Moving on

Well, today was my last day at a job that I have had for almost a year and a half (I'm transferring to a different but similar position). I'm a little sad and a little happy at the same time. The product that I am leaving I was involved from (almost) day one doing the coding, env. setup, user requirements, testing, testing, load testing, testing, feature development, testing, beta testing, user testing, release, bug fixing, bug tracking, testing, ... I could go on but I won't. :-P

I feel like it's my "baby" and I've seen it grow up till the first big release and be used on a daily basis as people's main tool. And that's big. It was time to move on though because even though we had a great relationship with our users and everyone, it felt like it was the "right time". I needed new challenges.

It still blows my mind how much I have learned in the last 17 months. It was a wonderful experience that I don't think that many people would ever get straight out of school. It's time to round out my skill set a bit more and find and overcome new challenges. I'm excited. ;-)

It has been done

As it was written, it is now done. Ah, the joys of owning your own hair cutting tools... ;-P

Funny money

I've been around coloured money for a while, but I was surprised by the Euro. Not that it's different colours or has a holographic strip, but that the bills are actually different sizes. Strange. The bigger the bill, the bigger the denomination. Not that I have seen a large sample to based that hypothesis on. I guess that's a good system for seeing impaired people. I just thought that was pretty cool.

*Shudder*

One of the fuggly-est sites that I have seen in a loooonnng time. Looks like something from '92... yikes.

Star Wars - RotS

The other day I went and saw Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith while waiting for crappy tire to switch a wheel for me (I couldn't get it off myself). Overall, a pretty good movie. Lots of action, lots of lightsabers, lots of great special effects. The thing that I liked best about it? How it tied everything together. Now it makes sense how and why Anakin fell from grace. The whole story line feels so complete now, it's great.

What didn't I like? Well, there were many times were it didn't flow as well as it should of. I kept on thinking "oh, they cut out another scene there". Hopefully when it comes out on dvd they will all the scenes that they cut out and it'll be a smoother film.

Another wonderful thing? Jar-Jar didn't speak. ;-)

Maintenance starts Day Zero

Something came to me the other day when thinking about software development. Developers usually want to work on "new development" rather than "maintenance". Maintenance is usually thought of as dealing with someone else's shit. But what is maintenance really? Isn't it just fixing bugs, adding features, making it run faster? What's new development? Isn't it just fixing bugs, adding features and making it run faster from the previous iteration? So what's the difference? I don't see any. I think that the difference is just perception of the problem.

It's a perception of new development that you can hack it till it works, toss it over the fence to someone else to maintain it and fix it. How do we fix that? Maintenance starts on Day Zero. You expect that at any time you are going to pass it along to someone else to maintain it, or you will be "stuck" with doing it yourself. That's one of the benefits of writing tests, specifically unit tests: you are always in "maintenance mode". If we can get rid of the idea of being able to hack and have someone else being responsible for it later; if everyone takes a long term view of software; I think that software over all would be in a lot better place than it has been in the past.

It's all coming off baby! Yay!

I have figured out what I am going to do with my beard while in Europe. Shave it off. You got that right. I've had the face fuzz for almost (or more???) than a year now. When I actually do it, I'll take a before and after shot and post it just for the fun of it. ;-)