Agile Development
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness on June 12, 2006
A neat session this morning on Agile Development. While not pushing the “Microsoft Way” of doing Agile Development it was a thought-provoking session talking about the need to focus on the “ingredients” that make the Agile “recipe” work. Not terribly new or innovative (this stuff has been around for a while and I’ve had some exposure to it through Extreme Programming) but it really made me wish that we implemented it in some form. In the project that I’m working on right now, it’s a difficult environment since we’re spread out geographically and much of the development effort is performed in different places, in different time zones, by just a few developers. However, I do feel that it would be well worth it to pursue this (and actually implement this for the next phase of our project).
Some of the key “ingredients” include a heavy focus on communication within the group, a willingness to change as your environment changes, a focus on strict but simple rules and procedures for the software development lifecycle, and a focus on the customer. Like I said, it’s not new, but it really does challenge the traditional software development process.
More session summaries as I have time,
Arrived in Boston
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness on June 12, 2006
Well, I’m here at TechEd 2006 in Boston, MA and things are about to begin. It’s been neat so far. Boston [seems] to be a pretty place. More details may confirm otherwise. Anyhow — the break-out sessions will be beginning soon and I’ll get a chance to get blasted by some Microsoft advertising while learning probably not that much. The food is good though. That’s always important. Internet access is ubiqutious. They have wireless here all over and I have quite fast wired Internet access in my hotel room.
Let’s see how this goes…
Boston trip
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness on June 9, 2006
Well, I’m heading off Sunday evening to Boston for Microsoft’s Evil TechEd 2006 Conference. It should be fun! I’ve been to Boston before with relatives but really briefly (I think a few baseball games and that’s it). When I was a little kid, one of my favorite books was Make Way for Ducklings. The book takes place in Boston’s Public Garden and so it will be neat to take a stroll through the area. Most likely I’ll be traumatized as I see hippies begging for change and business people talking into their Bluetooth headsets instead of cute ducks and noble policemen. I believe the hotel is only a block away.
I’m also considering actually keeping a running commentary on my experiences. Posting daily! Maybe!
We’ll see what happens…
Government IT
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on May 17, 2006
Well, I spent the last week in Dallas, TX attending a conference discussing Information Technology in the government. Some neat stuff. It seems like the government is pretty far behind technologically from the commerical sector. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some neat high-tech stuff that occurs in government — especially with regard to custom applications and some very fun hardware. However, they are severly hampered by the beaurocracy that exists and also the insanely paranoid level of security (and the sheer complexity of the security architecture) as well as the conflicting directive to “share information and operate in a collaborative environment”. Yeah — whatever. If all we were protecting was the secret recipe for Coke, I think things would be a lot easier but with the volume of data and the obtuse way that it’s separated and cordoned off, it’s just not being realistic to think that it can be shared.
Fun With Esoteric Code
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on May 1, 2006
Sorry for not updating for a bit! We’ve been busy continuing to house hunt as well as taking care of our ever-more-evil little son. At work I’ve been busy with doing some extensive .NET exception handling in my pretty but buggy code as well as getting into some serious shell scripting (never really had a reason to get too involved before). It’s amazing how a single line of bizarre and seemingly random characters can solve all your problems. I’ve also been messing around a bit with regular expressions. I’ve used them before but I had to add data validation to all of my code and it’s been time consuming learning exactly what to type next. Fun, fun, fun. Really — I’ve been enjoying it.
I’ve ordered a second hard drive (it should arrive tomorrow). It’s external, 2.5″ and bus-powered (no big clunky power adapter!). The intent is to use it with my laptop to install the Intel version of OS X. This will allow me to use Windows on my “work” hard drive but then tri-boot between OS X/Ubuntu/Solaris 10 on my external drive. Let’s hope it goes that smoothly.
Recent Geekiness
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on April 19, 2006
This week has been full of geekiness so far. I’m in D.C. on business travel doing all sorts of boring stuff for work. Thankfully, I’ve found a little time when I’m done with work and while I’m not on the phone with my wife to do a bunch of random time-consuming stuff. I reinstalled Linux on my laptop (and this time did some things right). I tried to install OS X on my laptop (there’s an Intel version that you can run on a standard PC) but I need a separate hard disk for it and I’m not that rich. I’ve also been playing around with some new software and taking a look at XGL (a coworker of mine gave me a LiveCD to check out). Very slick stuff.
All for now — it’s not that exciting but it’s something to pass the time before I head home to the family…
House Hunting
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Ranting & Ravings, Somewhat Random on April 16, 2006
My family has been in the house hunting process for a bit now. It’s an annoying market in the South Sound area and we’re definitely not getting a “deal” on anything we’ve considered (but at least it’s better than the D.C. market). What’s been amazing is how much guidance we’ve received from God on this. I’m normally much more of the type of guy who considers a decision, weighs the pro’s and con’s, prays that the right decision is made, and plunges in. However, with houses it’s been a lot more nerve-wracking. It’s a huge amount of money, it’s very hard to determine what you’re getting and what it’s really worth, and it’s also very hard to tell if you like a place.
So far, we’ve successfully avoided getting two different houses. The first was very nice in many ways but they didn’t take our initial offer (which was barely shaving anything off of what they were asking — about 2% of the total cost). I liked the place but was concerned that the price was too high. We sort of “let the fleece out” and determined that if they took our first offer, we would go with it. They didn’t and we backed out. The second house was just this weekend. I didn’t like it quite as much but the price seemed good (certainly relative to others on the market). It was also an ideal place to start with a new family and it really was quite beautiful. Just prior to putting an offer down (our agent was literally driving over to our place) the listing agent called to notify us that the sellers had decided to not sell their home at this time (some sort of family crisis). That doesn’t happen very often…
I guess people could look at these events as just coincidences (even unfortunate coincidences since we didn’t get “what we wanted”!) but I very strongly disagree. It’s obvious to me that we’re being Guided and I’m confident that we’re going to get what God wants us to get.
Gmail for Your Domain
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on April 4, 2006
I just got in on the Gmail for “Your Domain” Beta.
Neat stuff — it’s basically just the Gmail interface but they’re providing “domain level” administration. Basically, if you don’t mind keeping your email on Google’s “Anti-Federal Government” servers, you can have a really slick interface.
I’ve already found and reported some minor bugs, but it looks really promising! Here are some screenshots:
Crowd Panics as Flood Threatens Ireland!
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Somewhat Random on April 1, 2006
StackOverflow
