Reality Me

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  • Principle 30 – Follow The Lemmings With Care

    Excerpt from Alan M. Davis’ excellent book "201 Principles of Software Development" which ever programmer, QA person, consultant, project manager, analyst…shoot, anyone involved in software should own this book and review it regularly.

    If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. -Anatole France

    Just because everybody is doing something does not make it right for you. It may be right, but you need to carefully assess its applicability to your environment (Principles 142, 143, 149, 150, and 151), software reuse (Principle 84), process maturity (Principle 163), computer-aided software engineering (CASE, Principles 22 through 25), and prototyping (Principles 11, 12, 13, and 42). In all cases, these offer very positive opportunities for increased quality, decreased cost, or increased user satisfaction. However, the advantages are available only to those organizations in which it makes sense. Although the rewards are significant, their potentials are often oversold and are by no means guaranteed or universal.

    When you learn about a "new" technology, don’t readily accept the inevitable hype associated with it (Principle 129). Read carefully. Be realistic with respect to payoffs and risks. Run experiments before making major commitments. But by no means can you afford to ignore "new" technologies (see related Principle 31).

    Ref: Davis, A., "Software Lemmingineering," IEEE Software, 10, 6 (September 1993), pp. 79-81, 84.

    The index points object oriented programming to Principle 30 calling OO a "fad" (see Priniciple 31) since object oriented programming is really one implementation of the principle of encapsulation (Principle 65). This is by no means to berate object oriented program, which I enjoy very much, but simply to point out that OO is not always the best solution to a particular problem.

  • Cool Pool

    World’s deepest pool.

    • Water: 2.500.000 liters of spring water at 30°C, visbility >33m, without chlorine smell
    • Ferment: 2 pools, 3 pits (5, 10 and 33m)
    • Decoration: Caves at -10m, possibility of fixing of new decorations.
    • Never seen before: Three permanent bells of air under pressure (-9m, -7m, air renewed permanently), they avoid ceaseless return tickets bottom-surface of the student and his instructor.
    • Technic: 250 anchoring points distributed in the tank to:
      • changer the aspect of the swimming pool (for the amateurs)
      • adapt it to the need for a film making
      • to adapt it to the need for the scientists and technicians
    • Changing rooms : Heated, separated man-woman, showers separated, toilets separated.
    • Lightning : Natural & artificial

  • Let Them Feed!

    In more breast ignorance, a woman was kicked off airplane for breastfeeding baby.

  • Difficulty writing

    I am having a hard time writing about my life right now. I have noticed a sharp decline in readers also according to the stats. I have several reasons for backing off on my writing. 1) I am interviewing. I cannot imagine a net savvy company not seeking out a prospective employee’s blog. 2) I am facing some large challenges. I want desperately to write about them but that may have to wait a while and be presented in a retrospective. 3) My time has been sucked away from me to deal with 1 and 2.

  • Amanda, re-boomed

    I was an Amanda Congdon fan since Sept 27, 2005 (See?). Upon her departure, Rocketboom lost its appeal and I switch ed to watching Ze Frank’s The Show. It appears that Amanda is returning to video blogging! The twist is that she’s gone mainstream media and is on ABC’s online news channel with a 5 minute format.

    Congdon, 25, will regularly appear on ABC’s online news channel, ABC News Now, and will host a weekly five-minute video blog appearing on ABC.com. Congdon, who will primarily provide news analysis and commentary through the network’s online channels, says she also expects to occasionally pop up on Good Morning America, Nightline, and other ABC news television programs.
    …
    She’s working to develop a show for HBO’s on-air and on-demand channels.
    [Source]

    This should be an interesting development in the video blogging world. I need iMovie!

  • Walkin on water – this I gotta try!

    I think the scouts would have a blast with this but it is probably more appropriate for a frat party.

    Thanks goes to Make for pointing out this great video on non-newtonian fluid.

  • I40 west at a stand still from west hills to 17th street. Take alternate router today.

    —
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    Brought to you by, Cingular Wireless Messaging
    http://www.CingularMe.COM/

  • I40 west a parking lot due to construction

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    Brought to you by, Cingular Wireless Messaging
    http://www.CingularMe.COM/

  • Look out!

    I’m getting back on top!

  • I Didn’t Get The Gay Marriage Ban Until Now

    I voted against the constitutional amendment to declare marriage between a man and a woman. Now that I have read the Top 10 Reasons Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal I understand so much better.

    09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children. [Source]

    Update: Critz and my wife both agree that I was a might unclear in this post. I realize that posting only one of the 10 reasons doesn’t convey the author’s sarcasm as well. Here are a couple more (number two is my favorite):

    01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

    02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
    …
    05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
    …
    07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
    …

    StopGeek has updated their post to point to the original source which was 12 reasons:

    I was emailed the source by a reader which you can find here. Its similar, but not the same version i got in my email. [Source, StopGeek]

  • Strange Place to Park a Ship

    Landlocked aircraft carrier in China

    I suspect this is a memorial put in place before the lock and bridge was built.

  • Light Linkage

    Cat pictorials for Jasper.

  • Plug me in – Enhancing WordPress

    For anyone interested, these are the plugins I currently use. I’m experimenting with one not listed but it has to prove itself before it gets any credits.

    • Spam Karma 2 (absolutely incredible, occasionally some trackback spam gets through but this just makes it all manageable)
    • Audio Player (slick way to include audio on the site)
    • Live (for the stat addicted, it shows the ip of someone on your blog while they are there, whether or not they are on the site or rss, if they are leaveing a comment etc) (Note: stat addiction can be cured. Don’t judge the success of your blog on "stats")
    • Flickr Photo Gallery (adds a tab on the upload box that allows you to easily paste several size pictures from your Flickr account)
    • Subscribe to comments (gives your readers the ability to request an email when someone replies to a particular comment thread)
    • Time Zone (automates daylight savings time adjustments so that the times on your posts are always correct) (wonder if it will break in 2007)

  • MLADS Now Maszman Speaks

    Hurray! Blogger loses another one! Tom Maszerowski has moved My Likes and Dislikes from Blogger to Maszman Speaks using WordPress. Way to go!

    On a similar note, we moved Aspergerteen from Blogger to Aspergerteen.com using WordPress but we haven’t started posting again yet.

  • So, you think YOU voted these people into office

    The US government is so inbred that the same people have been running out country since the 70s…sort of. The Times Online UK edition explains.

    Last week George W Bush was forced back — once again — to the protective arms of his father. They call the first President Bush “Poppy” in the family, and it captures both the authority and the slight daffiness of the 41st president. His first son always lived in his shadow — both deeply admiring him and deeply resenting him, the way dauphins often do their monarchs.
    …
    BY nominating Robert Gates to the Pentagon, Bush Jr was reduced to asking one of his father’s closest friends to clean up the mess. What was Gates’s last job? As president of Texas A&M University, Gates hosted Poppy’s own presidential library. What was his previous claim to fame? Poppy had appointed him CIA director. Poppy himself had been CIA director — manoeuvred into the shell-shocked institution after Vietnam by a wily young Donald Rumsfeld in the Ford administration. Gates was a CIA director’s CIA director. He was Poppy’s Poppy.
    [Source]

    "Jeb, his younger brother, was always going to be president" so…think we will see Jeb in 2008? A Democrat controlled Congress cannot clean up W’s mess 6 years in the making in only 2 years but can the Repulicans spin those two years as "ineffective" and get the public to vote for another Republican president and Republican controlled Congress?