Matt's Texas Tales

He's usually been pretty close, in the three years I've known him. I agree with him, Bill Murray deserves an Oscar for Lost in Translation, Rushmore and Ground Hog Day.

(VIA ESPN)

Sam Hornish, Jr. is good. He's really good. Laura got me hooked on the Indy Racing League (IRL) a couple of years ago. Being new to the whole scene, I chose to pull for Helio Catroneves based on his record, but mainly for his personality. Helio has a hard time beating Sam so I expect to see a few more of these 1-2 finishes with Sam in the lead.

Sam recently left Panther racing for Penske racing replacing Helio's old teammate, Gil De Ferran. I think Sam went for one big reason: he wants to win a 500. Penske has won more 500s than any other owner. I'm predicting Sam will win it this year; Helio will show up in 2nd place.

(Via Eric at Work)

I hate these things. I have a friend who is "boycotting" Quiznos because of their wolf boy add they had a while back and I'm sure these new singing monkey/rat things aren't helping matters.

Portis a Redskin? (via ESPN)

The Denver Broncos have been in need of a dominating CB in the secondary for as long as I can recall and they're trying to get one by trading Portis for Champ Bailey and second round pick. Obviously, they've had no problems with their running game which since their recent Super Bowl victories: T Davis, M Anderson, O Gary and C Portis. Coach Shanahan feels that Portis is a product of the system which history has shown is probably true. If I recall correctly, 3 of the 4 backs on the list were 3rd-7th round picks. But the Broncos have to play Kansas City and the Raiders a lot and the Colts in the playoffs which means you need a good secondary. It's hard to give up a 1600 yard rusher but I don't think the Broncos have too much to worry about as they have proven time and time again that they can line up most nfl caliber running backs in their backfield and make them a star.

What Managers Do : (via Johanna Rothman)

I'm editing a chapter in my hiring book, and the original sentence reads, "...managers amplify the work of other people ...,"

The editors have suggested that amplify is the wrong word, and suggested "facilitate." I'm still thinking about this. Managers do facilitate the work of other people. They also make their staff more effective. They provide leverage to their staff. They remove obstacles. To me, facilitate is too small a word for all these things. But I'm stuck and have no other words right now.

As in most things in life, it all depends on the two people involved in the manager/employee relationship. Some managers do amplify the work of other people. At the risk of sounding like a kiss ass: I have a manager who is very strong technically. This has been a big benefit to me during coding and actually "amplifies" the quality of my work. But just as easily I could have accidentally knocked his computer off his desk my first day of work and laid the foundation for a bad manager/employee relationship. A change in how we relate on a personal level could severely affect the "amplify" and change it to a "degrade."

I actually like the choice of "amplify" but would append "or degrade."

Arrested Development

If anybody needs more television to watch (and really, who doesn't?), I highly recommend this show. It's probably the best thing on TV right now. An equally good show that passed before it's time along with one of my favorite comedic actors is back on TV finally! TiVo has been diligently searching for reruns of NewsRadio and it looks like it's starting again on the Biography channel, March 1st. Good boy, TiVo. Everybody should be on the lookout for the Suggestion Box episode.

Inch Pebbles (via Managing Product Development )

Account for interdependencies. Most of us work with other people in teams. We are dependent on them for information at the very least and sometimes for pieces of the product. In Drake's case, he was waiting for his reviewers to become available for a review. He had done everything else, short of checking the code into the public configuration management system. Until the other people became available, he could not finish his task.

This happens to us all the time here at work. And we kick ourselves every time we make a time estimate without including this general headache.

Designing a Better Remote (via Brandon)

...damn you nytimes and your registration!...

The TiVo remote has many fans. One TiVo aficionado, Pat Hughes, a software engineer in San Jose, Calif., dressed up his two-month-old daughter as the remote for Halloween in 2002. The costume, which took a week to make, was a painstakingly exact replica, complete with battery compartment in the back. "That's where she went in," he said.

I was converted into a TiVo fan a little over a year ago and have since converted several more myself here at work, Brandon being one of them. I love the machine for the little things like the remote. They just seem to do everything right. I even find myself asking Laura to fast forward in TiVo beeps, if she has the remote. This is very sad, but I can't help it. Boo-Bup (ff, almost like a question), ( Bup-boo)( play again, the answer to the question). And then there is the dreaded (BONG!) when you've caught up with live tv.

Prototyping success

Another Intel decision involved putting its Hillsboro researchers next to a full chip-development factory and encouraging them to test new ideas quickly in clean-room production. "I don't want people to argue about equations. I want them to build prototypes and find out what really works," says Marcyk. "We call that a 'gross reality check.' A prototype probably won't work perfectly the first time. But you'll be able to tell if you're getting at least a squiggle. If you are, maybe a big window of opportunity will be there. If you're getting nothing, maybe it's time to move on."

I've always enjoyed prototyping to a certain extent in the technical, mainly software, world. When I prototype, it's usually to see how a new technology will fit in to a current product and figure out some best practices for using it. This seems to be similar to what the guys at Intel did here.

The danger I see is when the prototype goes too far and begins to dictate design in the real deal. The pieces of code you spent a few hours hacking at will most likely not be a good model for how they should be done in a full scale, high load production system. Or, more precisely, a prototype with little design != good A&D.

UPS and horizontal design.

And that's just what makes the business so attractive to UPS. Its industrial engineers who design solutions for companies look at the entire life cycle of a product. "We've been talking all along about looking at this from a holistic point of view," says SCS president Bob Stoffel, "not just here's your warehouse group, your planning group, your distribution group, and your technology group." To SCS, those groups are linked--part of a chain.
...
The idea is to make the chain shorter and simpler, not longer, so that companies can operate quickly and efficiently. The best way to do that is to have raw materials, finished products, and repair technicians close to the people who need them. Or, if that's not feasible because the customers are spread out, then close to the next best thing: the end of the runway.

I think this is pretty clever. Leverage your omnipresent like presence across the world to provide a one stop shop for your corporate infrastructure. I read a long time ago that Coke has (or had) the largest shipping fleet in the world. You would think that their infrastructure would lend itself to this strategy as well.

Cost to fix a defect. (via Johanna Rothman)

It always costs more to fix a defect the later in the development game you are. The previous link provides some rules of thumb for calculating cost. What would be even more interesting would be to graph the cost to fix a defect versus realized monetary gain to hitting a market window of opportunity. It might help in that ever muddy world of project time estimations.

Last summer, Laura and I visited the wine country of California. By far, the best wine we had there was from Frank Family Vineyards. If you visit the winery, you start off in the front room of a non descript tasting room. They serve you various champagnes which I'm sure are good, I'm just not a big fan. Oh and yes I know champagne, to be called such, has to be from France. The Frank Family rep at the counter said that they could call their sparking wine whatever they wanted; with a half-wink of course.

If you're patient and ask nicely about their various wines, they'll take you into another room where they'll serve you their wines. We ended up buying a little over a case of wine; each one we tasted seemed better than the last.

Tonight over a nice home cooked tenderloin and shrimp, we opened one of the nice bottles we bought. It's as good as we remembered it.

1998 Rutherford: Winston Hill (Frank Family) : Cabernet Sauvingnon : St. Helena, CA.

> $90

If there is a flavor you like, you can taste it in this wine. Probably the best cab sav I've ever had. Smooth and chock full of complicated flavors highlighted with chocolate and blackberry. The label has a picture of a dog (Winston was the family's English Springer Spaniel) and paw prints on the cork cover.

Reading articles like this always make me wonder who we have in training to be the next Greenspan.

"He is the kind of person who knows how many thousands of flat-headed bolts were used in a Chevrolet and what it would do to the national economy if you took out three of them." -Former Rep. Frank Ikard, D-Texas

At times, I think his unofficial title of "The 2nd Most Powerful Man in the World" should be upgraded to 1st.

My boss guy Klobe showed me this. It would be interesting to figure out who would play the different major characters in the Simpsons if they were to do a live action movie. Here are my picks:

Homer: James Gandolfini (suggested by Klobe)
Marge: Frances McDormand
Bart: A young Seann William Scott (Stiffler)
Lisa: A young Yeardley Smith. :)
Maggie: Whatever baby is around the set.
Moe: William H. Macy
Apu: M. Night Shyamalan
Principal Skinner: Al Gore
Chief Wiggum: Dom Deluise

I could have done this, I just don't want to.

Thanks to Matt Ray.

Laura just called me up and asked me if I had ever heard of JAD. Nope.

After a little googling, I found this.

Joint Application Development (JAD) is a technique for engaging a group or team of software developers, testers, customers, and prospective end-users in a collaborative requirements elicitation and prototyping effort (Wood and Silver 1995). JAD is quintessentially a technique for facilitating group interaction and collaboration.

Lookout RUP!

From the Feb 9th, 2004 Sports Illustrated article by Michael Silver: Bolting into the clear, the nearly nude knucklehead was slammed to the turf by linebacker Matt Chatham, a member of the Patriots' return unit. "I wanted to knock him down, but not wrap up. ... Was I surprised? Hell no. I play for Bill Belichick. You don't think we watched film on that guy all week? I'd seen everything there is to see."

The guy was quite a dancer and, I guess not surprisingly, had an ad for an online casino accross his back. Matt's joke of the day: "I said, 'hit me', not 'tackle me'."

envision: to picture to oneself.

envisage: to have a mental picture of especially in advance of realization.

Gotta love French etymology.

Testing out the OpenWiki install we have at work. It looks like it supports syndication.

2000 : Luis Felipe Edwards : Cabernet Sauvingnon : Gran Reserva : Colchagua, Chile

< $20

***

Simple, smokey black cherry taste, but not fruity. Definitely let it breathe a little.

As would be expected of a football fan, I watched the Super Bowl last Sunday. My friend has a High Definition Plasma TV, so we watched at his place. Normally my friends and I watch everything buffered through TiVo. No longer must we watch commercials for ED treatments and Dr. Shoals like common trolls. But in the case of the Super Bowl, whose commercials are a part of the show, we made an exception and watched live TV in HD. This information is important pretext in explaining why we watched the half time show.

One of the AB (After Boob) discussions between some fellow TiVo owners and I predicted exactly this. I think they figured out the "favorite" commercial as well. During the first commercial break AB, we quickly switched over to our TiVo recording and verified that, yes indeed, we saw what we thought we saw.

BTW, DirecTV is coming out with a HD Tivo in March of 2004. If the planets align just right, I might just get me one of them fancy HDTVs.

Hi all! I wanted a nice place to write down wines that I like, programming tips I pick up and other tidbits of knowledge I'd like to refer to later. So here goes.

Who am I? A 30ish programming guy living in Austin.