csixty4

I have so many things to blog about today, I don’t know where to start.  And, I really don’t want to spend all day blogging.  So, here’s one thing on the list that really stood out, almost as much as the cat poop recycler from the previous post.

James Shore, an Agile development consultant and author, has a post with the attention-grabbing title The Decline and Fall of Agile.  He laments the number of teams out there who have adopted “agile practices” and ended up with an unmaintainable system.  He fears, as one who makes his living off Agile might, that this will be seen as a failure of Agile methods, Scrum in particular.  Really, he thinks the real problem is that teams are adopting the “fun” parts of Agile, and leaving out the parts that really make it work:

It’s human nature to only do the stuff that’s familiar and fun, and that’s what has happened with Agile. People look at agile methods as a chinese menu of practices, choose the few that look cool, and ditch the rest. Unfortunately, the parts they leave out are the parts that make Agile work. 

The article’s comments are great, too.  There lots of good insight there.  For example:

People want a software, a CD-ROM to install something, a tool, a template, and they don’t understand that Agile is not about a process or a tool.  
 
It’s a cultural change.  
 
Different mindset.

The discussion reminds me of my post, The Process is Your God Now, where I talk about the need to treat the less fun aspects of programming like rituals.  For example, treat checking code into source control like saving in a video game:

Now, back to my game, what if I come to a fork in the road.  I can go left through the ominous looking sewer, or I can go right through the abandoned city.  Well at this point I’ll go and save my game with some sort of name like “Taking the sewer”.  That way I can continue playing, quick-saving as I go, but I can always get back to that fork if it turns out I made a mistake

I was googling around for information on “control-break” loops to document some of my code, and I came across the Autumn, 2008 syllabus for CSCI 465, “Enterprise Application Envionments”.

The description from their undergraduate catalog reads:

465. ENTERPRISE APPLICATION ENVIRONMENTS (4). File organization, job control language, file access methods and utilities. Security. High throughput data-intensive applications. Extensive laboratory work. PRQ: CSCI 360 or consent of department.

That sounds like an interesting class, actually, and very relevant.

Read the syllabus, though, and you’ll learn that it’s really a COBOL and mainframe assembly language class.

Sure, there are places still using COBOL and IBM 370s, but let’s be reasonable. That’s not the norm anymore, and NIU continues to do a disservice to their students by offering such tripe.

Mom’s in the hospital with a broken hip, and I’m worried about her. It’s 7:00pm on the dot, and her surgery should be starting any minute now.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to visit her before I leave town.

We’ve been talking about moving to Seattle after Amy finishes school. If only we were there already! Babeland (a Seattle sex shop) says to bring your “voter registration card, ballot stub or your word of honor” tomorrow and they’ll give you a free sex toy. Oh well, at least I can still get a free coffee at Starbucks — maybe.

I don’t want anyone getting the impression I’m jumping ship, but I think these articles from Bruce Webster are important for IT managers & leads to understand: How to Retain IT Talent with Goal Alignment and How to Retain and Improve Your IT Staff Simultaneously.

I’ve been meaning to write a blurb about Warp 11, a Star Trek band. They do a variety of rock styles, with lyrics that sound like a cross between Gene Roddenberry and Lords of Acid.  You know, songs like “Boldly Go Down on Me” and “She Make it So“.  If you’re a Trek geek, go buy one of their albums now.  I came across The Vulcan Freedom Fighters thanks to a Reddit posting last night, and they’re pretty good too.

I listed some interesting Commodore items on eBay last night: a Turbo-232 high speed serial interface and a commemorative t-shirt from World of Commodore 1988.

Tomorrow’s the big election. After two years of campaigning, it’s almost over. This will be the first presidential election where I’m not voting Libertarian. I can’t lend my support to Bob Barr after all he did in his legislative career, and this is one election where I don’t think it’s in my best interests to “vote my conscience”. I don’t want another eight years of the current regime, I certainly don’t want Sarah Palin in national office, and I think this country really needs a charismatic, positive person in the White House who can actually string together a complete sentence.

Still decompressing from two days of intense sessions. A few thoughts:

• I need to get more involved with the Drupal community.  Dare I go back to hanging out in IRC channels all night?  What’s a good IRC client for the Mac?
• For $20 I got Drupal training, four meals, soda, wifi, and two t-shirts.  That’s a great deal.
• Google Docs is handy.  I was able to take notes during a session and share them with my co-workers with just a few clicks.
• I borrowed my 15″ Dell laptop back from Amy.  It was so nice to have a full-sized screen & keyboard for typing 9 hours straight over two days.
• I’ll probably clean up my notes this week and post them here.  They’re going to make videos available, but who knows how long that’ll take?

I’m at a Starbucks, somewhere just off the UIC campus.  Amy’s chemistry lab started at 8, so I got up bright & early to hitch a ride from her.  We caught up on Sonic Newsdriver episodes on the way downtown, and I listened to the latest episode of You Look Nice Today as I wandered the area looking for something to do and a public restroom.

Drupal Camp Chicago opens its doors in 20 minutes.  I should probably head back to the Innovation Center on campus.  By 7pm tomorrow, I will be a Drupal ninja, ready to take on Views, Ubercart, and all that kinda stuff.

AT&T DSL customers get free WiFi at Starbucks, BTW.  It saved me from boredom this past hour.