I’ve been at several organizations, both large and small, who keep the same chant over and over that offshoring is the key to getting your software cheap. When it comes up, it never seems to be to be a good solution, and so far that’s panned out. None of the offshored projects have succeeded. That’s…
How Mono gets its CultureInfo
Recently, we had a core NUnit test failing on Mono/Linux. It was expecting the CultureInfo to be set to a certain pattern of string (xx-XX, or [a-z][a-z]-[A-Z][A-Z]), but when I ran it, it was coming back blank. Since CultureInfo is something that is usually read from the underlying OS, I inquired on the Mono list…
Communication and Coaching
During the time off with the new baby, I was able to catch up on some reading. I came across two great articles that are worthy of reading. The first is from Esther Derby. She wrote an article on the Scrum Alliance site entitled 7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Begin Coaching. It’s a…
Welcome to Annabelle Katherine Foy!
At just past 2am last night, June 14th, our first child, Annabelle Katherine was welcomed into the world. We had gone in for an checkup at 7:30 am on Tuesday the 13th, and they decided to induce at 8am. Thanks for all of the support, and be sure to check out her gallery:
Bit fiddling computers and dealing with humans
It’s always amusing to me when people find out I build software for a living and get this, “Well, that must be hard!” expression. The funny thing is that bulding software, fiddling with bits on a computer, isn’t terribly difficult. If I need to add 2 numbers, any language will do that, and even if…
Test-Driving Yahoo API Call with Ruby
I just started a new project for a web site (non-work related) I am very excited about. One of the things I have to do is make a call to the Yahoo Maps API to Geocode some information. I wanted to wrap the functionality into a class to make it easier to call from my…
The Net Neutrality debate
Last week, the big news was about Congress voting on the Net Neutrality act, which the telecoms say is vital to keep the internet from having a total meltdown. One of the favorite targets of the lobbysts is Google. Why? Well, according to them, Google and other content providers are getting a “free ride”. For…
Settling Disputes
This is what I miss about Tampa. A federal judge there Tuesday was fed up with the constant bickering of two lawyers who couldn’t solve even the most basic queries without court intervention. So he did what all of us would probably like to, he ordered them to play Rock, Paper, Scissors on the steps…
Updates and Musings
Things have been quiet on this front – we’re expecting our first child any day (literally, today is her due date), so we’ve been busy with preperations for that. I’ve also been trying to finish up some dev projects around here, and some cool stuff is going on with that: I’ve been working hard on…
Automated tests versus Manual Testing
Right now there is a bit of a hot topic in the Agile community around Automated Testing versus Manual testing. Ron Jeffries just posted a great article, and Keith Ray also posted a response to one of Ron’s posts on the Agile Testing mailing list. Ron had said on the list: The only time not…