TDD sucks when not everyone is doing it

I now understand Ryan's frustration better when we were working on AudioMan now. He was all for TDD, and it's easy to agree that it's a good thing and that you should do it, it's quite another to actually believe it and drink the kool-aid (which Ryan's commented on a couple of times).

I have to admit that in the last little while I have strayed from the path, and I regret doing that now for even a couple of minutes. Tests are not something that you can easily add in later. Well, not good tests. One of the reason that I like unit tests is that I can "see" the different paths that things can take easier. When using any kind of UI I tend to do it the exact same way, every time. This isn't great if you are doing UI functional testing, because you're only hitting part of it every time, instead of a consistent path, all of the time.

I think that I really have to harp on my co-worker for doing test first, I think that I have to show it to him really... I have to find a better way to address it I think. Ah well. We'll see how things go.

Listening to: K's Choice - Not an addict (acoustic)

When do you tell your boss you're leaving

I was talking to a friend of mine today and they have a problem. They applied for a job like 14 months ago and just recently found out that they got the job (long approval process). They are stressed because they are not sure when they should tell their boss. Do they tell them now before they have anything in writing, or should they tell the boss only when they get a job offer in writing?

My advice to the person was to wait till they get something in writing because I don't trust verbal agreements: they are worth the same as the paper they are written on. But this means they are going to give their boss only 2 weeks notice. Do they trust the verbal agreement and tell their boss asap, or do they wait till they get something in writing? What do you think?

Listening to: Swollen Members - Bad Dreams

Keeping perspective

At times during work I get stressed out. We might not be able to meet deadlines, we have dependencies on other groups and I am unsure if they will be on time, issues with our customers, people getting sick...

I talked to my co-worker and about a conversation he had with his wife. She simply asked "why are you getting stressed out?" Yes, why am I? As much as I like to talk big about Software Engineering and how people's lives depend on good sw, that's not true for what I am working on right now. No one will die if my web app is late or has bugs. And what's the worst that can happen? I can get fired. So what.

It's not worth getting stressed out. It's just a job and nothing more. It's not me. I do care if my project fails, but if I does, it doesn't really impact a whole lot of people in a serious way. My drive to work has more wide ranging implications on people's lives than what I am doing. My job is just to provide experience and money for my life. That's where I am getting the money to put gas into my car, buy people dinner, and buy a kayak for myself.

There are SO many more important jobs in the world such as doctors, nurses, parenting and teachers. I just have to keep on reminding myself that the stress from work is not worth my health, not even close. I think that when I can keep perspective all of the time, I will be where I want to be in life.

Listening to: Joan Osborne - What if God Was One Of Us

Spring Convocation 2004

Since my mom has been bugging me for months to figure this out, and it took me a good 1/2 hour to find the info on U of O's site, I just thought that I would post it. Spring Convocation for us is Sunday, June 6, 2:30 p.m (Ceremony II) at the NAC. I guess that I don't have to take time off work like I thought that I would.

Well, it's very soon in some ways, and far away in others. I was just counting the the months (on my fingers) and it is almost the time to go back to school if I was on co-op. Strange. I thought that I would be sick of work and get all antsy at this time of year. I don't miss school at all really. I guess that I might in a couple of years, but right now I am having too much fun and am far too busy to want to go back to school now.

On a slightly different note, Kibbee linked to a really interesting article about why nerds are unpopular. It was a good read, if long. I don't totally agree about some of the things that he says, but the thing that I found was the most interesting was how teenagers create their own "society" because they don't have any real purpose to what they are doing. To me that implies that if they are given a task to work toward, a lot of crap (socially) that people go through wouldn't happen anymore. I guess that makes sense when you think of the expression: the idle hands gather no moss. So true. ;-)

Listening to: John Lennon - Imagine (acoustic version)

Passwords for chocolate

Some specific people came to mind when I read a slashdot story about how people would give up their passwords for chocolate. It just goes to show what most people know: that we have to know too many passwords and we need a better way because people don't use strong enough passwords. This isn't really a technology issue, but a social one. I am sure that it will be easier to come up with a tech solution to this, but that is by no means easy.

Getting things to where I want them

It sounds really dumb, but it can be a lot of work to get things to a point where you feel comfortable. Right now I'm trying to do that with my computer. As I've talked about before, I now have the space that I want: a lot. My only complaint now is that I'm moving a lot of data over a small pipe: USB 1.1. Well, honestly that's something that I always bitch about, slow modem, not enough space, slow transfer speeds, ... Just ignore it. I'm just venting.

Now, when I get everything on the drive as I want, I'll be able to do things like re-rip or re-tag songs as needed; weed out the bad songs; get rid of ones that I have in there a couple of times; be aware of the ones that I have the original songs for and ones that I do not. But mostly, it's to get stuff off my computer so I'm not so squished for space, yet still be able to enjoy music. Now what I'm going to do is find all the music in my house and put it on that drive. That way I'll be able to wire a home sound system (eventually) that will run off a hard disk and play pleasant music in the background. That's my goal. We'll see how the journey goes.

Listening to: the sound of my hd and dvd drive transferring mp3's. Oh the joy!

Changing posts

One of the good things about the web is the ability to make corrections right away to any published material. If you make a spelling mistake, bad link, etc. you can change things right away and the next person that comes to your site sees the corrected version.

However, this can be bad as well. You go to a blog or whatever, and the comments don't make sense to the post. I have changed posts before, but mainly they were spelling mistakes and bad links. What happens if I blog about something and then later think that I made a mistake. Should I change the post? Should I add to the post putting an "Update:", or should I just do another post with a trackback or something saying how I understand how I was wrong? How about deleting a post? It can be a very fine line.

Personally I like the "Update" option. I feel that every post I do is a snap shot into part of my head and shouldn't really be changed. If I said something or did something I have to live with those consequences. If I made a mistake, next time I will think twice about what I am going to post. Life isn't full of "do overs", so why should the web be? Even though the medium allows for instant change, I don't think that is good for ownership of what you do / did. No more than I can make defamatory comments in person and take them back, should I be allowed to on the net. It just annoys me, that's all. *deep breath* Okay, on to lunch.

Finally more room

I finally have more disk space. Now I can spread out past the 18 G that I have for my whole computer. I got a external drive case and 120 G hard drive from deals direct. Man, I still have my original P 100 computer (that my sister uses). It had a 3 G drive at first, and I thought that was a lot at the time. I quickly found out that it isn't. Ah well. The setup / install was pretty easy. I just didn't know how to get the Computer Management program in XP that I can manage drives etc.

I got a WD drive 'cause the place didn't have a Maxtor that I wanted (120 G, 8 M cache) in stock, and he told me that he had seen a lot more problems with the Maxtors. So, we'll see. I just have to make backups of my stuff anyways, I can't trust when it's on a HD, even if it is write protected.

Now the next step is for me to change my songs into mp3, acc, ogg, or something similar. I think that I will re-rip all my cd's (I do own a lot) just to get the tags all nice and pretty. Ryan recommended that I use iTunes to rip cd's. (I don't think that AudioMan can do that yet) I am using winamp at work, but it takes forever to rip a cd not using the pro version because the fastest it will do it is 2x. And I refuse to use Media Player, just because. :-P

Now, having gone on like that, what do you recommend I use to quickly rip the songs? I don't really care what format it goes to right now (mp3, ogg, acc) since I no longer have an mp3 player (it died after 3 weeks. Yay futureshop). I'm still using winamp 2.76 at home, but I might switch to something like 5. We'll see. Ideally, I would have something that would do a directory watch and add any new songs to the "all songs" playlist. It would have a small memory foot print, have the basic features (by shortcut key) like track forward, random, ... and have the jump feature. I find this the most useful feature of them all. So now it's your turn, what's good out there, 'cause I'm looking. ;-)

Listening to: Don Henley - Boys Of Summer

QotD

Taken from a /. comment

Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer...Now I are one!

Listening to: Disney - Winnie The Pooh - Rumbly In My Tumbly Song

Hard drives

I have finally bitten the bullet and ordered an external usb hard drive case for my laptop (after giving up on Samba). Now my question for everyone is what type of hard drive should I get? I'm thinking of something in the 120 Gb range, but I really don't know what is the "best brand" out there right now, or really what options (I'm not a hw guy). I'm looking at a couple of places to possibly buy (or even future shop). What do you guys think?

Listening to: Daft Punk - One More Time

Gollum's MTV Acceptance Speech

On another note completely, I just watched the old Gollum's MTV Acceptance Speech. So funny... ;-)

Listening to: Jive Bunny - Swing The Mood

Gas use and consumption

The thing that I was thinking about when I was putting gas into my car tonight at the price of 0.795 CAD / L (yes, cheaper than in Europe) was how stupid we really are. Even though the gas prices can be really high, the vehicle that seems to be the most popular is the SUV or other heavy trucks. And for people who are using them to go back and forth to the mall / work, pick up the kids, etc... None of which need a big heavy vehicle.

And why do people buy these? Because of the image that gets sold to people: to be able to be do anything in your big light truck, to be able to drive the wilds (and ruin them for everyone else) in your big ass air conditioned, CD playing, gas guzzling vehicle so that you don't have to admit to yourself that you are just a regular everyday person. It's a mental escape and nothing more.

My brothers would argue with me on this one. They both have Ford Explorers and grunt like Tim Tayler while they use their big gas guzzling trucks to move around their babies or for going to work. Wait, a second, they could be using cars and using half of the gas that they do. Humm....

What gets me is that our (the worlds) gas supplies are quickly running out. And what are we doing as a trend to delay this event? We're using it up at a faster rate! We are acting like a fat kid at a party who is told to share the brownies, but the kid starts stuffing his face as fast as possible to get a bigger share. Is this what we are going to leave our children? No brownies?

It just pisses me off that we as a whole are acting so stupid, wasteful and short-sighted. I'll just have to hope that we won't completely screw up the world and all our resources. I guess pretty soon we won't have to worry about non-renewable resources anyways, 'cause they won't be there.

Listening to: Eminem - Stan (feat. Dido)

Downloadable movie trailer

I'm really happy to see that some places are letting you download a movie trailer instead of just watching it in your browser. Not that I have been checking out a lot online, but Spider-Man 2 lets me do that. And it's good 'cause I can download the biggest one, and then just come back and check it out later (well, like 3 hours later) because of my connection. I'm still surprised that more places are not using sw like BitTorrent, but I guess that's just not main stream enough yet.

On a slightly different note, if I had a nice room to have a computer, (nice wood floors and desk etc), I figured out what case mod I'd want to do: something pretty in wood. Pretty cool, and I don't think that it would be too hard to do by yourself.

Listening to: Ben Folds - Rocking The Suburbs

Gotta love Pixar

I was just poking around on pixar's site and I found that they have a new short coming out. It looks pretty amusing all right. I've always been impressed by the stuff that they have done like Geri's Game and other shorts. Good times, good times.

I found it a bit funny that when they re-released Knick Knack for Finding Nemo, they had to do a bit of plastic surgery (har har har...). Ah, I guess that even our cartoons have to stay with the times eh?

Listening to: Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice

Snow, super zoom, and robo-cars

One thing that I didn't expect when I walked out of my house last night was for it to be snowing HUGE flakes. And it's still snowing. Just wonderful. I think that this is why I have problems with spring, it seems to have an identity crisis. It doesn't know if it's summer, winter, or somewhere in between. And it changes it's mind day to day. *sigh* Ah well. Pretty soon it will be brown and soggy again, so it's all good.

My brother sent me a neat zoom thingy (ya, I not great with words yet today). It goes from a distance of like 100 million light years from earth to the subatomic on a leaf. Pretty cool. ;-)

There's a cool article on NT Times about self driven cars (linked from /.) I can see that in the next 50 years we get to something like cars in Demolition Man or Minority Report (the movie). As it is now, you just get in your car and tell the navigation system where you want to go, and it tells you exactly how to get there. Now cars can steer, break, etc. for you because the computer can make "better" and faster decisions than the driver. Will commuting be totally automated in the future? I hope so.

Listening to: Wild Cherry - Play That Funky Music

Carpe diem

Something that HCT pointed out to me tonight was a really good plea for people to live to the fullest by Matthew Lazzara. It really makes you think about what is important. It's the people around you, and not wasting any day. Why do I act silly a lot of the time? It's to minimize my regrets.

And on that note, I have to get my car fixed up. I think in addition to new summer wheels, I am going to tint the window this summer. And maybe add a cool decal too. ;-)

Listening to: Tragically Hip - leave

Dummy me

I had to hold my self back from commenting on a story on slashdot. Then I remembered that it's April first... I think that I fall for that every year. One of these years I'll learn. Hopefully.

I got taken for a joke today though. My boss sent us a change in the requirements for a temp. solution we have for our proof of concept due out next week. (she did this after noon). We (I) freaked out. Not much, but I got stressed about it. When we were able to talk to one of our co-workers he told it was a joke. So total stress time was less than 5 min. But, boy am I going to get them back... as soon as I figure out something to do.

Listening to: Crash Test Dummies - Superman Song