The Joy of Excellence

  • March 2012 Train to Chicago

    I thought I’d go visit one of my sons in Chicago this weekend but rather than fly that I’d take the train. It is clearly a long trip… I left Denver about 9pm Thursday and should arrive in Chicago about 5pm Friday. I went coach rather than a sleeper car. Of course many of you…

  • My Achilles’ Heel–Ouch!

    I HATE it when I miss a spot with my sunblock… Today I missed about a 1” square patch on my Achilles’ heel… Then I went out and spent 3 hours in the sun riding my bicycle. While it was overcast much of the time, that doesn’t really matter. Today was another beautiful day for…

  • Champa Cam

    This is what I had to do to get images from my home to the web… Motivation I travel from time to time and would like to see what’s going on at my home. At least what the weather is like. So I asked a friend (a web cam guru) what I should do. The…

  • Great Resource for TFS Integration

    This is a great site for programmatically connecting to TFS (Team Foundation Server) to perform certain tasks. Shai Raiten’s blog : http://beta.blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/shair/archive/tags/TFS+API/default.aspx

  • Something Peaceful About Snowing Nights

    Tonight there was a light snow by comparison with last week’s snow. I need to investigate the acoustical properties of snow. I’m always amazed how quiet it is after a snow fall… Here is a picture as the snow was falling this evening…

  • New Year’s 2012

    2011 was a year of change and by the time I reached New Year’s Eve and started work on my resolutions I was quite shocked. I have better measurements for January 2012 so I’ll use those numbers: I weigh 10 pounds less today than I did the day I graduated from high school. (was 161…

  • Software Architecture–Do One Thing Very Well

    As I look at nature, I’m struck by the idea that for truly reusable software you must architect it following the principle that it must do one thing and only one thing very well. Think about it for a moment… We are all made up of atoms. Individual units that generally stand the test of…

  • Strategic Productivity–Ask the right question

    Headline: Balance is required to chose the right approach when developing. If you only ask the question, “What is the fastest way for me to get this done?” your skills will become dull very quickly. What’s the Right Question? When someone is asked to produce some functionality there is a lot of inertia. Inertia from…