Random Stuff

Had a chat with Alan today, sounds like work is doing some good stuff - with their pizza round tables. Interesting that the CEO wants us to move towards having IP, which means products, which means staff programmers. And these staff programmers would be developing code for consultants who are out in the field. I'm not too sure how well that's going to work. Unless the product is really well tested, and documented it's likely to be a white elephant - like the project I worked on previously, which suffered from that problem.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of the staff members from the company we used to work for pushing the product idea to the side, as it really didn't work effectively. The product team eventually developed into a company of it's own, which was terrible. Unfortunately it's quite hard to product-ize something specific for a J2EE consultancy team, given the variety in the work that we take on. Obviously, we are pushing products from our business partner, which leads you down a dangerous path, in terms of keeping agile in relation to client needs.

Personally, I would suggest that we decided on a 'Developer Toolset', with a known set of best known open source projects (Hibernate, Jasper, Struts, Spring, Display Tag Libs, Ant, Maven, etc etc), in which we have a bunch of training, and a reference site implementing all the projects. This would make life a lot easier. So, you could envisage having a new start, with a clean laptop installation - then install Eclipse (or WSAD, or whatever IDE is standard), with the reference implementation of all of our developer tools - and have the ability to then send the developer out to actually do some consulting work straight off the bat.

This would allow people to work efficiently in a known tool set, we have access to/create our own training courses (which we could sell to clients!), plus we could sell the 'Centre of Excellence' idea much more strongly also. If we had a quarterly review of the tool set, along with consultants submitting a 1 pager on any new tool/versions that come along, this could be checked, and then added/discarded in a well organised manner.

How this would work in practice, it's a bit hard to say. We did have a great deal of difficulty in getting a developer tool set organised for a group of 15, let alone 100 consultants. Everyone has a big personality, and this means everyone has the favourite/best known tools to do specific jobs.

I might have a chat with our chief architect when I'm at the monthly meeting tomorrow night.

Yeeha!

Well, the boil has resisted all attempts to extricate it. Rach started hacking into it last night, but no joy. I think it's time to go and visit the doctor to see what we can do. I probably should see a dermatologist to work out if there is anything that can be done longer term also.

I spent most of yesterday in a requirements workshop, which was really interesting - a hell of a lot of work has come out of it, but i'm confident that we can get it specified nice and thoroughly, although the work is continuing to expand. I doubt we will be able to give it to them by mid January, as the plan states. It will be interesting to see if they get more budget, after just going to the budget committee and getting a 50% increase in the budget already.

Hopefully I can get some work done today - I might spend some time typing up my view of the requirements workshop too. The requirements for the reports I've been working on have come through, so it will be interesting to see if it all flies. :)

Little star!

Rach decided to submit a picture to 'Bright Stars', which is essentially a child labour business. They organise catalogs, ad work, tv work, etc. They called yesterday, and told us they would like to meet with Jude, to get his 'personality'. How much personality do kids have at 19 months? I know he's a cheeky bugger, and he loves to smile/laugh, but what are they really going to get? I figure they just want to confirm that the photo we sent in is from the kid we have, and not just some random internet picture.

Anyway, he's going in Friday to meet with them, and we decide what work we are comfortable with him doing. I imagine that he would be ok for catalogues and that kind of stuff, but not too sure about any scenario where he has to do something, and repeat it! He tends to do something once, and then not do it again, regardless of the amount of coaxing/bribery/coercion you apply on him. He's a funny kid. I will post a photo of him eating his lunch desert later too. :)

Bits and pieces..

I missed riding the bike last night - Which is a bit of a bugger, because I really wanted to get some exercise - I've been feeling a bit blah over the past few days - probably the lack of sleep on Sunday night which is contributing to that. My face has a massive blind pimple, the likes of which have never been seen before! If I hadn't had the chat from my boss, I would have hidden myself away, like the elephant man. I have also managed to rip a chunk of nail out of my thumb. ARGH!

Phil gave me a call yesterday, and told me we are being invited to his and Jo's wedding! Cool as. It's in about 8 weeks (end of November), which means it's going to be a busy time for both of them, organising everything. I still don't really know where it will be, or even what time of day! I guess that's what the invitation is for hey.

I'm going to be busy at work today, having a workshop from 9:30 to 12:30, and the morning meeting from 9:00 to 9:30 - so effectively I'll get no work started until 1pm today. joy.

I've also just finished the Mail Merge portion of my Computing Assignment 1. Now I just have to find a bunch of uni's that offer online/distance courses, list them out, and footnote the links that I used to find it. Also got to finish the 'Best Achievement' paragraph. Should be pretty straightforward, I will hopefully do that tonight, as I cant surf the web on the train. :(

Bathies..

Little Jack had a bath with me tonight - He was a bit all over the place at the start, but he relaxed, and got a bit used to it. He was holding onto my hands for grim death though - he had little white knuckles. I had him supported behind the head, with his legs and body floating - and he seemed to enjoy that quite a bit - he had big laughs when I did the 'boo' game with him. So cute. He seems to be much more aware of what is going on around him, and will be rolling around pretty soon - Rach found him moved down the couch on morning, it might be time to start putting him in his cot - although he seems to not really like it at all - screams come pretty quickly, even when you put him in there after he's asleep. Poor little tacker - he must feel the cold.

Recently...

I saw a couple of movies recently, on tv, which makes it a bit hard to judge them properly - I find that tv stations pick bad times to break movies up (with ads!), and often scenes are cut due to the content of the movies - we have a fairly strict set of boundaries as to what is appropriate to show at different times of day.

The Hot Chick
Not a great movie, Rob Schneider swaps bodies with a high school cheerleader, and hilarity ensues.
4/10.

Just Married
Well, Brittany Murphy is gorgeous, but she can't help this dog of a movie. Ashton (Dude where's my car?) Kucher is average poor joe, and Murphy is rich girl. I didn't really watch the end of this film, but I was tired - and it's not like I walked out of a movie that I'd paid my hard earned for.
2/10

Rach and I were going to go and see a real movie on the weekend, and there seems to be quite a few good ones at the moment - the names of which escape me right at the moment. Although I did see on the weekend that the new Rob Schneider film Deuce Bigelow 2 got an absolute caning - phrases such as 'The worst movie of the year', and 'Don't waste your money' have been attributed to this film. I'm curious to see it, just to see if there is any truth to the reviews.

It helps that we have about a dozen free tickets to go to the movies, but it's not helping that we don't have anyone to look after the smalls.

Work

I have been having a few good wins, but I'm finding that going back over work that other people have done is quite a bit of a shock - sometimes stuff that was supposed to be done, just has not been done at all. I had to debug a few stored procedures yesterday, and re-work a bunch of unit tests, after our schema change - I was confident that this had already been done, but it doesn't look like it! Hopefully that will be the last of the re-work that has to be done as part of the migration to the new schema. That, and re-doing all of the scripts for the database to be re-created. We have to have good scripts, otherwise we wont have a useful database for the testing phase.

Chaser

You have to go and see this site - www.chaser.com.au - Brilliant satirists, they have their show back on ABC2 (if you have digital, yay!) - and they have a bunch of merchandise which I'd love to get - including a t-shirt, and dvd's of their previous series. Their site is really well done, with a real 'The Onion' feel to it - I just cant wait to see one of their stories picked up by some dumb journo, and then being busted on 'Media Watch'. I'm constantly amazed by the sheer stupidity of a lot of journo's and editors, putting obvious internet fakes on the front page of their daily newspaper. And the suckers at Sunrise, who believed that photos sent in were taken in Bunbury WA.

Fitness Regime

I was too tired last night to get stuck in on the bike - I'm cranking it up to 30 minutes a night now, as I only start sweating at about 15 minutes. 15 minutes is just too short to get any real benefits, and 30 minutes is the length of most programs, so I'll do it that way from now on. Tonight will be the first time at 30. Hopefully I can build up my fitness to a point where I can take Jude on a bike ride for at least an hour. We might ride down to Frankston in a couple of weeks, and then get the train back (or ride back, depending on how I feel!).

I've been eating a little better, but it hasn't helped my skin - which is playing up something shocking - I have a massive boil/lump on my chin, which is shithouse! :( I am eating healthier mostly due to the fact that I've got no money left this month, so it's sandwiches from home all the way! :)

Public Transport

I'm a big advocate for public transport - I spend a lot of time lurking at the railpage forums learning about how the system can be improved - It's amazing the cars that I see in the carpark since the price of petrol has gone up through $1.30 per litre - Brand new BMW's, Integra's, Calais, all kinds of brand spanking new cars.

I really hope that the line that I'm living on has some services added to it - we are in desperate need - I'm only 3 stops from the end of the line, and the trains to the city are near on full by the time they get to my stop - and are standing room only about 3 stops later. We are still in school holidays, so there is a bit of easing of the pressure , but it still makes sense to add some services

This never happened when the price of petrol was around $.80 per litre - It looks like we are entering another oil crisis, just like in the 70's - when Holden released their ill advised 4 cylinder commodore. That became a museum piece!

I've heard that there will be a new timetable released around the 8th of October, and there are to be a few more 3-car Siemens services running on the northern group lines. Unfortunately that means that less Siemens 6-car sets will be available to the caulfield group lines. We will be getting more Comeng trains, but what can you do?

The weekend...

Was great.

Today was really quiet, Jack was pretty jiggy all day today - he had to have love pretty much all day. Poor little tacker. I spent most of the day doing nothing at all but watching telly.

Yesterday was good, we went to Rach's parents place for grand final day - what a fantastic game too. Sydney got up by 4 points, after a fantastic pack mark in the last 5 seconds of the game by Leo Barry.

Paula and Reuben broke up too - that's shithouse.. :(

Getting bigger...

Little Jack is getting a lot more head control now, and he is following stuff with his eyes. He is having big awake times, but is still not really eating more than about 120ml per feed. Hopefully he will start to take a little more, and sleep a bit longer. Unfortunately he doesn't like to sleep up in the boys room, which means he spends most of his sleep time on the couch.

Sickies

Poor little tacker - he's really really sick at the moment. He had his first real spew, while lying on the couch with Rach last night. Poor little lamb. He then whinged for the next hour while we were trying to get some sleep. What are ya gonna do?!

Jasper, Exceptions, etc

Busy doing some stuff;
- Jasper Reports PDF factory. That went pretty well actually - I managed to hook in an XLS generator factory in about 3 hours - All I needed was the XLS exporter to be used on a filled report. Easy as pie.
- Exception handling framework - This is a pain in the arse, as we have a number of logging destinations - the application log, the database event log, the UI log and the monitoring software log. Hopefully the site logger that I've put together is able to handle this ok. There are quite a few good sites related to generic exception handling, which I have to read up on - unfortunately we don't really have time to spend on it during the project.

Had a great day at work, got a hell of a lot of things sorted out, which is good. I'd been having a bit of a nightmare with the Jasper Reports generation, and have set up stubs to hook the reports into the client publishing system, so we dont have to worry about it. I still haven't ridden the bike this week either.

Chris and Murray came to meet the team out where we are, and he gave me a huge rap - I was pretty impressed with that - I didn't really think about it, but I was the only person out there for quite a while, and aparently I 'opened up opportunities' in the group that I'm working for - which has gone from 1 person (me!), to 4 - and soon to be 5, if I understand it correctly.

Dinner was great tonight, we had low fat Lamb Kebabs - just pita, lettuce, lamb backstrap and tzatziki (sp) - which were very tasty indeed.

testing times..

11/15 for my exam - I'm happy with that. All of the exams make up 15% of the overall mark, with the other 85% being for the exam, which I will have to sit in Queensland! How crap is that timing?

We will be up there for the big holiday in December, and it's just at the right(wrong) time! I spent the train trip in to work this morning studying, reviewing the first 3 weeks of lectures, and going about 3 weeks ahead. The logic/proof stuff will be finished soon, thank god. I must make a note to read the text book for the first 4-5 weeks of reading, so that I can cement my understanding. I might have to take a day to review the notes I'm making while I'm up in Qld.

Wednesday- Murray came to see me at the client site today - aparently the client has mentioned that i've been taking a few days off - and that is right on the money. With the kids being sick a fair bit recently, and my back playing up (that's a once every 3 months job!), I'm not suprised that it looks like i've been sick a lot. He was just checking to see that everything was ok - My main gripe was about the seating at the client site, which is contributing to my dodgy back.

Well, that and the fact that I'm 25 kilos overweight.

Opera Test

I read today that Opera browser is removing the ad banner, and the subscription fee! How good is that? I have been a fan of Opera for quite a while, but found that it didn't fly properly with the internet banking sites that I used to use - Now that I don't internet bank, it's all good!

Mondayitis..

Didn't ride the bike - Dumplings for dinner, as Rach had come in early so we could go to Amol's suprise birthday tonight, which was fantastic! He
was very suprised to see us all there - I think there were about 30 odd people waiting in the restaurant for him to arrive. We had a good chat, and he had a great birthday. We left reasonably early, as the kids were with Rach's parents - And we got there just in time to watch the Mark Latham interview on Enough Rope. Latho is just going hammer and tongs at everyone. Great to watch, in some way, but very sad for the Labor party in general. I personally think they are going to suffer from this, and Kim Beazley is just the most useless leader ever. Lame Duck.

Also did my Discrete Maths exam for week 3. Not too bad.

The weekend

We had the quiet weekend, and god it was great. I think Rach and the boys were going a bit stir crazy - it's ok for me, because I'm away at work for 40-50 hours a week, to sit at home on the weekend, but they just want to go out. We decided that it was time for me to start exercising a bit, with 15 minutes of bike riding per night, for this week, going up to 30, etc.

I am eating pretty average at the moment, I think cutting out the fizzy drinks will help a lot!

Busy..

Been flat our recently - Had a few things that I wanted to blog about, but I have been too exhausted to write them on the train.

Plus I've been reading my maths lectures on the train too.

You beauty!

Warnie now has 4! Yeah baby...

Now we have only 5 more wickets to get, and then we can have a bat, and hold the Ashes!

Oh yeah, and I've got to do my maths quiz tonight - I re-read the 3 lectures for this week too.

dj flange!

I had a good couple of hours dj'ing on Ruby's decks last night! I had a ball! I'd really love to spend a lot more time learning to be a good dj.. :)

Wordliness

Jude has a quickly increasing vocabulary;

• Scully (cully), the cat.
• Plane, accompanied by pointing at the sky. We have shark spotting planes go over on the weekends about every 10-15 minutes.
• Thai and Pad Thai. We've been eating a bit of Thai food recently.
• Boobies. This made us laugh. A lot.
• Doobie, second cat.
• Baby - Clear as a bell.
• Chester - from 'Snap goes Chester', one of his favourite books.
• Bum. A personal fave of mine! ;)

He knows what a cat is too - if you ask him where the cat is, he goes to the back door where the cats wait for us to let them in.

We have started reading to him, and buying him a book or two per week. He loves to sit on the couch and listen to us read the books.

Eye Of The Storm

Eye Of The Storm

Ashes - Test 5, Day 1

Well, we are going not too bad.

After letting the openers get away, Warne has come back and got 4-for. Unbelieveable.

Child Care

Rach has found a good cheap child care place in Chelsea - just up the road.

He is going for his first 'test' day tomorrow. :) I hope he has a great day. awww.

Laughter...

Little Jack has started laughing - I really don't know what makes him laugh, but I've managed to get him to laugh a couple of times in the past few days. And it's not a forced laugh (i.e, from tickling), this starts as a smile, moves to a coo, or a two syllable noise, and then becomes a laugh. I was really chuffed. :)

Busy Fathers day...

Been busy recently - trying to finish the assignment which has been plaguing me for a while.

Quickly - Today was good fun, got a great brekky, a beautiful card from the boys (Rach), and all in all took it pretty easy - Rach cooked a BBQ, and her dad came over too. Very nice Salmon, Chicken and salad for lunchies.

Yesterday: We went to Southland first thing in the morning - we had to have our Yum Cha - It all went pear shaped pretty quickly, with Jude playing up, and then Jack wanting foodies - We managed to get through, and Jude seemed intrigued that we were eating with two sticks, while he's still struggling with a spoon.

This week was reasonably quiet at work, we had a few changes waiting to go, dependant on some other work. Got to nail the Jasper Servlet on Monday, and then ready to rock and roll. Crazy!

Developing...

Jude has come along with a few new things that he's doing now:

1. Jumping - he loves it!
2. He's moved onto two syllable words - well, kind of - Daddy, CD and pad thai.
3. He's got Thomas the Tank slippers that flash every time he takes a step - I'm surprised he doesn't walk into more things while he's wearing them, as he has a habit of watching the lights on his shoes, and not where he's walking! :)
4. Eating with a spoon - We have to put down a massive sheet over the lounge room, but he's been getting into the Thai food - Green chicken curry, and coconut rice is a favourite at the moment.