Archive for January, 2010

Happy Birthday, <lj user=”f45one”>&#8230;

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

…and many happy returns of the day.

From Twitter 01-05-2010

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

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From Twitter 01-04-2010

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

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A course

Monday, January 4th, 2010

I’m taking a course in business communication about software development this week from the famous Tom Gilb. He is the co-author with Dorothy Graham of the book Software Inspection, which is an expansion of the relatively famous Fagin inspection method pioneered at IBM in the 1950s. This is the second course I’ve taken from him; the first one was the second day I was in the United Kingdom, back in January of 1994. It was a course to qualify me as a manager of the inspection process. Unfortunately, the company didn’t use inspections for very long (they are time-consuming and expensive), so I haven’t done an inspection for a while.

So today was the first day of this week-long course. One thing that has struck me from the first time I met Tom: his courses and books may have ostensible titles like “Software Inspection” or “Principles of Software Engineering Management”, but they are actually all variations on the same subject: “Tom Gilb”. He has been in the software business for 52 years, and has built up such a history that everything he does is couched in war stories which star himself.

There is no doubt that Tom is gifted, highly intelligent, insightful about the processes around software engineering, and articulate. However, everything he talks and writes about revolves around himself and his exploits.

I have come to the conclusion that this is kind of tired and intrudes into the process of learning some of the doubtless valuable lessons and insights he has to offer.

Another interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that many of the delegates, who only know him from his reputation and his books, are so in awe of him that they treat him with the kind of reverence normally reserved for Popes or cardinals, or at least archbishops. They seem to believe that every morsel of information that emerges from his mouth is sacred. While I don’t share this reverence (I know of at least one occasion where he let down a mutual friend in order to court another possible business contact) it does intrude on the learning process.

The really good thing about this course is that it is free to people who are not currently employed. There was thus an enormous takeup, of course, and there are 30 people (plus Tom and his wife, who is kind of a power behind the throne, making sure that everything runs smoothly) in the room. There are two to a table, with 15 tables in a room designed for 10. There are not enough power points for all the delegates—thus, those of us who arrived closer to 9 am had no power point and my netbook ran out of juice by mid-afternoon.

The course goes until Friday. At the end I’ll recap what I believe I learned from it.

From Twitter 01-02-2010

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

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From Twitter 01-01-2010

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
  • 01:14:43: Happy New Year! and happy birthday, @nard, and many happy returns of the day.
  • 09:23:04: @soveren And HNY to you as well. Hope you’re not frozen up there…
  • 12:26:52: morning, tweeps and peeps. grey outside today and about 1 degree C but Happy New Year anyway!
  • 12:28:26: @gelodelacruz sounds good! do you have permanent housing yet or are you in a hotel?
  • 16:30:40: Drinking hot chocolate with HWMBO

Random thoughts for the New Year

Friday, January 1st, 2010
  • I have pretty much stopped looking at Usenet newsgroups in favour of Twitter, Facebook, and Live Journal. Sad, but true.
  • You will all think I’m crazy, but a taste from my childhood that I cannot reproduce with the equipment at my disposal is percolated coffee. Yes, it tasted boiled, it was strong, it was assertive, it might even have tasted burnt. However, it is something I crave. Pyrex glass percolators are on sale on eBay by their dozens, but they are almost all located in the US. A six- or eight-cup glass percolator is what I want. I may buy one and have it shipped to my brother in time for our visit this year.
  • I also want a theremin. Totally mad, but after seeing this YouTube video of Clara Rockmere playing “The Swan” by Saint-Saens, I am hooked. To my astonishment, they are available on eBay as well. There are many models, one- and two-antenna models.
  • It has been quite cold so far this winter—I wish it would warm up a bit.
  • After finishing my metronidazole, I had my first alcoholic drink in two months or more. It was Drambuie on the rocks. What I wasn’t aiming for is the rocketing-up of my blood sugar the next morning.
  • We went to the Saatchi Gallery today to see some current American artists’ works. With one or two exceptions, they were shite. Oh well…the fare at Patisserie Val

From Twitter 12-31-2009

Friday, January 1st, 2010
  • 14:04:58: AFternoon, tweeps and peeps. The pipe and spigot have been removed from my arm. Hooray!
  • 16:11:37: @IvyBean104 Happy New Year to you & your family & friends!
  • 22:24:58: @BrianHeys Hm. If I ever go into the publican biz, that’s what I’ll name the pub: The Pipe and Spigott (must have 2 “T”s for US tourists)
  • 22:31:28: RT @MitchBenn: Deserted fathers! Contemplating killing yr wife & kids & then yourself? Why not START with yourself & then see how you feel?
  • 22:32:50: @RobertFischer I wonder if anyone saved a pre-Y2K app and then ran it after 1/1/2000 to demonstrate the mayhem unfixed software would cause.
  • 22:39:57: I was with my friend Mark on Blackfriars Bridge #10yearsago
  • 22:45:15: @gelodelacruz Welcome to Europe! Just in time for the new year!
  • 22:50:28: @pedroissexy hey sexy! happy new year!

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