Mr. Jahnke Spills His Guts

2003-07-16T22:19:00.000-05:00

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

When I was younger I wanted to be a lot of things. I wanted to be a nuclear physicst ('cause they were the apex of smart.) And then I wanted to be race car driver, and a mechanic. And then when I got into high school and was introduced to computers I knew I wanted to be a programmer. I knew it was going to happen, as sure as the sun rose I was sure I would be a programmer. This was in 1980 time frame. Then something happened...

I am not sure how to describe it, I think my future became important becuase it was no loger my future it was to be my present. I wondered what I could take in college to assure that I was married to a successful career woman drove a red car and had my first million by 30. Well Jeri is wonderful, but I think successful career woman falls a bit wide of the mark, my first million has eluded me thus far and I willbe 38 in September, but I do drive a maroon 1988 Buick Park Avenue, the hot rod will be a sorta yellow green (Jeri won't let me own a red hot rod, which is another story.) Anyway given my parents forced me into college I decided that I would get a liberal arts education and see where it takes me. So I studied european history, psychology and german for 4 years, even spent a year abroad. And except for writing papers I stayed away from computers for the most part. They did not seem like much at the time, the explosion had not yet happened and so I ignored them.

And then I was done with school and I didn't know what to do. I did odd jobs for a while, I think 1987-8 could compare favorably for right now as far as economy goes. But I was unfulfilled for some reason. I knew somehow that my mark on the world would NOT be made by flipping burgers, digging ditches, or working as a salesman. For a while Jeri pushed me to get a job as a landscaper at the U of A, they had a great benefits package and all. But it did not feel right to me. I had been cast adrift. School is easy, the basic framework is there, as long as you take the classes pay the money and fill out the paperwork things are OK. But then one day you are done. You stop going and have to do something, liberal arts sucks in terms of post graduation prospects, but I feel it isn't supposed to make you more employable, but a well rounded individual. Suddenly the treadmill was off, and I had to choose what I wanted to become.

When I moved to Arizona to be with Jeri I had some nebulous plans. None of them I thought I would continue my education, it didn't happen due to residency requirements. So I did odd jobs. I ended up selling computers over christmas. I was hired in September or so got to help open a computer store and worked over an XMas season. We sold Apple computers. CompuPro was the place. I thought I had found my niche. I was in heaven. And then I lost the job. I think they hired too many people and someone had to go, but in all fairness to them I think I also sucked at sales. But I was devasated. I did not know what had happened. I don't know why it had happened, I should have seen the signs, it was obvious in retrospect but...

One of the best things about working there was I got to meet Tom Rees. Tom was interesting. He had worked sales, and had worked for airlines and had been a grad student where computers were used. He reminded me what I found so facinating about computers. When I left CompuPro (fired no less) it was kinda difficult to find work. So I worked for a temp agency. I dug ditches. Lotsa ditches. Jeri would get up with me and drive me to my job in Jan in Arizona to be there at 7:00 so I could dig my ditches. And could come pick me up at about 3:00 and we would eat and I would fall asleep from exhaustion at about 6:00 with our kitty on my chest until about 10 when Jeri would wake me up and get me to go to bed. I did this for a little bit and I realized that I was not happy with the way things were going.

So for two weeks I gave all my attention to my career. I had learned some lessons. But I wasn't happy. I read the want ads every day, we lived around the corner from a public library and I went there almost daily to read books on resumes and job searches. I looked back at my education and what I liked about it and how I could apply it. I also looked at big employers in Tucson to see if perhaps they would hire me and put me on a track.

Slowly in my head a single crystal formed. Computer Programming. I knew I would do it when I was in High School. I like computers I was good with them I knew how to program them, and as soon as I decided that it took very little work to make my resume read like I knew what the hell I was doing and after digging ditches for a month or so I had a job. I had told the people at the job site I was on I was leaving for an office job and they called to tell the Temp Agency. When I picked up my last check the chick there was suprised I didn't come to ask for a new job but that I really had an office job.

So why am I thinking about this now... I have been doing the same thing. I love to program. I really do, and I am really good at it. I can solve most problems thrown my way, and I can help guide others through their problems. I am that guy lots of people go to solve their problems. And even if I don't know the answer I know how to bullshit long enough to find the answer and give it to you.

But as I look at the state of the computer industry I wonder how long these jobs will last. It is odd, I have been telling people I can do my work from anywhere. And I think managment gets it and has decided that if I could do my job from Tucson they could get someone from India to do it for even less than me living in Tucson. Which was not exaclty what I wanted to see.And then I look at me. I have risen to the top tech heap. I make a lot of money solving technology problems. Someone comes to me and says I need to do X. I listen patiently ask a few questions, look at what is available and then put up a screen while I plumb a bit and viola, the solution emerges.

And the level I operate is cool in that respect. I know a lot because I have done this for a while. Other talented people come to me and ask questions and I can see things they can't. It is cool I have become the guys I most admired. But the question lingers now what.. When I stared looking for a job I needed something to support Jeri and I. Now I do that well, and I am sure I could be one of those 50 year old engineers who have seen it all and are so quick with answers they are wrong half the time, but they are so smart they make it seem like the wrong answer is really the right answer you just asked the wrong question. Or I could stretch and make the step into managment.

There are a lot of cons... Working with technology is cool and I will no longer have hands on responsibilities. There is nothing I hate more than some management weenie who doens't do technology any more telling me how to do my job. Of course I have to go into the office every day, and the dream of working from Tucson for a company in Chicago is pretty much dead. But there are some positives. I get to learn a lot of new things. My career is much more portable, and of course an opportunity for money.

I am mostly decided. It took a lot longer to decide this than it did to decide to do into computers, but I am ok with it. In fact I feel like I did when I was 22 and deciding computers would be a good way to spend the rest of my career. I will have to learn to use odd adjectives n such (like monotize, actuate, and authentify) but I am up to the task. Perhaps I will have my first million by the time I hit 50.

2003-05-28T21:59:00.000-05:00

So this is what single's life is like

Been another while... I am busy as all getout again. Not shocking really I guess this is the state I am most comfortable with. A lot of work to do and enjoying doing it. It must be this way becuase the more I think about it the more I realize that when I have nothing to do is the rare thing in my life and surely if I wanted to do less I could arrange that.

Our yard which we paid most of Motorola severence for is absolutely gorgeous. The purple catmint flowers help to highlite the orange roses in that bed. The prarie plants are growing and are gonna be great, everything survived and is thriving birds and other animals are taking advantage of the plants for cover or nesting material or food I must say I could not be happier.

The height of my joy however has been cut quite low by the fact that since May 5th Jeri has been in So Cal with her mom. She hasn't left me... yet. Actually it is a lot less worse than it sounds. Her mom suffered what she thought was a heart attack, after a week of extensive tests and moneyectimies it was determined that she had suffered a severe panic attack and that the time had come for her to cash in on a life time of helping her kids out.

Jeri's Mom moved to Hemet in '86 or so and from the moment the furniture hit the floor in her new house she hit the thrift stores in search of bargins. She would call us regularly and regale us with some tale of a wonderful find of "hotel towels" for 5 cents a piece. Jeri and I thought nothing of it at the time. After all the well known law of what goes up must come down never really struck us. Until this year that is.

Jeri's mom had more linen than most hotels. She had enough frying pans to start 5 resturants, and don't even get me started on the plastic butter-ette tubs. Geeze... Anyway Jeri went to help make sense of this pressing issue. And mangaged in a few short weeks to get rid of 15 years of thrift store shopping. Go Jeri. Now she is taking mom and her car to VA to be with the rst of the family.

Which puts me in a spot I have never been in. I am unattached and not poor. Jeri and I hooked up when neither of us had anything. I mean going to a movie once a month was a budged buster. We spent < 25 dollars a week on groceries, and gave ourselves 5 dollars a month in "Mad Money" to spend on whatever we wanted. Keep in mind this isn't 1962 it was 1989. So with Jeri safely out of the way I have been going out to eat with friends and other social events that cost money (of the two of us Jeri is much less social than I am.) It has been fun, although this weekend I hit a low point and was depressed the entire time becuase it just wasn't fair that Jeri was not here.

We call each other each day which helps. But I am done being the social butterfly, Jeri you can com back home now.

2003-04-19T20:18:00.000-05:00

Ingore the spelling errers.

I got a call from my mom today, she was feeling kinda blue... Well put upon really, and she asked me if I had any memories of any good things that she did. Now I need to say that I have harbored some rather unkind feelings towards my mom for a long time. Why isn't important, I think we can leave it by saying it is hard to believe that any teenager makes it to adulthood, it is even more difficult for me to imagine I made it. I love both my parents and while I am forever uspset they were NOT billionaires, both the good times and bad ones have mostly faded and left me a reasonably well balanced individual.

Anyway, the question took me aback, I laughed at first and realized she was serious. And I racked my brain and I realized that I had blocked a lot of the good things she had done, I had stuffed them behind the bad things she did. Please bear in mind my mom did not wrap me in duct tape and force me to spend my evenings in a spider infested closet. It wasn't like that, and I am sure the issues I have with my mom pale in comparison to other much worse issues people have had, but hey, they it's my baggage I can fill it with anything I like. Anyway, as I talked to her I realized that she did stick up for me on a number of occasions. She took my side on some issues that were important to me. And when we did "family" stuff by in large she was the reason it happened. So it wsn't all bad.

She also realized I absolutely SUCKED at spelling, I mean suck like I suck at putting the toilet seat down and making sure the garbage gets out on Thursday night. In Jr. High she forced me to have a spelling test each week. I hated it I really did, but in retrospect it helped some. It at least proved to me that if I applied myself I would be an OK speller. But lately with all the work I have been doing and the fact that Opera makes this little box so freaking small.. Well... lets just say it has been a problem. But since I write this for me not you I won't fix it.

Anyway, the work saga continues. We released into PreProd this Friday and I will be dang nabbed if it didn't work. We started at about 2 and every possible thing that could go wrong with our release did. The Release Engineer did not have the proper access on the machine, the release jobs were copying to the wrong directories, the supporting software we use had the wrong versions, I forgot a props file in my release files, and finally at about 5:30 when everyone wants to go home we realize we don't have firewall port open. On the up side I kept notes so when we go into production it should all be smooth sailing. Or not.

At home, the patio took some rain so we can sweep it off now, the entire yard looks great, people driving down the street stop and back up and point. Granted the windows are up so I can't tell if they are laughing or if they like what we did, or if they are the block captians who are gettin set to inform us which landscaping statuates we violated, but it is nice to be noticed.

Jeri has also convinced me to buy a car. So we went out looking at them today. I found what we are going to buy, it isn't a Beetle we decided in the end. But we took it for a drive and now I need to start sending out faxes to every car dealer within about 100 miles of here to get a quote. I hate buying cars. I think I buy POS's becuase I don't want to deal with car sales people. My way I deal with people who have a car that is causing them more problem than they think it is worth. I get a car with some problems but less than the other car I am driving everyone is happy.

Anyway I decided my plan for my car is to fax what I want to every dealer in a 100 mile radius and collect quotes. I will then take the top quote and sent it to the top other dealers and make them compete with each other (screw the interent.) I hope I can get a good deal this way, I will let you know.

2003-04-14T21:33:00.000-05:00

Geeze where the hell does the time go... Lesseee a mess of time has passed.

The Authentication Framework goes into PreProd at the end of the week, PreProd in our world is "Gold" in the shrinkwrap world. In essense it is going into our final staging environment and barring any configuration issue it will ship from there. Nice thing about working on web based services is that deadlines are sloppier and versions mean a lot less. At Motorola it cost a boat load of money to ship a point release on the web we just put up a banner on a friday evening and release the new software. I will be glad to get back to 40 hour worrk weeks.

Spring has come which means I got to finish the landscape which is sweet, we got my Oak Tree, which leads me into time. It seems that a lot of sorrow has entered my life lately.

My grandfather passed and with each day grandma looks less willing to live. While at grandpas funeral I talked with a second cousin and was made painfully aware that we now fill the roll of my parents at family reunions.

We have the kids who are not yet adults we drink too much beer, talk about work and play sheepshead long into the night. We have stress releated problems and wonder what things will be like when we retire. Our parents are the older generation all retired and enjoying the grandchildren. Pretty heady. Really I don't know how it happened but I am middle aged.

Anyway my second cousing Tommy died last week. He had just quit a sales job that he held for 20 years and start to train as an apprentice electrician. He was estatic about this, he got to work all over the city of Green Bay including the new Lambeau Field. He loved it he was doing something new and it invigorated him.

He gained like 20 lbs in one day and went to the doctor and they drained an incredible amount of fluid from chest cavity. He was eager to go back to work and was told he would probably never get to do that again and within a few day she was dead. He left behind two almost adult boys and a wife and a loving family. He was well liked though I personally have NEVER seen so many people at a funeral home in my life. Not bad for a kid who liked to listen to Heavy Metal before Hair Bands made it cool and smoke a little pot.

And course Jeri's mom is getting pretty disoriented. So we need to go out and visit her to make sure she is OK. Jeri is beside herself with worry but cannot get herself to help. I did finally realize that her obsession with the cats really was her very far reaching attempt to not have to deal with this very issue.

This started with my new Oak Tree. I had a neigbor muse aloud as it was being installed of the uslessness of an Oak Tree. I would never see it mature into the mighty oak it will become. We were careful to plant it in such away that it can reach it's full maturity without ever causing the house too much trouble, the driveway may pose a problem, but we should have flying cars by then. And I got to thinking my life is way too short. I am almost half way through it now. And when they Oak tree is my age now it will be just hitting adulthood. It reassures me, what's more it makes me happy. I think most people get to feeling like this when they have kids, I never had any so I guess you could call me a late bloomer.

2003-03-04T21:25:00.000-06:00

Plenty to do today... Inching ever closer to putting the Authentication Framework into our testing environment. I hope by tomorrow we are good to go. Spotted bugs in the delegated admin piece. Wooo hooo.

2003-03-01T17:24:00.000-06:00

Zip... I have been always been innately aware of how little time we have on this earth. I am always appalled by people who say, "Man I wish it was next week." Or long for some day in the far future when they will no longer be in their current sucky situation and in a much better one.

As I have gotten older my living situation has gotten incrementally better. I earn more money I am mor econfident and I think I enjoy myself more. But I have never wished that time would hurry up. I was talking with someone this week who was wishing just that, granted he was 13 or 14 years younger than me. But even at that time in my life when I thought this day would never arrive I did not rue my situation but I looked for ways to enjoy it. We all die before we know it and I believe that once you are gone you are gone, one shot is all you have and you should enjoy it as much as you possibly can.

2003-02-24T22:46:00.000-06:00

Gonna take a trip tomorrow. Gotta go to Charlotte (I have been summoned.) This kind of shit ONLY happens when you have too much to do, a bunch of bozo's at the "home" office noitce what you are doing and decide that since their sitting on their ass is too important to innterupt that you should stop what ever YOU are doing and go see them and educate them on what exactly it is you do.

I just wonder why I have tonnes of supporting documentation if they people that need to read it can't be bothered. Geeze.

2003-02-22T22:01:00.000-06:00

Today was a busy day... My pop came down from Green Bay and we went first to see what was billed (by pop) as a Vintage GoKart show.

When I was younger early 70's timeframe. My dad bought a GoKart from this guy. It was a dual motor kart and it was pretty cool. My father raced it and did quite well, he would win as often as not and went ot the natinal championships in the middle 70's timeframe where he had an accident and broke his hip, we had to live in a campground for 5 weeks while he healed well enough to be flown home, grandpa Sneezer came down to GA to help mom drive us back. The next year we went again and we got to visit Disney Land and a few other places.

Anyway, I raced when I was younger I stopped by the time I was 15 or so. A friend of mine that I used to race against still races, not go carts, but CART and IRL cars. I keep an eye on him from a far. He had a REALLY bad crash at Indy about 10 years ago, went right through the paddock wall, but he still manages to get rides as often as not.

Anyway we went to the vintage kart show and were surpised to learn that it wasn't "vintage" at all. Quite a current car show afterall.

We walked the show for about an hour, and talked to some people we hadn't seen in over 20 years and then went downtown to the Chicago Auto Show to see some decidedly NON VINTAGE cars.

I really wanted only to see four things. Two were Fords the other two were Dodges. The new Fort GT (someone else owns the GT-40 trademark, can you say D'oh?) the 2005 Mustang, the Tomohawk, and the Magnum.

GT looks as nice as I had imagined it would. The 2005 Mustang looks pretty slick as well, although I don't think it will be any easier for me to get into it. The Tomohawk is one bad ass piece of equipment. I did notice that the movie they showed of it never had anyone turning. Hmmmmm It is a shame it will never be manufactured as a product. And finally Jeri wants me to buy a new car. And the Dodge Magnum might convince me to do it. 430 HP 5.7 Liter Hemi V8... Oh yea....

2003-02-21T21:38:00.000-06:00

Woooosh, don't blink another weeks just flies by. I like to be busy. It keeps me invigorated. But I think I have reached a state of too busy. Oh well. More work stuff. My thing is coming along other thing I am responsible for but not actually working on isn't doing so well.

I don't think it will be late, but I had hoped it would be done before I was done, no such luck.

On the upside my pop is coming down and we will take in a two car shows tomorrow. A vintage Go-Kart shows at Pheasant Run, Bloominton Gold was there this summer. Anyway, then down town we go to see the new cars.

2003-02-15T21:50:00.000-06:00

Man... What a couple of weeks. We managed to get on the critical path for another project at work. I hate it when that happens. Becuase then I have more than one manager wondering how I am doing and if they can help.

Anyway the past two weeks have been spent getting OFF the critical path. So providing a rock solid interface for the other projct to develop with while we get our shit together and ship the product.

I am the lead on this project and it all the sins I ever perpatrated on my own previous leads came back to haunt me. Developers who nod along and say they understand when really "Lollipop Lollipop oh Lolly Lollipop" is really playing in their heads. Asking for dates and the ones I recieve are the ones I want to hear not the ones that are realistic. And others.

I dunno why I did this in the past, to be loved I guess and I guess that was the same motivation for my team. I think our final date is still too optimistic and while the stuff I am working on will fly through testing I am not so sure about the other part of this.

But like a man I have been standing up and taking it for the team, which was what the leads I liked used to do. So I stay late with them help them where I can and talk to them often but try to keep them from having to deal with product managment.

And I gave us all permission to flake out over the weekend with the expetation that next week we will go back to the death march to get fully caught up. We slipped at least a week next week I will be able to tell how bad the slip really is.

Needless to say I did a lot of sleeping today. And ate cheese for the first time since I decided I was allergic to milk. And I'll be damned I still am. Rats.

2003-02-02T18:19:00.000-06:00

Been that kind of a week. I have a cold, Jeri really really really wants to move the fuck outta here. And we lose another shuttle. On the upsdie Saddam got a kick out of it, seems like a stretch to see this as god punishing us though.

Space travel is really dangerous. I mean to start with you strap yourself in with a few tons of explosives to get you off the earth. Then if something fucks up it isn't like they can send someone to help you out. Then on your way in you travel at over mach 40 using the atmosphere to slow you down to a reasonable speed. It is amazing more don't die.

I think space exploration is worth the time and money. I don't know that we will see the benefit for a LONG time from it, but I can't say I think we should stop, after all we got a ballpoint pen that will write anywhere and Tang from the space program.

2003-01-30T16:01:00.000-06:00

Geeze where did the time go.... Hmm to recap been feeling like shit. The breathing problem came back. Falling behind on work. Although I am not so far behind that I won't be able to pull my bacon out over this weekend. Refinanced the house, payments drop by 15%, which is a good thing, Pop's hip is doing OK. True the US is going to war, but in my little corner things are going along quite nicely.

2003-01-25T22:29:00.000-06:00

Wooo hooo... Got the browser compiling... With new libs too from jigsaw, rhino and xerces. Now lets see if it runs.

2003-01-25T21:00:00.000-06:00

Again I am still not sleeping. To say I am not sleeping is not to say that I am staring at the ceiling praying for sleep to come. You know the kind you solve by getting rid of the TV in your bedroom and stop drinking caffine late at night.

My problem appears to be something else. I can be in bed for 10 or 12 hours and not conscious but I am still tired.

So I napped some today, went for a walk to nowhere, ate a quart of hot and sour soup and half a blueberry pie. We will see if nay of that helps.

2003-01-25T00:14:00.000-06:00

Huh... Been a MOT day... Talked to Dave L for a bit. Dave used to be my boss at Motorola. We talked as we do in a far ranging set of topics, OSX and how NeXT it is, the fact he never used windows 3.x, I personally want that time back. Talked about Java and why high performance people don't like it, not code execution but garbage collection. Since I no longer work in a gateway world I am shielded by that becuase when we have a performance problem we just throw another machine a it. And how Moores law has not been put on hold by reaching the end of some technology but that most people have machines that are fast enough.

2003-01-24T22:48:00.000-06:00

Not much work done today, I am just exhausted anymore. Anyway had a chat with Jonahtan E about some VoiceXML stuff. We were talking about the Motorola Browser he took over some of the things I did on it and was checking back on some of my old code to be sure he knew what it did. At this point he guess was better than mine.

On the plus side the bank called vis a vis the refinance. The house appraised for a bucketload more than they thought Go Jerries. So my old enemy PMI is gone this and the fact that we dropped 2% on the loan rate is going to free up a bunch of money which is schweet. I am financing some fees though which I find annoying but I figure when I refinance again in a few years I will take care of that issue then.

2003-01-23T22:54:00.000-06:00

Not much to say again today... When I go into work I spend most of the day talking to other people, I am on phone calls telling customers that while they might have a good idea for their little corner of the world I am concerned with the MUCH larger picture. Talking to younger engineers letting them know what *I* think about shit. Talking to managment types letting them know what *they* think about shit. Bleah...

It seems to me as good engineers get older they hit one of three tracks.

1) They get to be antisocial masters at something. They plumb the depths of a particular area and get so good at it that no one dares confront them. They spend their days in blissful solitude.

2) They become mentors. So they stay tied to technology and become technical managment. Telling younger engineers what they should think and non technology managment what they should be doing.

3) They cross over to the dark side and become pure managment. So they divorce themselves from day to day technology, and become masters of organization building and financials n such. I don't mean this to sound bad, effectively what they do is become organization engineers something that looks to be quite challenging.

I am sitting at this crossroads. I have been here for a few years actually I am not sure where I want to go. Number 3 means I need to dress better and pay more attention to things I don't like to pay attention with. Number 1 means I become one of those arrogant engineers I never really liked, and Number 2 has limited growth potential.

Decisions Decisions.

2003-01-22T21:46:00.000-06:00

Month of Jan is whipping by, this always happens when I have a deadline. It seems like no matter how fast I work that I have a ton more to do.

2003-01-21T14:12:00.000-06:00

Geeze how hard is it ot choose a piece of software that works. We use NIKU for something, right now just time tracking I guess at some point we will be doing it all with NIKU but it is a piece of shit, the interface is clumsy at best, time wasting is what it really is. AND for some reason this tool MUST be a Java Applet.

Now I love Java, I am a better programmer having found Java but geeze even I know when Java isn't useful. And Applets is it. To make matters worse it only works with one specfic patchlevel of one specfic version of Java. So much for write once and run everywhere.

NIKU is supposed to be using Six Sigma Process but from what I can tell Six Sigma is NOT the magic bullet that produces good software on time, if I were to use NIKU as the example.

2003-01-20T02:03:00.000-06:00

Man does sitting onna sofa all day watching Columbo take it out of me.Man that guy is a-freakin-mazing. I musta watched 6 episodes, and he got the killer all six times.

I enjoy the show becuase Columbo is overlooked by everyone who doesn't know him. Even as he is hunting down the crooks and they know he is on to them the think it was luck. I enjoy the juxtaposition the sly look he gets at the end when the quarry finally realizes that he knew from the start and he was jerking them around is something I enjoy.

Also watched a few other things. Jeri and I have really enjoying Greetings From Tucson for the obvious reasons. The show started pretty slow but has gathered some real steam.

And of course for some reason it sounded like a good idea to record a made for TV movie with Markie Post and Cindy Williams in it wherein Markie Post plays a hooker and wears some rather "interesting" outfits. I tell you what though Hollywood Hookers are well dressed, look at LOT like Madonna. Markie was (is I suppose) stacked. And Cindy Williams is hilarious.

2003-01-19T10:43:00.000-06:00

Or not... Hmmm getting this freaking dual processor Compaq machine up and running is a lot more work than it should be.

2003-01-18T21:36:00.000-06:00

The summary is that I had to install the Compaq Configuration
Utility onto the hard drive (using the Smartstart CD), reboot and
press F10 to enter the Config Utility. At the first selection
screen, press Ctrl-A to enter the advanced config (a dialogue
box pops up to confirm) and select 'Configure Hardware'. Choose
the manual configure (i.e: don't auto-detect) and skip to the
'Edit and Review details' menu. Move down to the 'APIC option'
and set to 'Full Table' (nothing else). Save and reboot and
if your kernel is SMP aware, you should be away. :-)

2003-01-18T20:23:00.000-06:00

Nice day, I am still tired as get all but I will fix that tomorrow, a long day of Columbo and Nero Wolfe watching (reminds me that I must get my eViL TiVo on the network so that everyone knows my pathetic choice in television.) But as my buddy Colin says, gotta clear out the tivowood.

The day started with me getting up at 5:45 and getting ready to meet some buddys for breakfast at the iHop (I got to choose this month so it was near me as opposed to being in Wheaton or some other easter seaboard city.) I did promise to consume the weight of five (5) pancakes in pancakes and I succeeded, the waitiress did tempt me with unlimited pancakes but I figured I am big enough, side five usually leaves me quite full.

Then off to the bank to deposit my check and then Jeri and I went to go find a Model One radio. Now this is a sweet radio. I had been reading reviews and Jeri keeps giving me these shitty radios attached to shitty tape players. She insists she needs a new tape player and spends as little money as possible on it. Subsequently she gets a shitty one and complains about how shitty it is and then it finds its way in the spare bedroom where I do most of my reading (cause the piles of books on the bedroom floor pisses her off) along with it's shitty radio, and I throw it away..
Anyway it is Green which is a color choice for Jeri and it has amazing sound. A bit pricey for a radio, but I may end up getting one for my desk as well.

And finally we went to Waldenbooks where we spent a buncha money on books, or worst vice. Then dinner at Luigi's House and home so Jeri could watch the Wildcats plan and the Jazzer and I could curl up on teh spare bed and I read The Watchmen

2003-01-17T12:43:00.000-06:00

Ahhhh nothing like putting a final bit of polish on a job well done. The documents are done and in the "offical" format. I don't know why, but they look better when they are formatted and such, more offical somehow. The content is the same but when it has the offical template wrapped around it it looks like I know what it is I am doing.

2003-01-17T10:43:00.000-06:00

Ok a new day... Yesterday was pretty much wasted, I was still strung out from the data download AND to top it off we had a design review of code I had not designed yet. So most of the day was spent doing that.. Review passed with only a few comments clients to see it today.

2003-01-16T21:39:00.000-06:00

Man is broadband overrated. Actually I thought it would be, Jeri's protests aside I got exactly what I needed from my modems. And now I have objective proof of that fact. Anyone wanna buy a V.90 and a V.92 modem and a WebRamp?

But this busy week is drawing to a close, I can spend a little time getting the DMZ setup on my firewall and put some services out da WWW, schweet, this is why I got broadband, I will get to see the cluefulness of the AT&T admins.

2003-01-15T21:39:00.000-06:00

SMOKIN broadband comes to Mr. Jahnke's Dream House... Now Jeri won't bother me becuase I am "hoggin all the damn internet."

2003-01-15T15:10:00.000-06:00

Class over... Now back to the dreary software existance that is my life. Actually isn't so bad. Although I do feel like I put in a week in a few days. If I weren't so far behind becuase of the class I would take a day or two off. But back to the design documents. Gotta get em done for tomorrow...

2003-01-14T21:04:00.000-06:00

Welp pop is doing better at least, no surgery. Even though going under the knife yet again for him would speed his time to walking around and doing shit, I worry about paying some guy to keep you floating on the knife edge between life and death.Jeeze... They haven't lost him yet and he has done this a lot (elbow, hip, back, hand, back, back, ankle, hip, back, hip, hip) but I never feel right when it happens.

But 6 weeks of sitting on his ass is what he has t look forward to. It will make him crazy and my brother may well take the opportunity to clean his basement, like he did to dad's garage when he broke his back. I will try to call him a few times a day so at least he doesn't spend the entire time staring at the celieng couting the peaks and valleys in the stucco.

It does really seem to be effecting mom too. She has started forgetting her purse a lot. She has hd a rough time of it, she lost her dad, and she is helping her mom deal with the loss even as she is coping and then dad goes and busts his hip. I wonder who will suffer more in the next six weeks.

2003-01-14T20:55:00.000-06:00

And more process today. Only one more day to go, quite a bit less than a day actually, they guy who ran the class is kinda odd. We were pretty vocal the first day, but he beat us back with his logic, we would regroup find new scenarios where the process would NOT hold surely even the process could not make a rock so large it could not lift it. But no indeed there is a make an unliftable rock procedure, PP2030 which can be invoked only with special permission from within the Rock Lifting Process PP4909. Game set and match process god.

It is easy to make furn the process and we will be spending the better part of two months adapting it to our own uses in our corner of the world, but what really got my goat today was one of our own process guru's stopped by the training and was struck at how docile we were. He sent out an email at lunch telling us we should be taking advantage of this GREAT resource we have available to us.

What really annoyed me about this statement was this, here we are a group of neophytes being taught something something the instructor has devoted a large portion of his career to. So when we have an objection he has an answer, which usually is "There is a procedure for that." How can we deny it? We don't know so after a while you learn the answer "There is a procedure for that." And you assume that given enough time you can find it when it will be needed.

So some other process chucklehead telling us we aren't making the most of our opportunities becuase he wanders in for a half hour after we have exhausted ourselves the previous day should just keep his big mouth shut.

2003-01-13T22:01:00.000-06:00

It seems this year could be starting better. Packers lost their first ever playoff game at home. Man that smarted, it would have smarted more but I did not go becuase my grandfather had (at age 89) died, I did attend his funeral..

I miss the man, he wasn't easy to get close to but he and I had a long lucid talk before he died. But I can't walk by a train without thinking of him (he worked on the electrical systems of Desiel Electric trains, he let me drive one once.)

So I get back from this bit of sadness only to find that after months of begging to be involved in our goal of becoming a CMM Level 3 organization I have been invited to be a memeber of a Technical Working Group to adopt the coporate standard proces to our division wide process. Not a bad thing persay but I am behind on a project what with the holiday and the funeral and all.

So I get home today and get an email from my mom, my dad fell and broke his hip. Needless to say Pop has had a lot of trouble in this area, he broke it when he was my age (middle 30s) and it was never set correctly and had it replaced a few years ago and popped it out at least once.

Anyway he busted it again. And will be laid up 2 or 3 weeks if they operation and 6 or 8 weeks if they don't (how screwed up his that?) And I am not sure I like the fact that my father is falling and breakin his hip, I mean not only becuase I feel bad when he is hurt. Old people fall and break their hips, and old people have middle aged kids. 2003 is getting off to a real shitty start.

2003-01-13T21:43:00.000-06:00

Bleah... Long day of process discussion. a stated goal of my employer is to be "One of the most admired companies in the world." No kidding that is our mission statement. I guess it beats "squeeze the rubes til they bleed, then squeeze their kids."

Anyway, as a member of the IT organization we have to become more like a software consutancy in order to meet that goal. The logic, and it is airtight as I learned in an Algorithms class working on the Traveling Salesmen problem, goes like this.

If all departmetns of the company are most admired then the company will be most admired, in that no one will be more admired so we will be as greatly admired as possible..

Anyway we gotta be process mosters. We have a big ass proces and we get to customize it for our organization. So today's lecturer started with the first of 3 days of him READIN HIS OWN DAMN SLIDES. Geeze, my parents spent a lot of money on my education, and then I spent a lot more. I can freakin read, I can even comprehend, man crap like this bugs the hell out of me.

2003-01-11T19:41:00.000-06:00

BroadBand here I come... Well got offa phone with AT&T gonna get cable broadband. I wonder how well that will work. It will make Jeri happy anyway. No more yelling at me for messing up her connection.

2003-01-11T11:24:00.000-06:00

One interesting thing about Clover I have noticed is that it is begining to effect my code. When it runs it tells you how much of your code was tested, right now both the tests and the code under test are instrumented and tracked. So dead code in my tests which is expected shows up as red in a mostly green bar, and I find myself editing the test to get rid of that. And then I stop myself becuase that is foolish.

So then I think should I stop instrumenting my tests with my code under test. And I have not yet decided on the correct answer. Collecting that data may point out a flaw in the testing logic at some point down the road.

2003-01-10T21:51:00.000-06:00

The car is leaking tranmission fluid like no tomorrow, I don't know if I am scared or lazy for not crawling under the car to see where. There is a sizzling when I stop and I am always out of fluid, I wonder if they are connected... I guess I will at least look at it tomorrow.

And Jeri has convinced me to do something I swore I would never do. What with our refinance on the house we should be saving close to 300 bucks a month in mortgate payments. So I started looking at the prices of 2003 Beatles. Which run about 20K.... She may get a Green one for Valentines day.

2003-01-10T21:49:00.000-06:00

Nothing of import today... My design was reviewed from a conceptual angle and it passed with flying colors. The design was modular in all the right places. It might be a little slower than what we have today, but I think that our flexibility will make up for it. So did the reviewers.

2003-01-09T19:46:00.000-06:00

Turns out the problem with Clover was one that had to do with the JVM. I run a FreeBSD system and do as much work as possible with Native FreeBSD apps. Including my JVM.

The support guy mentioned that the JVM was expecting a TEMP system var, and of course no such thing occurs normally in FreeBSD so I switched to running a Linux Emulated JVM and viola the thing worked. I may end up bying this tool, time will tell.

2003-01-09T14:30:00.000-06:00

List night I spent all night struggling with the next piece in my process puzzle. Unit testing is a really good thing, it helps you develop good code. But we have been having a conversation at work about how do you know when you are doing good testing.

There are a number of metrics, one would be to count the number of tests you produce. Of course if that were the case and I were to be compensated for how well I test I would just break my tests up into a zillion small tests. Which leads to the observation that perhaps code coverage would be a good number. Code coverage is where you run you tests and then count the number of lines of the system under test were executed.

Good idea I thought, so I spent the evening looking for a tool to help me do this. And I came across Clover only problem seems to be I can't make it work.

It integrates seemelessly into my process. I use Ant and Junit and it was designed to be used in that environment. I run the code and it tells me it can't create some temp dir.

Also as I have been thinking of Coverage I realized that it is a metric to use but it won't show when you are missing code. Say a particular runtime error happens say a NullPointerException in java. And you don't catch and handle it. If you don't test for it even though 100% of your code could be executed you are missing potentially vital piece of code. Something else is needed. Dunno what, once I get Clover to work I will have to ponder it.

2003-01-08T21:38:00.000-06:00

At work we are gung ho on Process... I guess I don't mind too much, it does mean more "paperwork" before we can develop, and it is supposed to mean more work while we develop, code reviews, unit tests and analysis.

One of the things I have been trying to do is take the best parts of the process we implement and incorporate into my personal process. One big improvement I made was added JUnit to what I do.

One piece of advice I have about JUnit is to just forget about incoporating it into a project as your introduction to the process. What did work for me was to start a new project and keep two windows open as you develop. In one window is the object you are working on and in another the test object. Then with each compile run the unit tests.

At first it may seem slower but you catch a lot of bugs as you develop this way. And as you refactor your code, which happens a lot to me while I am developing the tests are a great deal of help.

2003-01-08T11:50:00.000-06:00

An interesting idea... lanpipe what would make it neater of course is if it did video as well. Currently at home I use 2.4 GHZ Audio/Video Sender I realize that people can now listen to me listen to my MP3's, which does not bother me, but my problem is I want to send audio back down to my computer. So I can use the mic from my desktop too.

2003-01-07T22:00:00.000-06:00

Oddly enough today was a long day wherein I did absolutely nothing useful. I was supposed to be working on a design doc for some work stuff but nothing was coming so I spent the day looking at weblogging and decided wtf.