GenXJamerican

My sister and I spent the weekend with my parents and an aunt to watch the Christmas shows at Sight and Sound Theatre, in Strasburg, Pennsylvania.  We were fortunate enough to see both Miracle of Christmas and Voices of Christmas.  Both shows are Christian-themed musicals with live animals and very impressive set design.  The Millenium Theatre, where Miracle of Christmas was staged, is large enough to have front and side stages.  There was plenty of action to both sides, and the show also used the center aisles to move people and animals in and out.  They even had the actors playing angels on wires, flying them around at heights of what must have been at least 30 feet for some scenes.  I really enjoyed both shows.

The latest podcast of Hanselminutes mentioned a custom search engine focused on .NET topics. It’s using Google Custom Search, and at least for a search term like MSMQ, the searchdotnet.com results look a bit different than regular Google results. The creator of the site, Dan Appleman, has authored a number of books on Microsoft technologies (primarily .NET and VB). He seems to be going for a “quality vs. quantity” approach with the sites he includes as sources (which makes sense for this sort of niche search engine).

While I wait for Google to fix their desktop search bug, I’m using Lookout (version 1.2.0.1924) to search Outlook.  I was under the distinct impression that Lookout got killed after Microsoft bought the vendor (Lookout Software),  especially when I read this post on Channel 9.

It looks like the helpdesk people at work squirreled away an old installation of it, because Googling for it brought back nothing but Windows Desktop Search links.

I was at the San Jose Airport waiting on a flight to Los Angeles when this earthquake hit.  It didn’t register with me that an earthquake was happening until a few seconds went by and I saw the walls and ceiling moving more and more.  Everyone in the terminal (including me) dashed toward the nearest doorway or arch they could find.  It was quite a scary experience, and one I hope never to repeat.

I spent a few hours this afternoon making chocolate at the Cacao Anasa kitchen.  My friend Peter invited me to the third of these events since I’m in town for a conference.  If it’s possible to have more fun in a kitchen, I’m not sure how.  We made (and ate) truffles, cookies, chocolate bars, chocolate soup, and a bunch of chocolate-flavored drinks (spicy hot chocolate, and an assortment of stronger beverages).

Now that I’ve had freshly-made chocolate from my own hands, I’m sure I’ll be a lot more picky about what I buy. The CEO/owner of Cacao Anasa, Anthony Ferguson, gave us a great education on the making of chocolate (and some of the health benefits).  Before today, I would never have known that chocolate is actually tempered, not unlike steel.  His biography is even more impressive than the great chocolate.

While I haven’t made much headway on my other four resolutions for 2007, I just accomplished the fifth one–a two-week vacation. From September 5-19, I visited Seattle, Vancouver (BC), and Portland. Two weeks was definitely the right amount of time to decompress from work and its typical concerns.

Of the three cities I visited, Vancouver impressed me the most. It’s the only city I’ve ever visited with a public transit system that can take you from the heart of downtown to the base of a mountain (Grouse Mountain). Stanley Park is a two-in-one attraction because it’s home to the Vancouver Aquarium too. Harbour Centre (in downtown Vancouver) has a Space Needle-like observation deck stuck on top of it that gives you a 360-degree view of the city.  Vancouver was easily the most expensive of the three cities where I stayed.  Some Canadians must be doing quite well financially, because there appeared to be an abundance of late-model Porsches on the streets.

Seattle was the first city I’d visited that had wi-fi on its public buses.  It also proved to be as hilly as San Francisco.  I got to enjoy plenty of great seafood there, though I didn’t see any flying fish at Pike Place Market.  Seattle was also more of a college football town than I expected.  There were fans everywhere in Washington State Cougars and Washington Huskies gear.  There were also a lot of orange-shirted fans from Idaho (the Huskies opponent the weekend I was in Seattle).  The most interesting thing about the Space Needle was the exhibit inside where you could view time lapse photos of Seattle over a 24-hour period taken from cameras mounted on top.  The monorail was underwhelming, but I was quite entertained by the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.  People in Seattle have a great sense of humor.

The only really “touristy” things I did in Portland were check out Vista House and some of the waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge.   There’s a lot of forest and great hiking out there.  The only thing missing was sunny weather (which Seattle and Vancouver had no shortage of).

One thing I wish I’d done in at least one of the cities was some cycling.  Each one of them seemed quite bike friendly.

Now that I’ve spent a couple weeks in the Pacific Northwest, I can see why people are ditching California to move north.

I found this post on "street programmers" and computer scientists quite interesting because I manage a staff where the former outnumbers the latter significantly. In this environment, his conclusion that the street programmer is better than the CS graduate is wrong. The staff that have formal training consistently deliver higher-quality results when compared to the street programmers. The code they produce is easier to maintain and better-tested.

Mark Tarver's definition of street programmer is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to people who write software for a living. It doesn't include the people who got into this line of work because of Internet bubble; people who did it because they saw dollar signs rather than out of a genuine interest. I believe the person who self-teaches well is quite rare indeed.

I can't dispute Tarver's points about the state of computer science education. Far too many of them have been confirmed by friends of mine who are in Ph.D programs now. He's certainly right about the conservatism of CS courses too. I still remember learning Pascal in the early 90s as part of my CS curriculum.

Even with the shortcomings of today's computer science departments, the degree still serves as a useful filter when trying to decide if an interview with someone is likely to be time well spent.  I've also encountered enough good programmers in my time with degrees in math or physics that I'd certainly hire them if they interview well enough.

I came across this link on UML sequence diagrams via Mike Gunderloy’s blog.  While the site is pitching a product (TraceModeler), it does a nice job of explaining the utility of sequence diagrams.

I started reading programming.reddit.com not long ago. Today, I came across Classic Oo Anti Patterns. It does a great job of describing many of the problems I see in code I inherited at my current job (and a lot of the previous ones too).

TSS.NET posed this question in one of their newsgroups on March 1.  Here are the comments I added to the thread:

- They only write what they need to. They tend to choose open source libraries and components for needed functionality instead of writing things themselves. They definitely don't replicate functionality already provided by whatever platform they're coding against (whether it's .NET or Java). - A companion characteristic is that they're good integrators. Because they use third-party components to develop solutions, they're skilled at making them play well with each other. - They're good at refactoring. The first version of any application is always the worst one. A good software developer refines and otherwise improves their code as they go along. - The companion characteristic to refactoring is unit testing. No developer can consider themselves good unless this practice is part of their everyday work. A robust set of unit tests is the first line of defense when it comes to high-quality code.

I was in the middle of writing my self-evaluation for work (review time is coming up) when I realized that the end of 2006 marked my 10th year of working full-time in software development.

First, to my readers (all three of you), I hope that 2006 treated you well and that 2007 is even better.

2006 treated me pretty well as years go. I actually kept the “get in better shape” resolution I made last year by joining these guys. There’s 25 pounds less of me right now than there was at this time last year. I took up a new hobby (skiing). I bought a new car. I also got to do some traveling (Killington, VT for skiing and San Francisco, CA for vacation). I learned enough of a new programming language (Ruby) to try a startup idea with Sandro. A few months ago, I got a new job (and a nice raise as a result).

I haven’t made any resolutions for 2007 (outside of “get in better shape”). I’ve been seeing more of these “101 things in 1001 days” lists (like this one and this one) lately. While I don’t think I’m nearly as ambitious as my friends, there are some things I’ve been thinking about doing that would be good to attempt this year:

• Learn a new programming language. One of the consultants that works for me has had a lot of good things to say about Eiffel. So far, I've installed the development environment, read a bit of documentation, and written a bit of sample code. There's a small product idea I'd like to try, and I plan to use Eiffel to do it.
• Incorporate. My friend Richard has been encouraging me to do this for years now, instead of being a regular employee for some company. He's been working for himself as long as I've known him (at least 12 years now) and has done very well. So far, I've bought a couple of domain names and done enough budgeting to determine what my hourly rate should be if I were to go into IT consulting.
• Re-learn the piano. I was good enough at it when I was younger that my last piano teacher wanted me to go to school at the Peabody Institute. Spending the past couple of years as a sound engineer for one of the services at my church just made me miss being able to play even more. Since I can still read music, I need to do something more with it.
• Study the Bible more regularly. Some years ago, I took a Disciple Bible Study class at my church. We covered 75-80% of the Bible over the course of a year. It was a very spirtually-rewarding experience. I want to get (and keep) my life in enough balance that I can make some Bible study a part of each day.
• Take a two-week vacation. 2005 was the first year I'd taken more than a week off in a row since my undergraduate days (back in the mid 90s). I took a bus tour through western Europe for nearly two weeks with my dad (and about 50 other people) and had an excellent time. It really helped me disconnect from work concerns, and I'm positive I'll need to do that again this year.

I came across this post in a rare break between meetings.  Since I’m an IT manager now, I found it good reading (and a good ego check as well).

It’s one thing to know that SQL injection is bad, and quite another to have some stats to back it up.  I came across a Michael Sutton blog post on the topic via Joel Spolsky’s latest blog post.

Out of 708 sites checked, 80 had potential vulnerabilities to SQL injection attacks.  Beyond the importance of the topic as a security hole, the most interesting thing about Sutton’s article was the tool he built to come up with these stats.  He used a C# app with the Google API to get his results.  I only wish I had time to build a tool that clever and useful.

I’ve left to join APS Healthcare as a manager of software development. My last day at Lockheed Martin was September 20.

In nearly two years at Lockheed Martin (and Aspen Systems prior to its buyout) as a combination project manager, systems analyst, and lead developer, I learned many different lessons about myself–some painful, some not.

The necessity of diplomacy

When I first arrived at Aspen Systems, I was blunt in discussing areas I felt needed improvement (code quality, process, etc). Because I wasn’t always diplomatic in the way I talked about what I saw, some people responsible for the work took offense. It was irrelevant that I was describing standard industry best practices. Co-workers who were offended became far more difficult to work with. Being more diplomatic would have made life easier.

The importance of corporate culture

My experience at Aspen Systems led me to conclude that corporate culture is as important as profitability. It affects the quality of work, the caliber of employees, how co-workers treat each other, how management treats staff, and employee retention. I had a lot of disagreements with how things worked in all of these areas (which is probably why I only lasted two years in a company that had an average tenure of seven years). Two other people who joined Aspen after I did ended up leaving before I did. Corporate culture played a role in their departures too.

Project management is really personality management

I didn’t manage difficult personalities very well on my projects. To succeed at project management, it’s vital to have that ability. Being able to put together realistic work breakdown structures, project plans, and budgets is important–and I did all those things well–but being more able to persuade others to do certain tasks would have made my job much easier. When the people assigned to your project(s) don’t actually report to you, persuasion is the only tool you have. Being more diplomatic would have helped me. Beyond that however, the role of project manager needed far more support from the organization than it received.

While the skills are useful, project management is not something I’ll take on as a full-time role in the future. I’m better at other things.