Postcard Memoir

She Says (she still exists, despite the 12/5/09 post - she's become enamored of facebook) sent me an email about how this teacher at the NOW Academy in LA, in a poor part of Koreatown, wanted postcards representing various parts of the world.

Rather than send her class actual postcards from Minnesota, I sent them Larry Sutin's book, A Postcard Memoir. Larry was my professor at Hamline when I was doing my Master's in writing and scribbling a thesis on dystopias. He's done books on Aleister Crowley and Philip K. Dick as well. But this book is beautiful, and contains pictures of postcards from his collection (he also collects pens from drug companies - a hobby my mother has been helping me to facilitate for him for years) from all over the world, with a bent toward Minnesota: pictures of old hotels (like the Leamington), Annandale, Lake Pepin, et al. If you want a postcard of Minnesota, Larry's pictures are unique.

However. It's a memoir. So some of the writing accompanying the postcards is a bit racy for 2nd and 3rd graders. I'm not so sure they care to know that Larry's mother was gang raped in the French wilderness when she was a Jewish resistance fighter in WWII (his parents are the subject of another book - also very good. Or that they need to know he first masturbated to Cyd Charisse. Twice. I'm glad I didn't know that when we saw each other several times a week. Singing in the Rain is perhaps one of my favorite things in the world. I hate to think of someone wanking to it. And there are a few postcards featuring the odd Greek/Roman statue with the highlighted phallus.

My hope is that the teacher will be sharp enough to simply pick out the postcards that are interesting and present them without presenting any of the text (at least any of the inappropriate text). After all, my teachers in elementary (one in particular) were kind enough to deal with me when I said "vagina" several times in several minutes without raising a serious ruckus. So I suspect they're experts at sifting and dealing with inappropriate material, yet might appreciate that the inappropriate bits are appropriate for them during non-school reading time.

Good luck with all that, Mrs. Sakai. I hope you show them the Annandale Card. That's probably very close to the field where I almost got hypothermia during a Scouting event!

Midwest Burlesk 2010

I went to the Best of the Midwest Burlesk Festival 2010 at the Ritz tonight. Last year I went with Kyle, but this year I screwed it up and managed to purchase a ticket for the 7:00 p.m. show while Kyle and his brother went to the 10:00 p.m. show. I think I finally figured out what I did, and it involved the use of a bookmark and backspace key. All very stupid. But I'm almost glad I missed dinner at the Polish restaurant. I had breakfast at Junior's with Ming and lunch at Ghengis with the guys from work. I'm still not hungry (although I am drinking a 2010 Bigfoot Ale while I write and, as we all know, food is beer).

Midwest Burlesk was once again great, even by myself (Ming...I know they were sold out, but I think you could have scored a ticket at the door. There was an open seat next to me, although perhaps the only one in the house). It's just an incredible variety of bulesk (burlesque), and you're never bored.

Some of my favorite moments were:

• The opening act, Minne Tonka. She did a Mary Tyler Moore strip tease.
• The Stage Door Johnnies from Chicago. One of them did a strip tease involving washing himself and multiple layers of towels, like a Matryoshka doll. A favorite of the many women in the audience.
• Nadine DuBois singing "Coax Me" while being undressed by AJ the Bodyguard. She's hilarious in addition to being sexy. That was a serious green dress, by the way.
• Trigger (Ferguson). Oh my god. I expected this to be something I hated. It was less burlesk at first and more loud cross dressing act. But it went somewhere incredibly amusing after the opening monologue. The audience was roaring. And he's seriously athletic.
• Fanny Tastic. She did a bit as a flight attendant last year. This year she did an act with a bowler (hat). Great dancing. When she sort of grabbed at her bottom and legs with her fingers and pulled, you could hear a reaction from the audience. Incredibly sexy.
• Sweetpea dancing to "Dance Machine". She started out in a boots and a robot costume and took it off to reveal heels and skin. She started with a robot dance and moved into several other dance in what was so energetic it looked like serious work.
• Lola van Ella from St. Louis doing a 50s housewife schtick involving an apron, some frosting, and a spatula while singing "Bake me a cake". Nadine warned that she was renowned for her bottom, and her site calls her "the derriere beyond compare". The advertising was well deserved. The frosting ended up on her body, and the spatula ended up replacing her merkin. Very funny. Her website says I can book her for parties...hmm...Kyle, don't you turn 40(ish) this year?
• Michelle L'amour did the finale with a sort of Spanish dance. Not as exciting a finale as last year with all the hands popping out of the sofa, but a great dance. She does a lot with minimal props.
• And there were others - it didn't end there. Burgundy Brixx from Vancouver. The Chicago Starlets (from Michelle L'amour's school in Chicago). Kami Oh (I think). Ned the Magnificent. Ophelia Flame. Ray Gunn. Summer Clearance (I think it was her doing the fan dance). Switch the Boi. Vica the naughty ballerina. And more.

Pooteewheet is going with Cookie Queen and Lissy Jo tomorrow. I know she'll have fun.

My only complaint is that the beer selection wasn't as good as it was last year when there were Flat Earth beers to be had. Fortunately, Surdyk's was right down the road and between the Ritz and I-35.

Monster Camp

While we were gaming last weekend, Adam mentioned that he'd watched a movie called Monster Camp. Both Kyle and I doubted him, thinking that he was referring to Darkon. But he was correct that there are two movies involving LARPing, both of them enjoyable. Now, I'm going to make fun of the movie because, well...there was so much to make fun of. But if you're a LARPer coming to my blog, don't get upset. I actually have a little bit of respect for people who really enjoy their hobby and gain some sort of friendship and benefit from it. It's not difficult to see that I can be a little overboard with geocaching and bicycling now and then. I did take my daughter on a search for 13 bloody geocaches, and hauled her along on RAGBRAI. In Monster Camp, I was particularly impressed with the woman in a wheel chair who stated that Nero (the LARP) allowed her to sit behind the table, help other players, and they assumed she was just another LARPer sitting down. She seldom played, but found great satisfaction in making costumes and helping where she could. There seemed to be no doubt, looking at her, that she was deriving mental benefit from LARPing in the way that made her happy. I don't have an issue with healthy hobbies. I have an issue with obsession, which is the flip side of that pancake (the burnt side that you hide from your daughter, hoping she won't notice because the chocolate chips mask the taste...is that a valid mental health analogy?). Fortunately, there's plenty of obsession in Monster Camp and it's readily available on Netflix streaming.

So what's funny about Monster Camp and it's look at Nero?

• The guy who says they're going to make a "full-sized dragon head" for their Nero weekend. How does he know it's full-sized? I've read How to Train Your Dragon. Those dragons were very small. He should have picked one of those dragons so there was no problem finishing his craft project on time.
• The guy who plays a dream moth and states that his attack is "the hypnotic glare of the dream moth". This involves opening his jacket in a motion much like a flasher at other characters.
• The idea that there are "holds" to stop all the live action in order to resolve a dangerous situation. They give us an example, and I quote, "my glasses are right over there!" He could have at least said, my spectacles of optimal vision.
• Quotes like, "I don't tend to focus on my every day normal life." WOW! No...I mean WOW...World of Warcraft. Because Nero is only once every three months or so. So he has to bleed off the rest of his "normal life" playing a video game. At one point the text accompanying the movie notes that almost everyone in Nero plays WoW. We can be sure I'm safe. I once had an obsession with TeleArena, but that was in the BBS days.
• Paul, who has lots of pictures on his walls. All of them him in various LARPing situations. I have pictures of me bicycling and geocaching. Usually they're not the focus of our wall art, even in a single room. Although if you're working at it, you can find a picture of me in a clown suit and sitting on the big green teddy bear I used to feed poop.
• The swords. Sometimes it looks like they're holding giant, pink phalluses (phalli?). It reminds me of the ultimate defense system in Dominion: Tank Police.
• The affectation many Nero gamers have when talking. It's like they have to have their own accent. Someone I know said it's, "Almost flamboyant gay man." Then later said, "It's role player douche bag accent."
• The Nero rule book. Over 200 pages. And yet they can't find an NPC that knows Earth magic. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE A 200 PAGE RULE BOOK AND A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER!
• Monster and player outfits can be made out of Hot Topic shirts.
• Monster and player outfits seem to involve an awful lot of white headbands (never explained).
• Monsters are considered scary when they're wearing a vine boa...not a snake. Like the boa you wear around your neck...with leaves on it. I think that makes you some sort of f*ing gay tree ent.
• Monster and player outfits pretty much involve a tunic and a hockey mask (when not sporting vine boas).
• Undead lizards wear headphones so they can stay organized. I don't even use my headphone at work, let alone when playing an undead lizard.
• One of the highlights of the actual gameplay was running around next to a barn in a state park looking for spider ichor. This would have been cooler had they actually milked a few spiders.
• The guy whose daughter told him he's spending too much time playing WoW instead of spending time with her. He teared up a little bit, talked about how it was like any other addition such as alcohol, and then related how he was setting up a second computer so she could play next to him. Hey...if your daughter says you're playing the video game too much, stop that s*it and find a different hobby. Almost all of the interview time with him involved him sitting behind a laptop playing WoW.
• The guy who stated he was in his fifth year as a high school senior. Pooteewheet yelled at the television, "STOP LOOKING LIKE THAT!"
• Fern. He lives with his mother in Seattle. His mother is a hippy. She said Fern had his hobbies, but at least he hadn't grown up into her hobbies, like kink. Ewwww.... At least he rides a bicycle. Then again, is there anyone in Seattle who doesn't?
• Swords are called boffers. Hitting someone with your sword is called boffing. This seems to take the place of sex.
• Passerbys who state of Nero and the participants, "I thought I was looking at Darth Maul. Or Harry Potter." And, "There's nothing like a good dismembering to perk up your Saturday."
• Quotes like, "FEEL MY POISON!" and "MATT IS DEAD!"
• The player who asks another player, "Are we dating?" And then says of his real girlfriend, "My interests lie elsewhere with a particular dancer at the ******* ballroom." Could you make it sound any more imaginary or creepy, even if it isn't?
• The idea that "in game sexual dynamics" can get complicated. Some players date in the game, but not in real life. Or in real life, but not in the game. They take out their breakups on each other within the game. And, they have problems with their dating characters having "different personal values" and take the game issues out on their real lives. That's right...they break up because their characters, the characters they're pretending to be, have opposing values within Nero once every several months.
• When the individuals running the game change, it has to be sold. Someone pays for the game, rather than just creating a new game and, well, not paying.
• Pooteewheet stating, "That douchebag in the green reminds me of Klund. I think it's the way he holds his head and, specifically, his mouth....It's the way he's standing!"
• Resurrection involves a bag with 9 beads of one color, and 1 bead of another color. If you draw the odd bead out, you avoid dying permanently. It would seem like that's where the exercise would end. But instead, you get shipped off to a room, the resurrection chamber, decorated with LED string lights where particular characters chant around you until you come back to life...unless they're mean, in which case it gets ugly. I can't even picture what that involves.
• If you don't come back in the resurrection chamber, you may come back as a vampire. At this point your friend may cry and talk about how much it hurts, because you shouldn't really be there.
• And finally, there's the politics. Not the sexual politics. Not the politics of who owns the chapter. Instead, there's the politics of what happens when certain characters band together and cast a spell that changes the race of the last sea elf, ending the sea elves as a race. Another character puts it in perspective: the sea elves are all gone, the economy is going to be hurt, shipping is going to be hurt, it's not safe. The death of the last sea elf is right up there with the housing crisis and international piracy concerns. Stupid Obama. Bring back the sea elves by changing the race of a few humans, and you could eliminate a few pressing issues and focus on healthcare. Maybe the sea elves have special herbs and sea salts and we could fix that issue in the same broad stroke.

So there you go. Perhaps that was too much in the way of spoilers, but there was just so much to enjoy.

Kill -9

I'm stealing a link from John Duprey because if you're a developer, Kill -9 is pretty damn funny (though not language appropriate at work).

Postpourri - Agile, Bananas, Breakfast, Beer, Memes

Been a while since I did a postpourri, but I had a few things queued up that I found enjoyable:

1.) How to open a banana at viral video. Perhaps Mean Mr. Mustard can benefit from knowing how to open those bananas he stores in his banana bunkers.

2.) Know Your Meme - in case there's an internet meme you don't understand or missed. You can't be expected to function in polite company if you don't know about Om Nom Nom Nom or the Keyboard Cat.

3.) Conner posts a link to the beer flow chart which advises you what to drink (hmm...this link might work better).

4.) Metro magazine reviews breakfast. I ordered a subscription to their magazine after reading their breakfast articles. They review the bacon independently. That's good journalism.

5.) How to turn your chest freezer into a chest fridge (why? because it saves you a lot of money when the cold stays in the fridge, and you can stop yelling at your kids, "QUIT STANDING AROUND WITH THE DOOR OPEN!")

6.) Boing Boing has a quote on their site from 8 years ago quoting Joel on Software talking about the MBA mind that I found highly amusing if you work with Agile at all:

"People who aren't programmers are just looking at the screen and seeing some pixels. And if the pixels look like they make up a program which does something, they think "oh, gosh, how much harder could it be to make it actually work?"

The big risk here is that if you mock up the UI first, presumably so you can get some conversations going with the customer, then everybody's going to think you're almost done. And then when you spend the next year working "under the covers," so to speak, nobody will really see what you're doing and they'll think it's nothing.

Things That Might Interest Klund: Snowclones and Ferdinandea

1.) What's a horse's favorite band? Snow Patrol! I posit that this might actually be an example of a snowclone, and that Klund has cleverly used a named piece of language.

"A snowclone is a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants".

An example of a snowclone is "gray is the new black", a version of the template "X is the new Y". X and Y may be replaced with different words or phrases – for example, "comedy is the new rock 'n' roll". Both the generic formula and the new phrases produced from it are called "snowclones".

The term was coined by Glen Whitman on January 15, 2004, in response to a request from Geoffrey Pullum on the Language Log weblog.[3] Pullum endorsed it as a term of art the next day, and it has since been adopted by other linguists, journalists and authors. The term alludes to one of Pullum's example template phrases: If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z.

2.) Ferdinandea - I once wrote a lengthy post about how I suspected Terry Pratchett had a old book of particularly uncommon words. He knows his peculiar history as well and Jingo is based on an island that sometimes crests above the sea near Sicily, and sometimes sinks, and was once a source of contention among four different nations who all laid claim to it. Our own government once dropped depth charges on it, believing it to be a Libyan Submarine. I thought the idea of a Libyan submarine was nonsense, but apparently they own six, although none of them was consistently at sea between '85 and '94, so the U.S. attack in '86 wasn't even a potential victory, despite misidentifying an island. However, it seems fitting that if we don't know what it is, we declare it to be from a rogue nation and ask questions later. I quote from Third World Submarines: "Libya's submarine crews have a reputation for being poorly trained, and their boats are so shoddily maintained that only one or two out of six may be operable--not one has routinely gone to sea since 1985." I can't remember if Pratchett mocked the Libyan navy in Jingo.

Overheard at Work

I was crossing the skyway, and two young women were walking the other way.

Woman one: "I just want to remain young and hip."

Woman two: "More like young and chubby."

Ouch!

Luna Hates Klund

I saw rocks in the poodles' bowls at Klund's house when we were down there and he mentioned they were for keeping the dogs from wolfing down their food in moments. Luna inhales her food. If I were to time it, she might actually be coming in at under sixty seconds in many instances. It might not be dangerous. My knowledge of dog esophagus capacity is limited. But it looks dangerous. And I need a few moments to myself, and when the dog is eating should be one of them, because ten seconds after she's done it's time for her potty break.

So, Pooteewheet brought in the rock Eryn knew was buried under the snow on the deck, and put it Luna's food bowl. Luna immediately popped it out. So when I fed her dinner, I switched her water and food bowls and put the rock in the bigger metal bowl so it was harder to dislodge. Not only did she eat for over five minutes while she pushed the rock off the food, but she added another five minutes on top of that coming back over and over to look for food under the rock, and another five minutes on top of that making return trips to lick the rock on the off chance it might actually BE food. Each time she failed to find food under the rock, or licked (or bit) the rock and found it to be lacking, she gave it and the dish a disgusted swat with her paw before padding away.

I'm sure she'll figure out a way to foil this cunning plan in the long run, just like how she figured out to push her bed out of the way and pee under it so I still have to clean pee every morning until we find a smaller replacement cage, but for now it seems to be working.

Movies 2009

Almost forgot about this, although as I said in 2009, it has less meaning every year as I watch media from Netflix streaming on the Roku (lots of Penn and Teller), Hulu, Dish (we've had complimentary channels for being new customers for months), Netflix ordering, movies Eryn owns, movies we own, the dispenser at work, et al. It's a pretty sad list. There's one 5.0 on here, and it's from a movie Pooteewheet watched all by herself while I was away because it seemed too much of a chick flick for me to stand.

If you're a gamer, I'd recommend one movie that's not on this list: The Gamers, Dorkness Rising. If you're not a gamer, I'd stay far away from it. Netflix recommended it as an instant streaming video, and I felt it was worth a look. Low budget. No name actors. Shot in a game store and presumably in actors' homes for the most part. Still, I gave it a four. It made me laugh quite a bit with references to Munchkins (the game), D&D, and a variety of other things that are amusing if you grew up playing fantasy and board games. I told Kyle about it, and it looks like he gave it a four. And during Axis and Allies this weekend (board gaming day on Saturday and we played an old school war game for most of the day - the Xeno edition), Adam asked if we'd seen it. So it's three for three among gaming dorks. That's got to be a good review if you can fit yourself into the category.

"All Lodge wants is for his gaming group to finish their adventure. Unfortunately, they’re more interested in seducing barmaids, mooning their enemies, and setting random villagers on fire. Desperate to rein in his players, Lodge injects two newbies into the distrust: a non-player character controlled by Lodge, who the power gamers immediately distrust, and the rarest gamer of all — a girl. Can the group overcome their bickering to save the kingdom, or will the evil necromancer Mort Kemnon triumph unopposed? A parody of fantasy films and the adventure gaming community, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is a hilarious romp through the world of sword and sorcery — in this case, a world of exploding peasants, giant house cats, and undead roast turkeys. Game on!"

I'd use the list below, sans the scifi television series, primarily as a list of things to avoid.

Tales of the Black Freighter / Under...	2.0
The Spirit	1.0
Knowing	2.0
The Unborn	1.0
I Love You, Man	3.0
Land of the Lost	1.0
Race to Witch Mountain	2.0
Adventureland	3.0
Observe and Report	3.0
Inside	3.0
Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 3	4.0
Anvil: The Story of Anvil	4.0
The Horsemen	1.0
The Wrestler	4.0
The Burrowers	4.0
The Haunting in Connecticut	2.0
Crank 2: High Voltage	2.0
Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 2
Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries
Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 4
Doubt	3.0
Lost: Season 4: Disc 4	4.0
Lost: Season 4: Disc 3
Lost: Season 4: Disc 2
Lost: Season 4: Disc 1	2.0
Lost: Season 3: Disc 6
Lost: Season 3: Disc 5
Lost: Season 3: Disc 4
Lost: Season 3: Disc 3
Lost: Season 3: Disc 2
Lost: Season 3: Disc 1
Eureka: Season 3: Disc 2
Eureka: Season 3: Disc 1	5.0
Eureka: Season 2: Disc 3
Eureka: Season 2: Disc 2
Star Wars: The Clone Wars	2.0
Eureka: Season 1: Disc 3	2.0
Eureka: Season 2: Disc 1
Eureka: Season 1: Disc 2
Eureka: Season 1: Disc 1
Happy Endings	2.0
Badland	1.0
Towelhead	3.0
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button	2.0
Frostbitten	3.0
Splinter	3.0
The Chumscrubber	4.0
Wit	5.0
Frontiers	3.0
Cthulhu	1.0
Zombie Strippers	2.0
The Ruins	2.0
Insanitarium	1.0
Religulous	2.0
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder	4.0
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist	4.0
Role Models	4.0
The Midnight Meat Train	3.0
Run, Fat Boy, Run	1.0
Eden Lake	2.0
Max Payne	1.0
Quarantine	3.0
Pineapple Express	3.0
The War: A Ken Burns Film: Disc 2
The War: A Ken Burns Film: Disc 3
Zack and Miri Make a Porno	4.0
Man on Wire	4.0
Whisper of the Heart	3.0
The War: A Ken Burns Film: Disc 1

Card Games

When we played card games on New Year's, I tried to pull out a few of the games my father in law and his friends had introduced me to on quarter day:

1.) Pass 4 one way. 3 the other way. 2 the other way. 1 the other way. A round of betting each time. Low and high hands split the pot. This one drove people crazy, but there was a method to the madness and you really had to think about what you were passing.

2.) Jacks or better to stay in. Trips to win. Old game, but I always forget it exists. Forces you to play hands that might not normally get played.

3.) High hand AND high spade to win. If someone doesn't have high hand and high spade, the pot rolls over and you play again until someone wins. This can result in some very large pots if you play a stud variant unless you put a rollover limit on it.

4.) High hand splits with high spade in the hole. Or, high hand splits with low spade in the hole.

5.) I can't remember the 10 of diamonds/Q of spades game exactly. But it had something to do with making everyone throw their cards back in on a 10D and the QoS being wild maybe? No, I bet the QoS took half the pot. The trick was to have the 10D face down so you knew your QoS was good.

There are a pile of good variants for poker out at rec.gambling.poker if you're looking for something interesting.

A Pleasant Exchange With Eryn

Eryn has her homework on the couch so I can help her.

Me: "You've got your ruler. How long is a side?"

Eryn: "That's not what you do. Do you know what each means?"

Me: "It means we can each do our homework by ourselves if you're going to be rude."

TV Snobs

I read this article over two months ago and yet it's still bugging me, because I find it to verge on the liminal that delineates where sanity crosses into total batshit lunacy.

TV Snobs Are Wrong About 'Two and a Half Men'

Really? That's a bold statement, pretty much equivalent to stating one of the piles my dog leaves in her pen is misconstrued by clean grass elitists as a pile of shit. To quote the writer of the article:

"If your brow tends to arch on the high side, “Two and a Half Men” can be off-putting, with its love of double-entendres and inability to pass up a good fart joke. Like “The Three Stooges" and “I Love Lucy" before it, this series plays heavily on the side of physical humor. But unlike the old days of slipping on a banana peel, these clowns are more likely to injure themselves on a used birth-control device."

Brow arches on the high side? Who the hell says that about anyone? And like The Three Stooges and I Love Lucy? Why not include Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Mr. Bean? Those shows relied on FUNNY physical comedy, not total inanity. And then, we're offered several examples of what a good show it is:

"Third-season episode “Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Burro” embodies the essence of the series, serving up banter and slapstick in equal portions. The show is packed with the kind of humor fans adore, including Charlie talking about the time he convinced Alan that it was Almond Roca in the kitty litter box. “Are we done visiting Charlie Harper’s Museum of Sibling Cruelty?” deadpans Alan. Dim-bulb Kandi once dated Charlie but is now dating Alan. Charlie’s with Kandi’s mom Mandi and Alan’s ex-wife is smitten with Kandi’s dad Andy. As Berta says, “Sweet whistling Geronimo, you people are like a box of hamsters, crawling all over each other.” The moment when all parties come together under one roof is comic genius."

Genius of the sort after Algernon regresses back to his original state? There is nothing funny about Two and Half Men, including, "for true slapstick fans, it never gets old watching smitten men like Alan and Jake walk into doors." Stop watching it and scour Hulu or Netflix for something that's actually funny. The only reason your brow is arching is because of the induced migraine.

Another List of Science Fiction

Hmm...I have to disagree that there's no need to draw a line between fantasy and science fiction. My friend Klund, he prefers the fantasy books. Me, I prefer the sci fi. And it's not a slight preference. Far and away I read more sci fi, or at least a wider range of it if not sheer pages (my doubt lies squarely at the feet of Tad Williams, whose Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series is one of the great wastes of time in my life, despite some people feeling it belongs in a top 100 list), than I do fantasy. I like both. But I like many so-so sci fi books better than I like some good fantasy books (at least what I've heard is supposed to be good fantasy).

But ThisRecording (via Fimoculous) at least has an eclectic top 100, which I respect and am intrigued by, despite my disagreements about Jurassic Park and anything by Anne McCaffrey. The fact that Roald Dahl's "Danny the Champion of the World" list, makes it unique as far as I'm concerned. I may have to check out some Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe, just to see what he's excited about.

Probably Not Appropriate

'The other speaker on the bill that day was David Irving, probably the best-known Holocaust denier in the world. Irving started his talk by alleging that the numbers of dead in the Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany, were severely undercounted. He then described a bizarre conspiracy involving Enigma coding machines and a massive British spy operation after the war that gave Britain access to the secret message traffic of several small nations in the Southern hemisphere. Telling the audience "many people in this room will not want to hear this," Irving, like Weber, admitted that more than 1.2 million Jews were killed at several camps. But he added that he thought this was all the work of Heinrich Himmler. Hitler, he said, merely wanted "to move Jews to Madagascar."'

(Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report)

Hmm….maybe I should have put the title for “Schindler’s List” over the happy, dancing animals instead to capture the gravity of Irving's statement.

McGross

This morning, running late to work, I realized I was particularly hungry. I stopped at McDonald's with the intention to get an Egg McMuffin, which I haven't had for a long time. I ordered and picked up my food without looking at it as the cashier's warning that the hashbrown was wicked hot was enough to convince me I had the right meal. I ate the hashbrown first because I like them scalding, like some sort of giant tater tot cooked at 500 degrees. If you leave them around for even a moment, they start to taste more like grease and less like a tater tot as far as I'm concerned. Which, not so coincidentally, is how I feel about tater tots themselves. Leave 'em sitting around and they taste less like crispy potato goodness, and more like cold grease. That applies double for tater tots with a hot cheese injection juicy lucy style.

After the hashbrown, I reached in for my McMuffin and, instead, found myself eye to eye with a McGriddle. It smelled strangely sweet and sort of like cheap maple syrup and was obviously pretty much a McMuffin, but with strange pancakes bracketing it instead of a muffin. I tried to remember if I'd just given them the wrong meal number, or if I was the victim of an attempt to unload some of the backlog. I had my doubts, but I took a bite. It was like eating maple candied breakfast. UGH! Revolting. In a moment that might be familiar to some of you, but was new to me, I was forced to consider whether it was better to spit or swallow. Get your minds out of the gutter. I was talking about when Kyle had uni.

I don't mind my food touching, and I've been known to let my breakfast eats indulge in a bit of of orgiastic mixing, but I generally keep my eggs and sausage separate from my pancakes and syrup. Apparently, Malcolm Gladwell's "thin slicing" was at work, and I had innately realized that syrup doesn't belong near the rest of your breakfast food. I drank my entire large orange juice, and still couldn't get the candied maple taste out of my mouth. It took a large refill of Caribou dark roast to eliminate the wrongness that permeated my mouth.

So much wrongness in such a small package. I don't think I'll ever be eating a McGriddle again.

Spit

I was at Erik (the Hairy Swede)'s house tonight, talking shop and drinking a few India Pale Ales. His dog, Henry, was playing with a ball and tossing it around, and that was all fine. I didn't give a thought to the fact that he's a rather drooly dog. I took a long drink on my beer and thought, "that tastes....chewy...and gross". I'm 99.95% certain I got a big wad of dog spit before the beer kicked in. I hope the alcohol kills dog STDs.

What do Agile Managers Look Like?

What does an Agile manager look like? According to Alan Cooper at Code Freeze, you can't manage craftspeople. Instead, you have to facilitate. A good Agile manager will:

• Define and reiterate the overarching goal (focus on the quality line, not the deadline),
• promote standards,
• focus on what to avoid and potential obstacles,
• help everyone on the project focus,
• own the problems and eliminate roadblocks. [author's note: as a manager, I consider this to be paramount. Making sure developers can come to work, sit down, and start coding, is priority number one for a good manager, whether they be Agile, or traditional waterfall].

The factory has moved to the brain, and managers who continue to follow an outdated factory floor management paradigm are going to have an issue with that change. Don't think you can convince them. Just do the right thing and drag them along so they have to confront reality.

Sanjiv Augustine in "Managing Agile Projects" repeats this same criticism, "Managers trained in predictive, plan-driven project management techniques face a learning curve when entrusted with the management of agile development projects." (xvii)

Snowman Model

At Code Freeze, Jeff Patton referred to the "Snowman Model of Iterations" where the daily scrum feeds into larger iterations (Powerpoint of the snowman here). He scribbled a picture much like the one below. There was quite a bit of focus at Code Freeze on being able to draw some of the ideas that are involved in Agile or your design, so that they make a lasting impression on the many players in the project, particularly the product owners. This isn't just an Agile skill. Being able to create a lasting image in the mind of your audience is one of the best ways to foster change. If you're in my group at work, you may have seen "The Heart of Change" (John P. Kotter) on a manager's bookshelf, or you saw the video at the organizational realignment meetings where managers sported mullets and talked about how the web was just going to be a fad and CDs were the future. Kotter's book recommends making that visual leap that makes people feel rather than see, with images akin to Patton's snowman. If Agile is about harnessing change, then it's also about creating that indelible image for your audience that communicates that vision and creates a repository of shared imagery.

Weekend Miscellany

Matthew and Jonnie watching the Vikings trounce the Cowboys. Woo hoo! Even Eryn was excited about the game.

Our sole attempt to find a geocache. We didn't get much further than climbing over the fence, because outside the dog park the snow got very deep and Eryn and I were in tennies. The rest of them went on, but had to pull up short on the edge of a pond because the snow got deeper and deeper. Still, it was a nice day for a walk and we got to see lots of dogs. Eryn is trying to take a picture of the landscape on her DSi.

Eryn on screen at Dave and Buster's where we had lunch. She was playing a driving video game. I missed the best faces because I realized too late I could see her highlighted above. She's gotten much better at video games and was a big fan of Skee Ball (I know, not a video game), Beachhead (?) 2002, with the helmet you put your head in and move around in a 360 degree circle, plus up and down tilt, and driving and motorcycles (she can tilt the motorcycle now). As Kyle noted, "I'm sure MLK, Jr. would be proud to know we spent his day playing games of violence and destruction."

Sunday Sledding

It was a long weekend for Eryn and I. While Pooteewheet was down in Tucson, we:

1. Went to Art Buddy training at the MN Institute of Arts.
2. Went to Ollie's hockey scrimmage.
3. Went snowmobiling (previously blogged).
4. Cleaned the house and the porch rather thoroughly (sans scrubbing).
5. Went to breakfast at Kyle's.
6. Went sledding at Elm Creek Park Reserve.
7. Watched the Vikings - Cowboy game where the Vikings trounced the Cowboys.
8. Went to the Holiday Inn and spent six hours over two days in the water park (nice bed!)
9. Went to Dave and Buster's with Kyle, Matthew and Jonnie to have lunch and play games.
10. Had a failed geocaching adventure in the Elm Creek dog park
11. Ripped two pair of tights and had to go to Target to replace them and the car seat I broke this weekend before going to Ballet on Monday night.
12. Somewhere in there I mixed in watching Year One, part of The Orphan, the pilot of Human Target (bleah), read a sizable chunk of The Phantom Tollbooth to Eryn, and got my butt handed to me in multi-player Call of Duty.

Serious weekending.

The sledding was particularly fun. For the first time, the hill at Elm Creek was groomed, so we could go all the way to the top and get some real speed. Ming and Logan showed up in addition to Matthew, Cynthia, Zoe, Jonnie and Kyle. There are a ton of pictures on my Flickr photostream at the top if you head out there now.

Zoe waving as Cynthia pulls her back up the hill. I wouldn't even carry Eryn's sled up the hill for her. If you can't get yourself and your sled up the hill, it's time to quit as far as I'm concerned.

Logan and Ming going luge. My favorite part was when Logan made Ming sit at the top of the hill in the sled, but wouldn't let him go until everyone had walked all the way back up the hill from the bottom.

Matthew, Kyle and Jonnie. It sounded like a large plane taking off when they went past.

Eryn and Jonnie after a successful run.

Eryn running into trees for the second time over the weekend. Once on a snowmobile and once on a sled.

Cynthia and Zoe on their way down.

And ad hoc picture of me taken entirely by accident.

There's plenty of video as well:

Ming and Logan Luge Runners:


Cynthia, Zoe, Kyle and Jonnie:


Eryn and Me:


On Your Mark, Get Set, GO!


Zoe going down the hill in a prone position. Very amusing.


Zoe with a faceful of snow after going down in a prone position. Not as amusing. A little sad.


Ming on a tube that work gave us...indicating why no one uses them. Too slow.


Zoe going down prone and Eryn not far behind.


It's time to go now...

What do Agile Managers Look Like?

Alan Cooper was asked at Code Freeze 2010 "What do Agile Managers Look Like?" His response was, a manager can't manage craftspeople. Instead, they have to facilitate. A good Agile manager will [and I'd posit any manager should]:

1. Define and reiterate the overarcing goal (focus on the quality line, not the deadline),
2. Promote standards,
3. Focus on what to avoid and potential obstacles,
4. Help everyone on the project focus,
5. Own the problems and eliminate the roadblocks.

The factory has moved to the brain, and managers who continue to follow an outdated factory floor management paradigm are going to have an issue with that change. Don't think you can convince those managers. Just do the right thing and drag them along so they have to confront reality.

Snowmobiling!

As part of "Mom's out of town" festivities, Eryn and I took a papa san up to Logan (it took about 15 seconds for the cat to claim it), went to Ollie's hockey scrimmage, and then went to my brother's house north of the cities to have dinner and do some snowmobiling in the back yard. Eryn had never been on a snowmobile before, so it was a treat to a.) ride as a passenger on the bit Cat, b.) ride solo on the Kitty Cat (and secondary kid's machine), and c.) ride the sled pulled behind the snowmobile.

On the Kitty Cat. This is the one she was on the most, going around and around in circles. I know, no helmet. But the speed was pretty limited. When she switched to Ollie's slightly bigger sled, she ran into a tree, but she still wasn't going fast enough in Andrew's back yard to be worried.

On the big snowmobile. She wasn't driving - she was a passenger. I was going to have her rev it, but then I thought that might be a bad idea if she went shooting off into the water.

In case there was any question about whether she was having a good time. When we put away the snowmobiles later, she cried.

A panoramic view of my brother's back yard with Eryn on the Kitty Cat in the distance. It was more like the rides you do at the fair around a track then real snowmobiling, but it was perfect for learning to ride/drive.

A couple of videos of Eryn on the Kitty Cat. I hauled Ollie around while she drove in circles. Apparently he's taught many of his friends to drive the snowmobile that's just larger than the Kitty Cat as it will pull a sled and he loves to ride. I heard a story today that he'd run into my brother-in-law's car the first time he tried to drive a snowmobile. Given my brother's history of running into things when he was younger, that's pretty funny.


Another video on the Kitty Cat:

Invasion of the Bike Weenies

Eryn and I have been reading a couple of David Lubar's Weenie books, collections of scary stories aimed at children. At the end of "Invasion of the Road Weenies", Eryn asked me what I thought a story about "Invasion of the Bicycle Weenies" would be like, based on Lubar's idea that he might build his next book around that story. I told her this short ad hoc tale while sitting on the couch. If Lubar gives me credit, he's free to steal it. I think it came out sounding very close to one of his stories:

Aaron's mother yelled at him as he walked out the kitchen door leading into the garage, "If you're going to ride your bicycle, remember to put on your helmet!"

"Yeah, Mom," Aaron mumbled.

"I mean it!" she yelled at the closing door. "Helmet!"

Aaron stood in the garage looking at his bicycle and thought about what his mother had said. "Wear your helmet. Wear your helmet! Wear YOUR HELMET!" Always with the helmet. Just once he wanted to go for a ride and feel the breeze on his face. The wind in his hair. The helmet always made him so hot and sweaty. He had no doubt he wouldn't sweat a drop if he went helmetless.

Aaron looked back at the closed door. His mother had been washing dishes and when he had seen her, she'd been only halfway done. If he went now, she wouldn't catch him. Aaron tossed his helmet in the corner and hopped on his bike. He took off, leaving the helmet rattling far behind.

"Your helmet!" his mother yelled from the kitchen window. "Your helmet!" He should have known she'd be watching. But Aaron didn't even look back. He'd had his first taste off the wind and he wasn't turning back.

Faster and faster he biked, flying through town and past his gym coach who was just walking out of the grocery store. "Aaron Teasdale! Where is your helmet?" he yelled as Aaron biked on. "You'll crack your skull!"

But Aaron left Coach Bart in the dust. Flying onward, his hair trailing him like a windsock.

He pedaled past the drugstore and Pastor Janet came running out. "Aaron Teasdale, put on your helmet! You'll get hurt!"

Burt Aaron didn't stop. Pastor Janet would just have to pray for him.

Aaron left town, breaking into the open fields and farmland beyond the buildings and cars. He was exultant. Out here it was so flat he could see for miles. He was safe now. A car couldn't hit him. There were no pedestrians to worry about. A helmet would have been pointless.

Something hit Aaron in the head. Something hard. Aaron saw a pebble fall and bounce off his top tube. He rubbed his head. It must have been kicked up by this tire, he thought, and he surged on. But then there was another knock to his head. And another. Aaron slowed, in case his speed was the reason for the bouncing stones. But the small pebbles kept coming, even when he came to a halt.

Aaron looked around for the tosser, but there was no one. He looked up to find the pebbles were falling from the sky, like hail. One rock hit him in the forehead, and another nearly hit him in the eye. Aaron realized the rocks were coming faster and faster, and the stones were getting larger and larger. There was no where to hide. One particularly large rock nearly knocked him out and, as he spun around, dizzy, a fist-sized boulder fell and dented his down tube. As another large rock hit him just over the eye, Aaron wished he'd worn his safety helmet.

Trainer Tire

I blew a tube on my bicycle trainer the day before yesterday. When I took a look at the tire to see if there was a problem that would lead to another flat, I noticed that the outside of the tire had actually fallen apart, allowing the tube to squeeze through a hole and pop. So I didn't just need a new tube, I needed a new tire as well. I wouldn't have minded so much, if the tire hadn't been less than a year old. So I removed the whole tire (get it, whole tire, hole tire...ahahaha. F'in bike humor. Sweet) and took it in to Erik's today.

When I talked to the bike shop clerk (and co-clerk, it was very quiet so I got to monopolize their time. The only distraction was a couple looking for a sled and hoping the bike store had one), they recommended a trainer tire. A trainer tire?! I had no idea such things existed. Apparently the rubber on the outside of a training tire is less "sticky", preventing excessive wear, allowing several seasons of use, and, as a bonus, eliminating the plastic-knife scraping I do every other month to remove a layer of rubber from the trainer cylinder. They couldn't get one right away, so I had to buy a regular tire for now and put a training tire on order, but as of Monday or Tuesday, I'll have new tech allowing me to step up my training. I can't believe I've been using my same wind trainer since 1987 and no one ever mentioned this small improvement. It's the little things in life that make me happy.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

I've started listening to Blink on CD now that I've finished SuperFreakonomics. Maybe I'll discuss my opinion of "thin slicing" later. But for now I've discovered two things that are making it an annoying audio book (and book in general).

1. Mood music over the parts the author feels are sensitive, such as discussing a relationship, are ANNOYING! There's no mood music in a book, and I don't imagine mood music while I'm reading a book. It's like elevator music, but infinitely more aggravating because I have to get past it to get to the next part of the book. Knock it the fuck off.
2. The statement, "Splash without Tom Hanks would not be funny" is accurate only because Splash wasn't funny with Tom Hanks. I don't care if it did get 91% on RottenTomatoes.

Alan Cooper - Insurgency of Quality

Alan Cooper's presentation at Code Freeze 2010 was on the intersection of Agile and interaction design (IxD, the study of devices with which a user can interact - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design). A big theme of Cooper's presentation was that a certain amount of design underpins even Agile

projects [e.g. up front, as opposed to within the iterations], although it's not always acknowledged and is overshadowed by the Agile practice that a project iterates toward a mutable goal and design, development, and testing often go hand in hand.

As a point of argument, Cooper noted that even Agile projects don't begin at scrum/iteration 0 (though perhaps they should, and he'd heard of groups who have). Yet, there's always some sort of dig or prep, and the length of that bricklaying, as Cooper called it, varies from project to project, even in the Agile space. While small, greenfield, uncomplicated projects might be capable of iterating from day one, larger projects are circumscribed by:

• The size of the code base
• Team inertia
• The history of the product

These factors, in turn, are constraints on the ability of the product owner or product team to give their full attention to the project. The problem then becomes that, without an appropriate amount of design up front, the product owner can be constrained in their ability to make or evaluate "battlefield decisions." These decisions, which increasingly become the mandate of the developer and not the Project Manager or Product Owner, who is otherwise engaged, can have an impact in the board room as they roll upward.

There is an interplay between Agile and design that is at odds with its

elf. Tactical decisions fit with design and can be timeboxed. Strategic and analytical decisions do not fit within Agile timeboxes. Yet the latter underpins the former, and without a solid foundation, tactical decisions can take the project further and further off course, beyond what's expected from the natural realignment with each iteration.

What does Cooper recommend to counteract unwanted drift and unhealthy battlefield decisions in Agile?

1. Get the product design out of the hands of the PM, BA, Code Librarian, C** and, in many cases, product owner/product team. They often do not have the big picture in mind, and their other responsibilities and job limitations can interfere with understanding the strategic design.
2. In the tradition of Peter Drucker, place decision making in the hands of craftspeople or practitioners. As Cooper calls them, "no collar" knowledge workers. Those closest to the design and those focused on interactive, agile, craft-based design, and not focused on process for the sake of process. Foster a "selfless insurgency" in skilled, trained interaction between craftspeople of equivalent level, targeting the quality of the product and the satisfaction of the customer.
3. Keep conceptual decisions frontloaded where they're cheapest and customer feedback has the most impact. As time increases, move from the leadership-heavy interaction design to development where everyone understands the impact of the early design decisions.
4. Ensure designers focus on funneling (as a metaphor), not seesawing. Make sure they align on a clarity of vision.

In the end, Cooper gave a metaphor for a successful project that embraced design and Agile. Think of a nursery full of children. All of them are yelling, "We want candy! We want ice cream!" If you truly understand the design leading into the project, you'll listen and decide, "They're hungry." Then you'll do the right thing, the responsible thing, and give them broccoli and liver.

Trash

I've been listening to SuperFreakonomics on CD and the theme of the book has been incentives and how they change human behavior. In illustrating incentive-related behavior, the authors talked for a while about trash and how some cities are charging based on the amount of trash you produce. Rather than lead to less trash, the incentive leads to more highly compressed trash (I think they called it The Seattle Smash), trash in the woods, illegal burning, and invariably people on fire from illegal burning.

This reminded me of a rule we have with our renters. We pay for garbage disposal. Many times someone who is trying to rent has said to me, "I notice you pay for garbage. Can you just adjust the rent down $50 and we'll find our own garbage disposal service." Invariably I say, "Absolutely not." They argue. They tell me they always use such and such a service. They tell me about their brother who owns a service and they can't rent unless they can use his service. They tell me they can save me and them money by rotating services or hauling the trash themselves.

But my brother and I have that rule for one simple reason. We don't want trash in the basement and the garage. If you let renters pay for their own trash, it's the first thing they'll decide to stop paying. Not the cell phones. Not cable tv or DISH. Not high speed internet. Trash. And it will end up in some part of your house, or in a pile in the corner of the yard under a tarp. Because all those other things exhibit personal gain, and trash is just an inconvenience. So we remove the incentive/disincentive aspect.

We apply the same rule to water because we live in Minnesota. Our pipes are not an incentive trade off option. At least not in the winter.

Code Freeze - The Collective Groan

One of my favorite moments at Code Freeze 2010 was when a presenter noted that everyone pictured on a particular slide worked six different projects. At that pronouncement, a general groan arose from the audience.

Where I work, I currently keep a load of around half a dozen projects, although if you slice and dice them, or consider my space to overlap with that of the other manager who does the same work, the portfolio is considerably larger. Fortunately, I have smart leads, and they really handle the bulk of the lifting, allowing me to focus on wider issues. But to stress how many projects you can expect working in my area, one of the question sets on my lead hiring interview form is "Have you worked in a matrixed environment? On how many projects simultaneously? How do you handle the context switching and constant flow of information? Where do you put your focus when there are competing priorities?" I've dinged more than one interviewee for never having worked on multiple, large projects simultaneously. Despite the groan from the Code Freeze audience, the interview process turns up a significant number of developers who are allowed to maintain their focus.

In my last role, I think I maxed out at thirteen simultaneous projects, not including my generalized day-to-day role. One project, overseas, consumed about 50% of that time, and the others cycled up and down over days and weeks from zero to twenty hours. But all were partially active, somewhat different, and not predictably cyclical. It wasn't abnormal to have twenty hours of concrete work flow in over the course of a day. The goal was then to push it down as fast as possible because you couldn't be sure the downswing was coming immediately. Additionally, when you were on call, you might be fielding questions, requests, functionality assessments, architecture explanations (and changes), training, coding (yes, coding - I still touch code, even now), and more, for upwards of twenty simultaneous teams/projects (we called them "partners"). Handling half a dozen projects in my current role has been somewhat relaxing by comparison.

But I should append that it was my old manager who once took a look at my forty hour per week schedule and dumped an extra twenty hour per week partner on me, overloading me. She was the first person who ever concretely pointed out to me that I work more effectively when I've got a little too much to do. That sort of load compels me to find ways to streamline until I'm back down to forty, and the processes and code I put in place generally benefit everyone. It was a good call on her part, and I've always felt it's evidence she was really paying attention to me in her managerial role.

I guess I'm trying to say I wasn't one of the attendees who groaned - which is a bit suspicious, because as a developer I seem to thrive in a matrixed environment (I'll post a bit about big company hiring premiums later) - but knowing that each employee is different, I can empathize with those that did, particularly as agile recommends avoiding context switching, and find some humor in the general despair that it's often expected of those who thrive in a more focused environment.

Code Freeze 2010

Remember, if you see xb in the label, it may be cross blogged, and it's definitely about Agile or some aspect of development. Feel free to avoid it, although you will be missing out on a little deeper dig into some of what I do day to day.

Last Thursday, the day of the icy streets here in the Twin Cities, I attended Code Freeze 2010 at the University of Minnesota. In the past, topics have included Maximizing Developer Value, Innovation, and Global Systems/Global Development. This year's theme was Redesigning Agility.

After hearing Ming wasn't going and learning from him which developer was (apparently there was more than one from our department who went, but that information didn't make it down to everyone who was participating), I contacted Jonathan, determined he lived in Eagan, and arranged to be the designated driver. Considering it took 35 minutes to travel 35E from Lone Oak to the Minnesota River (a few miles) on the way to the conference, and an hour and forty-five minutes to get back to Eagan from the U of MN Alumni building, it was a good choice to carpool as it gave me someone to talk to for most of three hours of iced interstate driving. Maybe Jonathan disagrees. Maybe we didn't talk. Maybe he just got talked at. I seem to remember monopolizing the conversation.

The Symposium was great and I'll post some follow up on the presentations by Alan Cooper, Jeff Patton, David Hussman, and Tim Andersen. I appreciated that as a conference focusing on Agile, Interaction, and Design, and where the intersection of those activities is headed, the presenters felt there was space to disagree. Too often when I've gone to an Agile event, it feels as if all the presenters are lock step in their approach. That seems to be acknowledged by others as well, as there's plenty to read about whether Agile is a methodology or a belief system. Code Freeze had none of that feel.

A few non-Agile, conference-related items reminded me I live in Minnesota:

• When I had to go back to the parking ramp for my blackberry, I had windburn on my face before I'd even made it off the Alumni Building sidewalk.
• The steeply slanted windows on the Alumni Building pick up the snow in waves that flow down the windows in a cascading series of white akin to what you see when you shake an etch-a-sketch. It looks like you would expect the dune-building process at White Sands to look if you could accelerate time.
• So many people are bundled up that you can see bits of down floating on the air current inside, dancing in the sunlight. Minnesotans molt in the winter, just like geese. It's probably one of the reasons I sneeze so much, and my eyes water, at random times (that aren't so random if you listen for the blower).
• Despite those arctic-related anecdotes, there's still a constant stream of bicyclists passing by the window. Some without a hat or a jacket.

Code Freeze and Cross Posting

I once had a director who gave me this advice, "Stay away from low-visibility, long-term chores." Fairly succinct and useful advice. But what do you do when the low-visibility, long-term chore finds you and you can't avoid it? You can delegate, which seems rude unless what's low-visibility for you is high-visibility for someone else. Or, you can try to expand the visibility.

I bring it up, because I do writing for other blogs and communication tools, some of which are at work where the audience is limited by the scope of who's interested within a much smaller community behind the firewall. I hate leaving what I write behind the firewall. I want to hear comments from people who aren't at my company so I can correlate them to what I see internally. It doesn't help that I'm generally writing content on my own time and then dropping it there where fewer people see it. So I'm going to do a bit of cross-pollinating. Some posts that I could put in both places, I just will, after I've stripped out anything blatantly work-specific, like names, departments, and organizational details.

But I suspect some of you won't find my extended posting on Agile and Code Freeze and coding to be that interesting. So I'm giving you an out. If you see a label/tag that says xb, that means "potentially cross blog" (I don't guarantee I posted it elsewhere. I just thought about it.), and you can safely avoid that content. Unless you're interested, then by all means, please comment.

Phartz

I went up Kyle's way yesterday to have breakfast with him at Lynde's in Osseo. It used to be sort of a run down looking house, but last summer they fixed it up and made it larger and more modern. We invited Ming as well, but he was at a Boy Scout event all day and couldn't go, so Kyle had a pancake for him.

That is one big pancake to layer on top of a three egg omelet full of hashbrowns. Truth be told, he ate more of half a pancake for Ming. I had the meatsa omelet and made the mistake of putting salt on it before I took a bite. I should have known an omelet full of bacon, ham, and other assorted meats wouldn't need any additional salt.

When they upgraded the building, one of the things they didn't get rid of was their old beer can collection. This one, Milwaukee Phartz, is my favorite.

The Downfall of Agile Hitler

I owe someone at work a big thank you for pointing at me this video. A warning, it's only really funny if you've had to talk Agile for any length of time. I was laughing out loud in a few places and I really wish I could put it on the Agile blog I admin at work, but I'm pretty sure that might be a career killer:

Dog Injury

Not an injury to the dog, but an injury caused by the dog. I think Luna really messed up, because I suspect Eryn isn't going to trust her for a very long time. Eryn got down on the floor to play with her and, despite frequent imperatives to the Luna over the last several weeks to stay away from Eryn's hair and stop trying to bite it, she grabbed hold of one of the two new decorative beaded braids Eryn is so proud of and hoping to show off at school and Monday and ripped it off her head by the roots.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been. No bleeding. But you could definitely feel the roots at the end of the disconnected braid. Here you can see her new bald spot, front right on her natural hairline if you're facing the same direction as Eryn. We've assured her it will grow back. But she's very sad and the Boo Boo Pooh ice pack she's had since she was a baby made an appearance from the freezer.


The severed sports braid, indicating she likes soccer twice as much as basketball (so she told me - she's extremely happy about basketball because she made her first basket this week). I feel bad, because she knows I don't ever let dogs near my face. I just don't trust them. I suspect she'll now share my mini-phobia despite how many giggly, happy pictures we have of her frolicking with the dog on the ground and in the leaves and snow over the last two months.

I Win! Wang Humor!

Kyle sent me an email this morning making fun of a few names that were suspiciously like Mike Hawk of Andrew Zimmern fame (mocked on both The Soup and Attack of the Show if I remember my media correctly). I responded with an article about the Johnson and Johnson heiress dying and that her father is Bob Wood "Woody" Johnson. Bob Johnson...nice. Kyle sent me back an email about Dickman Park. That was the end of it. Until I got home and was reading today's ThisWeek newspaper for Eagan...I think my latest contribution to the chain will be extremely difficult to top:

Books 2009

It was a bad year for reading. I've discovered that job changes can have that effect on my reading habits. 14,273 pages and 64 books, although there's a healthy number of kids books I read aloud to Eryn and graphic novels in that mix. At the moment I'm listening to an audiobook (Super Freakonomics) and pondering whether that belongs in my 2010 list. Seeing as I let graphic novels in, I don't rightly feel I can deny an audiobook its place, so I'm going to add them with the appropriate pages, as long as they're unabridged. I did break 200,000 pages this year, so maybe that's the goal to be proud of.

My favorites this year were The Prefect (a very decent bit of science fiction in a year I didn't read much good scifi), Subterranean Twin Cities (non-fiction about the caves and limestone tunnels in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Did you know there's a cave under one of the strip clubs?), The Court of the Air (steampunk), In the Company of Ogres (irreverent fantasy), Fool (Moore, a given), Red Queen, The: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (my favorite of the year...such an excellent book to make your brain do some acrobatics - I'll probably read it again), and, somewhat surprisingly, The Living Dead, an anthology of zombie stories that Pooteewheet read after I dead (whoops, I mean "read", that's a funny slip) and agreed was a damned good anthology for a book full of zombie stories. I gave a few graphic novels high ratings...but that's sort of on a graphic novel scale. I prefer novels/texts.

I think the standouts on the other end of the spectrum were primarily management texts. Figures.

2009

12/29/2009	Prefect, The	Reynolds, Alastair	9.00
12/22/2009	Fables: The Good Prince (Issues 60-69)	Willingham, Buckingham, Leialoha, Alexovich, Pepoy	5.50
12/20/2009	Fables: Sons of Empire (Issues 52-59)	Willingham, Buckingham, Leialoha, Allred, Pepoy	6.00
12/18/2009	Book of Monsters (Rex Libris 2)	Turner, James	8.50
12/15/2009	I, Librarian (Rex Libris 1)	Turner, James	8.00
12/13/2009	Accidental Time Machine, The	Haldeman, Joe	7.50
12/13/2009	Whys and Wherefores: (Y: the Last Man 55-60)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	7.25
12/12/2009	Kimono Dragons (Y: the Last Man 43-48)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/12/2009	Paper Dolls (Y: the Last Man 37-42)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/12/2009	Motherland (Y: the Last Man 49-54)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/11/2009	Gates, The (of Hell are About to Open, Want to Peek?)	Connolly, John	8.00
12/11/2009	Girl on Girl (Y: the Last Man 32-36)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/11/2009	Ring of Truth (Y: the Last Man 24-31)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/11/2009	Safeword (Y: the Last Man 18-23)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/10/2009	One Small Step (Y: the Last Man 11-17)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/10/2009	Cycles (Y: the Last Man 6-10)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/10/2009	Unmanned (Y: the Last Man 1-5)	Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra and Jose Marazan, Jr.	6.75
12/9/2009	Subterranean Twin Cities	Brick, Greg	9.00
12/2/2009	All Star Superman (vol 2)	Morrison, Grant and Frank Quitely	7.00
12/1/2009	All Star Superman (vol 1)	Morrison, Grant and Frank Quitely	7.00
11/27/2009	B if for Beer (A children's book for gorwn-ups, a grown-up book for children)	Robbins, Tom	7.75
11/20/2009	Edging Past Reality	Fingerman, David A.	6.00
11/13/2009	Juggler of Worlds	Niven, Larry and Edward M. Lerner	6.00
11/6/2009	Superfudge	Blume, Judy	8.50
11/6/2009	In The Company of Ogres	Martinez, A. Lee	8.25
11/1/2009	Court of the Air, The	Hunt, Stephen	8.75
10/31/2009	Brief History of Time, A: From the Big Bag to Black Holes	Hawking, Stephen	8.00
9/15/2009	Practices of an Agile Developer	Subramaniam, Venkat and Andy Hunt	5.00
9/6/2009	Nameless Witch, A	Martinez, A. Lee	7.75
5/25/2009	Heart-Shaped Box	Hill, Joe	7.75
5/20/2009	Prador Moon: A Novel of the Polity	Asher, Neal	7.50
5/20/2009	Race Across America, The	Stilton, Geronimo	7.50
5/15/2009	Saturn's Children	Stross, Charles	7.50
5/5/2009	Christmas Carol, A	Dickens, Charles	8.00
4/20/2009	Fool	Moore, Christopher	9.50
4/18/2009	Fables: Wolves (Issues 48-51)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	8.25
4/17/2009	Fables: Arabian Nights (and Days) (Issues 42-47)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	8.50
4/16/2009	Fables: Homelands (Issues 34-41)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	8.75
4/15/2009	Fables: The Mean Seasons (Issues 22 and 28-33)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	8.50
4/14/2009	Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers (Issues 19-21, 23-27)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	8.50
4/13/2009	Fables: Storybook Love (Issues 11-18)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	8.50
4/12/2009	Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland	Neuschwander, Cindy	6.00
4/12/2009	Fables: Animal Farm (Issues 6-10)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	8.50
4/10/2009	Favorite Greek Myths	Pope Osborne, Mary	7.75
4/6/2009	Red Queen, The: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature	Ridley, Matt	10.00
4/1/2009	Fables: Legends in Exile (Issues 1-5)	Willingham, Medina, Leialoha, Hamilton	9.00
3/27/2009	Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft (Issues 1-6)	Hill, Joe and Gabriel Rodriguez	8.50
3/26/2009	Magic Pickle vs. The Egg Poacher	Morse, Scott	6.00
3/22/2009	Rapunzel's Revenge	Hale, Shannon and Dean (illus by Nathan Hale)	9.50
3/15/2009	Harvard Business Review: November 2008 (Magazine)	Various	8.00
3/15/2009	Icy Hand, The: Something Wickedly Weird (II)	Mould, Chris	7.00
3/15/2009	Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith	Krakauer, Jon	8.75
3/8/2009	Mine All Mine	Davies, Adam	8.00
3/2/2009	Wooden Mile, The: Something Wickedly Weird (I)	Mould, Chris	7.00
2/24/2009	End, The: A Series of Unfortunate Events (XIII)	Snicket, Lemony	8.75
2/22/2009	Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good Manager	McCormick, Nick	5.50
2/18/2009	Thief of Time (Discworld XXV)	Pratchett, Terry	8.25
2/13/2009	Road, The	McCarthy, Cormac	7.50
2/9/2009	Last Hero, The	Pratchett, Terry	8.25
2/5/2009	Living Dead, The	Adams, John Joseph	8.50
2/3/2009	Penultimate Peril, The: A Series of Unfortunate Events (XII)	Snicket, Lemony	8.50
1/28/2009	This Immortal	Zelazny, Roger	8.25
1/15/2009	Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang	Wilhelm, Kate	8.00
1/8/2009	Grim Grotto, The: A Series of Unfortunate Events (XI)	Snicket, Lemony	8.75