An errand day.

2012-02-27: Day +77.

I took an extra day this weekend just to be with my sweetie after her three week absence :).

We did a bunch of chores in the AM, the most interesting of which was to take a look at married student residences at the UofC. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'll be doing nothing but school full-time from May forward (April is half and half). So, we thought it a good idea to check them out and see if these would be a good fit.

The initial impression was pretty favourable. For two people, there is a good amount of space, including an actual basement. (Quite a bit better than what I lived in in the 70s at the UofA). So, we sat with it for the day and sat with it and ....

At supper, we made this fantastic salad (Big bowl of greens, veggies, feta cheese, avocado). After supper, we loaded the dishwasher and talked it through.

It just would not make sense.

The initial thought was that it would save us a bunch of money and we would be walking distance to all of the UofC (including the gym, library and bookstore). The thing is, though, it doesn't really save us that much actual money. Cash flow would be better, of course, but at the end of the year, our asset base would be pretty close either way. So, no advantage there. Secondly, I already live a 25-30 minute walk from the UofC. So, yes, a bit further and less likely to do it for a casual gym visit. Definitely not a clear win.

The clear loss, however, was the kitchen. They are quite small. Having just completed a 4 week course in chef school, that doesn't appeal to either of us :).

Final nails in the coffin:

• No laundry in the units. (UofA had those).
• Moving costs and hassle
• Putting items into storage
• Moving hassle
• Less comfortable surroundings
• Moving hassle

So - we're staying put for another year. (This is about the 10th time we have made this decision....)

Sleepy Sunday too!

2012-02-26: Day +76.

"Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"

Well, we certainly lived that last night / today. Asleep by nine, and woke up at 5:30AM. Again, a lovely day inside away from the cold. Visiting, reading and catching up.

Sleepy Saturday

2012-02-25: Day +75.

With my sweetheart arriving after midnight, we didn't get to bed/sleep until after 3:00 AM. We had a bit of a sleep-in — to about 9:00, but I was wasted pretty much the whole day. Tea helped.

It was a lovely relaxing day. We stayed inside as it was bitter outside and just visited and caught up on life.

For supper, I was treated with a mushroom dumpling, using rice wrappers. Man, did that perk me up. They were delicious! Marie made them up on the spot, loosely based on the ones she did for her graduation.

Bella Nocé!

2012-02-24: Day +74.

This is it!

Sweetie arrives in about an hour. Heading up to the airport to get her and then disappearing in the house for the next few days. I'm taking Monday off work so I can be with her. All the dishes are clean, all the clothes, towels, floors etc. are clean. I bought groceries. We're good.

One more sleep!

2012-02-23: Day +73.

One more sleep and my sweetheart arrives!

I worked from home today. As I've said before, I always get a bit amazed at just how productive I am when I do that. I get through emails, I get things crossed off my todo list, I get a better sleep and generally just feel like a lot gets done.

I did some more work on the cucumber with uispec4j. Works very smoothly ... except... it won't terminate. Sigh. Always something. I've tried dispose on the main interceptor, dispose on the main window, getting the frame of the main window and disposing that, reset the environment and nothing works. Of course, java.lang.System.exit(0) does the trick, but it then cuts out of cucumber as well.

That is really the strangest thing. Cucumber finishes and gives its stats and so forth - but the threads just keep on running. Hopefully I will find something simple that handles that eventually. For now, I'm just going to proceed with actually doing some BDD/TDD on this program.

Swingtown!

2012-02-22: Day +72.

I finally took the plunge and tried uispec4j with cucumber for BDD on Swing. A little fussing and a little pushing and it seems to be doing everything I need.

It is different from jemmy in that it doesn't bring up the screen as it runs through the clicks. I actually like that as I find it less distracting. The other good thing is that it actually does work with menus.

I'm sure it has some things I won't like but that's ok, nothing is perfect.

Only two more sleeps until my sweetheart returns!

Caffeine withdrawal going ok. Most of the day without a headache, just body aches — primarily the leg. Thank goodness for tiger balm!

Caffeine free....

2012-02-21: Day +71.

Back to work after a nice four day weekend.

Today, I went caffeine free (at least, I think I did - I had a decaf Americano in the morning.)

Tough day. Depressed, lethargic, a headache all day and my leg hurt like fire. I managed to get in a full day at work, even with all that to complain about.

Once nice I was able to do at the end of the day was catch up on these blog entries. Finally. Blogging days after is rather useless. I remember bits of the day, but nothing is fresh, nothing is vibrant or has the same meaning as the day it occurs.

I had wanted to do more exploration with Cucumber and jemmy or uispec4j once I got home, but I just felt wiped. Instead, I watched a couple of episodes of Eureka and then crashed. I was in bed by 8:30 and slept through to 6:30.

Go see drogar.blogspot.com

2012-02-20: Day +70.

Wrote / published the blog post monkeybars-with-intellij-swing-designer

Back to programming

2012-02-19: Day +69.

Spent a fair amount of the day writing my blog on monkeybars with IntelliJ. I like to get these things as readable and sensible as possible. My sweetheart helped tons — as usual.

I actually had her do the same when I wrote my Master's Thesis (1Mb PDF), and it showed. (If you like, compare to my 1981 Thesis from the UofA.)

Struggled to get cucumber working with testing Swing - more on that in a couple of days.

Shopping, cleaning and chores

2012-02-18: Day +68.

Although I had intended to spend all four days of the weekend doing nothing but programming, a day off from that kind of thing is good.

So, today, I went around doing shopping, getting a couple of things, cleaning the house, doing laundry and generally just doing all the things that keep life livable.

Talked to my sweetheart lots today. (Sometimes every few minutes :).

Friday off!

2012-02-17: Day +67.

Tweeted today that I had monkeybars, IntelliJ, JRuby and Forms Designer working.  From that, I had very nice encouraging comments suggesting a blog would be in order.

It seems to me the twitter brings out the best of the web.

IntelliJ is quite the IDE

2012-02-16: Day +66.

So, IntelliJ has support or plugins for Cucumber, Scala, JRuby and on and on. Nice stuff. The only issue I having is the keystroke stuff, so I may switch it over to the emacs keys and upload/update my emacs plugin.

Cucumber support is quite nice - as long as you make JRuby the default in rvm. The JRuby cucumber task can not seem to find the cucumber gem, but the standard cucumber task just chugs along fine.

There are a couple of things that would be nice to have — for instance if you add code to lib/ruby and load that in env.rb, the steps within it are not found by IntelliJ, leaving them with a warning. No big deal as the execution just rolls along.

Decided on monkeybars

2012-02-15: Day +65.

I finally found the most up to date version of monkeybars, downloaded it and started trying in out in IntelliJ.

(BTW - typing monkeybars on the Mac has been over a week of frustration as it continually wants to put a space between the 'y' and the 'b'. Sigh)

Anyway, it seems to work really quite well. I've spent the afternoon just "spiking" code (read - playing around).

Happy Valentine's day.

2012-02-14: Day +64.

I'm in YYC, my sweetie is in OKC. Not what the best Valentine's day is made from.

Monday monday.

2012-02-13: Day +63.

As I write this, I am 8 days behind on my blogs.

Today was an uneventful day at work. Catching up a bit and doing Win7 stuff.

I've also finished reading all my testing books and now thinking about how to approach the quantum emulator interface.  I did a bit of research in JRuby interfaces to swing and the more I look at Monkeybars, the more I like it.

The 3D Phantom Menace

2012-02-12: Day +62.

I went to see the 3D release of the Phantom Menace yesterday with my daughter and Grandson.  I was one of those strange people who actually enjoyed the first release :)

It was good.

I had read a review on wired the day before that was so-so and I did agree with a couple of his points (Young Annikin's acting a bit uneven, the 3D didn't add a lot).  The only other big point was that the glasses definitely darkened the picture quite a bit.

Yummy yummy yummy

2012-02-11: Day +61.

More food photos of the dishes Marie is learning to do!

A working Friday

2012-02-10: Day +60.

One of our few Fridays that I had to work. Rather straightforward day, various meetings and so forth.

Up to the UofC in the afternoon to listen to Jonathan and more info on derivatives of computations.

Work work work

2012-02-09: Day +59.

Tuesdays and Thursdays seem to be my most crowded days at work. Typical T/Th is meetings from 9:00 AM through to 4:00 PM. Sometimes a break for lunch, sometimes not.

Wednesday == School Day

2012-02-08: Day +58.

Wednesdays I head up to the UofC late in the afternoon. Today I got to attend a seminar and then chat about development environments with some people. Nice stuff.

I've finished The Cucumber Book, Rails Test Prescriptions and most of The RSpec Book now. Now, to see how to apply them to my quantum emulator front end.

Good food going to be coming my way!

2012-02-07: Day +57.

My sweetheart is currently taking a course in RawFood Chefing. Here are some of the dishes she has been making:

Back to Work!

2012-02-06: Day +56.

As I got into work today, I had over 180 unread emails in my inbox. Yikes!

By 2:00PM, I was down to a dozen. good stuff.

Got home, still pooped from the cold, had a supper and just watched some shows then off to bed.

There are shows besides Bond.

2012-02-05: Day +55.

At least today, I thought about going to try to program a bit.

More TV.

Bond continues

2012-02-04: Day +54.

Still tired from the cold and all the travelling. More Bond.

Bond. James Bond.

2012-02-03: Day +53.

Still sick with cold - more James Bond flicks.

I hab a code

2012-02-02: Day +52.

I woke feeling sick as a dog with my cold. So no work, cancelled meetings, changed my voice message and cycled between drinking juice and watching old James Bond movies on Blu-Ray.

Fly, fly, fly away.

2012-02-01: Day + 51.

Had to fly back to YYC today. Interesting route - first from Oklahoma City to Houston, then Houston to Calgary. Hmmm.

Will Rogers World Airport and Houston airports: NOT FRIENDLY WIRELESS!!!! Intelligent airport operators offer at least a couple of hours of free wireless. These two cheapies only give you 20 minutes. Like that's useful.

I tried to upgrade to Business class from Houston to Calgary, but because I was booked on United and it was an AC flight - that was a no-go. As it turned out, no biggie. This was a 2x2 plane and I was able to move to the back and get a duo to myself. One thing I will give Air Canada — their in-the-back-of-the-seat entertainment centres are quite good. I was able to listen to almost 4 hours of baroque music through the flight.

Arriving at customs was a bit long. They must have had a couple of flights arrive all at the same time. I picked a wrong line, switched and then made it through quickly. Ah well - at least the luggage is out and waiting when you do that.

Then home - with sniffles....

A day like any other in OKC.

2012-01-31: Day +50.

Worked, ate at whole foods, added RSpec tests, spent time with my sweetheart.

First day of sweetie school!

2012-01-30: Day +49.

This was my sweetheart's first full day of raw chef school. Yes — creating raw food dishes. They got a new knife which doesn't fit her as well as the other knife, but also a gorgeous jacket and head wear. Maybe some pictures another time.

My leg / hip hurt like wildfire today after all the walking. So, we finally got a car for the next while. Much better. Two 25 minute walks a day is OK, but 5+ is just too much for the arthritis.

Worked today while sweetie was at school. As usual, working out of the office seems 5 times as productive as working in the office.

Further work on using Cucumber. I managed to get a complete scenario of an administrative user logging in and viewing a variety of pages. This is one of the most fascinating tools I have seen for development in a long time. I may see how it can be integrated into a Haskell development cycle.

Walked and walked and walked

2012-01-29: Day +48.

Walk from the hotel to whole foods, 25 minutes, buy some stuff.

Walk back to the hotel, 25 minutes, total 50.

Walk to Penn mall, 20 minutes, total 70.

(Cab to the hotel and then to whole foods — great cabbie accidentally gave him a 50 instead of a 20 because this !#^$!&#£ American money all looks the same, and he gave me change and showed me it was a 50.)

Walk from Whole foods to hotel, 25 minutes, total 95.

Walk from hotel to Matthew Kenney OKC, 27 minutes, total 122.

Walk from Matthew Kenney OKC to hotel, 28 minutes, total 150.

2 and 1/2 hours walking is enough in a day.

Oklahoma City - Relaxed people

2011-01-28: Day +47.

My sweetheart arrived just after noon today. Nice.

After a quick bite at the hotel, we wandered over to Matthew Kenney OKC to see the school and map the route there. From there we wandered kitty-corner to the Whole Foods to check it out.

We went through the store, then settled down to drink a Kombucha and just people-watched.

People watching here was fascinating. No one looked stressed. Everyone is polite. Husbands bought flowers to take home and walked out smiling.

The parking lot is clean. The cars are clean. There is space between the cars in each parking lot.

We are beginning to think OKC is just one big well-kept secret. No one tells you how nice it is here so they don't get too crowded.

A final minor note - Some long lost relative opened a clothing store here.

I took the TRAIN

2011-01-27: Day +46

The Heartland Flyer from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City.

I haven't been able to do this (a real - for transportation!) train trip since I was 18.

My dad worked for CN when I was a kid, and then retired. Because of that, since it was the days before Via Rail, i could get a free ticket to go anywhere.  Typically it was from Salmon Arm or Kamloops out to Calgary or Edmonton to visit my sister, but once I took it all the way from Kamloops to Tilbury, On, just to visit a girl.

Amazing rides in those days. The cars were single deck, separate dining car etc.

The Heartland Flyer was great. Just over $20 to go between the cities, easy boarding, had a duo seat to myself. It would be even greater to do it in the summer when you could see the scenery for longer.

Here are a couple of pics from the station and on board:

A work day in Denver

2011-02-26: Day +45

Work was definitely the focus once again today. Lots of meetings with people in Denver, one great success - we started getting people to agree the way the term "RAD" was being used was not correct. Up to now, the term meant "Develop in MS Access or Excel".

This has frustrated a number of the technical folks because RAD is really a process of development, not a technology. The big thing is that there is the (perceived) need to have a local developer available to create some Access and Excel solutions for end clients — and then either just turn them over to clients or possibly make them an IT supported item.

Quite a few of us have wanted the option to develop the latter kind in something more robust but still quick. (e.g., JRuby on Rails :).

Hope continues!

After that day, we all flew to Dallas. It was a bit frustrating for me as I had been unable to book a seat on the flight. Although I am a calm flyer, I am a nervous boarder :).  Being a biggish guy, I need a bit of space to feel even half-ways comfortable. I like to be sure I have an aisle seat and get on early enough to make sure I can put my backpack in the overhead.

Turned out to be just fine, got there, got a seat at the back of the plane and ended up not even having a person beside me.

Presentations work better when you are not tired

2011-01-25: day +44.

Long day again today.  For work, I had to prepare and give an overview of JIRA and how it is used where I am currently working. Preparing the presentation was pretty straightforward - just a few key points, a link to the Atlassian YouTube video and some screen shots.

The issue was that I had not done a run-through of the presentation (i.e., practice) before that. Normally, that isn't an issue as I do think quite quickly on my feet. However, with only 4-5 hours sleep last night and gut-wrenching cramps, I felt my performance was less than sensational.

Luckily for me, the audience was quite forgiving and things were OK. I just don't like feeling like I didn't deliver my best all the time.

A long day.

Actually, yesterday was day +43.

This was a loooong day. I got up at 5:30, got ready for work and plowed through a ton of things. I managed to catch up on a lot of email (down to 33 in the inbox) and then had to go out to supper with a bunch of people from work. That meant getting back to the computer and work at 10:30 or so. Yikes.

Then, a quick restart of some services and adding about 30 people to JIRA for the training tomorrow.

Now - Bed!

Life, the universe and everything.

Technically, yesterday was day +42. (The Answer!!)

I say technically, because in is 12:20 on the 25th, but I still haven't gone to bed yet.

It was a Monday. I did no research. I worked. I packed.

What can beat a brunch with friends?

Yesterday was day +41.

We had a lovely day yesterday other than both waking up with migraines from the Chinook.

We met our friends for a leisurely brunch at Bolero's and had a great time together with great conversation.

That was followed up by a bunch of running around and more chores at home. The evening was nice and relaxing, but we both found it a bit difficult to sleep.