Ryan Grier.com » The President’s Challenge
I have decided to join The President’s Challenge
Race ya!
Archive for April, 2005
The President’s Challenge
Wednesday, April 20th, 2005always debug the debugger first
Wednesday, April 20th, 2005int uninterestingValue = foo(); int interestingValue = bar(); System.out.println(“uninterestingValue: “+uninterestingValue); System.out.println(“interestingValue: “+uninterestingValue);
I wonder why foo() and bar() are returning the same thing!!!
marketing failures: world class
Tuesday, April 19th, 2005“world class” means we didn’t even want to try hard when lying to you about how much we suck.
Notebooks of McLazarus
Tuesday, April 19th, 2005So I liked the way Tom’s websites have evolved to have a fancy one where he writes long articles and a not so fancy one where he tells the world off through his away message. I don’t know if this is what encouraged Mike to break off and create his separate Deep Thoughts blog, but either way the combined effort has caused me to do something similar.
Of course I tried to make it more complicated, by using my single wordpress install. I have simply created a separate category called Notebooks and changed the index page of my site to only show everything but the Notebooks category. However my RSS feed should pick up all the entries to the Notebooks category, so the three people that faithfully read my RSS feed every 72 days when there is a new post, should have a bit more than they are used to handling. Everyone else (which I think there are only 3 of them also) of course will simply have to go to the Notebooks Category page.
Marriott saves me from a trip to Guantanamo bay
Sunday, April 10th, 2005So unless you have been living under a rock somewhere you know it is frowned upon to bring a knife onto an airplane. You also probably know that they have a little lottery to decide if a passenger gets an extra special screening by the TSA.
Well I sometimes carry a Swiss Army Knife that was a Christmas Gift from my Aunt Judy, Uncle Dom and Niko. I carry it in my backpack that I use to carry my laptop and what at times is a huge collection of electronics gear (usb drive, ipod, travel alarm clock, headphones, airline headphones, usb mouse, cell phone, wireless pcmcia card, laser pointer pen.) Well I flew out of PHL today and the gear bag was at full capacity. And I won the TSA lottery for extra inspection.
Of course I don’t know the knife is in there. And it turns out they don’t either, even though I noticed the TSA worker looking quizically at my USB drive, and checking out my ipod. It wasn’t until I was talking to Michelle a few minutes ago that I noticed the knife while I was looking for my cell phone charger.
Dammit. I have at least 3 more airplanes to get on. And to pass TSA security at least twice more. A knife has to light up like a christmas tree on the XRay machine, otherwise why the hell is the xray machine there. I could check my bag. What a PITA, especially since my original 2 flights and 1 of my subsequent flights were cancelled today. Where would my laptop end up?
So I decide to try the “At your service” line at the Marriot I am staying in. Well they hook it up, a fedex envelope is filled out and set to be shipped back toward my home, for hopefully not too much money. Now I can avoid becoming a mainstay on the terrorist watch list, or avoid further disgust and embarssment as my tax dollars at work to protect the airways continue to miss finding a knife in my bag.
The importance of icebergs
Friday, April 8th, 2005The Iceberg Secret article: Joel on Software – The Iceberg Secret, Revealed also known as Chapter 25 in the Joel on Software book. Has inspired in me a profound revelation, when it comes to developing software.
Once you understand the Iceberg Secret, it’s easy to work with it. Understand that any demos you do in a darkened room with a projector are going to be all about pixels. If you can, build your UI in such a way that unfinished parts look unfinished.
Outside of the context of my life this may not be huge to you. But if you shared some of the experiences I have over the past 5 years, you would understand how profound this is. Or you might say, yeah, I know that, who doesn’t know that.
But it doesn’t matter, based on the understanding I reached this morning reading Chapter 25, it will forever alter the way I handle the creation of software. Sure there are other great insights provided by Joel, and they may all be even more important, or seem more important. But as for me, as for right now, there is nothing more important to understand.
When it comes to software there is nothing, absolutely nothing more important about it than the user interface.
Podcasting, Fools and Canadian?
Friday, April 1st, 2005Why does google think I am in Canadian. When I am at work and go to google.com it automatically sends me to Google Canada. I know Jersey is a little strange, but I didn’t know we (the US) were shipping them off to be some other countries problem.
Apparently it’s All Fool’s day as evidenced by all the half assed Slashdot stories and the whole assed Google Gulp product announcement.
I guess with it being a Friday I will have to read the the joke RFC too. Side note: If you try really really hard to tell a joke and it really is only mildly amusing, does it still count as a joke?
Also I downloaded ipodder last night and grabbed a few podcasts to listen to on the travel to and from work. Mildly interesting, I guess at least as good as some of the commercial radio around here. The only problem is the people tend to not have a very strict agenda and digress into really boring topics or inside jokes, it’s like college radio where all they talk about is how cool it is to be able to communicate over this wonderous medium that is radio. “And here we are voices coming to you through the air, isn’t radio great! I wish everone would do this.”
Although I think an hour long podcast of just the little 5 – 10 second self-promotional rock and roll intros with ominous voiceovers that each caster inevitably makes for themselves would be fun to hear. It would be like just hearing that little segment of the Rob Zombie song Howard uses to launch his show every day, over and over. (Yeah I know, I am the only one driving around at 6 that hears this. But it sounds cool.) Seriously I think most of the people doing podcasting probably wanted to do it, just because they always liked this really cool part of some song wanted to have it as their intro music, much like the WWE wrestlers have, or that episode of the family guy when Peter wished for theme music to follow him around all the time.
“Ridin’ on the bus. Ridin’ on the bus. Ridin’ on the bus ….”
