Thoughts of Canada Day

Does anyone else know what they are going to do for Canada Day? I don't know right now. I heard that the stuff (concerts) downtown were going to blow, but that is from the guys over at X FM, do you never know how good that info is. I figure that I'll just be wandering around downtown if it's not too hot. This week has been pretty much a write off. Friday was the only day that I got a decent amount of work done, and I think that is because just about everyone else was out of the office. Thursday was blown because of a department picnic at Lac Lemi after listening to a consultant go on about iterations in the morning. *yawn* It was okay though except for the managers in the department keeping on asking "how are we going to cost that?" Sheesh. Give it up people.

One of the interesting / funny stories the the consultant told us was how it is hard sometimes to sell iteritive developement to customers. One of the first things he said: don't make your mock ups too good. This is because when the customer sees something that looks like the end product, and they can click it, the just go "well, connect it so that it works". Riiiight. It's akin to seeing a plastine car at a car concept show that you can reach out and touch, and then just expect them to drop an engine into it and make it work. Doesn't quite work that way.

The second story was about tackeling the hard issues first. Address high risk things early. Well, he told us about a project that he worked on and the biggest concern that all the tech people had was if they could get these three computers to comunicate going through all the networks that they had to (he didn't get into too much detail). Anyways, they worked for an iteration (many weeks at least) and were able to get things working using ping. Well, they were really happy with this, and brough the customer in to show them. So the guy comes in and they show him the three computers that show the pings on the screen. The customer looks at this and says "I paid how much money for this?". Oie. I guess that it is hard to explain some things to people when the issue is not in their field at all.

Irish Tenors - Waltzing Matilda

Yay! Harry is here!

Humm.... maybe I should figure out a different title. Ah well. The title sort of spoiled my story, but long the jist of it is that my copy of Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix has arrived. Yay me! I am sure that I can use all my spare time reading it. ;-) I think that right now I'll only read it at night. I'll save my Effective Java book for the bus ride in. I see now what Ryan and Peter were talking about. I'm mostly reading it straight though with some minor skipping around. Some things in it we have been following in our project group, some not, but nothing big. I just read the defensive copying section, which I thought that pretty smart.

Speaking of Harry Potter, I thought that today's Penny Archade was pretty funny. From the look of the cover, I think that I like the one that we got here better than the one that they got in the states. Why do they do everything differently? What is fine for the rest of the world isn't okay for them, so they have to change it? *sigh* Some times I really just don't understand.

Now all I have to do is resist reading my book and actually clean my room. Give me strength...

Moby - At Least We Tried

Update: I didn't notice at first what the girl behind the counter was wearing / had on her forehead. hee hee... nice touch. ;-)

Dusty Clean

Oie. I think that I should be cleaning my room more often. I just went though it getting it "clean". So far, I am at stage 1: organize and put away. Tomorrow will be stage 2: actual vacuming and dusting. I think that stage 3 is profit, but I am not sure yet. Dusting is something that I hate, but it is something that I do the most. Somehow my room still gets dusty. Damn. I just have to clean more. I think that when I get a house, I'll buy and old wind tunnel and have everything smooth surfaces and hardwood floors. When I want to clean things up, I just turn on the 'ol wind, and boom, the place in blown pretty clean. No dusting for Jim. I could probably set it to go on while I am out of the house. That way I would be forced to put everything in it's place. I went for a short bike ride in between some cleaning, and that helped my head a bit.

I have picked up some funny quotes lately. One was from the JUnit FAQ, which said:

Some developers have argued in favor of putting the tests in a sub-package of the classes under test (e.g. com.xyz.test). The author of this FAQ sees no clear advantage to adopting this approach and believes that said developers also put their curly braces on the wrong line. :-)

I thought that was pretty funny.

The other one I found in some code at work. It was a comment that said:

// No idea what happened here. This is an impossible error!!!!!

That was my favourite because I had seen the output of that default switch several times before I had read that code. I am just glad that they had put it in.

Black legend - you see the trouble with me

Ah, Friday...

Yes, as you may have guessed, it is Friday. ;-) Yay! That means that really not much is happening here today. I was supposed to go out with Kibbee some time this week to the rib fest, but that didn't end up happening. I went out with my group though for a "team building lunch" which means that we just went out and got some ribs (rib sandwich for me) and sat outside watching car accidents and people. Really productive lunch. *cough*

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw what happend to Peter's door. That is pretty damn funny. It can't be fun living there, but at least Pete always has great stories. Every time someone complains about the place that they are living at, he can trump them, everytime. hee hee... Anyways, I should get back to work... most people are away at a meeting right now, so that means that it is mostly quiet and I can actually get stuff done. ;-)

Village People - Kung-fu Fighting

Babyback, babyback, babyback ribs!

Went out to Sparks St. today for lunch with the guys (no running for me) and got some ribs. The lines were pretty long, but they moved "quickly". I think that I am supposed to go out later this week with Kibbee, so I'll be doing that too. They were not as good as some people were raving though... Ah well. And I think that they should provide a tarp instead of a napkin. That and a toothpick.

Big plans tonight. Going to find a good pasta place (Mamma Gratza's?) downtown and wander with Laura. I would figure out something more ambitious, but that would involve staying out late most likely, and I will still have work in the morning.

They have a new policy here at work. Nothing will go live to the production server durring business hours (8-5). This will only be fore static pages and images. So, since the earliest anyone gets in is like 7:30, we have 1/2 hour window in the morning to move anything up. This is really going to hamper any work that I will be doing. *sigh* I really think that I have to find a project that I can work on at work... doing small fixes on things is really ticking me off. I'd like to build something bigger sometime. Oh well. I should be working on AudioMan anyways. If you want to download it and play with it, that's cool. Just email anything you find out about it.

Cake - pretty pink ribbon

sleepy...

It is late once again, but I am still up. *sigh* You would think that I would learn. I have to be early tomorrow so that I can get off early. I am going to go out with Laura because today she found out that she got into med school at U of O. I am really happy for her. This means that she doesn't have to write the MCAT exams again. From everyone that I have ever spoken to, those are to be feared above all else.

Does anyone else think that when I go to www.asciitable.com they have an ASCII table, but as an image? I think that is really funny. Maybe I am just to much a nerd, or that really is ironic.

If anyone wants to make comments, right now you have to enter in a email address... don't bother. Just put in some crap that looks like an email address. I will fix that shortly. I'm too out of it to figure out where to turn it off right now.

Ace Of Base - Happy Nation

2003.06.17 @ 2018

Well, I think that this is the end.

I will from now on be blogging at this location. Ryan is hosting me. I am doing more and more blogging just to blog, and not to play around with the technology. And I am getting frustrated with what I had built already. This will allow people to post thier own thoughts on my thoughts too (if you so desire).

Just as a warning, it isn't the prettest right now. I have to play around with the style sheet some, and add links etc. I will still keep this site going, but not too much more. I have moved this months posts to the new blog, but there might be some formatting issues. Anyways, that's it for now. Jimbo Jones, signing off.

Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - It's All Been Done