Bob's Blog

My blog has moved

meta-creation_date: 01/24/2007 11:24:10 Don't get me wrong - creating/modifying your own blog software in Perl was fun but it became more of a pain in the butt after a while. This new PHP blog is much more up to date and will be easier to modify - if I have to. Sorry for the inconvenience but here are the new URL's:

http://blog.balfes.net

Atom: http://blog.balfes.net/atom.php
RSS 2.0: http://blog.balfes.net/rss.php
RDF: http://blog.balfes.net/rdf.php

Of course you can also access them below on the right.

The Mexican Jumping Bean

meta-creation_date: 01/16/2007 08:48:44 Very interesting write-up in case you did not know about them.

They are a type of seed in which the egg of a small moth has been laid. It is the moth's larva which makes them "jump".

The Bloggies are back!

meta-creation_date: 01/06/2007 16:06:42 Feel free to nominate my blog for the 2007 Bloggies. I didn't place too well last year (actually not at all) so I am really stepping up the advertising. I am really trying to get recognized in the following categories for the following reasons:

Best Web Application for Weblogs - Blosxom is awesome and there are not many who use it any more
Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog - I mentioned Steve Irwin's death - God I miss that show.
Best Asian Weblog - I like Pokemon!
Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog - I know many African Americans, I even had one in my wedding party
Best European Weblog - One of my favorite movies is European Vacation
Best British or Irish Weblog - I have both British and Irish heritage
Best Latin American Weblog - I read Latin in Church many times
Best Canadian Weblog - Bob and Doug McKenzie were my childhood heroes
Best American Weblog - Do I really have to say?
Best Photography of a Weblog - There are tons of photos on this site
Best Craft Weblog - My wife thinks I am pretty crafty
Best Food Weblog - No reason outside of I eat a lot of it
Best Sports Weblog - Go Bills!
Best Weblog About Music - I had four postings with the word music in them.
Best Entertainment Weblog - The vote is not out on whether this is entertaining
Best Weblog About Politics - I love Bush!
Best Web Development Weblog - This site has been a pain in my ass with all of the perl and Javascript
Best Computers or Technology Weblog - Need I say more?
Best Topical Weblog - I probably have the most topics!
Best GLBT Weblog - Giving Losers Bottled Tequila was my passion 10 years ago
Best Teen Weblog - I know my site has thousands of teens subscribing
Most Humorous Weblog - Is this funny? Probably not...
Best Writing of a Weblog - I have gotten better...
Best Group Weblog - I think of it more as a community
Best Community Weblog - It is more like a group to me
Best-Designed Weblog - Come on, Blue - how can I go wrong?
Best-Kept Secret Weblog - I still believe my blog is the biggest secret on the Internet
Best New Weblog - It is new - I might actually qualify for this one
Lifetime Achievement - Married 13 years, 3 kids, a dog, a bird, two cats - I think I deserve it
Weblog of the Year - Wooo Hoo, this is what I am aiming for!

Translate your site

meta-creation_date: 01/06/2007 14:16:29 You can use the Google tool to translate any site to your native language. It has some cludges but does a pretty good job.

German
French
Spanish
Italian
Japanese

New Years Resolution

meta-creation_date: 01/02/2007 04:02:00

Happy New Year!

I have several things I want to focus on this year and my resolution is either to do better in them or complete them.

Personal

Lose 18 pounds and keep it off the entire year through casual dieting and working out
Be more active with my kids in all ways

Get them golfing more

Teach them more about computers, programming

Get them interested in new things

Become a single digit handicap in golf

Work Professional

Make the Lotus Expeditor client/platform a great development environment and runtime
Ship Lotus Notes 8!
Finish my masters degree
Educate the community on composite applications and our products through blogging/articles.
Promote Eclipse
Stay motivated and keep focus!

The last one is very important to me. I try to stay motivated and keep productivity and product quality good by having a great interest in my work. I love my job and I think it helps in these areas but with all jobs it is still a job. I visited the National Marine Corps Museum last week and it reminded me how motivated I was being a Marine. I carried all of those attributes into my programming career - things like Leadership, Initiative, Decisiveness, Dependability, Integrity, Enthusiasm, Knowledge, etc are all attributes I try to display all of the time. Of course I am human and I can always do better. I then realized, what is my Marine Corps now? What makes me proud? What keeps me motivated?

Well, here they are:

My loving wife
My three children - Bobby, Kayla, Nathan
My extended family - I have a very large family
Former Marine!
My passion for software programming.
IBM - being part of several huge products in arguably the best software company in the world
My team - I have some of the brightest people in the industry on my team.

Merry Christmas!

meta-creation_date: 12/22/2006 09:46:29

Yul Kwon Wins 13th Survivor

meta-creation_date: 12/18/2006 04:36:59 Yul won but I really wanted Ozzie to win.

"It's the first time I've ever felt bad that somebody didn't win," host Jeff Probst said. "It was so evenly matched."

Simplicity

meta-creation_date: 12/10/2006 02:28:30 Joel talks about how simplicity can be viewed a few different ways. I do agree that for many reasons software sells because of features and that really is the bottom line in the industry. Unfortunately if you have 100's of features and the software is just plain hard to use people might buy it but they most likely won't upgrade and continue to support it. If you happen to have a novel product then you have time to make it easier to use because people will buy it in the first round. A few days ago I wrote about the Logitech Harmony remote I purchased. This remote to me is extremely simple yet contains many features. With one or two clicks I can setup my entire entertainment system to do X. I can also control every single device down to the last function - feature rich. After reading Joel's posting and then realizing the remote is a similar "great" product fit to his description I started thinking about other aspects of software development where this is greatly needed.

One being Automation - this is a place where testing a product should not be time consuming to anyone on the development staff - whether they are a manager, tester, developer, etc. Anyone should be able to run the regression suite on the product. Why? Because if I am writing a piece of code I should be able to test that code in the context of the automation with little work. If I am a manager and produced a crash (which only happens on my machine) I should be able to run that suite against my installed binaries - on my machine. If I am a tester I should be able to say - just run test X and you will see the crash.

I still think today that automation, unit testing and build verification testing are all done in closed boxes. Developers can only run their unit tests, testers can only run their automation, and if you are lucky the build room runs the build verification tests. I have always preached that the automation tools developed in house need to be like products themselves and the customers are the entire company. When you approach software testing - and specifically automation - like this, you will see huge benefits in the very short term. Testers will easily be able to communicate their bugs and developers will be able to run the tools prior to delivering their code.

Second being collaboration. Sametime 7.5 is an amazing product. Grady talks about this in a recent post and products like Sametime 7.5 are leading the way. Many products do the individual features of Sametime very well but not many integrate them so nicely - and also do not integrate into an existing infrastructure like Notes/Domino/Sametime. One of the best features I use very frequently is the Call button when chatting with someone. If I am not in a meeting and the "chatting" gets a little too "chatty" I simply click the button above the chat window to call them. This is voice over IP - and amazingly enough the quality is actually better than my Vonage connection. Once again, simplicity on the covers but feature rich.

Tags: testing software development

Blog gets a face lift

meta-creation_date: 12/08/2006 14:34:30 I finally got around to updating my blog with style sheets. I also cleaned up the UI a bit and removed the advertisements from Google. Apparently I am not going to become a millionaire from Google Ads, darn!

Logitech Harmony XBox 360 remote rocks!

meta-creation_date: 11/29/2006 08:19:20
I bought this remote last night and I am amazed I did not have this little gadget early. You can do a lot of different setups with the remote (activities to be more exact) and each activity can do any number of commands and configurations. For instance I click the "Watch TV" activity and it:

Turns on the television
Turns on my stereo
Turns on my cable box
Sets up the stereo for the volume
Sets up the cable box for changing channels
Turns the TV to the correct Input Source

Product information here.

#1 Ranking on Google!

meta-creation_date: 11/19/2006 16:01:39
One of the top searches that brings people to this blog is the following phrase:

"the number one smartest animal in the world"

Search results here.

Last posting on bad flights

meta-creation_date: 11/19/2006 02:55:52
I have come to realize that I could have an entire blog associated with bad travel problems. This is my last posting complaining about the travel nightmares I have endured. So now what, you ask? Well, my flight Thursday night was completely canceled - after I tried to get on an earlier flight (3 to be exact) and didn't make any of them. I then had to reschedule for the next day, the only problem is there weren't any hotels in the immediate area! I ended up getting a room for $250 a night. It came with a beautiful living room, two televisions, etc. My flight was very late and it looks like many people had to reschedule for the next day.

The next day was even worse. My flight to JFK at 8:30am went off fine. Then we circled NYC for an extra 25 minutes - missing my connection. After receiving a free ticket in the U.S. I finally arrived home at 6:30pm. Nice...real nice...

Weather Forecast in your FireFox Toolbar

meta-creation_date: 03/18/2006 02:30:13
This is a pretty cool plugin for FireFox, it puts icons in your status bar for weather warnings, todays weather and the next three days weather.

Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.

Screen Shot

IBM builds super-fast transistor

meta-creation_date: 06/20/2006 07:47:49
This is crazy! 500ghz chips at absolute zero, 300ghz at room temperature, an enter DVD quality movie transfered wireless in 5 seconds!

The transistor achieved a speed of 500 gigahertz, which is more than 100 times speedier than the fastest PC chips sold today

...

Meyerson forecasts that the advances will show up in real products within a couple years, probably in chips to power super-fast wireless networks capable of moving a DVD-quality movie in as little as 5 seconds.

Referenced Article:

IBM build super-fast transistor

USS Oriskany was sunk today

meta-creation_date: 05/17/2006 15:36:42
The USS Oriskany was sunk today to create the largest man made reef. News footage and pictures can be seen here.

The ship is named after the Revolutionary War battle that was fought in the Village of Oriskany.

I was born and raised in Oriskany. The anchor is in the center of town in a park named after my grandfather and his four brothers (Trinkaus Park).

Wal-Mart May Start Pumping Ethanol

meta-creation_date: 06/01/2006 01:33:44
I don't normally like blogging news but this could have a pretty big impact on the fuel wars.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. may offer ethanol made from corn at its 383 U.S. gas stations, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

Reference article: click here

Steve Irwin is dead

meta-creation_date: 09/04/2006 01:46:29
I watched this guy a thousand times with my kids, very sad.

Irwin was killed by a stingray barb to the heart on Batt Reef, off the remote resort town of Port Douglas in northeastern Queensland state, his wildlife park Australia Zoo said in a statement.
..
Irwin was famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchword "Crikey!" in his television program "Crocodile Hunter," which was first broadcast in Australia in 1992 and has aired around the world on the Discovery channel.

Article is here.

Tired of Paying for 411?

meta-creation_date: 02/01/2006 09:30:00

Sent by Art Thomas

When you need to use the 411 / information option, simply dial 1 800 FREE 411 or 1 800 373 3411 without incurring a charge at all except for the minutes required to make the call.

See: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/free411.asp