• 11:18 Testing NLs while listening to the varied noises of furnace duct cleaning. Kinda like hearing balls roll around under a pool table+vacuums.
• 13:01 Twitter's older button is missing from Recent tab, but still on Replies and Archive. Interesting.

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The pan I baked tonight turned out very well, so notes. Of course if you want to do a variant you can change / subtract as needed. ( Read more... )

• 16:43 Downloading yet another IE 6 VHD. Bonus: IE 8 beta VHD.
• 16:52 Fyi - IE VHDs - tinyurl.com/y64upm

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• 13:59 Want: A good rain to clear the air. Get: Overcast skies & humidity.
• 19:57 Mapping out puzzle pirate moves with bowl, napkins, and usb key after dinner.

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• 22:10 Car's odometer reading is a palindrome. This observation brought to you by skydancer.
• 11:12 Jesse made eggs & pancakes this morning. Mmmm. I am loved. <3 <3 <3
• 15:14 Watching a seaplane fly slllowwwly by on its way to land on Lake Washington.

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Whenever I conduct workshops with any group, I ask people how free they feel and to rate themselves on a scale of 0 to 100. The responses are usually about the same whether I am talking to people in a correctional facility or at a workplace. I have learned firsthand that some people feel free while behind bars (and use their time in a positive way), yet others feel “locked up” while living in society.
[...]
[W]ouldn’t it be great if we didn’t define ourselves by our work? It should be just as valid to define ourselves by our leisure.
- Alison Link, quoted in The New York Times

I thought those were worth thinking about.

• 14:30 Shoe shopping ... It sucks because it takes so long to find comfortable shoes.
• 15:07 1.5 hours, 3rd store.
• 16:12 Took a brief food break, now trying on at store 4.
• 16:57 On to store 5 - Nordy.
• 17:21 Getting a mocha at the dept store where i got my very first mocha.
• 17:56 Bellevue Square. It seems like a mob scene to me but we're told it's slow right now.
• 19:38 My haul - 1 pair black sandals, 1 pair green trainers, 1 silver tote bag. :)

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• 11:48 Interesting read on how some corporate cultures thrive on fear - tinyurl.com/6p5cam
• 19:43 At crossroads waiting for iron man to start. :)
• 19:47 Remember when there were just ads for movies before the movies not cars?

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• 17:45 Dumb stupid cirque is going to screw up traffic for a month??? Argh!!

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• 13:38 1/2 an hour ago I put sunscreen on my arms because the sunlight was stinging in that "going to burn" fashion. Now? Hail. I am amused. :)
• 14:14 :: Wonders how quickly the GTA IV virus is spreading ::
• 14:16 .... that's "GTA IV virus" meaning "need to call in sick", not "need to update MacAfee" :)

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• 17:10 At lenscrafters. I can haz un-scuffed lenses. :)
• 19:35 Is 7:45pm too early for those over 8 years old to go to bed?

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• 16:32 You know it's a good Saturday when breakfast is at noon and lunch is at 3 ;)
• 19:31 Question: Do those with "locked" twitters get businesses following them too? (I assume they're adding me as an advertising measure)
• 21:00 Got Coulton's 'Baby Got Back' stuck in my head. 'I like big butts & I cannot lie...'

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• 15:33 Did a Friday afternoon mocha run with Jen W. :)
• 16:06 "In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time." John C Dvorak
• 16:10 "Most of what others say or do is about them, not you." tinyurl.com/5qjgxe
• 16:10 "If you carry that to the next logical step, that also means that much of what you say about others if really about you.... hmmm... "
• 16:52 Small child arrived to pick up coworker. Orange Starbucks caffeine monster (tinyurl.com/6lp8d7) compelled to play peek-a-boo.
• 18:40 Bird convention at city hall campus. Loud too.

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Saving money by simplifying...

Sometimes figuring out what really matters takes time.

"I want to think M&Ms are better than money, because you can eat them."

Thoughts on the Desiderata.

• 11:54 It's Dine Out for Life day, so I'm off to lunch ;) www.diningoutforlife.com/
• 16:35 Reportedly (Reuters, not Onion) Kinshasa is freaking over theft of, er, "mojo" via witchcraft. tinyurl.com/6hky6u

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• 13:00 New in-office-building cafe finally open. They are giving out free sandwiches and salads for lunch. w00t
• 13:44 Headache, headache, go away, come again some other day...
• 14:09 Coworker asked me to launch iTunes so she can get a Springsteen fix. Guess I'm an enabler ;)
• 21:38 I am really lucky to not only have a wonderful husband, but also friends who are available for hugs or games or dinner or what-have-you. :)

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With thanks to mistress_gaelan:

Practical vampires are the people, places, institutions, beliefs, and situations we deal with every day that drain us of our time, our energy, and our good will. They are personal to us and defined not by what they do but rather by how we are affected by them. When we diagnose a vampire in our lives, it is by looking at our wounds, and not by looking at the vampire. [...]

Practical vampire slaying is founded on the spiritual principle that a vampire cannot enter into our lives to feed without first receiving our invitation to do so. Taking responsibility for what enters our lives and how we deal with it is how we reclaim our power to choose for ourselves what we want to do about our vampires.

Sometimes we choose to evict them by "revoking our invitations," and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we are ready to be rid of our vampires and other times we're not. It's all about having a choice. &emdash; The Practical Vampire Slayer

There's definitely some good stuff in comparing boundary-violators to vampires. At the same time, my work drains me of time, energy, and sometimes of good will - but I get money and satisfaction out of work. Overall I consider it a fair exchange. I also know that others would want to alter the bargain (less work, more money, different location, different sort of work, etc) and that is fine too.

For me, it's the lack of fair exchange that defines a problem. :)

• 10:09 I had my first-ever mocha at a clothing retailer (Nordy's ; ) That was back in, um, 82? 83? Am I old?
• 10:16 "To my embarrassment, I was born in bed with a lady." - Wilson Mizner tinyurl.com/6mbkt8

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Faulty character set for text messaging results in misunderstanding which results in assault and death.

Because of course if an insult is on a computer / cellphone screen, it must have been deliberately sent and cannot have been a bug or typo. And of course an insult cannot be mended with an apology.

There are days when I really do not understand humans.

Apparently the pedestrian bridge in the Arboretum (also an aqueduct) not only has several warning signs advising drivers that it's only got 9' of clearance, but Raymond notes there is a laser sensor which triggers flashing yellow lights if an over-height vehicle approaches.

So how did the driver a of 12' high bus manage to hit it? Simple - he set his GPS to "bus" and assumed it wouldn't route him somewhere that didn't have "bus" clearance. The driver didn't think he had to worry about clearance, so he didn't see the lights or signs. (Raymond linked to this article on inattentional blindness, which I thought was pretty useful.)

As it happens, the bus had an off-the-shelf GPS that knew not to send him to routes generally closed to buses, but not one that tracks clearance height. (One clue might have been that the GPS didn't ask him the height of his bus.) The GPS company spokesman notes "Stoplights aren't in our databases, either, but you're still expected to stop for stoplights."

Some companies do send people out to collect clearance height data and create specialty GPS packages that calculate clearances, but it's a specialty item mostly geared to truckers. This article doesn't discuss price but it sounds like it's more expensive, too.

(Btw, all the links here are from Raymond's post. I'm including them here because I found them pretty useful.)

• 16:49 OMG, wikihow has "How to Make Chocolate" starting from raw beans. www.wikihow.com/Make-Chocolate

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• 16:22 The Three Lions people seem to be used to us having more friends show up over time. #


• 16:25 Last weekend was 80F. This weekend is in the 40s. Hi Spring. #


• 20:01 I have a copy of Vixy & Tony's new CD. Yay. But it would be a little rude to leave the live show to listen to the CD. Oops. #


• 20:04 ...and it's 8pm & Vixy is singing 'The Girl That's Never Been'. :) #


• 20:41 I'm never sure if 'Rich Fantasy Lives' is more sad or sweet. #

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(ETA links & some cleanup)

• 10:00 @penelopetrunk added me? Hm. I do read her blog, why not her tweets? Much less freaky than @PastorMark.


• 12:51 Reportedly it's been snowing at Snoqualmie Ridge all day...


• 18:46 Yes, we have snow on the ground in Redmond today, too. Jesse is heading to Dustin's to see if anyone wants to have a snowball fight.

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• 22:05 They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse. - Emily Dickinson #
• 10:40 Psychology Today on caffeine - besides increasing heart rate it blocks the "sleepy" neurotransmitter adenosine. tinyurl.com/3zskn4 #
• 12:42 "Don’t be rude to the wait staff" & other useful things to know tinyurl.com/69ha2k #

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...is that often the metrics aren't what you really wanted. In tech support, "shorter calls" were a big metric. Shorter calls meant more customers were served and problems were solved more efficiently, right? Right?

Some calls, yes. Perhaps even the 50% or 80% most common calls. But not the less common calls. Not the troublesome calls. Those took longer, and one 1/2 hour call would screw up your stats for the day.

"Of course you should take the time to do the job right, just not more time than necessary," management would chirp. And yet the rewards went to those who did the job quickly - and not necessarily well. Since people repeat the behavior that gets rewards, this led to less service.

In testing, focusing on bug counts can be a similar problem¹. My first test lead didn't look at how many bugs were reported by each individual on his team. Instead, he read every bug reported by his team. He found it was very clear who was breaking bugs into tiny little bits so's to inflate bug counts (often a habit acquired elsewhere), who was sloppy in figuring out repros, who was noticing that two different symptoms had a common cause and reporting it as such, who was mostly finding bugs in areas other than their own (which if a conversation determined their area just didn't have many bugs to find could be a good thing) and so on.

Of course, it was expected that a test lead would read and know all the bugs for the areas covered by his team. And my first test lead did so. Among other things, this made him aware of what was being reported by those not assigned to test the area. (Often these were bugs on areas that weren't officially released for testing yet and such. But sometimes it was a clue that tests needed revising.)

Sometimes the focus on bug count goes beyond using it as a measure of tester productivity. The Defect Black Market relates just one example. This Dilbert shows a slightly less, er, subtle approach.

¹The problems with using bug counts as a measure of tester productivity are discussed in-depth in Testing Computer Software by Kaner et al.

What to do if you haven't filed your tax return.

One man's tale of how the IRS became his favorite creditor. It's sorta surreal.

And from XKCD: how to pirate techno music :)

Oklahoma sex offender registry exposes and executes SQL statements in the URL, enabling downloads of social security numbers, birthdates, addresses, et cetera. Who knows, maybe their site executed INSERT statements too.

Nobody accessing sensitive government databases should assume that users don't know SQL. And yet.

I tried to give options for the non-US taxpayers out there, but remember you can always click "submit" without filling in the poll to just see the answers.

Poll #1171586 US Tax Day
Open to: All, results viewable to: None

Do you consider today....

Are you....

According to MSNBC, the average person spends $207 and a day to file their tax returns. Did you...

...and how much time was spent on the return (and recordkeeping, if you care to guess)?

To quote the MSNBC article again, "One reason for this annual agony is that tax law keeps getting more complex. The instruction book for Form 1040 has grown from four pages in 1945 to 117 pages in 2000 and 155 pages last year." Did you read the 1040 instruction book?

Do you file both federal and state tax returns?

Do you ...

Do you feel: