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Schmeam-Work
It took me about 15 minutes to conjure up the inane picture below. It took me another frustrating fifteen minutes attempting to come up with something that rhymes with “team-work” for the lower half of it. As you can see, I failed miserably. Do you, dear reader, have a better label for the “crappy” half? (@riczwest, my money is on you!)
Sprint 0 Starts Today!
With Fat Tuesday falling on March 4, Mardi Gras 2014 is coming up fast. Since BD00 will soon be making the trek down south to the world’s greatest party again this year, he downloaded the Mardi Gras Parade Tracker to keep on top of the situation. Think of the app as the greatest burndown chart ever concocted; providing 24X7 real-time progress updates to Scrum Master BD00 of each agile krewe’s progress from inception to final delivery.
After downloading the app, BD00 scrolled through the parade list and counted no less than 50(!) time-boxed parades on the product backlog. Sprint 0 starts….. TO-FREAKIN’-DAY, February 15th, with the Krewe du Vieux kickoff. BD00 can’t wait to ask the last of the big 3 Scrum questions (you know, the one nobody normally likes to ask or answer): “Are there any obstacles preventing you from creating business value?”
If you, dear reader, will be down in the ‘Nawlins French quarter between the dates of 2/28 through 3/4, tweet me with a “Who Dat?” when you rumble into town. We’ll hookup somewhere and the first Hurricane will be on BD00. If not, then check my twitter feed ‘tween those dates for some wholesome, uh, family-oriented pix of the festivities as they unfold.
It would be especially great to meet and interact with those reader(s) who strongly take issue with much of what BD00 writes in this mostly caustic blog, because:
I don’t like that man, I must get to know him better – Abraham Lincoln
The Commas And Stuff
After watching an interesting documentary on J. D. Salinger, I decided to re-read his monstrously famous book, “The Catcher In The Rye“. Stunningly, I couldn’t find any store online that sold an e-version of the book. I ended up having to buy the dead-trees version.
In an early part of the book, protagonist Holden Caulfield’s roommate, Stradlater, begs Holden to write an English composition for him:
How ’bout writing a composition for me, in English? Just don’t do it too good, is all. That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you’re a hot-shot in English, and he knows your my roommate. So I mean don’t stick all the commas and stuff in the right place.
Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place.
I laughed my ass off when I read that passage. Ya see, I’ve been blawging for over four years now, and deciding where to place commas in the text has always been a real pain in my keester. I’m constantly finding myself being yanked out of the continuous flow of words and pausing to ask “should I put a freakin’ comma here?“. In addition, when I iterate over a post just prior to queuing it up for publication, I’m always adding, removing, and/or moving commas around. I’d estimate that 20% of my writing time is spent obsessing over comma placement. LOL!
I think that my “comma dilemma” is why I enjoy composing the dorky clipart pix for a blog post much more than concocting the comma-laced text. I find the construction, placement, movement, and connection of images on the e-canvas a more fluid and less disruptive experience.
Another text-based conundrum that I’m constantly bumping into is the annoying decision process associated with the use of the word “that“. But that, is for a future post.
Fetch-tini
Hey look! It’s BD00 playing fetch-tini with his buddy BD01.
The 1200 Mile Flex
I am, and always have been, a gadget man. I own an iPhone 5, a Kindle Fire HD, a Livescribe Echo pen, and a Fitbit Flex. Since I purchased it in the spring of 2013, my favorite device has been the Fitbit Flex. That delightful gadget is effortless to use and has a well thought out, seamlessly integrated web/phone/device system.
My Flex has helped me shed close to 10 pounds of flab because:
- I now park farther away from driving destinations,
- I’ve tacked 10 minutes of treadmill time on to my regular workout
- I frequently scurry off for quick, 10 minute walks at work and home
Recently, I received my first annual report from Fitbit.com:
1200+ miles in less than one year! Sheesh, I never woulda thunk it.
Oh, and even though my friends often hassle me about my utter lack of fashion style, I’ve happily collected every color band currently available for the Flex.
Simply Atrocious
Via a twitter tip from Scott Berkun, I read Matt White’s “Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History“. The book is a truly impressive and meticulous compilation of man’s inhumanity to man throughout the ages. It’s not only chock full of body counts, it attempts to describe why each atrocity was precipitated. The book also contains lurid details of some of the tactics and methods used by the “victors” to obliterate their victims.
According to Mr. White, here are the top 3 atrocities that have occurred (so far) over the course of human history:
While reading Matt’s book, my feelings oscillated uncontrollably between repulsion and gratitude. Repulsed at the insidiously diabolical forms of death experienced by bazillions of fellow human beings, but extremely grateful I wasn’t physically present during any of those maelstroms.
No BS
As you can tell from the fading red color and the yellowish background, this tacky “No BS” sign has been around for decades:
I’ve carted my beloved “No BS” sign with me from cubicle to cubicle throughout my long and un-illustrious career. The cool thing is that I have never been asked, nor “commanded!“, to take it down by anyone in any of the companies I’ve worked for. Hell, I can’t even remember ever getting a “stern look” from anyone who’s seen it. I do, however, remember getting many chuckles from people who saw it for the first time: “Nice sign, LOL!“.
How about you? Have you been so lucky?
It’s All About Me
According to the wordpress.com stats helper monkeys, these metrics summarize my 2013 blogging output:
Since conjuring up dorky, childish, clipart pictures seems to be my “strength“, it’s not surprising that I uploaded over twice as many pretentious pictures as blog posts.
The WP monkeys didn’t stop there. Those animals also tallied up my most-viewed posts of 2013:
Even though I don’t post on the topic as much as I do on other “stuff“, every single one of my top five “best sellers” explores some aspect of programming in C++ that piqued my interest. But that’s not surprising. Members of two sites with large C++ programmer followings, reddit.com and isocpp.com, decided to share links to my top five on those sites.
In addition to being a blathering blogger, I was fairly active on Twitter in 2013. The talented programmers at vizify.com gratuitously compiled a nice little video of my 2013 Twitter activity (you can see it here) and tallied up my most impactful tweets:
If wordpress.com and vizify.com can create synopses like these, just imagine what the NSA can do.
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
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