The most common reason for software project failure is attributed to requirements issues – badly defined, not stated correctly, changing requirements, etc.
Any project I’ve done that lasted longer than a day had changing requirements. If your development strategy only works with an unchanging set of requirements, you need to rethink your approach . . .
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if boxes, etc., sitting around the office are supposed to go out with the trash. In Southern California, you’ll often see BASURA written on these things because the probability that a Spanish-speaking person will be taking out the trash is high.
We couldn’t seem to get this box removed by writing BASURA on it, so one of our tech support people came up with this sign . . .
“Look at the color of this banana,” my son says as he takes it out of the refrigerator. “It’s black.”
“I think it’s still okay,” I tell him. “It’s not the color of the skin that’s important . . .”
” . . . it’s the content of its character,” he jumps in.
Be careful what you wish for . . .
“Get off,” my wife says — but the pug
Just looks at her and doesn’t move.
He’s lying in his favorite spot
Beside his master on the couch.
“Off,” she says — the dog just stares;
He could win a test of wills
But when she moves to pick him up
He concedes defeat and jumps.
“I want to sit there,” she explains.
He looks at her, he looks at me
Then jumps up from the other side,
Lying down across my lap
Sideways, facing down his foe
As if to say “Your move.”
My wife asks our son, “Why do you have to argue about everything?”
“I’m stubborn,” he says. “It’s all part of puberty.”
“Well, I’m getting old,” she says, “and part of that is I’m not going to put up with a lot of nonsense.”
From the front page of the Los Angeles Times 70 years ago today, Jan. 26, 1938:
Wives of Spanking Husbands
Form Girls’ Auxiliary to ClubSIOUX FALLS (S. D.) Jan. 25 (AP) — Wives of Spanking Husbands’ Club, organized in Sioux City, Iowa, and parent organization of fifty-nine such clubs throughout the nation according to its own figures–reached out for another slice of territory today.
The Iowa housewives who consider it a mark of esteem for their husbands to wield a disciplinary hairbrush once in a while, announced plans today for a junior auxiliary–Daughters of Spanking Parents.
ELIGIBLE GIRLS
A letter received here from Sioux City and signed “Rita Rae, general delivery,” told of plans for the new organization for which she claimed an initial membership of seventeen. Any girl above the age of 11 years is eligible to join, Mrs. Rae wrote.
“We think all parents should spank their daughters when they don’t behave,” Mrs. Rae wrote. “Some girls won’t admit it, but the really know it is better to get spanked than scolded and nagged. Spanking creates a better understanding between parents and daughters.”
MERELY SPANKED
Mrs. Rae is the president of the Wives of Spanking Husbands, which was organized last June 26 under the broad-minded slogan “Spare the hairbrush and spoil the wife.”
“Our husbands don’t beat us,” the Sioux City woman was careful to explain. “They just turn us over their knees and give us a good sound spanking.”
[Heath] Ledger’s ex-fiancée Michelle Williams and their two year old daughter Matilda flew from a film set in Sweden to their home in Brooklyn following the tragedy. . . .
Her father Larry Williams said: “It has just broken everybody’s heart in my family. I think Tennyson got it right in the poem he described someone as having died at a young age but burning the candles at both ends. And oh what a beautiful flame he made. That was Heath.
“The saddest thing is his daughter whom he just loved dearly. The Tennyson poem is just so true. His years were few but he left a beautiful legacy.”
Okay . . . Tennyson?!
Tennyson did write In Memoriam A.H.H. about a friend who died young, but the candle poem was written by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
It gives a lovely light!
He mentions Tennyson twice, in case you missed it the first time. I’m quotin’ Tennyson here! The first and last time anyone will be interested in anything this man has to say and instead of going down in history as a Tennyson scholar, he’ll be remembered as a puffed-up phony . . .
Some media outlets are using the occasion of Heath Ledger‘s demise to publish lists of stars who died “too soon.”
Does anyone really die too soon? Maybe everyone dies at exactly the right time. Maybe some people die too late.
[James] Dean died before he could fail, before he lost his hair or his boyish figure, before he grew up.
James Dean died at age 24. Did he die too soon? Would he have been remembered as fondly if he’d lived to an old age?
Better to be a delicious fruit snatched away in mid-bite than something one finds in the back of the refrigerator and says, “My god, we should have thrown this out a long time ago.”
It’s never a bad career move to check out in your prime . . .
In memory of Heath Ledger, here’s a list of 79 more stars killed by drugs . . .
“Look at those guys,” my son says. “They’re all wearing ponchos and it’s not even raining.”
“Well, it was raining,” I say, “and it may rain again. There’s an old saying in the fruit picking business: It’s better to have a poncho and not need it than to need a poncho and not have it. Think about it.”
“Why do I need to think about it?”
“Because it didn’t seem to make much of an impact on you. Want me to say it again?”
“No.”
“Timelinewise” — as in “Where are we at, timelinewise?”
NEW YORK — Actor Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday of a possible drug overdose in a Lower Manhattan apartment, the New York Police Department said.
Possible drug overdose, possible suicide! Oh dear . . . another blow to the theory that being rich and/or famous is the ticket to happiness.
I think most famous actors — not all, obviously — are convinced that they can do things that nobody else can do, that they’re not cardboard people who are adored for no reason.
Tom Cruise, for example, I don’t think will ever commit suicide.
Oh well . . .
One of my co-workers keeps calling another co-worker Misty, although her name is actually Mitzi.
“I’m sorry,” she explains. “Misty is my roommate’s cat and I mix up the names in my mind.”
“Do you ever call the cat Mitzi?” I ask.
“Sometimes, but not as often as I call Mitzi Misty.”
“Does the cat respond when you call her Mitzi?”
“No, but she doesn’t respond when I call her Misty either.”
Americans like a winner. If you lose, you’re nothing. I’m going to win, though. It’s good for the match that Spassky has a plus score against me. We’ve met five times. He’s won three times and we’ve drawn twice. But I’m a stronger player and a long match favors me.
Bobby Fischer died last week in Reykjavik, Iceland, the site of his greatest triumph — the 1972 World Chess Championship. He was 64 years old, one year for each square on a chessboard.
For the first half of his life, his brilliance as a chess player mostly outweighed his irrational judgment and paranoia. For the second half of his life, it was the other way around.
In the middle of the Cold War, he beat the Soviets at their own game. He became as famous as a rock star while playing a game that absolutely no one in this country cares about. I’d bet a dollar to a doughnut that most Americans can’t name one other chess grandmaster, living or dead, such is our apathy for chess and the people who play it — but by god, we do love a winner!
I’ve never been lonely. I’ve been in a room — I’ve felt suicidal. I’ve been depressed. I’ve felt awful — awful beyond all — but I’ve never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me . . . or that any number of people could. . . .
Now not only can I call home and get no answer, I can call my wife’s cell phone and get no answer and call my kid’s cell phone and get no answer . . .
Jerry Weinberg has suggested that “it works” may mean “We haven’t tried very hard to make it fail, and we haven’t been running it very long or under very diverse conditions, but so far we haven’t seen any failures, though we haven’t been looking too closely, either.” In this pessimistic view, you have to be on guard for people who say it works without checking even once to see if it could work.
“No user would do that” really means “No user I can think of, who I like, would do that on purpose.”
Who aren’t you thinking of?
Who don’t you like who might really use this product? What might good users do by accident?
In general it can vastly simplify testing if we focus on whether the product has a problem that matters, rather than whether the product merely satisfies all relevant standards. . . . Instead of thinking pass vs. fail, consider thinking problem vs. no problem.
Originally uploaded by wendyophoto.
Found a cute photo pool on Flickr: Cat and Dog : not Cat or Dog, please read the guidelines!
