Over the falls

Just cleaning the kitchen after a busy days worth of work on the infovark project. Sometimes you have those days where you feel you're working your very hardest, and yet, things seem to go backwards just to spite you. After a solid 6 hours worth of code, less then 2% of the 300+ unit tests that we've written were passing. Oh well. I guess you get that on the big jobs. I was just pondering, as I was scrubbing those pesky pans (does it ever seem to you that all pans seem perpetually dirty? It's just like you're cleaning them, but you can't really scrub off anything more than one layer of dirt. Pan dirt is special. I think it contributes to much tastier food.) Anyway - oh yeah - pondering. I was thinking how sad it is that no matter how well humans adhere to whatever their particular religious code may be, that there will always be someone somewhere else who would view them as condemned to some kind of hell. If you're the world's most pious Christian, then the...

(This is cross-posted with my new company blog, inforvark.com I'm pretty excited about the new job, new challenges, and so you can expect to see more project management, Enterprise 2.0 technology and software posts happening over at the infovark site. I'll try and keep Over The Falls up to date with personal stuff, but no promises! ) For most people, the use of the nominative plural pronoun (’we’) tends to refer to themselves and to the other significant people who happen to be sharing their lives. If you work for a company, or any kind of collaborative venture where there are multiple people working towards a similar goal, you’ll find that you use the word ‘we’ an awful lot. For example ‘ We need to refactor that code, and we should probably add some comments’ or ‘ We need to get our TPS reports done by Monday’. I think that the use of the word ‘We’ is one of the nicest things about being at work. That one little word indicates collaboration is occurring. It shows that you ...

“If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." - General Eric Shinseki. Found on R.Todd Stephens new collaborage blog, via Jesse.

Apparently Einstein once said: 'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we used to create them.' That's way cool, if it's true. And even if not, it's still way cool :) *

Hello! I haven't updated my blog in forever - and personally I blame Web 2.0. Between Twitter , and now Facebook , and my crazy work commitments, I seem way too busy to even think of anything interesting to say...

Simon's new blog, The Cluttered Desk, talks about how people in your head when you read are composites of people you know. It's true - it reminds me of how I read somewhere that one theory of dreaming is that all of the people you meet when wandering around in your dreams are really you. Ocassionally in a vaguely lucid dream, you can become aware of this, which makes weird dreams even weirder... But on some level, this makes sense - for instance, while you think you are talking to your Wife, you're really talking to the way you imagine your Wife to be - it's not like she's actually in your head... Reading is similar to dreaming in that respect. The late Kurt Vonnegut , in his last interview, said of reading that he thought reading was a difficult task. If you could do it right, you could be transported to the murky waters of the Atlantic with Herman Melville, or a deserted tropical island with Defoe. But if you couldn't do it, I guess there's always TV, ...

"I'm annoyed!" I announced to nobody in particular. I pushed the desk away from me and rolled back into the middle of the cubicle. "What by?" Dean asked, turning away from his machine. I thought for a bit. "Well... I'm annoyed that things don't just come into existence because I think of them." "Uh -right... You're actually annoyed by that?" And you know, I was. I mean, I still am. In software development, solving conceptual problems isn't always easy, (or even possible) but it is usually rewarding. Unfortunately, just solving the problem isn't enough. Once all the hard thinking is done, you then have to sit there, and wiggle your fingers in a very exact and particular sequence, until your design is completely implemented. Then remove all the mistypes and little deviances from your perfect unimplementable design.Then re-test it, over and over. And that's the thing that's annoying. And the more I think about it, t...

For some reason, I was a little bit disappointed when I visited: http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com Every Good Domain Name is taken. Here's Why.

What's not good for eating soup? Not the moon , that's for sure.

Well, I'm still alive - and feeling largely refreshed after a long over due vacation to DisneyWorld, the happiest place on earth. To try and get y'all back up to speed (yes, they really do say that down in the South), here's a bulleted list of stuff that I've found interesting... As well as being the title of this post, Blather is a plug-in that my friend Stilly wrote for his gTalkBot, that allows you to publish all your twitter-esque daily musings to your Blosxom powered blog. Very cool, and Stilly's Blathering is pretty entertaining too... While on the topic of Stilly, his second book just got published ! - it's a how to guide on building your own PVR using Myth TV . I had a go at this a while ago, and it was really kind of confusing, especially for a Linux N00b like me. A book is long overdue... My friend Ian Schue, who works with me here at TOWER NA has started blogging . Apparently the birth of the universe, donuts, quantum computing and giant ants are al...

(Apart from Enterpise Content Management ...) Ron Miller's post on returning from AIIM really rang loud with me. "...It was the complete lack of innovation. I can't help feeling that ECM has lost its wow factor. It has matured to the point it really has nothing new and exciting to offer customers." I work for an ECM company . It's a good one, and my company has plenty of experience and a great product. But I can't shake the feeling that the whole world of enterprise software is utterly devoid of any real innovation. There's nobody thinking different. The most interesting thing to really happen to the ECM industry in the last three years has been SharePoint, and it's not really very interesting at all. Add to that the whole round of market consolidation that's happened recently has ensured that things are going to be more consistent than ever before. There's no pressure on any one of the major ECM vendors to deliver anything revolutionary. The R...

Virtual Tax! I just spent WAY too long in the local Fairfax H&R Block, waiting for Michael, the local tax guy to figure out how to do my taxes. While he was "out back" trying to cajole the system into filing my 1116 (Foreign Tax Credit) form, I sneakily opened a web browser on his machine... The default home page was an internal intranet site. It told me, in delighted H1, that H&R Block had just opened an island on second life. "No way!", I hear you exclaim (Or is that just me thinking loud...) Way... As long as you don't have to pay tax twice on your second life... although I guess it kind of makes sense. Incidentally, my tax 'burden' here in the US for the last year ended up being the princely tithe of 185 dollars - apparently because I have four kids. Still, it seems crazy low. I don't know who's paying the taxes over here, but it turns out that it's not me...

Here are some pictures of nerdy, nerdy things. That is all.

This is my new 'office'. It's a cupboard. Because we have Ali's Sister and family staying with us in the crapshack at the moment, I had to forgo my study to be used as an extra bedroom - so I moved into the cupboard in the hallway. I know, it sounds a bit nuts, but I really like working in here! There's no distractions, I can shut the door, It has great soundproofing and acoustics so I can crank up the music - and best of all, nobody can come in and talk to me, because there's no room for more than one person. So if people want to talk to me, they have to wait until I come out. Joel Spolsky is currently trying to find a bigger office for his Fog Creek developers. Maybe he just needs to move them all into cupboards...

Okay, this is just plain weird. In India, you can buy Toothpaste packed with Tobacco . "In a state of despair or when you are depressed, use Ipco Creamy Paste to drive out the blues. It will change your attitude and your reactions so that your responses will be positive, leading to improvement in your state of mind." Um... Okay. Crazy nicotine dreams...

Since late Summer, Simon and I have been working on a way to fix the Craftsman Riding Mower that we bought for fifty bucks. It had been left in the rain for a year, after it refused to start. Well, we replaced the fuel line (it was full of some weird looking fungus), replaced the starter motor (unnecssarily, it turned out) replaced the battery and the ignition switch, banged one of the engine mounts back into shape, drank an awful lot of beer, and finally - Voila! We can mow anything! Here's the maiden voyage: And Even better - It can tow kids!

I really got a kick out of Miranda July's new website for her upcoming book. (link via Seth Godin ) (You know, there was a time when it wouldn't have been possible to build yourself a website using the top of your refrigerator.) It seems to me that the best marketing in the world is the stuff that comes honestly from people. For all our new-fandangled technologies, various broadcast media, and in a world that is full to overflowing with 'Your call is important to us' style corporate bullshit, A Single Conversation between two people still counts more than everything else. I guess it's because as people, we're all hardwired to listen to each other. (Well, most of us, anyway :)

My Brother Grae is a photographer for Snapper Media , one of the leading "Independent Photo Agencies" in Australia. Basically, he's what might commonly be referred to as "the Paparazzi", (although he does a lot less street photography these days) He's currently in Melbourne, following the celebrities around the children's hospital. While such a job might seem glamorous, and the sort of thing that Video Games are made of, His latest post about the stark reality of his current gig really touched a nerve with me. You can keep up to date with his travels over on his blog, Please Don't Punch Me.

My Son Patrick decided to prove the theory of gravity with some help from his baby brother Lincoln, our tree house, a large log, and a shoe... Thanks to Simon for producing, directing and uploading the episode!