Slatch

#sleestacks

Thanks to all the folks who looked after things while I was out.

Image(240)

#roadtrip #vacation

Lutefisk

This fine item was found at the Mantorville Marigold Days flea market.

For the non-scandinavians out there lutefisk is cod soaked in lye and generally smells as bad as it sounds.

#fleamarket #lutefisk

finally made it here..  tired.

Made it into Cheyenne with pit-stops in Salt Lake City and Rock Springs, WY.  Over 800 Miles.

I-80 construction is annoying

Got my first speeding ticket  -- ever.  NV state trooper nabbed me doing 89 in a 75.  He was decent enough to write it up for 80.

The signs in the Salt Lake Desert/Salt Flats about Drowsy Driving were classic.

Salt Lake City was clean and tidy, very green and seemingly devoid of people.  Maybe they overbuilt during the Winter Olympics and haven't filled it in yet?

Rock Springs is in the center of mining, and chemical country.  Drove through looking for something to eat.  Decided against it since no non-meat options were forthcoming.  Popped into the Starbucks there, found out it would open in 2 weeks...  Walked the dog in the remains of the old downtown, long since killed by WalMart.  It's a depressing collection of strip clubs, and cheap storefronts for local services (karate, nails, haircuts, etc.)

Now in Cheyenne at a place at the edge of town.  Trains going by now and again.   Need to get to sleep so we can make the final 850 mile leg through Nebraska and Iowa....

#cheyenne #roadtrip #rocksprings #saltlakecity #speeding

So, we set out for Minnesota today.  I-80 all the way to Iowa and then hang a left on I-35.  Easy, right?  Nah..

Due to navigational error and rush hour traffic in Sacramento we ended up on highway 50 to Tahoe.  Beautiful drive, but well, slow.  That and some confusion later and we were headed back towards Nevada by way of Tahoe City and Carson City.

That ate into our time a lot, so we only made it as far as Winimucca, Nevada.   Another railroad town along the heavily trucked I-80 and the Southern Pacific Railroad.

[Note - - Writing this blog post one day after -- was too tired before.]

#i80 #roadtrip #winimucca

We had our dog Tommy photographed by Amanda Jones.  She's terrific and I'm very happy with the few glimpses I got of the images as they came off the digital camera.  Here's a photo of the happy puppy shot by former Six Aparter Matt Peterson:

Tommy

Turns out Amanda is publishing a new book and wants to use one of the photos.  It's coming out in March.  How cool is that?

A Breed Apart: A Celebration of the New American Mutt

Amanda Jones

#amandajones #dog #photography #tommy

BayXP (The Bay Area Extreme Programming Group) had a small meeting at the offices of ThoughtWorks here in San Francisco.  The topic was interesting things learned at the Agile 2006 conference.

I found a number of items to add to my reading list, Including Refactoring Databases and Working Effectively with Legacy Code.  (See Links below)

Topics of discussion from the meeting included

• Coding Dojo - how to get hang of test-first development and Pair programming.
• A lot of talk about how Rails stacks up against upteen different Java Frameworks.
• The TDD Pair Programming Game is an interesting way of pairing that seems to make sense.  It's like a dance.  I write a failing test, you implement, then I refactor, then you write a test, etc.
• The best name for a talk that I've seen in a long time was Crushing Fear Under the Iron Heel of Action.  It explored how to deal with team dynamics in an Agile environment, mostly by saying "What's the worst thing that can happen". 
  
• Found out about a web site called Developer Testing.  Another thing to add to the RSS reader...
• There was a short talk about Code Debt.  Some people are surmising that Code Debt should be publicly disclosed in a companies SEC S4 forms via Sarbanes-Oxley.  One interesting quote was that code is an asset and you should maintain that asset properly because assets "increase the means of production".  If you don't maintain code properly and use correct process your software becomes a liability.  (Or course that begs the question of who defines the Generally Acceptable Coding Practices (GACP!)

Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design (Addison Wesley Signature Series)

#agile #bayxp #extremeprogramming

I was unfortunate enough to miss Kent Beck, one of the founders of the Extreme Programming  speak recently here in San Francisco.

He asked "when was the last time you were comfortable in your skin as a programmer? ...and when did you last have that feeling at work?.  "  As usual Kent has hit upon some interesting psychology that really makes sense. 

Here's part 1 of 8.  If there's interest I'll  post the other 7 segments. (Or you can find these at the Agitar website and some of it's also posted on YouTube..)

Kent_beck_01

#easeatwork #kentbeck #xp

So Julie found these very snazzy shoes in Japan, however the American counterpart to this company can't seem to order them for us.  The web site is at http://www.atmos-tokyo.com/ubiq/iliscvs_ppl_re.html  I stumbled throught the Japanese purchase forms, but it appears that this company is only set up to do local deliveries.

I'm looking for a size 24cm purple-esque as pictured below...  Contact me at lindner@inuus.com if you can help me out.

Ubiq

#gift #japan #purple #shoes #ubiq