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July 28, 2005
An aching taste of blue
When packing to leave for PA yesterday I realized I didn't have a book I was currently reading, and nothing checked out from the library. I decided it was time to re-read Neuromancer.
I read it on the flight back from PA to WA today.
If you haven't read it yet, go find a copy and sequester yourself in a room 'till you've finished it.
Damn that's a good book.
Posted by dberger at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2005
Who ordered the hot, muggy and disgusting?
I'm in Philadelphia for a meeting tomorrow.
It's near 100 degrees and raining.
You can cut the air with a butter knife, and the city smells of o-zone.
Blech.
Posted by dberger at 6:32 PM | Comments (1)
July 26, 2005
Security Theater
I've ranted before about the coast guard boats escorting the commuter ferries. I've noticed this week the boats have been replaced or augmented with officers milling around the passenger cabin.
Cheaper, closer to the (potential) problem, and infinitely more likely to detect a problem before it gets out of hand.
Someone seems to have engaged their brain.
Posted by dberger at 6:41 PM | Comments (0)
As the city wakes
I had to stop at the Library this morning to drop off some books that were due. So I walked up the hill from the ferry to the library, and from there I walked to work via my old route through Pikes Place Market.
Bought some donuts from the Daily Dozen (fresh mini donuts, good stuff, terrible for your waist line) and wandered through the market while the flower vendors were setting up.
Being in the market early always reminds me of the Covant Garden scenes in My Fair Lady. It's somehow "right" to see the city wake up with you - starts the day off on the right foot.
Oh, and the donuts didn't hurt either ;)
Posted by dberger at 4:03 PM | Comments (0)
In Search of Stupidity
I'm not sure how I missed In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters when it was first released, but a friend and colleague loaned me a copy and I read it over the last few days.
It was a well written retelling of the evolution of the PC hardware and software industries from the early 80's to the rise of Dell and Microsoft as the dominant powers in their respective niches in the early 00's.
In hindsight, it's easy to pick out the key ill-conceived strategic decisions. The author, who laces the text with personal anecdotes from his time as field engineer and product manager for such one-time luminaries as Ashton-Tate (dBase) and MicroPro (WordStar), often stops frustratingly short of drawing lessons from these decisions, or convincing the reader that the consequences of the decision were even remotely obvious at the time.
None the less, it was a good read, and has some insightful gems about how to lose control of the hardware market you birthed (IBM), drive a productive software business into the ground by ignoring your users clamoring for a GUI (Novell), and get yourself squashed into oblivion by bating the 800lb gorilla of the software world (Netscape).
Well worth the time to read it.
Posted by dberger at 8:07 AM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2005
Take the long way home...
I had decided to take a ride today, and after a brief consultation with a map, decided on this loop; from our place, off the island, north on route 3, across the Hood Canal bridge, south on 101 along the eastern edge of the Hood Canal, back onto route 3 and home.
The loop was about 150 miles; I left just before 11 this morning and got home around 2:30. It was fabulous. And I realized after the fact that I should have taken route 106 on the return, which follows the western side of the Hood Canal. Oh well, next time. The tail end (RT 3 into and through Bremerton) was nothing special, but the rest; well, I've said it before, but I'll say it again - I used to have to ride for a whole day just to find scenery like this.
I stopped at the Hoodsport Winery and risked a few tastings. Ended up leaving with two bottles of wine stuffed into the tank bag. One bottle of an "Island Belle" (a locally grown, limited yield grape - the wine is light and fruity, with a color to match) and a Loganberry cordial (yum). I'm thinking Dawnise will like 'em both (fingers crossed).
While stopped at the Winery I got a call from a friend who's in WA doing an internship at Microsoft Research. He and his girlfriend were heading to Bainbridge to spend the afternoon. I ended up getting home just about the time they were done looking around the winery, so I gave them directions and they came over to the house for a bit. We chatted a bit, played some pool, and they left to catch the 5:30 boat back to Seattle.
I'm going to finish this sentence, and leave to meet Brad and Kat for dinner and a movie at their place.
Posted by dberger at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2005
Turn over enough rocks...
And you're bound to find something interesting.
I spent a good chunk of the afternoon sifting through the last few boxes in my office - trying to get the room into usable shape.
Among the more interesting finds:
1. My 8th grade yearbook. My god, was I ever that young? I was amazed at how many faces and names I recognized. I actually found my 3rd and 6th grade yearbooks too, but I didn't flip through them, just put them on a bookshelf with our high school yearbooks.
2. Redhat Linux 5.2 (five point two) CDs. Oh, and 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 9.0. Windows 95, 98, WinNT, WinNT 3.51, WinNT 4 Workstation - a romp through the (fairly recent) history of operating systems.
3. Wing Commander II
4. MechWarrior II, Pentium Edition
5. Syndicate (the Bullfrog game) for DOS
Oddly enough, I kept all of the above. So one day, far in the future, I can "discover" them again and wonder why the hell I felt it necessary to keep them.
The office is starting to look like an office. Still to much junk on and around my desk, and a bunch of papers that need to either be filed or shredded (or maybe both), but progress is being made.
Posted by dberger at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2005
Patterns Patterns Everywhere
Late last year, before we moved, a colleague loaned me a copy of Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development and suggested I read it.
It promptly got lost in a pile during our move into the house, and finally surfaced at the same time I found The Party's Over (also loaned to me, by a different colleague). I finished it on the ferry this morning.
Overall, I thought it had some gems in it. It's hard to judge a pattern book based on the "merit" of it's patterns - you don't (can't?) know if they "work" until you've applied them in a given situation - but many of the patterns enumerated in the text have a ring of truth to them.
Continue reading "Patterns Patterns Everywhere"
Posted by dberger at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
Yo Ho, Yo Ho
A bachelor's life for me...
Dawnise left for a week and a half stay in Southern California yesterday afternoon. Ostensibly she went to visit her parents, and help out at the quilt store she used to work for, but I think the working was just an excuse the quilt store owner used to write-off the cost of the plane ticket.
So I spent last night tinkering around with photo-management software.
Continue reading "Yo Ho, Yo Ho"
Posted by dberger at 4:20 PM | Comments (0)
Somewhere, A Network Executive Loses His Wings
This is one of the more amusing articles I've read explaining why you should "watch a half-finished science fiction/western from three years ago."
Posted by dberger at 4:17 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2005
Colleagues by coincidence...
We had a group off-site today; the CTO took his entire organization - save for a few folks who had inflexible deadlines (or management) - on an Argosy cruise around the Puget Sound.
The cruise wasn't much, really - the sound off downtown Seattle isn't as interesting as, say, the Bay off San Francisco. 'course part of that could be that I traverse it every day.
Anyway, a group of us were sitting at a table, with drinks and hors douvres, and I raised a glass to toast, not having really thought of what to say.
What came out was:
"Colleagues by coincidence,
Friends by choice.
May the friendships outlast the coincidences."
To those (you know who you are) who couldn't be there to raise a glass, for whatever reason - I owe you a drink.
To colleagues of the past, who've seen fit to maintain a friendship across time and distance; thank you.
Cheers.
Posted by dberger at 6:33 PM | Comments (2)
I feel so much safer, really...
I commute on a boat. A big boat.
So it was with some bemusement that I noticed that after the London bombings, the ferry runs are being escorted by coast guard patrol boats. They're basically over-grown zodiacs with a front-mounted .50 cal machine gun.
It's the worst sort of security theater. Assuming that an attack from on-ship is more likely than a water-born attacker, these patrol boats are useless. They can't observe passengers for suspicious behavior - they can't see into the passenger deck, or onto the car deck; and were there to be an attack, they lack the capacity to assist in passenger evacuation or rescue.
So what, exactly, are those added patrols accomplishing?
Posted by dberger at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2005
The Party's Over
A colleague loaned me a copy of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies some time ago, and I've been working through it on and off.
It's a good book, fairly well written, and mostly balanced though the author doesn't hide his bias, he presents both viewpoints, and arguments that don't support his beliefs or conclusions. It's well annotated (11 pages of end-notes and an 8 page bibliography), and even handed in it's presentation - more of a modern Cassandra than Chicken Little.
It's also horribly depressing, and more than a little terrifying.
Read it.
Think critically.
And most importantly, act accordingly.
Posted by dberger at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)
Choose, but choose wisely
Survey says...
Ding! (#2)
Posted by dberger at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2005
Start at the beginning...
Talking about an "Agile" process is the current "in-thing" in many software circles, but finding someone who can offer a clear explanation of what an "Agile process" is has proven problematic.
So I went back to the source - the first (that I could find, at any rate) published paper that used the phrase "Agile Process": Agile software process and its experience.
It's an interesting read, if you can get past the choppy English. The author was a principal contributor at NEC for over a decade, and is essentially documenting the process they evolved over time in an effort to improve their quality, delivery predictability, and stabilize developers work-load characteristics.
If you're fortunate enough to have an ACM library account (I knew there was a reason I kept my alumni relationship with the University active), take a read.
Posted by dberger at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
July 8, 2005
Party Like it's 1979...
I'll never eat again.
At least, not 'till tomorrow, when I stop feeling like my stomach is ready to explode.
Brian, Dina and Lucas, Ian and Mary Ann, and Dawnise and I had dinner at The Melting Pot - a fondu restaurant. We had a great time joking about all the fondu sets that are given as wedding or house-warming gifts and ultimately find their way into a garage sale. In fact, I posited, it's likely that they haven't actually needed to manufacture a fondue set for over a decade; that the world has all the fondue sets it will ever need.
All joking about the mode of cooking aside - the food, and company, were excellent.
Continue reading "Party Like it's 1979..."
Posted by dberger at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
July 6, 2005
Not as Freaky as the Title Might Suggest
A friend recommended I pick up a copy of Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, which I did a month or so back. I finally picked it up, and when I put it down three hours later, I had finished it.
It was a good book - the authors are good at two things:
1. identifying the right control group in order to ask meaningful questions of existing data (often using regression analysis), and
2. not confusing correlation with causality
The book doesn't have a much of a theme, really - a fact the authors warn you of up front - but it hangs together well regardless.
With chapters including "What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?" (answer: they both have strong incentives to cheat), "How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?" (answer: they both depend on an information asymmetry), and "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?" (oh read the book, I'm tired of parenthetical answers) there's something there for everyone.
I'd say you should find a copy at the library, but if you want to read it soon, you're better off buying a copy than getting in line with a billion other people waiting for the two copies the library has.
Posted by dberger at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)
Too Much of a Good Thing
Turns out we fell prey to the oldest trick in the book on the 4th.
The old (imagine Peter Sellers as Inspector Jacques Clouseau) "it's-so-nice-out-you-don't-notice-you've-spent-all-day-in-the-sun ploy."
Dawnise got pretty toasted - the hazards of her Polish heritage, and I managed to get some pink on my face that faded into tan in less than twelve hours (I'm still trying to figure out where the Mediterranean complexion comes from out of my gene pool of northern european descent).
Anyway - she was pretty miserable yesterday, a bit better today, but still not exactly comfortable.
As Kurt Vonnegut (never) said: "Wear Sunscreen."
The evening on the 4th was great. We went to Edmond's apartment in Seattle, on the 20th floor with windows facing the space needle, and watched two fireworks displays: one over lake union, and the other being launched from a barge in the sound. Dinner was excellent, as was the company.
Posted by dberger at 7:58 AM | Comments (0)
July 5, 2005
Tom Lehrer Strikes, er, is struck Again
As proof that Jib-Jab (and the Americans) don't have a lock up on using flash for effective political commentary, I refer you to the very model of a modern labour minister
Posted by dberger at 12:47 PM | Comments (2)
July 4, 2005
4th of July Weekend
The weekend got off to an inauspicious start; our game night on Friday wasn't terribly well attended. Brad and Kat came over, and it's always entertaining to spend time with them. We started with Guillotine, moved on to Win Lose or Draw (hampered only slightly by the fact that I can't draw), and rounded the evening out by breaking open Dawnise's newest game: SPANC.
Scott was planning to arrive in Seattle around 12:30 on Saturday afternoon, and we were going to meet him in the city and have lunch at Ipanema. Things didn't quite work out that way, however - a 90 minute wait at the border made him late, and getting to the ferry just in time to watch it sail away made him even later.
We passed the day around the house - doing some local errands, and when Scott finally arrived - after 7 (!) hours in transit - we played a game of Gloom (thanks for the reminder, Scott) and took him to the Island Grill for a belated birthday dinner. After dinner we went and caught the local improv group. At one point during the show, Dawnise managed to get Scott pulled up on stage to be (drumroll please) a sound-effects guy (those who know Coz will see the irony ;).
Continue reading "4th of July Weekend"
Posted by dberger at 3:38 PM | Comments (1)
Zero 7
I'm sure I'm the last to know about this talented duo of producers. I found them by way of Tina Dickow (or Dico, as it's spelled in America) - who's definitely worth a listen.
Sometimes you want music, and sometimes you want atmosphere - Zero 7 is one of the few ambient acts that can deliver both - tracks with strong vocals and sing-along quality that can be turned down a bit and fade into, or create, the background for any mood.
I've got both the big studio releases (Simple Things and When it Falls), and I'm keeping my eyes open for copies of EP1 and EP2, they're first two forays into the limelight after working with the likes of The Pet Shop Boys and others.
Give 'em a spin.
Posted by dberger at 9:43 AM | Comments (0)
Christopher Moore
A couple years back, a friend of mine (thanks, Clark) recommended I read Christopher Moore's Lamb, which I did, and which made me laugh harder than anything I'd read since Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I've subsequently read many of his other books, and found most of them to be highly entertaining, albeit not as laugh-out-loud funny as Lamb.
The other day, while killing time in the bookstore before the Serenity sneak-preview, I picked up a hard-cover copy of Fluke for $5.
It fits the pattern - a very quick read, with great characters, a fine dry wit, and a good story. If you haven't read any Moore, I'd start with Lamb, and I'd definitely add Fluke to the list.
Posted by dberger at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)
July 1, 2005
...and a star to steer her by...
I was sitting in a meeting the other day when there was a tremendous "boom" and the building shook. We're on the waterfront, and there are train tracks immediately adjacent to the building on the water side - so my first thought was that a train had hit something.
Looking out the window to the water I realized I was wrong.
It wasn't a train.
It was a canon.
Continue reading "...and a star to steer her by..."
Posted by dberger at 10:43 AM | Comments (1)