August 16, 2010 - One Week at Home

August 6, 2010 - Why do People Like Apple?

June 1, 2010 - Playing with Nim

May 16, 2010 - Daughters Meet Nimueh

My older daughters got to see Nimueh today. I didn't hear exactly what was going on, but there was a brief window where they allowed kids into the NICU. It was their first chance to see their baby sister -- almost 7 weeks after she was born. Nimueh was doing good. Her O2 saturation improved when the girls were there (we generally equate positive numbers on the machinery to happiness).

April 12, 2010 - Baby Nimueh

April 12, 2010 - FFXIII

February 24, 2010 - The Fourth Is Not Strong With This One

February 23, 2010 - New Home

Our offer for a new home was accepted today. My wife and I have been discussing our need (or want) for a bigger house and more property for most of our marriage. We finally found a house we like on land we like without a really bad commute. The home is 13 years old (built in 1997) and 3400 sq ft.  It has a huge wrap-around porch, and a wrap-around balcony!  it's on 6.4 acres of land with access to a 25-acre pond.  It already has Verizon Fios (fiber optic internet) installed!  The private driveway is 600-feet long; unfortunately, it's a dirt driveway.  It has a two-car garage, but plenty of driveway for more cars.  it has two living rooms and a dining room -- all three larger than the living room in my current home. Most of the pictures are from the online real estate ads for the house, so... that's not my furniture.  The pictures are: the front-left of the house at a distance, a satellite view of the land, a closer view of the house from the front-left showing off patio and balcony, the driveway, the back of the house (near the garage), the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the master bedroom, the second living room, and another picture (without furniture) of the master bedroom, and the master bathroom.

January 11, 2010 - Computer Fried

My home computer was off when I went to use it Saturday afternoon.  When I attempted to boot it, it immediately turned itself off.  While tinkering with it, I found that the fan on one of my graphics cards (an NVidia 8600) was totally gummed up (?).  I managed to power up the motherboard long enough for it spark up and catch fire.  I bought a new power supply, which is the most common hardware failure I experience, but that didn't solve my problem.

My other graphics card looks good, and my power supply seemed fine, so I bought another motherboard.  I spent an hour or so to disconnect and reconnect everything to the new motherboard, but it still wouldn't boot up.  Of the main components that could cause the problem, I could still replace the CPU and memory.  Tests with each of the memory modules faired no better, so I went out and bought a new CPU today.  That wasn't cheap, as I'm on a Core2Quad.  I sure hope this works out.

What really bothers me is that I've now bought almost all the components necessary to build a complete new system, and I've built an OLD system.  I might as well have bought cutting edge hardware, if I had known that I was going to buy all the main pieces anew.

January 7, 2010 - Theory - Definition vs the Colloquialisms

I was in a discussion with one of my coworkers about political affiliation and I was expressing my consternation that I am predominantly a conservative person, but find myself in an incompatible position with the republican party on many topics.  I am generally a political absentee -- skipping the entire political process most years.

As an example, I cited separation of church and state -- something that Republicans seem to disagree rather strongly with.  My coworker said that he thought the topic was blown completely out of proportion, which is something that I somewhat agree with.  He mentioned that in his conservative high school, they respectfully and equally discussed both "theories" of evolution and creationism.

This irked the crap out of me, because the ensuing conversation highlighted a number of things.  Firstly, the whole "separation of church and state" thing had broken down in his education.  Secondly, the consequence is that my friend doesn't understand what a theory is, at all.  And thirdly that his impression of scientific theories -- like the big bang and evolution -- is that they are just ideas, and not supported or supportable by evidence and experimentation.

In non-scientific and non-mathematical circles, a "theory" is colloquially defined as "an idea."  In this colloquialism, any idea can be a theory and there are no rules, constraints, or qualifications needed in order for the theory to exist.  This is the definition of the word "theory" as used in creationism.

In formal systems of logic, induction, and deduction -- the world where a word like "theory" was needed, created, and formalized -- the word has a far more specific meaning.  A theory is an idea that adheres to systems of logic and deduction.  It is predictive in nature.  It is falsifiable.  And it has already been tested by repeated experimentation.  In scientific parlance, a theory is as close to "fact" as any piece of inductive logic can ever aspire.

Sadly, many people -- under the influence of religion -- don't understand that a theory is scientifically equivalent to a fact for as long as it is considered valid.

January 6, 2010 - Business Requirements

I was in a conversation with a coworker about a business requirements document.  The document was 5 pages long, and consisted of a title page, a table of contents page, a document metadata page (who wrote it, date, audience, revision history), a brief introduction, literally three sentances describing the business requirements, and a page with a list of "calculations" -- a list of numbers that differentiated bad values from good ones.  He had not written the document, and his business analyst seems to be new to the role.  He felt that it didn't contain enough information and asked me what else should be in there.

It reminded me of a series of conversations that I had with developers at my previous company.  In Oxy, most of the developers were responsible for creating their own business requirements, and there was a time when we went through a lot of contractors who weren't used to doing such things for themselves.  After watching a few of them flounder and develop severely crippled applications, I put together the following rules for any data-enabled system:

1.  Each piece of data should have a tool that searches for it.
2.  Each type of data should have a tool that allows for adding new data.
3.  Each type of data should have a tool that allows for editing the data.
4.  Each type of data should have a tool that allows for deleting the data.
5.  Security should be considered for each tool (action) and considered on a record-by-record basis.
6.  Almost every system requires some level of reporting.  A "good enough" search tool sometimes replaces this.
7.  Consider how the user will navigate the application to find these tools.  (a reporting dashboard?  An admin section?)

All of these basic rules apply to almost every system, and when they don't explicitly apply, they should at least be considered.  Navigate, Add, Edit, Delete, Search, Report, & Security.

In my current coworker's case, the data comes from an external system in a feed, so he didn't feel that add/edit/delete applied to his system.  I asked him if the feed ever included new data.  Yes.  I asked him if the feed ever included old data that had been altered in some way.  Yes.  I asked him if the feed ever removed records.  Yes.  Are there any special considerations that need to be made when these three events occur?  Yes.  Admittedly, this isn't the same as developing add/edit/delete tools, and my rule is stretched quite a bit when I try to apply it here, but the exercise is similar:  How will the data change and what needs to be done to make everything work?

Business requirements -- and the skill of Business Analysis -- encompasses a lot more than just thinking through these few questions, and I don't mean to censor or trivialize the skill.  But for a person new to the role, and especially a person who is performing several roles and isn't specialized in this one, these points should be a good place to start.