Category Archives: Uncategorized

Getting there …

Signs are good that I’ll be back in shape fairly quickly, if the first two days can really be anything to judge by. Yesterday I rode 4 miles, with a significant rest at the 2 mile mark, and ended up feeling like rubber. Today I rode just over 6 – out to SFOJ and back – and felt tired but not utterly wiped out at the end of it. On Saturday afternoon, I’m going to try biking all the way out to Wilmore – or perhaps I’ll do it on Sunday. It depends on … stuff. But I think there’s a reasonable chance that I’ll make it Hopefully I won’t have to bum a ride back. 😉

Camera in the screen

I wondered how long it would be before someone embedded a camera in the screen itself. I’m a little baffled at the folks that say that this is reminscent of Big Brother. It’s a camera, folks. As with all computer peripherals, if you don’t want it on at any particular moment, turn it off. This is no different (big-brother-wise) than any other webcam, but it is significantly cooler, for anyone who has ever done video conferencing and been somewhat disconcerted by the way that the other person never quite actually looks at you.

And the winner is …

After much deliberation, I finally settled on the Trek 7.3 FX. I don’t know if this actually is in line with anyone’s recommendations, but I found your recommendations helpful anyways. I took it out for a short spin today, reinforcing what I already knew – I’m in terrible shape. I rode just over 4 miles – down to the Walmart and back – and had a peak speed of about 21mph. When I got back home, my legs felt like rubber. So I’m clearly going to have to work up to this. But I’ve determined to do this thing, and by Yuri I’m going to.

Oh, and at 12mpg, and $3 per gallon, I saved $1 on my trip down to Walmart.

Bike to work

Long ago, I determined that I would bike to work every day – or at least when it’s not raining.

I did this a total of twice before wimping out. The main reason I wimped out was that I had a cheap bike that didn’t gear properly, and made it extremely hard to bike efficiently.

Fast-forward about 6 or 7 years, and I’m considering it again. As I likely mentioned before, I’m looking for fuel-saving alternatives, without actually having to get rid of my gas-guzzling Jeep, which Sarah and I both love, but which we can’t afford to drive at $3 per gallon. And, since it’s paid for, it would be an enormous financial strain to trade it in and pick up a car payment.

I briefly considered a motorcycle, but the more I think about it, the more it frightens me. Yes, I expect it would be a lot of fun. But it would only take one careless move to break bone and bank.

So I’m considering investing in a real quality bike that I can ride to work 2-3 days a week. This will save $100+ a month in gas, and get me in much better shape into the bargain. It’s only 12 miles one way, so presumably I can do it in 30 minutes or less once I get in shape.

I’ve looked at several different bikes, all of which are considerably more expensive than I expected. But if it really saves me that much in gas, and if I can really discipline myself to do this 2-3 days a week, then it would more than pay for itself in savings and health benefits.

Any bikers out there willing to recommend a particular model for a 12-mile each way jaunt to work? I guess I was willing to spend about $2k on a motorcycle, so I’m willing to spend perhaps half that on a bike if it’s good enough to actually help me stay disciplined to do this thing.

Addendum:

My brother-in-law recommended the Koga-Miyata company as a good one to look at, and the Randonneur looked VERY sweet, if rather pricey. Don’t know if they are available in the US.

Pair programming

Most of the last few employers I’ve worked for have been somewhat leery of the concept of pair programming. After all, you have two (or perhaps more) programmers working on a single bit of code, obviously you’re getting half as much work done, right? Some of them (including, I think, my current one) are somewhat tolerant of it, because they see that stuff actually gets done. But I certainly understand the wariness that they feel when they see two programmers crouched around one screen yelling at each other. 😉

Well, for the last week – almost two weeks, in fact – I’ve been wrestling with the same bit of code, trying to implement the same feature. I knew it couldn’t possibly be that hard, but everything felt just wrong.

Today Chris and I worked through some of these issues, argued about implementations, brainstormed about various solutions, and ended up ripping out a piece of the code that, while it kinda looked ok, had been making me feel gradually more uncomfortable for the last few weeks, and turned out to be squarely in the way of what we were trying to accomplish.

And, as a result, we now have a simple, elegant solution to what I was trying to do all along, and, into the bargain, make a number of other things a bunch easier, and more secure. As well as being a lot easier to read in the code, and clearer to document.

I haven’t always been sold on the idea of pair programming. But there are some situations in which it works amazingly well. Having a new perspective on something, and attacking a problem from different sides, often leads to innovative solutions that neither programmer would have arrived at independently. And, at least in my case, it is almost always the very best way to break through a brain cramp, particular one that I’ve been fighting for an extended period of time.

If you’ve never attempted pair programming, it will feel weird the first few times you do it. But you owe it to yourself to try it the next time you get stuck on a particular problem. Or just when you’re trying to solve a particularly sticky issue, and your solution doesn’t feel quite right.

Reading what I’ve written

Each time I’ve written a book, I’ve avoided looking at the end result. I’m rather afraid of two things. One, that what I wrote was drivel. And two, that the editors did something to it to make it drivel.

I spent the evening looking through ‘Apache Cookbook’, and I’m less than thrilled with the *SIGNIFICANT* differences between the last version in cvs and the version on paper. Every recipe is changed in style, and most recipes are changed in content. I hate that editors feel the need to edit personality out of the text. It seems that people that know me from IRC will buy the book looking for my personality. All sarcasm has been removed. All humor has been removed. All colloquialisms have been removed. What’s left is pretty sterile. I’m not happy.

Of course, I suppose I can’t publish this post, at least until the second edition comes out. And even then, only if the second edition fixes these problems.

*sigh*