaps most) game endings I’ve seen in the past 30 years of doing this.
Yeah, it was a little heavily focused on the “negative consequences” of whichever path you take, so there’s no really happy ending and while it’s a little frustrating, it holds together.
Get over it.
Seeing as how this job is, as I’ve said, the first job I’ve explicitly WANTED in 15ish years (give or take) I decided I’m gonna throw my weight, my talent and my attitude behind it. I want these guys to do well and I know I can help make that happen in a way they’ll likely never understand.
I don’t mean “They’re not going to be able to grasp my awesomeness.”
I mean that what I do, despite my positively bombastic personality (as long as it doesn’t involve genuinely cute girls, who, at nigh on 43 years old, still make me all shy and derpy inside) is actually pretty subtle.
Sure, any moron can do the job they proved they were capable of in the interview. After all, who hires someone for a job that’s at the perceived boundary of their abilities?
No, that’s not what I mean. I mean the skunkworks projects and the implicit leading by example, encouraging best practices and delivering superior software to make the customers as happy as I can while bringing disparate technology teams together is going to have a meaningful effect on the culture of the company.
Thing of it is, as my father points out in a repeated sentence that’s cryptic beyond even his character “Mikey, don’t forget…you’re YOU.” And while I’m never sure if that means “…and you need to keep your shit in check before you throw someone out a window and end up in prison.” or “…and once you get a head of steam about something, it becomes the problem of everyone around you.” the one thing I DO know it means is that I’m gonna do it my way.
This is all well and good when it jives with what…say, my “would be superiors” think is the right way.
But when it doesn’t, it’s because my internal compass of professionalism and integrity are decidedly out of whack with theirs. Now, I got a taste (well, THEY got a taste) of that this week.
I’m not going in to any detail here. But I took a gamble and it came out fine. Logic prevailed and everybody looked good.
But the concern is that at some point there’s going to be a direct contest of wills.
And it ain’t gonna be pretty.
(Or maybe I should take a break from the Honor Harrington novels about for a few months.)
For the first night since February 19th, I slept in my own bed last night. It’s easily the best sleep I’ve had since then.
It’s going to take some adjustment to get used to the fact that
a) I’m home and
b) I have a job
I’m sure I should have all kinds of great sumuppage of my time in SoCal for a big old Rodinian postured blog post.
But…
I don’t.
Shove.
*squee*
Monday night, 11:13 local time.
I just read The Rook in a single sitting; took about 4 hours. A delightful urban fantasy effort, if a bit heavy on the weird.
I’ve set up an appointment for Wednesday morning for the dentist to take a look at the hole he made in the back of my face, and I’ve started packing “everything I’m not going to wear.” Or, well… I will in a minute.
They’re trying to get me to stay for a few more weeks but I read them the riot act and was prepared to go all batshit Wilsony and monstery at them, so they stood down. I don’t mind if it’s necessary. But they’ve made such horrible use of my time in the last four weeks I’ve been in this fucking motel that I’m disinclined to sympathize with their lack of planning.
I can’t even imagine how much weight I’ve lost. But I can actually see the difference in the mirror. It’s a little weird.
So the next couple days will rip by without much event I’m sure. I’ll head back up to Madeline’s on Wednesday and Thursday for a civilized adult beverage. One more stop at Mimi’s wouldn’t hurt either.
Friday morning it’s checkout, then navigate my way up to LAX to drop off the car and the the HELL out of this place.
I did make it down to the peninsula on Sunday. Nice spot. I had crab cake eggs benedict. Holy mother of God were they awesome.
But more than anything, despite my manufactured bluster I’m just tired of being not home.
Fashion Island food court… 12:40
After Friday’s escapade I decided to play this one friendly; unflappable; with a perfect stepford smile.
I’d had a late breakfast at the cute girl place with the cute girl who makes my hot chocolate with the extra cuteness.
Where was I…Oh! Right. SO I just wanted a little sammich.
I went to the Stone Grill place. They had a good sandwich last week and a nice simple little grilled cheese on the menu. It looked about right.
The short hispanic woman behind the counter had her face positively slathered on, looking like something out of an egyptian tomb. It’s too bad because she looked like she was probably cute underneath all that schlock. But, a little short, a little heavy and in southern california? Her body image was full bore panic. It’s the kind of thing that makes me wish someone would bomb the conde nast building.
“Hi how are you?” I asked, actually sincere. We went a round of pleasantries.
But the they wouldn’t give me a grilled cheese without a salad.
“But it comes with it.”
“No thanks.”
“The price includes…”
“I understand. No thank you. Just the sandwich.”
“You don’t want chips or nuthin?”
“No thanks. I’m not that hungry.”
“But… not even to go?”
“Just the sandwich, thanks.”
…
“Ok. That’ll be $7.22.”
At the pick up, after a few minutes later I saw the two women working the grill, putting orders together stare blankly at the ticket, at the sandwich, then at each other, then back at the ticket again.
They were completely perplexed by the instructions on the ticket.
It was just a grilled cheese, so there’s no doubt what was going on.
“Yeah, that’s mine. Just the sandwich.”
“You, uhm…” she looked back at the ticket.
“Nope. Just the sandwich.” The plates were right next to my sandwich, sitting there on the board, waiting to be plated and handed to me. The moment of truth.
I was still grinning my best toothy fake ass SoCal grin.
She wrinkled her brow as the other one looked on…holding her breath.
Like me.
She picked up a fresh plate and I gasped, perhaps audibly, I can’t be sure.
The moment of truth.
She shook her head as if she’d been under the influence of a bad hypnotist.
Definitively she took a plate from the stack that was within reach and did something horrible.
She put a fucking salad on it.
By the time I got to my table the vile lettuce shards had worked their way into the cheese, forcing me to take a once nice happy simple quick sandwich and perform sandwich surgery on it.
That’s what I get for being nice.
Noted SoCal.
Noted.
