So-called Cosmic Rays

The 700 Club just tried to refute global warming by using the phrase "so-called cosmic rays." Are they trying to reserve the possibility that they might have to refute cosmic rays if they're successful refuting global warming? Wouldn't want to commit to anything, after all. Those rays might be Jebus-emenating earth-warming holy-illumination beams that were sent specifically to save the planet. They might not be cosmic at all.

99 Problems

For Ming. He and I went to a late showing of Fright Night on Monday and 99 Problems by Hugo was the closing tune. It's a cover of the Jay-Z tune - definitely needs to be loud with lots of bass. And no, this isn't a clever cover for Ming and I going to No Strings Attached, which also featured the song.

The Muppets and OK Go (for Eryn)

Bad Mug...

I was in a meeting today and the woman next to me had a thermal coffee mug that read:
I ❤ SEM
I'm sure that's strategic e-something marketing, but all I can say is, bold choice.  Very bold choice.

Wombats

My song of the moment, The Wombats Anti-D

Automated Regression Testing

Per the modern definition of "legacy code", my new projects (which I've had for six months) are legacy. No automated regression. No continuous integration. No unit tests. It should be left unsaid that the next time someone says, "We want you to take this project and own it," my response will be, if it doesn't have a.), b.) and c.), you will provide me a budget for software and the necessary resources of at least a certain level based on the age of the project and the scope of the code to implement those things, or I'm not interested. Live and learn. I spent part of tonight playing around with Watin, Selenium, iMacros, and TestComplete. Most of those don't actually target desktop applications, which is what I'm after, but it's interesting to fool around with the tools and see what I can accomplish. I had someone else ask me about the possibility of pulling a mailing list from the web, and using a testing tool that can be extended to write to a file using javascript or C# (actually any language, but those are my sweet spots) works perfectly in that case.

Not very managerial, but then neither is automating the scripts for open source analysis, analyzing code for security holes, or config-developing the tools necessary to poc the new open source jars.

What is managerial is that the developer I've been trying to promote for several months got his promotion to Lead Software Engineer today.  He's been a lead for other LSE's (2-3 depending on the time frame) for the last 12 months, so it was way overdue.  Proof that working for a big company with some golden handcuffs can still pay dividends depending on your goals if you step up when no one else will.  He earned the promotion and I'm excited to see him landing not only the change in title, but a raise, and a potential award (with cash) in the near future.

Kyle's Birthday Sake Cup - 19c Ho-O Bird

We got Kyle another sake cup for his birthday.  He's up to three, so that's officially a collection.  For his records, in case he's ever looking them up.

I didn't know what a Ho-O bird was, so I looked it up.  "According to legend (mostly from China), the Hō-ō appears very rarely, and only to mark the beginning of a new era -- the birth of a virtuous ruler, for example. In other traditions, the Hō-ō appears only in peaceful and prosperous times (nesting, it is said, in paulownia trees), and hides itself when there is trouble. As the herald of a new age, the Hō-ō decends from heaven to earth to do good deeds, and then it returns to its celestial abode to await a new era. It is both a symbol of peace (when the bird appears) and a symbol of disharmony (when the bird disappears). In China, early artifacts show the Phoenix (female) as intimately associated with the Dragon (male) -- the two are portrayed either as mortal enemies or as blissful lovers. When shown together, the two symbolize both conflict and wedded bliss, and are a common design motif even today in many parts of Asia (see below).

鳳 = Fèng, Male Phoenix    凰 = Huáng, Female Phoenix"

The size of Cup: 3 7/16" Dia x 2 3/4" High. Nice Blue and White Japanese Imari Porcelain Soba Choko Cup. The cup is nicely shaped with good porcelain material and nice detail painting of two Ho-O Bird in front and back. There is also nice motif design of Yoraku design inside rim area. Inside bottom has Sho-Chiku-Bai design. Blue under glazing painting is well contrasted. The condition of Cup is excellent, no chip, no crack and no hairline. One Hittsuki (glaze stick) on the side of foot rim as last photo show, minor. Well balanced cup. Dating from early Meiji, late 19c.

Pictures!

Long Weekend

Had a nice long weekend.  Mostly relaxing, except for my wife being ill most of the last two days.  She and I went to Rise of the Planet of the Apes on Friday after I got back from extracorporeal therapy at the Red Cross.  As she said, "I felt bad for the apes."  I think you were supposed to be a bit conflicted, so a good movie.  Afterwards, we went over to the MIA to see Eryn show off her art projects from the last week.  There was quite a collection of impressionist works, from her own canvas, to a diorama, and half a dozen works based on impressionist techniques.  I particularly liked her bridge, and I'll try to get a copy out here for the grandparents.

Sunday, Eryn and her mother went to The Help while I got in some bicycling and cooking.  I went a little wild with the chocolate chip cookies and put a golden Oreo, a spring Oreo, and a Girl Scout Thin Mint into one of each.  Damn big cookies.

And today, Eryn and I left my wife to be sick on the couch, and we went up to Ming's place to ride the Gateway Trail.  Eryn managed to bike 15 miles.  Before we took off, I took us to Gateway Cycle and bought her a wireless odometer.  I think having the odometer to look at so she knew how far away the goals I was setting were was a big help.  Kyle and Ming (and family) all went to Randy's Pizza to use our Living Social certificates before they expired, which was a nice dinner.  One thing I learned while heading up there to meet them was that putting the bikes on the back of the convertible doesn't work so well.  With the top down, the wind is hitting them from the front and they shake and wobble alarmingly.  Not to mention the rack is a bit of a pain on the Mustang, although perhaps that's just not quite getting it on there right.  I moved my bike in closer to the car on the way home (with one of Ming's socks over the pedal to protect the car) so that I wasn't getting a lever effect, but that left Eryn's bike even more by itself in the open, and it was bouncing all over the place.  I'm going to have to investigate if there's a better way to strap your bikes down for vehicles with a retracted top.

Simulator

I'm pretty sure a simulator isn't truly a simulator if it's not simulating everything.  How hard can it be to simulate an accelerometer?  This just seems like more effort than I'm willing to put in while working on a tutorial.

Writers are shitty programmers, so I've heard

I'm part of the recruiting effort at work.  Tomorrow I'm headed over to a local college to talk to students and alumni and do a bit of recruiting.  And I've been working with a separate recruiting group to bring in new .NET, Java, and sundry other programmer-types (operations, et al).  Last week, one of the managers in the hiring meeting noted (for FrenchDip - this is the same manager who was offended when I talked about technical managers), "They have to have a CompSci degree. We don't want anyone else.  HR will remove non-CompSci candidates from the queue."  And today, another manager, "A BS in CompSci should be considered almost mandatory.  We'll talk to MIS students, but they aren't generally good coders.  And we can consider engineering majors for operations roles, but otherwise we should just move on to the next candidate."

My wife wanted to know why I didn't call them on it.  I will.  But I didn't want to do it in those meetings because I want to hear it from all the people who think it so I know who they are.  I don't want them to start censoring because it's common knowledge I'm a history/English with a master's in writing.  While I'm no Mean Mr. Mustard, I think I could still outcode the managerial branch of those discussions.  And just so it doesn't seem like I'm an edge case, I know of at least one other very good programmer who wasn't originally a compsci major.  Come to think of it, my boss was a biology major.  He's not a coder, but he's pretty savvy when it comes to tech (although I admit, I wasn't fond of his last hiring decision).  The rule for hiring people isn't that you should put restrictions around who you hire based on rigid qualifications.  The rule is hire smart people who are passionate and know the space.

Today I Made a Server Come Back to Life

...just by looking it.  And not physically, at the bare metal, but at the UI indicator that it was down.  I'm pretty sure before I looked at it, it was in a state of between-ness, like Schrodinger's Cat.  It went this way...Mark looked at it, the probability waves collapsed, it was down.  Then he quit looking at it, and it was in a state of flux, neither up nor down.  I looked at it and consciously collapsed the down wave and the hung wave, leaving it only two possibilities.  Up, or exploding.  Up was the easier state, so there it was.  I'm sure in 1 out of 100,000 cases, I'll mentally force a server to blow up rather than restart, but I think those are good odds and may even qualify me for super hero status, right along HTML Well-formedness Woman (that's right...<body><breast/><breast/></body>).

Marwencol

I recommend Marwencol, which you can watch on Netflix streaming.  Particularly if you like videos about people who reside somewhere between eccentric and crazy.  The movie is about Mark Hogancamp, who was beaten up by five men outside a bar so bad that he had brain damage and forgot many parts of his life prior to the beating.  In order to cope with his anger about the beating and his previous alcoholism, Hogancamp sets up a WWII town called Marwencol behind his trailer, and proceeds to act out his anger and inability to interact by using 1/6 scale dolls and cars, including Nazis and Barbies, that represent people in his life.  The movie is a great intersection of creativity, brain damage, stalking, fetishism, and introspection, and a far more interesting tale than that of Dibs and his play therapy.

I particularly enjoyed the quotes, "I was the only man in a town with twenty-seven Barbies."  And, in reference to one of his characters using a time machine, it's an "old VCR that ate one of my best porno tapes."  There are other surprises that I don't want to ruin.  You can find many pictures from Mark Hogancamp's town of Marwencol here: http://www.marwencol.com/gallery/.

Well...it's not cutting edge...

But I did manage to make the circle colors vary both with an if/else with a modulo, and in a second version using a (mutable) array of UIColor objects.  I feel a bit like I'm back in high school coding class with the Apple II and a sheet of graph paper...if you tacked on iOS memory management issues.  And I learned how to use the cmd-shift-3, cmd-shift-4, and cmd-shift-4 then space then click commands on a Mac to capture what I want.  And I learned Mac users are just as a-holish in many instances as PC developers with their "that's in the documentation, so I'm not going to answer that" and "It's Mac, not MAC. If you can't even do that right, I'm not going to answer your perfectly valid coding question."  These things were not said to me.  I just got to appreciate them in the general postings on the web.

Artists

Wow....I got told by an artist today that she didn't have time to take on a project for me, despite that I'd offered cash and she could set the terms.  The next time I see "starving artist" on something, I'm not going to believe it.  If you can refuse premium rates for my shitty (visually) stick figure comic, you obviously are making serious money.  If any of you know some artist friends, this is what I'm looking for:

We currently have two "settings", two in a cube, and across the table.  What we'd like to do is:

1. Clean up the existing images (e.g. lines not separated/no jagged lines/a more artistic feel [as much as possible with stick figures]).
2. Two in a cube modified.  Cleaned up, perhaps with a board with some generic developer text or workflow on it behind the developer on the right (with the black cloud).  That might be too cluttered - but something to add some visual busi-ness.
3. Figure out a way to clarify that the two individuals in two in a cube are sitting in front of computers without using a brand name (something applish on the back that's not an apple)
4. Modify across the table.  Cleaned up.  Something to give it a little more interest, although without cluttering the table which we have a habit of using for putting humorous items on (hats/etc).
5. A new image – The Office.  CEO/Manager type at a desk with the employee sitting in a chair facing them.  Alternately, perhaps the employee standing if it still leaves ample room for text.
6. A new image - The elevator.  Two+ people on an elevator.
7. Images should stay stick-figurish, although they can be cleaned up artistically.
8. Images should keep/incorporate the dark cloud or some recreation of the dark cloud as that's the annoyed-snarky thought bubble.
9. Images can have color, but we'd like black and white versions as well in case that's cheaper for making mugs for family for Christmas/Birthdays.
10. We own the images and all rights when all is said and done.

Really?

"Most developers copy and paste methods from the documentation." - iPhone Programming: Big Nerd Ranch Guide.

Because a typo defines a brand new method?  Obviously understanding at least the minimal amount of fn-F5 autocomplete is a necessity.

Reference Counting

"To understand reference counting, imagine a puppy. When the puppy is born, it has an owner. That owner later gets married, and the new spouse also becomes an owner of that dog. The dog is alive because they feed it. Later on, the couple gives the dog away. the new owner of the dog decides he doesn't like the dog and lets it know by kicking it out of the house. Having no owner, the dog runs away and, after a series of unfortunate events, ends up in doggy heaven.

What is the moral of this story? As long as the dog had an owner to care for it, it was fine. When it no longer had an owner, it ran away and ceased to exist. This is how reference counting works."

iPhone Programming, the Big Nerd Ranch Guide by Joe Conway and Aaron Hillegass

The Horrible Crowes

I'm not sure yet if I like their other music, but this song is great. The Horrible Crowes doing "Behold the Hurricane", a side project by Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem.