I did it. I waited until now (though there were some personal extenuating circumstances) to finish my Christmas shopping. Given my mortal fear of shopping, I had intended on doing most of my shopping online. I was encouraged by Amazon’s banner indicating that not only wasn’t I too late to...

The Pragmatic Programmers have suggested that you get a lot out of learning a new programming language a year. I’ve been doing programming for a long time, and though I’ve learned a number of languages over the years, but I think I’m still behind. This year I’ve been learning Ruby...

Recently at work, there has been a push to not only standardize on a software diagramming tool, but to enforce its use for all projects. I’m naturally opposed to this “one size fits all” approach, but it also made me think about the ways teams use software documentation. It took...

Anton sent me a link to Damien Katz’s “funny because it’s true” article about the symptoms of being a crappy programmer. I wish everyone at work would read and think about this. The fact of the matter is that everyone is guilty of something on this list from time to...

Keep your cat away from my bird feeders! Favorite quote: It was crouched, as usual, under one of our bird feeders & I fired from some distance with bird shot.