4th of July Photos — Ocean Beach, San Diego

 

Read the rest of this posting for more Photos from the 4th of July Fireworks. All shots by Jordan

Moving Beyond Technical Elitism

Improving the quality of discourse amongst IT professionals is crucial to regaining the Respect that IT deserves.

The current debate techniques often used by varying camps are harmful to IT’s Image and Credibility and harmful to broadening the knowledge and ability of our profession.

On the one hand, Computer Science is supposedly a branch of mathematics and/or engineering, where various tradeoffs are discussed soberly and dispassionately.  On the other hand, the facts on the ground show a clear disposition towards demonizing the opposition and labeling everyone who uses an alternative technology as an ignoramus or worse.

Whether it’s Mac versus PC, Linux versus Windows, Agile versus Waterfall, Rails Versus Java, ad nauseum, the level of rhetoric and animosity between the advocates and detractors makes rational discussions of these topics nearly impossible.

Why is this considered acceptable, when it is clearly counter to our mission as Engineers, which is developing the best products possible, in the best manner possible, which means having a healthy and rational conversation about the various technologies out there and which are most applicable for a given project?

Some Photos from San Francisco

I was up in SF for a couple of days last week and took a few shots….

More shots + captions will appear soon…

 

The Folly of all these Work for Sweat Equity postings on Craigslist et al

Pssst… Hey buddy…. do you want to work for equity? No pay? For six months or so?

Does anyone else get tired of these constant pitches?

Fairly Evaluting Consultant Versus Full Time Rates, Part I

Any Consultant will Frequently be engaged in rate discussions with potential clients.  Many times these are hiring managers, not HR folks.

Sometimes, these hiring managers expect consultants to work for the same hourly rate a full timer would perform the same task for.

If they are quoted a rate higher than that, they feel they are being “ripped off”.  Are they?

Agile & Waterfall are two sides of the exact same Coin

Agile & Waterfall are two sides of the exact same Coin, and are equally good or bad.

Agile enthusiasts enjoy lambasting waterfall while espousing “Agile”, however the two techniques are exactly the same.

“Waterfall” is basically a Strategic method of attaining goals, and “Agile” is basically a Tactical method for achieving goals.

Both are equally limited; strategy without tactics is ineffective, and tactics without strategy are especially ineffective, especially over a longer term.

What to do when Agile/Scrum isn’t working in your shop?

By this time, probably at least a few shops have given a try to Agile and Scrum.  For some, things have probably been going fine. For others, perhaps not so fine.  What to do when Agile/Scrum isn’t working for your shop?

Are you charging too little?

I found a great little list over at Freelance Switch.

http://freelanceswitch.com/humour/top-ten-signs-you-may-be-charging-too-little/

One of my favorites:

Number 6:
Clients pay your invoices in cash from their wallet.

 

Also check out:

http://freelanceswitch.com/humour/top-ten-signs-you-may-be-charging-too-much/

Number 9:
You’re still living off a job you finished in 2005.

Losing space on Drive C? Check your WER ReportQueue

I had been losing space on Drive C for awhile and it seemed odd to me as I rarely store things on Drive C, therefore the space should not be going down.

It ended up I had 255 GB (!) of files stacked up in the Windows Error Reporting Service queue in C:\programdata\microsoft\windows\wer\reportqueue

Definitely worth checking from time to time if you have apps that crash a lot and use Windows Vista

Offshoring: Fool’s Gold or Real Savings?

One thing that amazes me is that some startups still consider offshoring a cost saving option.  Offshoring will almost certainly guarantee that your first implementation will be a failure and a huge amount of time and money will be wasted. The notion that some people still think offshoring will lead to cost savings means they simply haven’t tried offshoring before.

Even sillier is venture capital boards who encourage their young companies to offshore rather than hire US Based developers.