David Anderson: Lean Kanban Southern Europe 2012 keynote
Another Reason Notre Dame Has a Terrible Football Team
Officers reported that several people began jumping over a fence when they arrived and, specifically, they observed a group of five men attempting to jump over a fence and ordered them to stop, said Capt. Phil Trent, South Bend police spokesman.
Police arrive to break up a party, five guys jump over a fence and the only two who get caught are Notre Dame football players.
Backup Quarterbacks
Oakland Raiders sign Matt Leinart to back up Carson Palmer
Deja vu! Here’s a picture of Matt Leinart backing up Carson Palmer 10 years ago.
Backing up both of these guys was Matt Cassel (#10), who has so far had a better NFL career than Leinart, despite a college career in which he threw zero touchdown passes and never started a game.
I don’t know who the other two kids are. The coaches are current Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian and current Hawaii head coach Norm Chow.
The Birth of Free Market Economics
Junior Seau, 1969-2012
Junior Seau Dead in Apparent Suicide
Seau was a legend in San Diego, where he lived and played most of his career. He was also a legendary member of the USC Trojan Family.
The number 55 is now synonymous at USC with great Trojan linebackers, but Seau was the player who made the number famous. It has since been worn by Willie McGinest, Chris Claiborne and Keith Rivers and is only assigned at the head coach’s discretion.
This picture was taken just a couple of weeks ago at the USC Spring Football game. He doesn’t look like someone ready to end his own life, but you never really know what someone’s life looks like from the inside.
R.I.P. Junior Seau #55
Ruby on Rails for Rubes
The biggest headache in software development is that most programmers can’t program and don’t want to learn anything.
I recently finished up a MOOC called Software Engineering for SaaS, offered by UC Berkeley through Coursera. For a modest investment of a few hours a week for five weeks, I learned some Ruby on Rails — a well-designed platform and a lot of fun to work with — as well as tools like GitHub, Cucumber, RSpec, SimpleCov and Heroku.
Over 50,000 students from 150 countries signed up for the class. According to a final email from the professors, about 10,000 students attempted at least one assignment or quiz. Or to look at another way, 80 percent of the students gave up without even trying.
Approximately 2,000 students, or 4 percent, completed all four of the assignments and the three quizzes.
One of the enrollees who gave up without trying is a former colleague of mine, an ASP.NET programmer, who threw in the towel when he realized he wasn’t going to be allowed to do the programming assignments in C#.
Evidently he read under Prerequisites: “Programming proficiency in an object-oriented programming language such as Java, C#, C++, Python, or Ruby” and missed the course description at the top of the page: “This course teaches the engineering fundamentals for long-lived software using the highly-productive Agile development method for Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails.”
“I’m not going to learn Ruby on Rails,” he said, as though it was a silly, irrelevant thing to suggest to a professional programmer, like learning a yo-yo trick.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. — William James
I’ve Got a Little List
From the LinkedIn profile of a linguistically challenged IT manager:
High-Level Strategic Planner and Executioner
Alternative Uses for Beer
I’m picking up a few things at Trader Joe’s — some Clif bars, a couple boxes of cereal and a bottle of IPA.
The checker points to the bottle and says, “That’s good. Have you tried it?” Like he’s the beer expert and I don’t know anything.
“Yeah, I’ve tried it.” Not to be outdone, I pointed to the cereal boxes and said, “Have you tried it on cereal?”
“No.”
“Well . . . think about it.”
Mobile Site vs. Full Site
From Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox:
The basic ideas are to:
- cut features
- cut content
- enlarge interface elements
This Scam Still Needs a Little Work
I got this in my email today:
From: paypal@service.com
Subject: account information needs to be updatedDear PayPal Costumer …
News Judgment
Dog bites man — not news.
Gravy-wrestling model hit in the face with monkey wrench after finding friend having sex on her sofa — now THAT’S news!
Aside
Steve Denning: The Best-Kept Management Secret On The Planet: Agile
Steal Like an Artist
There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income.
I think the same thing is true of idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.
Ashley Corral Wins 3-Pt Competition
It’s Not Easy Being a Dog
I’m taking a nap upstairs but I’m hearing noises from downstairs. When I hear a noise, I have to estimate how likely it is to be food-related, and how likely it is if I get up and go downstairs I’ll be able to get some of it.
I can stay right here and snooze. That’s a sure thing. Or I can go downstairs and try to get some food. But if I get up and go downstairs and I don’t get any food, then a good nap has been spoiled.
I have to do this estimation every time I hear a noise.
Being a dog is not as easy as people think.
— Lightning 
At the Dog Park
A pug (not mine) is humping a beagle . . .
“You could have puggles,” I suggest to one of the owners, “except they’re both boys.”
It may look like a crisis, but it’s only the end of an illusion. — Jerry Weinberg
The Buffalo Bridle
“Well, if you’re going to control buffalo, you got to know two things, and only two things: First is,
“You can make buffalo go anywhere, just so long as they want to go there.
“And second,
“You can keep buffalo out of anywhere, just so long as they don’t want to go there.
No difference plus no difference plus no difference plus … eventually equals a clear difference. — Jerry Weinberg