I started working on a post a couple of weeks ago, but like many things, I don't know when to quit.  So, here I am with an incomplete essay / research paper hybrid that I'm _still_ adding to yet trying to keep interesting enough to qualify as a blog post.  Most blog posts that cross the 500 word mark are deemed large, and over 1000 are considered epic.  I think what I'm going to do is finish the paper then post it here as a PDF with some meta information about it.

It's an ambitious endeavor to be sure.  I don't want to give too much away since it hasn't been edited at all, but I will give the opening paragraph. 

Working title:

Why software sucks: How the software industry mislead its customers through its missteps and its inability to adapt quickly to a changing technological landscape

This will be an examination of the current state of the art in computer software applications, their construction, and the people and companies that create them.  I concede that that is an ambitious title and opening statement.  I will attempt to analyze the state of software today by shedding light on the industry itself; the processes that contribute to the end product; a historical perspective on computing; and examining the business of software.

Perhaps sounds more like a Dateline NBC investigation, I don't know.  We'll see where it goes.  Yes, the title is meant to be slightly ironic.

Cheers,

Goody 

Tonight was my first night back to the gym after a lengthy hiatus.  It feels really good to go in there and come away exhausted.

For those who don't know, I have Sarcoidosis, and it hurts.  It physically hurts, it diminishes my physical capacity, but worst of all it's mentally and emotionally taxing.  It's primarily confined to my lungs so there are no outwardly physical manifestations of it.  The downside to that is, people, especially people whom I'm closest to, tend to "forget" or just not understand - if they can't see it, it must not be too bad.  "It's not cancer, right?"  Well, it's there, and I can't ignore it because it causes me physical pain and reduces my physical endurance.

So, between the sarcoid; being supremely busy with my wife and boys (the twins are now four); working; travelling; etc. I've been avoiding the gym.  I've tried to keep doing *something* like pushups and situps, but the truth is, I just became so exhausted and frustrated that I even started slacking on that.  Well, I'm happy to say that I've been hitting the treadmill at home and I've built up enough stamina to head back to the weight room.  So, tonight was my first night back.  Probably won't be able to move tomorrow, but I like that feeling.

 It's a vicious cycle when you don't work out - you become too tired to work out, so you don't go; when you don't go, you don't build the stamina and fight the fatigue. That's a mountain with a snowball that's hard to stop.   But, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  Hopefully tonight will be the first night of my comeback to fitness.  I'm setting realistic goals for now - first to make it a habit again, and second to build up the stamina and fitness level to lead a healthy life not just for me, but for my wife and sons too.  There was a time when I resigned myself to 40 or 50 as my life expectancy.  I'm going to do everything in my power to stretch that to 100.  100?  Ok, 90.

So, it feels good to be back, and I look forward to many more dates with the weights.

Cheers,

Goody

We made it to Japan. 13 1/2 hours on a relatively full 777. We left Sunday morning from DFW at 10:10am and landed at NRT on Monday afternoon at 2:20pm local time. We flew up over British Columbia, Alaska, part of Russia, and down to Tokyo, so from that aspect the flight was pretty cool.

Clearing immigration was interesting - there's a checkbox that says "Are you in possession of Narcotics, Marijuana, Opiates, Stimulates or .... Other Drugs." I have a prescription with me, so to be honest, I checked "yes." I don't think that's what they meant. After I handed the paper to the immigration officer his eyes got huge. He did a double take then asked me "What?!" in that why would you admit to this tone. I handed him a note from my doctor and explained that I thought it might fall under "other drugs." Glad we got that all straightened out.

We leave next Sunday to come home. We'll leave NRT at 5:30pm and arrive at ORD before we left at 3:30pm the same day. That shouldn't mess with my internal clock too much </sarcasm>.

We have Tuesday to ourselves so I'm trying to talk a couple of people into going to Mt. Fuji. It's 1500 Yen ($15) to take the train down from the hotel. Brian said he's up for it, so we'll see.

I didn't realize that our hotel was this close to the Tokyo Tower, so we'll definitely make sure to go see that while we're here too.

So, here we are.

I've put a few pics of our arrival up here, but I'll probably break down and set up a flikr account later. Until then:  Japan Pics

Update 05/06/2008:  I set up the flickr account here.

Sayonara,
Goody 

Wow, this is right on time, as usual.

Let's see. Chicago --> CAK was....mmm.... oh, here it is, Friday, 22 February. So, what is there to say? A lot, really. Most of the people I see F2F have already heard the adventures over and over (and over). I've never been accused of being boring.

The Training

Sam and I went to Chicago for training. Regarding the training, it all went very well, and we're now both certified to install and configure the Sphericall system. Not much else to report on that front. However, our training partners were from the UK. Cambridge, that is. Mike and Andy. Couple of great chaps, they are. Although, I imagine Andy would rather be called a bloke, whereas, Mike is a fine chap. As we spent a great deal of time exchanging humor and colloquialisms, Andy pointed out how "Mike is a posh loke. For example, Mike has a gar-A'ge, whereas, I have a gA'-rage." Mike and Andy were loads of fun. Mike couldn't stop pointing out how "cheap the beer is [t]here", while I couldn't stop pointing out maybe it's the exchange rate. Either way, a good time was had by all. I think.

The City

Well, other than Elmo's Tombstones - While You Wait, we never made it there. Drove back past it on the way to O'hare, if that counts.

The Flight Home

Ahhh, this is where the story begins. O'hare. Terminal 2. Concourse F. Gate 11. 6pm. If you've never been to O'hare, then let me confirm the rumors: it's very large, and it's very busy. But, gate 11, now that's a story all its own. It's an unwritten Stephen King novella. (Maybe it's an unwritten episode of The Colbert Report.) Either way, if you haven't been there, think 1408. If you haven't seen 1408, I'll do my best to describe the scene.

Gate F11: Chicago's O'Hare International airport.

I enter Terminal 2 and start the long walk toward the end of the airport - concourse F. After the trek down the unending corridor, past untold masses of travelers, vendors, and the TSA, I finally arrive at the end... of concourse F. I look around and all I see are people. Seats filled with hundreds of people. Their faces glaring at me through the fog of delayed flights and cancellations. Their eyes, piercing my soul with a thousand silent screams for mercy. The air is foul - dank and musty. What's that stench? It's sweat. It's people. It's delayed travelers.

I look around and see gates 10, 12 and 14, but no gate 11... or 13 either!. Where are they? Where is IT? It must be here, unless the airport architects were superstitious and feared the number 11 too. No, it must be here somewhere, it's printed on my boarding pass. Then I see it. A sign pointing downward toward a set of stairs, and a broken escalator that's covered with caution tape. The sign says... "Abandon all hope, ye who enter F11."

As I approach the stairs, the air thickens. The stench becomes more nauseating. The air down there looks like hot Phoenix asphalt in July, but it's Chicago in the middle of February. It can't be over 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but the heat. I can feel the heat rising from the stairs. I pause, but my heart races. I don't want to go down there. I have no choice. Somewhere, beyond the final stair, is a plane. My only hope. My salvation awaits.... down there. (it's like when you're 4 and your parents forced you to eat broccoli, but you didn't want to, but you really wanted the pudding for dessert. I digress.)

I begin to descend. Step. by. step. One at a time. No sudden moves. Stay alert. The mighty Cerberus awaits. The air is getting hotter. The stench grows thicker. My eyes, they burn. The final step. I'm down... there. More people. Hundreds of people. Weary, broken souls. The sweat. The smell. The... freakin' trash. Man, don't they ever clean this place?! It's the forgotten gate of Hell. O'Hare F11. It's old. The seats, the carpet, the walls, the doors - all old! I look around for an empty seat (two really, Sam's with me, but the buddy system isn't as dramatic). There are none to be found. It's standing room only waiting for the Inferno Express, muahahaha!

So, that's pretty much it. Our flight actually left right on time, and thanks to the jet stream, we arrived at CAK a few minutes early. But that gate - that gate is absolutely disgusting. Someone should really clean that place. It stinks, and the trash barrels are overflowing.

Conclusion

All told, Chicago was pretty fun. We learned a lot about the new system, hung out with some great guys from the UK, saw some good live music, and made some new friends. As they say - It dudn't git much better'n at.

Cheers,
Goody

Oh, I'm sure you've all asked that question to yourselves - "What do I want to be when I grow up?"

Well, quite frankly, I have no idea. I went to college to be an architect, but that fizzled out after a year when I realized that I'm good at the engineering "stuff" but not so much at being an artist. The first year of the five year Kent State architecture program turned out to be really artsy-fartsy. Way beyond anything I expected. So, I picked the next best thing - computers!

So, (eventually) I end up with this B.S. (that's Bachelor of Science, not the other B.S.) in computer science, and a good career so far. But the thing is, see, is that I feel stagnant. I've been at it for 10 years more or less and I just feel.... I dunno.... stuck in a rut. Maybe it's a mid-life crisis, who knows? One thing is for sure though, I've got to get moving in some direction.

I've been working a bit on my M.S. in computer science, and I've recently transferred back to Kent State with the thought that maybe... I dunno, that maybe I'll get my Ph.D. I'm just not sure. I could teach. I could research. I could become a museum curator. I'm a little bummed out because I work really hard to be a good geek, but there are all these other really successful geeks who have degrees in things like Psychology yet have really cool geeky geek jobs. Not that writing management and administration software for IP-PBXs and VoIP systems, and compilers for proprietary languages, and messing around with Jitter Buffers (<-- that's definitely geeky) isn't cool, but it's just not Cool with the capital C. It's cool with the lowercase c, as in "Oh, you like math? That's cool." kind of way.

So, the mission for January is to really figure out what I want to be when I grow up. <sarcasm>I'm allotting myself a whole month to figure this out, so it shouldn't be too tough. I've been toying with the idea for couple of years (decades) so it shouldn't be too tough to nail it down with a concerted effort. </sarcasm>.

I'm working on an essay, more of a research paper, really. 

I was listening to an interview with Grady Booch during which he mentioned that much software architecture is grown, or evolved, rather than planned.

That got me thinking about architecture in general, and brought to mind a quote from Linus Torvalds:

Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

I left off the last couple of sentences from Linus' quote which could provide more relevant context, I don't know, that's for you dear reader to decide.  Personally I find that it doesn't provide any mitigation to the first couple of sentences, so it's irrelevant.

Then I began to think about software engineering in general,  and particularly the essay that Steve McConnell wrote the other day about Software Engineering: Rumors of Software Engineering's Death are Greatly Exaggerated (aka Software Engineering Ignorance, Part II)

I think if you ask 10 seasoned software engineers to define software architecture, or software engineering, that you will likely get 10 different yet conceptually similar answers.  So it sounds fairly simple.  Then why are there so many contradictory philosophies? 

• Problem:  Too much architecture is not planned
  • Solution:  Need more planned architecture
• Problem:  Too many people plan big fancy architectures
  • Solution:  Think small
• Problem:  Too many people don't engineer software
  • Solution:  Need more emphasis on the engineering aspects of software

So, I solicit your input on the following:

• When is it ok, or not ok to have Big Design Up Front (BDUF)?
• Can BDUF and Agile methods coexist?
• What separates Software Engineers from Software Architects?
• How big, or how complex should the architecture really be?  (No lame answers of "only as big as it needs to be")
  • In other words, If I'm sitting down today to begin creating the next generation of a complex system, how complex can the architecture be if I "start with a small _trivial_" architecture?