Dennis Sherman

In many ways I feel like I’m a Luddite geek.  I’m well aware of the cutting edge of technology trends, and can explain them to my non-geek family and friends.  But I am very seldom living at that cutting edge any more.  I have little interest in the latest and coolest toys, I want them to be stable and proven before I jump on the bandwagon.

HD TV is there… we’ve replaced our reasonably good CRT TV with a middling size and price LCD.  All I can say is “WOW!!”.  Watching a DVD I know pretty well, it was amazing to see detail I hadn’t noticed before.  The sharpness and clarity needs to be seen to be believed, and there is even sometimes a bit of a 3D effect, if the shot has been focused in such a way as to keep the background blurred.

I’m looking forward to seeing how sporting events look.

I’ve been experimenting with The Pomodoro Technique in combination with Getting Things Done (GTD) to maximize productivity at work.  I’m finding some very interesting results after about 6 weeks.

First, working in 30 minute sprints (the hub of The Pomodoro Technique) does not seem to seriously affect the flow state a developer needs to do good work.  If I’m deep into work, when the alarm goes off, I just reset it and continue, instead of taking a 5 minute break.  This was one of my concerns about working in Pomodoros, that I’d be interrupting myself constantly.  At least for me, it doesn’t have a negative effect.  On the contrary, I’m not distracting myself with side issues, knowing there’s a potential 5 minute break no more than 25 minutes away, when I can deal with emptying the recycling, getting more coffee, or whatever.

Next, as the Pomodoro book suggests, it begins to be natural to break work up into 30 minute hunks.  I take the first part of every day to organize my Pomodoro list.  It gets fed from my GTD Next Actions lists, but often has a granularity somewhere between Next Action and Project. I haven’t yet figured out how to articulate what rules I’m using to build the Pomodoro list, but it is working for me.

On the not-so-bright side, I’ve discovered that even breaking tasks down into chunks that are theoretically 4 hours (8 pomodoros or half hour sprints) in size, I’m underestimating work consistently by about 20%-25%.  (I’m using a spreadsheet based on Joel Spolsky’s Evidence Based Scheduling practices to track estimated vs. actual time.)  I suppose its a positive that I’m consistent, with only a few outliers each week.

I’ll be doing more posts on this blended “Getting Pomodoros Done” technique as I continue to work with it.

I’ve finally moved all of the sheet music I’d published on my old googlepages site over here.  The SHEET MUSIC link up above will take you to my sheet music archive.  Now that I’ve got the old stuff moved, maybe I’ll get around tuit and publish some of the more recent work.

For the first post of 2010, a review of 2009 seems appropriate. IMHO, my performance as a blogger over the past year has been mediocre at best. I’ve got ideas of things to say, but making the time to write them up in a form I’m willing to share has not been easy. I also don’t seem to be settling on any one topic.  I’m mixing reviews, updates for family and friends, reference information on all kinds of topics, all in one place.  Kind of like what’s in my head, I guess.

I think this experiment in public writing is good for me, even if no one ever reads or comments, so I’m going to keep it up.  No promises that frequency of posting will improve, however.  If there is someone reading who would like to comment to me, you should probably send it in using the Contact link up above, as the automated spambots post comments too quickly, and I’m not interested in spending time moderating spammers.

The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an audiobook from Librivox.org.  I never read this adventure story set in the middle ages as a boy.  In one way, that’s too bad, because I missed out on a really good story.  In another, that’s good, because being introduced to it by Clive Catterall, who reads this book for Librivox, is wonderful.

Never mind the plot summary, go visit the web page for this title, where you’ll find a summary and pointers to the full text if you’d rather read it for yourself.  I want to talk about this audiobook version.

In short, its great.  I listened to it over a couple of weeks while walking the dog.  The reader keeps the story moving well, in a clear and easy to understand British accent.  Actually, several accents, as he changes voices to suit various characters.  Not every character, just the main ones, and he does quite a fine job suiting accent and diction to the character.  Its quite helpful to following the dialog and keeping track of everyone.

Librivox.org provides free audiobooks of public domain text.  The readings are all done by volunteers, so the quality is a bit unpredictable.  This reader, Clive Catterall, in my opinion is well up at the top end of the quality curve.

Combine good reading with a good voice, and a good tale to tell, and you’ve got hours of pleasurable listening ahead.  Highly recommended.

The David Allen Company has produced a new GTD Workflow map, and they’re selling it with an accompanying DVD of David walking you through the workflow. It looks interesting…

https://secure.davidco.com/store/catalog/GTD-Workflow-Map-with-Coaching-DVD-NEW-p-16554.php

The joys of an older home… built in 1928, our house is in great condition, but always needs something.  This week it was getting all the guest room doors to close, preparing for a house full in a few weeks.

Thanks to Grandpa’s Stanley #4 and the Veritas Low Angle Block Plane, that works now.  Mostly.  Standing on a ladder and planing the tops of doors isn’t my idea of a great time, but its better than trying to get the doors off their hinges.  These old doors are heavy!

The remaining issue with closing are more a matter of the fit of the front of the door against the frame, and too many layers of paint for the tolerance of the door fitting.  When we get around to stripping and refinishing the frames, that problem will go away.  I hope.

I like computers.  I make my living writing software for them.  I like process automation, setting up actions to happen automatically, whenever human judgment isn’t needed to execute a process accurately or safely.  But some process automation sure can be dumb!

I was supposed to pick up my sister in law at the airport.  Her flight was scheduled to arrive at 5:00pm, so I planned to go directly from work to the airport.   Shortly before the flight was to depart, I went to the airline’s web site to check the flight’s status, and find out if it was on time.  I saw an option to have them send me alerts when things changed, and since I’d be sitting in the car waiting, I decided to select voicemail, instead of text message or email.  The deluge of calls began:

“The flight is scheduled to depart at 3:00pm”

“The flight is scheduled to depart at 3:04pm”

“The flight is scheduled to depart at 3:00pm”

“The flight departed at 3:06pm and is scheduled to arrive at 5:02”

“… arrive at 4:47”

“…arrive at 4:53”

“…arrive at 5:10”

“…arrive at 5:07”

“…landed at 5:03”

At one point, I received 3 calls within 90 seconds.

This is a problem of a dumb automated process.  It needed to have some logic included somewhere to keep track of the last time it called, and how much the change is, and decide it didn’t need to update me every time the airplane caught or lost a gust of tailwind.

It isn’t the computer’s fault.  Some developer somewhere was probably told by a manager they couldn’t afford to take the time to add that feature, because they had a deadline to meet.   Its better to annoy your customers with a badly done feature than not to have the feature at all, in some people’s minds.  Its all human decision making behind that process automation, and humans sure do make some stupid decisions.

I love the Roomba vacuum when it works.  The key is when it works.  That’s why we had 4 of them.  They just don’t seem to have great durability. We’ve had various models of the 400 and Discover series.

But IRobot was offering an upgrade deal, so we sent off for #5, which is a model 530.  It arrived very quickly, just a couple of days from calling in to order.  After an overnight charge, per directions, it had its first run today.

There are several changes in operation that seem to be improvements, that are immediately obvious.  The 530 handles changing floor surfaces (hardwood floor to area rug and back) much better than the earlier models we have, and doesn’t seem to get hung up on the fringe tassels on the rug.  That’s good, but even better is the obstacle sensing — most of the time, as the Roomba approaches an obstacle (wall, table leg, etc.) it slows down before it hits it.  Narrow chair legs are problematic for this feature, and the slow down seems to depend on the angle of approach.  Watching it slow down to a table leg, touch it, turn, and then circle the leg without touching it again is amazing.

I find the dust bin and filter a little more difficult to clean — the older model lets you pull the filter fully out of the dust bin, while this one has a hinged carrier that swings.  Not a big problem, but one step away from best usability, in my opinion.

The Roomba does a perfectly good job of cleaning, and the battery life is pretty good, at least to start with.  That’s been one of the issues with the older models we have, and I’m going to try changing cleaning habits with this one to see if a different usage/charging pattern will work better.

But so far, so good!

Plumbing FAIL.  I can’t replace the leaking spray hose in the kitchen sink because the !*!)!$)# nut is *inside* the hole in the countertop.  The fix is clearly to remove the faucet, disconnect the hose from the it, add an extension to the spray hose attachment point so it will end up below the countertop, reinstalling the faucet, and then attaching the new hose.

The problem could have been avoided if, when the kitchen was remodeled, the workers had spent about 30 seconds thinking about maintenance.  If they’d noticed the spray hose attachment point didn’t extend below the countertop, they could have put a 1″ long extension on it, and the leaky spray hose would have been fixed already.  Instead there’s a much bigger operation needed to deal with the repair, doing what they should have done on installation.  And its more plumbing than I can stand to do, even though a faucet replacement is comparatively easy.  Time to pay the plumber.  Yecch.