High Caliber Guns

Beautiful Sleep...

Photo taken and posted from my iPhone

A Day Too Good...

I had a day I did not deserve today. About the only thing you can do under those circumstances is to be thankful.

First, my wife was in a great mood today. She was generous and loving even more than usual. She cleaned most of the day, but sent me off to Cigars For Aficianados for a few hours. In the evening she cooked a fantastic spaghetti dinner (in my top five list) to top everything off. To be honest, my wife was the main ingredient in my great day.

Second, while at the lounge my tobacconist shot me a free SCR by Alec Bradley AND the Alec Bradley rep just happened to be there and dropped a free Family Blend on me. Before today I hadn't payed much attention to the Alec Brsdley line, but I smoked a fantastic one today (the SCR), and I have two for later (I bought one as well...suppoert your local tobacconist and all that).

Finally, I scored a free copy of SkyVoyager for the iPhone (a $15 app), and a free copy of SkyGazer for the Mac (a $50 app) due to a promotion Carina Software held in honor of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Astronomy software is one of those things I've always wanted, but never wanted to pay for. This is top notch stuff, and I'm looking forward to gazing at a few of those twinkling spots and knowing what they actually are.

All-in-all a really good day. Thanks to The Creator and thanks to my wife.

Shut Down!...

The boys were being their usual selves in the car today as we waited on Mom to get done in Wal-Mart. So, I being my usual self, decided to ask them to be quite by screaming "Shut Up!". Sarai understanding that the phrase was meant to be delivered with enthusiasm, but not being as good with "up" as she is with "down" proceeded to sternly tell the boys to "Shut Down!"

Ball Of Fire...

I have one of these great Ronson Tech Torch's.  I use it to light yard waste, my grill, and mostly cigars. I was filling it today and without going into details...I enveloped the upper front portion of my body in a ball of flame. It was almost instantaneous and I wasn't harmed, but it burned hair off both my arms and heated up my shirt enough to make it smoke for several seconds...long enough to make the boys make sure I wasn't on fire! The stench was horrible. Definitely scary, but fairly cool now that it's over...

Wonderful Wife, Wonderful Food...

When you live in SmallTown USA it can be challenging to find new flavors for the dinner table. Tonight my wife spent a couple hours in the kitchen and brought not one, not two, but three new dishes to our table. The first was simply a beet that had been baked like a potato...a litter butter and fantastic city. The second was sautéd kolrhabi (a member of the cabage family)...garlic, olive oil, et al...my favorite of the night. The base flavor was a mix of cabage and turnip with only the good flavors of the turnip. Finally she mixed the kolrhabi greens with a concoction of flavors that made a rich, but very enjoyable side dish. It was the highlight of my day, as is my wife!
 
Posted from my iPhone

User Stories...

Several years ago I took a Systems Analysis and Design course. I've always remembered the class with fondness because of its extremely analytical nature (and because of a great instructor). The process required hundreds (if not thousands) of pages of documents, countless meetings, flow charts, CASE tools, and other wonderfully analytical things designed to help the stakeholders successfully design, implement, maintain, and eventually retire/replace the system.

My friend Anthony and I are just beginning a new venture into the land of iPhone, iPod Touch and Mac programming. While there are only two of us involved I thought it might be interesting to apply at least some of the tools and information from my Systems Analysis and Design class to the inner workings of High Priming. When I mentioned this to Anthony he sent me a link to www.extremeprogramming.org. 

Extreme Programming, or XP, is basically a new approach (OK, not exactly new...it was around when I took my class, but it is much more prevalent today) to systems analysis that removes much of the deeper analysis and replaces it with more robust design processes. That is certainly an oversimplification and I don't pretend to understand it completely, but what struck me as most profound about XP was the underlying philosophical changes that had taken place within the domain of systems analysis. To put it rather (over)simply, the systems analysis of yesterday was modern, while the systems analysis of today is postmodern. What required hours of thought before, requires hours of action now. What was once a use case is now a user story. Think about that because it is critical to understanding this entire discussion...a user story.

I wonder how many of those involved in the birth of XP and similar paradigms believe they have simply followed the natural course of systems analysis and design to arrive at the best possible solution without understanding the almost neccessary progression from analytical to narative solutions given the current philosophical landscape?

The more I think about how the broader philosophical domain has impacted the more narrow concrete domains the more I begin to understand the unbelievable power of evolving communal thought. How much do we control what society comes to believe and act upon philosophically, and how much does what society believes philosophically control what we come to believe and act upon?

Note: I've made some rather sweeping statements about the state of systems analysis today that may not reflect what stakeholders in all arenas are seeing, but I think the philosophical implications hold true overall.

Keeping Out The Florida Sun...



iPhone Still Awesome...

I'm sitting at the grocery store waiting for my wife, and it struck me again how magnificent the iPhone is. Now I love my Mac more every day, but the truth of the matter is that I use it at least 50% less than I did before I had the iPhone. Of course that is only possible because of the fabulous browsing experience and the thousands of apps available for the device.
 
If I had to choose between an iPhone or a PC it would be a difficult choice. Obviously some things are not possible or at least not easy on any mobile device, but what can be done is incredible...everything from email to podcasting without touching a laptop or desktop computer.
 
One final benefit is that I bought the 3G when it went on sale so I can post this without wearing oven mits...
 
Posted from my iPhone

AddressBookSync...

I found a cool app today called AddressBookSync that lets you sync the pics from your Facebook contacts with your Address Book contacts...very nice (mac only of course).