Purchase patterns

The other day I got a call from my credit card company. They thought that I had my card stolen (I guess) because a couple of purchases I did. I filled up on gas twice in the same day (driving from London), which isn't something that I normally do. I just think that it's interesting that 2 purchase tipped them off that something might be "up". They must have some kind of a learning algorithm for each and every customer. I wonder if it's similar tech to how my spam filter learns..

Before Laura and I went to Europe I made sure that I called my CC co. and bank to let them know that I might be making purchase from afar. Everything went smoothly. Maybe it's like the rock that protects me from tigers, or maybe it really made a difference, but I'll do the same thing next time I go away. ;-)

Architect needed for 1 month

One of the things that scare me (other than nuclear war and carnies) are people that want a senior software person for only like 30 days to "set things up" and then other people will take over. Yikes. What it says to me is that they do not have people who know how to do things by themselves.

Software is not paint by numbers or fill in the blank.

If the people you have working for you can't figure out it by themselves, you should get other people to do the job. No matter how smart or well laid out a projects framework is, it can go bad very quickly. It just sets of warning bells in my head that tell me to run away fast.

The other thing that bothers me is that people want and need to make money. They also want to make sure they make their lives as easy as possible for themselves. I want to make my own life easy, that's one of the reasons why I love TDD. If I was hired as a consultant for 30 days, I would probably like to be hired back for more work. Would I have a longterm investment in the project? Would I care about the quality of the project if I never have to see it again? Do I want teach the people I am handing off the project to everything there is to know so I am not needed anymore? Maybe, maybe not. So when you're hiring someone you are also trusting that they have your best interests at heart.

The whole idea of a developer swooping in, pointing everyone in the correct direction (which they follow to the bitter end) and swooping out sounds something like a super hero to me. It just sounds like fiction bound for disaster. Maybe I'm wrong, but at this point I don't think so.

How scary are they going to get?

I just can't believe that they are going to track all visitors to the US. Wow. Scary. Do I now want to take a trip to Boston or NY? No thanks. Please only treat me like a criminal if I become one.

I remember in Hunt for Red October they were talking about the US as someplace where you were free to move around, where you could go from place to place "without papers". The USA is getting scarier all the time moving into a society that seems to be based on fear.

They keep on adding value...

Check out the "hybrid" choice for google maps. No longer with just satellite and "maps"... so freaking cool. On a related note, when you are zoomed out and can see most of north america, move the map around with the mouse and watch the scale change as you go North... nice. I wonder what they use to figure out the scale, the middle of the map?

Wow

I can't help thinking of the following quote when I read stories like this one.

"They that give up liberty for security deserve neither" - Benjamin Franklin

I found one of the comments in the slashdot story interesting.

I was on a Star Wars set!

Well, I wasn't really on a Star Wars set, but when I was watching Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones tonight I actually recognized one of the locations as some place that Laura and I have been to. It's the scene where Anakin returns to Naboo with PadmÈ called, well, "return to Naboo". It's a place in Sevilla, Spain called Placa Espana. google map, my pics 1, 2, 3. Really cool. ;-)

What's up...

I guess that no one knows what I have been up to lately since I really have not been communicating. My bad.

So, Laura and I went to Europe for a month. I've been meaning to blog about it more but I've been busy since we have gotten back. More on that later. There are pics up that you can look at if you want here and here. Take a look at them now 'since I think that I may loose our yahoo! account.

When we got back we both got sick. That wasn't fun. But at least it didn't happen while we were away. It's much nicer to be sick in your own home than in a foreign country where you don't speak the language.

We got back on a Sunday, I took Monday off, and then started my new job on the Tuesday. It's more of a transfer within the same department doing the same sort of things. I'm still doing J2EE, but using a slightly different tool set. Bottom line: I'm having fun and working way too much.

Laura was offered a job (elective? studentship? whatever) working with kids. A really good opportunity. But it's in London which means I miss her and am trying to keep the apartment clean (unsuccessfully so far). So between weddings, family get-togethers, birthdays (Happy B-day VR!!) it looks like it's going to be a busy time.

So, over all I've been neglecting my friends and family and I apologize. I'll try and do better, please be patient. ;-)

Oh ya, welcome to my 501st post on this blog. Yay me.

Simple math

I heard people say that a test suite isn't really useful unless you have 100's of tests. First off I don't agree with that, I believe that it is useful with the very first test, but that's getting off track.

Let's do some math. Let's take a low-ish number of tests that someone could make in a day, let's say 10. 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, that's 200 tests / month per person! So if you are coding very slowly, by yourself you'll have a suite that is "worth it" just after 4 weeks. If you are in a team of 2, that you hit that point after 2 weeks. In a team of 4 people, if you go a week coding without writing tests, you have long passed that moment.

Why do people still not use test driven development? I honestly don't know. I guess they just are not test infected. *sigh*

What do you say?

We were at a wedding recently that they didn't do the "normal" clinking of the glasses thing to make the bride and groom kiss. You had to come up with a limerick to get them to kiss. One guest (relative) came up with one that ended with something like "we're glad that this marriage isn't gay" (rhymed with "USA" which is where they were from). Maybe it wasn't intended to come out as gay bashing, but that's how it seemed to us. We were tempted to answer that with our limerick but it would have been too confrontational and a distraction from the whole reason for being there. So I've decided to blog the limerick that we didn't feel we could say there (which was too bad).

We're Canadian, Eh?

And we think that gay is okay

So get with the now,

'cause acceptance is how

to stop hurting people this way