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“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
Jean Giraudoux

There are so many ways to take that one.
“Sarcastically” is leading the mental calculus.
Go figure.

Recently, I got turned on to Zen by Nate Kohari. Having used a Kanban-style feature management system (poorly). I can see a real need for what Nate has written. I’ve signed up for the free demo to see if I could really use it. If it does work out for me, I know the $9/month would fit into my budgets. Just allowing the product manager (the significate other) to update the item queue from anywhere would be worth the subscription. 90% of her new feature requests come about during the day, when she’s actually using the application (we are only using one app/Kanban to see if this style works for both of us). As it is, we have to gather and stare at the board in our home office. Remote, anytime updates… Nice.

The frame sliders showed up last night. After reading the instructions, they were a breeze to install. There was a warning about cross threading so I took my time. The only “difficulty” was torquing down the lower slider. The slider assembly replaces the stock lower engine mount with a new rod that fits through the engine case. So far, so good? Well, my arms aren’t long enough to tighten a nut on one side of the bike while holding a similar nut on the other side of the bike. I hadn’t thought about this issue… After waiting for the woman to return from walking the dogs, the problem was solved.

Bonus: She learned how to use a torque wrench and that the Craftsman 1/2″ torque wrench I bought a couple months ago does have a real purpose.

My morning news feed brought me to a page on the worst tech commercial ever. The first one is truly cheese. The second one is kind of cute, until the baby pukes and then it is really funny. You’d have to watch to see humor. The last word is probably the best.

Then of course there are the Internet Explorer ads… However this one is the one. I told you this one was about projectile vomitting.

I’ve been looking at Moo’s MiniCards. I don’t know why. I just have been. Maybe it is because I keep getting asked if I have a card at all of these geek things I have been attending. $20 for 100 sounds fair.

I ended up looking at Andre Jordan’s designs. I like minimalism. Einstein was right. (link)

I guess that’s part of why I enjoy the KTM so much…

Off to debug an Infragistics Ribbon control that crapped out during a major refactoring. KFLY is playing in the background. Once 2 comes, I’ll flip to Pandora or listen to MP3s.

I am learning that WinForms doesn’t like animations when the primary thread is occupied. A new rule to learn. I have been spending time cruising the net, reading up on threading in an attempt to solve my problem. Which is this: I have a dialog that shows a “waiting” graphic while work happens. The work does in happen, but the waiting graphic never updates. Does the graphic work? Yes. I know it works because I’ve displayed the image as a stand-alone item and everything is cool. More to learn. I’ll post some code to CodeKeep when I get it figured out.

I’m album mode today. Of course, this has rules too. Expect for the starting point I have only picked albums that I rarely listen to yet have owned more than a decade. Collections are not allowed. Full-length albums. Deep cuts, I guess you could call it. I started with the new G n’ R record, Chinese Democracy. Then I pulled up Fire Of Unknown Origin by Blue Oyster Cult. Followers have been Whiplash Smile by Billy Idol and War by U2. I wonder what else will come up. Bowie? I haven’t listened to Outside in a really long time. That was released in the 90s, 1995. Right?

Collision Detection

Obviously, I’m not sleeping again. This always comes in spells. Today was a busy day. I worked on the mower, setup/assembled a fan and water cooler at the office, cleaned the gutters, hung some art, patched a bare spot in the yard, sprayed all of the weeds, blah, blah, blah… I should be tired. I didn’t nap today but I did consume 5 glasses of Pepsi. That’s probably why I’m still awake. Read more…

I’ve been listening to a LOT of music on Pandora lately. Amusingly, most of it I already own. Anyway. Me being me, I wanted to learn more about the technology behind the selection algorithm. So I hit Wikipedia and ended up on Scientific Computing with this article. After reading the article, I can’t say that I learned much. I’m hoping to find out more about the way the algorithm selects tunes. I’ve got ideas on what it is doing, but I’d like to learn more.

Switter by Rammstein played last. Yeah, I have that one. It is really funny if you knew the translation. Who said those ‘wasted years’ in German class wouldn’t pay off. I learned how to use Babelfish better at the very least. LOL It helps when you know the language structure (noun/verb order). Gott Sein by Megaherz is up now. My German isn’t good enough to follow along but I can get the general idea and fill in the gaps by using references. After to listening to several Megaherz tracks, I think they will have to be added to my collection. Interesting. Similar to Rammstein, but not. Good stuff.

I am sure Marilyn Manson is lurking nearby.

Queensryche played at the Roseland last night. It was a really good show. They played a handful of older tracks like Screaming in Digital, I Dream in Infrared, and Take Hold of the Flame. They also played large chunks of the new album American Soldier. We had reserved seats in the front row of the balcony. That was a first for me. Great seats. Usually the Roseland is general admission. The sound was pretty good. And the band was in good form.

Umm. Yea. It’s spring. What did you expect?

New Music

Queensryche are playing at the Roseland this weekend. Hopefully the tickets we ordered and received will automagically reappear before 21:00 on Saturday evening. Hopefully…

I’m researching MVC Design patterns at work. I’ve got working code buried in a Excel Ribbon. I need to migrate that code out of the Ribbon in to a new WinForm. It sounds like a simple cut-n-paste. Maybe.
Read more…

UltraGridGroup group1 = band.Groups.Add();

During a code review this morning, I had one of those crazy moments. I was looking through this rather large block of code written by our team lead, Rob. I was doing the review because I wrote the formatting engine for the Excel UI that we currently use. The team lead is working to port all of that functionality over to a WinForms desktop app. Lee, who sits on the other side of Rob from me, was half-listening working on his own stuff.

So… I’m following along as Rob discusses all of his changes and I see the line I wrote above. On pure impulse, I casually belt out, “Band on the run…” Slightly out of key and with zero context… and everyone in the room starts laughing. A lot. Lee initially grimaced because I had scored a direct hit with the “Can’t get that tune out of my head” assault then he started laughing. Rob was trying to keep a straight face while he continued his monologue. It probably didn’t help that I was humming the melody. Every time Rob would try to even things out Lee and I would look at each other and start cracking up again. This lasted a good 10 minutes.

Shiny Toy Guns is play on Pandora at the moment. It was Dokken and Fleetwood Mac a while ago with some W.A.S.P. throw in. Now if I could just find some Paul McCartney and Wings.

The first track played on Pandora this morning.

The creative juices have been primed and ideas are flowing through my fingers. It’s time to pivot some data.

I think today is going to be interesting…

So when I roll into work this morning, I started adding notes to my current list of work items. 10:00 rolls around, which is when we have our daily scrum. The second to last person to talk is the team lead. He announces that he believes it is time to dump Excel 2007 as our user interface. What? Cool. Yesterday, he rewrote the UI to use a Windows Forms delivery model and achieved 80% functionality in the first attempt by only recycling existing code. (Read: n-tier is good.)

So… Turn left… Now!

It looks like the rest of my day will be spent researching pivot table implementations in an Infragistics Grid. Yummy.

Today’s Tunes:

G ‘n R: Chinese Democracy
Billy Idol: Idolize Yourself
Queensryche: Hear in the Now Frontier

I think I’m overdue for a CD run…