Meticulous

Note: this is a second third starting of the series… I have posted it and un-posted, posted it and un-posted it again and now I’m posting it for the final time. A woman told me my blog would be more interesting if I posted more stuff about myself so here is some that has been lingering around since Christmas but I never felt really comfortable about posting for real. So here it goes, just steer clear of that un-publish button now.

L’Entrada

One developer, two interesting, beautiful, seemingly single women, unsynchronized holidays, our cool chief and a long-time but still somewhat unknown colleague, an angry grand mother, two unnecessary disturbed parents, an innocent next door neighbor and a beloved car with way to powerful sound equipment. This is a Christmas story like no other.

It was the Friday evening just before Christmas, during the annual Christmas drink of our shop, that something changed in me. Poetically, a long forgotten fire was rekindled. It has been a long time since I really connected with a woman and the last few times I really did she was either not ready to commit, not available or simply not interested. There were women but none of those could live up to my dreams so in the end no real relations where forged.

Now there are two women who are seemingly single. They are both intellectually engaging and I am very curious to find out more about either one of them. There is a small problem though – I know them for, like six months and I haven’t shown any kind of real interest during all that time. I tried to answer polite when one of them spoke to me directly but usually I was happy just to mumble something that might be interpreted as a reasonable answer.

Strangely enough I never deemed myself worthy for neither one of them but a short while ago we had our annual company party followed by the the Christmas drink a few weeks later; both those events made me a different person. Not only thanks to a little encouragement from the chief and a good colleague but also due to the fact that I was finally able to talk to them like myself – even if it was made possible thanks to some helpful beers.

Continues with part II. Continue reading “Meticulous”

Shiba

If I’m ever going to have a dog in the near future then it’s going to be a Shiba Inu I guess. An Akita Inu would also be nice but unfortunatly I don’t really have the room and dog know-how for one of those puppies yet. Last year during summer I was lucky to spot a nice lady in the park with two of these very nice Shiba’s during my break and she was kind enough to let me take a photo of one of them.

Shiba Inu

Now if only I can find a good breeder and the time to bring one up and one of my childhood dreams is fulfilled. We never really had a dog at home and in hindsight that was probably for the best even though I always wanted one. Now I finally have the freedom and the money to purchase one but unfortunately there is also a full time job involved and bringing up a pup definitely requires some flexible working hours. Continue reading “Shiba”

Almost

Tomorrow is the day. After weeks of anticipation it is, once again, time for our annual company skiing trip. Yes, two years ago I broke my ankle in a nasty way and last year I skipped. This year I’m anxious to go and not the least because of a trip to the nearby Nueschwanstein Castle.

And even though I don’t intend to go skiing this year I’m still packing all the gear I’ve got including thermal underwear, thermal gloves, therm socks, balaclava, skiing goggles, hard gloves, soft gloves and two sets of walkie-talkies. Just to make sure that – might I want to try out a not so sleep slope – I come fully prepared.

More Ski Gear

I’m also taking my DVD camera and a host of adapters to charge all the damn equipment. Now the only thing that’s left is to find some normal clothes and a bag or two to stuff it all in and I will be ready to go.

Seriously though, who thinks that we will be able to leave at our scheduled 15:00?

Update 21:10: Was just updated with the latest information and apparently we are not going to Lermoos anymore. Our destination is supposed to be nearby but I am not sure of where exactly we are heading. This doesn’t look good for our bus which I am supposed to drive together with Sven but let’s just hope we are able to follow the convoy and everything will be fine. Continue reading “Almost”

Dual/Triple

Last Saturday I went to a colleague of my brother who is also heavily into producing music. His setup was pretty impressing with equipment, instruments, computers and cables everywhere but the eye catching centerpiece was his triple monitor setup with a total resolution of 3840×1024. That is a lot of desktop space and it is all made possible thanks to the Triple Head 2Go.

Now I want one of these puppies too but went for the Dual Head 2Go instead. I really wanted to go for the Triple Head of course but investing in three TFT screens and the magic box was too much. And I don’t really intend to use it for gaming because my system can’t handle the resolutions involved with three screens anyway.

So tonight I went to our local computer corner and had them order one for me. I could easily order it of the internet myself but I appreciate a computer store nearby and now those guys might make some money of it too. At least they get to order something that they’ve never ordered before.

Update 13-03-2007: Just got a call from one of the guys and apparently my USB powered Matrox Dual Head 2Go is already arriving tomorrow! After having to wait almost two weeks for my new external hard drive this is a pleasant surprise indeed! Continue reading “Dual/Triple”

FizzBusted

Lately there has been a lot of buzz about FizzBuzz but Giles Bowkett in his post FizzBuzters hit the nail right on the head:

“Keep in mind, FizzBuzz is basically an idiot detector. Anybody who bothers to code FizzBuzz is saying, ooh, an idiot detector. I’d better aim this at my own head and see what happens. Then they manage to code FizzBuzz and they go, “yay! I’m not an idiot!”

At the risk of raining on their parades, if you aim an idiot detector at your own head, it really doesn’t matter what the readout is.”

Continue reading “FizzBusted”

Firefox,

Tried to install the dutch language dictionary on my dutch Firefox 2.0.0.2 installation but apparently either Firefox or the plugin had mixed feelings about it…

WTF? Just install it Firefox you now you want to...

It roughly translates to something like: “Dutch Dictionary 1.0.4 could not be installed because it is not compatible with this version of Firefox 2.0.0.2. (Dutch Dictionary 1.0.4 only works with Firefox versions 2.0.0.* to 3.0a1)”.

If I weren’t familiar with wildcards I wouldn’t even understand the full WTF of this message. For my less savvy friends: the star is a so called wildcard character and it basically means anything. So the above message would mean that the dutch dictionary plugin cannot be installed because apparently my version of Firefox (2.0.0.2) is not in the range of 2.0.0.anything anymore. So it seems that the number 2 has gained some kind of magical property that excludes it from being in the set of anything. We all know that anything is a pretty huge set of things so there might be some dark forces at work here. My prime suspect is Microsoft.

Anyway, this all means that I will have to rely on my own dutch and even though this is supposed to be my native language, my spelling pretty much sucks. If you suck at dutch spelling too then good for you! Rest assure that it is not us being stupid but simply a general error in the spelling rules itself. Continue reading “Firefox,”

Go

Spend the first half of the day killing bugs in an application that we are developing. Luckely for me, these bugs happen to be in one of the ugliest looking editor screens that I have ever seen. I have the right to say this because I created this horrid looking thing myself. Had to model it after an existing form already in use in another application so I didn’t really get to redesign it even though I really wanted to. I just pushed some buttons being the good little coding monkey that I am and made a new thing to look just as ugly as the old thing. Yeah! Go monkey coding power!

I was able to fabricate a vastly more attractive and reasonably functioning prototype screen in no time at all for everyone to shoot on but some people would rather spend time with way too long meetings with way too many people involved trying to discuss way too many things at the same time. It often leads to a whole day of talking and tends to suck the life out of me. I think I will evolve the prototype into a fully functioning replacement and hopefully prove that the new version is a lot better than the old one because I’m really starting to dislike working on that thing.

It’s not all gloomy though. There is now a reasonably structured and ongoing effort to improve the overall code base which has a lot of broken windows. At least the interface is looking sleek again and are almost fully up-to-date with our dependency libraries. We are now strictly using Subversion for source control combined with Trac for some basic bookkeeping. Even better yet, my project lead and I agreed on an iterative development scheme with cycles of two weeks which looks an awful lot like the process described by Tobias Mayer on his Agile Thinking Blog. Continue reading “Go”

The

So my blog finally has a new name. Even though “The Meticulous Geek” had gained some fame in its own way I was thinking about a new name for quite some time. Thinking back I miss the name already here are three poor and one good reason why The Chances Are Nil” might be a better name:

  • Nil is a programmers word and as I do a lot of programming that somewhat makes sense…
  • The phrase can either be positive or negative although I would mostly see myself using it to describe the likelihood of a bug reappearing.
  • I do not really feel like stamping myself as a meticulous geek anymore. Even though I am.
  • There was this post on a blog…

And there you have it. It is definitive even though most of the reasons suck. The curtain has closed, reopened and headers have changed. The title has changed, the look and feel have changed and even the content is slowly changing. There is a whole new blog in town and things will never be the same anymore.

Cue dramatic music. Continue reading “The”