I don't have any idea who it was that wrote this, but she (it reads like a she anyways) should be commended.

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Scotland -- 15 yr old Single Malt Glenfiddich Scotch -- 49.00 -- A good smooth finish and it keeps you warm when it's cold.

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: feedback is the treament. - Kent Beck

I think that I was the person in every one of these frames at one time or another. Once you have accomplished that your perspective on the whole software development world does change somewhat.

I will admit to the fact that I have been known to try and succeed at intimidating co-workers before, but I've moved on from that place in my life.  With my new job I get to ride the commuter bus for about 40 minutes each direction.  I've only been doing this for the last 5 days, but only on the first day did anyone sit next to me.  Now the busses aren't standing room only, but I'm starting to think that it may be that I just look pissy first thing in the morning.  I know I feel pissy at that time of the day.  It's odd, but I will continue to enjoy the extra leg and elbow room.

I just had to do it.....odd for a Canadian to be so southern wouldn't you say?

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Dixie

5% Midwestern

5% Upper Midwestern

So, I've started my new job at Fujitsu and things are going well. The people are exceptionally nice and I'm looking forward to working with what seems to be a group of nimble and knowledgable minds. I say I'm looking forward to it because, as of right now, I'm "On the Bench". The contract that I'm supposed to be assigned to hasn't be singed yet, so I get to try to find ways to fill my time. The first couple of days weren't so bad as I had a plethora of company propaganda to wade through. Today, however, was a little trying. Luckily my mind wanders easily. It's also interesting that one of my reasons for leaving my last job was that they weren't giving me enough work to keep me engaged in the project. I realize that being on the bench will only be a short stint, but all the same I leave one job because I'm bored and go to another where I'm doing nothing.

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Gisborne NZ -- 2001 Brancott (Montana), Chardonnay -- 19.97 -- Very nice wine for this hot spring day.

Primary my job is as a software developer, but in the past I have spent a large number or never-to-be-recovered hours installing and configuring network systems. Even when developing I have built, from the ground up, at least 3 different security modules. So I can safely say that I have seen a wide variance of different security needs, implementations and, ultimately, uses. I may be versed in the intricacies of User-Group-Permission philosophy and a cassonova I certainly am not, but this takes the cake. Obviously this system was built by junior female developer. How can I say that you ask? To the fairer sex who may be reading this, this is intended to be humorous. Honest. So without further adieu, here are the reasons:

• The User Interface requires far to much interaction. A well seasoned Pm would have noticed that the device in question was just an ancillary step and would have removed it from the process.

• The developer interface is extremely complex. By wrapping this in an object and providing a single method (perhaps named ReleasedTheToys?) would provide for a more efficient execution of the code.

• The security should have been checked when the system was initially opened. If the security values changed during the operation of the system, the security settings should be automatically refreshed -- without user interaction. This is one system that logging off and logging onto could potentially throw an unhandled fatal error rendering further use limited or non-existant.

• Why does the security system only require a password? Does this mean that any unauthenticated user can reach this level, and further, in the system without providing any user credentials? Where I come from this would be considered an easy system.

Folks, I'm shocked. After Microsoft's company wide clamp down on security, how do they continue to release such fundamentally flawed systems? On that note, I am the Igloo Coder and I'm left wondering "When reaching this point in an Igloo, how do you type a password with numb fingers?"

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Coonawarra, Australia -- 2002 Jamieson Run, Limestone Coast Chardonnay -- 17.94 -- Wonderfully fresh and fruity.

Today at work was told that the IsNumeric Function in VB.NET wasn't returning the results that the developer expected. When I got home I created a sample program that goes through some permutations and all return what I would expect. Here are the permutations

String Value	Return Value
"."	False
".0"	True
","	False
",0"	False
"$"	False
"$0"	True
"0$"	True
"%"	False
"0%"	False
"%0"	False

I was led to believe, by the other developer, that these would all return True values. Now I must investigate at work. Perhaps the IsReallyNumeric fuction that was built is completely unnecessary.

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Victoria, Australia -- 2002 angus, The Bull (Cabernet Sauvignon) -- 24.94 -- Nice wine for a blend. Doesn't have any deep richness that I usually look for in a Cab Sav. Very nice after taste with hints of tomato.

Maybe it's a guy thing, but as a kid I loved my toys. I had a great all metal 6 wheel grader that I used to landscape with. Since I lived on a thirty thousand acre farm, I had all the sandbox any child ever wanted. Now I've grown up. OK, quit laughing. I'll restate that. Now I'm older. I'm no longer in possession of my grader and I live in an apartment. With that in mind I need a release. Somewhere I can create and destroy at will. A place where my naivete and lack of experience doesn't matter. I found it here. I've been playing around in the C# tutorials and have been very happy with the capabilities of the system thus far. It's free to sign up for, so take it for a spin. Make a great huge system of roads with your grader, then turn the garden hose on them and flood them.

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Margaret River Australia -- 2001 Evans & Tate, Cabernet Merlot -- 19.95 -- Wonderfully smooth wine. Not a great deal of depth in the taste, but very enjoyable.

I can't remember if it was when the company I worked for got a shipment of SQL Server or MSDN, but we did get a poster that detailed all the SQL Server 2000 System Tables. Since my office mate and I were working on an auditing system that was driven by the data in these tables, we thought this was the sweetest thing and hung it in prime real estate. To this day the poster was one of the great resources that I've used when developing. Today I found a post by Ashvil that displays a great poster of the SDLC when using VS 2005 Team Systems. I started poking around on the source website and found a great long list of posters that they have created. All very interesting and worth looking at.

Finally I have gotten around to installing the latest CTP of SQL 2005. I've had it sitting here for almost a month now and haven't had the time to get around to it. I installed it into a Windows XP SP2 instance on my Virtual PC and I now realize that I should increase the RAM on my PC. I've got 512MB and the 4 hours to install SQL Server says that just isn't enough in this configuration. Tonight or tomorrow I will start to dig deep into it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that VS 2005 installed as well, as I have been itching to get my mitts into that too.

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Martinborough NZ --2000 Te Kairanga, Chardonnay -- 17.94 --Presents with a musty nose. Has a woody tast too it and leaves an acidic after taste. Not one of my favourites

I saw this idea on a blog which I can no longer find. Instead of the ubiquitous "What I'm Listening To" foot note on posts, this blogger had a foot note on "What I'm Drinking". Being that I, like him, am a avid wine drinking (although an expert by no stretch) I figured I would do this too. So this post will be the first, and being that it is 9:26 in the AM, I don't have a glass of wine on the go. So I will use last nights adventure to start.

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Okanagan Valley, BC, Canada -- 2002 Wild Horse Canyon, Left Bank White (VQA) -- $11.95 -- Wonderful fresh young fruit smell and taste. Will be wonderful served chilled on a deck on a hot summer day.

I can now blog about this. During the past couple weeks I've been in the process of pursuing a new programming opportunity. As of April 15th I will be leaving my current position and joining the Fujitsu Consulting team. This will be a big step forward for my career as I get involved in larger projects with larger teams using "newer" technologies. I qualify newer because of the relative nature between what I am using now vs. future. Currently my team (all two of us) are using VB.NET with a SQL 2000 backend. Not all that bad one thinks when they see that (sure it could be C#, but it's still .NET). I thought this when I interviewed for the position, but have come to find that the application of the technology is perhaps more important than the technology itself. The current code being written for the project looks and feels very much like it was cut and pasted straight out of VB6. While that's not all bad, why not make use of the more advanced features of .NET. I don't believe that you have to use the technology that is there, but you should explore it's capabilities and make conscious choices not to use a feature or functionality in the language. For instance, inheritance. The combobox in .NET does not, by default, support a type-ahead feature. Instead of creating a class that inherits the standard combobox and adds the desired type-ahead functionality, every KeyUp event, for every combobox in the application has code written to handle the type-ahead. So, I'm hoping that this change to a larger and, as I've been told, very technically advanced group of developers will push me once again to strive for coding elegance. When I presented my resignation to my supervisor, the result was that he would like to debrief me next week. The desired result of this debriefing is to leverage my skill, knowledge and experience in projects to help them avoid any pitfalls going forward. Oddly, in 3 months of employment I have not been asked or required to help in this manner. I've actually been isolated from design, analysis and most all parts of the codebase. Perhaps it's a case of realizing what you have when you are going to loose it. Overall, I'm happy to be leaving my current position and I'm extremely excited about moving to Fujitsu.