Recent blog entries for quad

5 Sep 2008 »

Room to be free like the sun and the moon.

<small>(Edited for confidentiality.)</small><h2>Employee’s Self-Assessment of Results Against Commitments</h2>

The first of my three commitments is a personal goal. It is less about working with the team so much as aligning myself to team success. Toward shipping our product, I have made commitments and accomplishments above and beyond simply participating in the process. I have provided review and feedback for all aspects of the project, including involvement in the planning process, raising and proposing solutions for development concerns, and helping bring new members up to speed.

Additionally, I took a lead position in the conception and implementation of the integration sprint. When the planning process was lead firmly in the direction of continued independent sprints and codebases, I investigated and presented the future risks to the team. I then acted as the scrum master for the sprint to integrate our disparate codebases. Simultaneously, I included planning for the ramping up of our engineering process and testing infrastructure.

My second commitment is about improving the performance of the development team. I don’t know if our team’s performance has improved. However, I do know our ability to understand and work with each other has improved. I influenced the definition of goals for the team, as opposed to individuals, to strive toward. This creates interdependencies and makes a team. Unfortunately, it also makes very clear team deficiencies. I think we have more work in improving our weaknesses and relying on our mutual strengths before I can consider us an “improved” team.

My third commitment was about ensuring the development team and our partners are synchronized. Much of the work there has been a matter of connecting the results and consumption of our teams. While painful, this has forced a spotlight and evaluation of both groups. On our partners’ side, the model creation process has been relatively uncontrolled and therefore allowed rapid evolution. The simple fact there are over six branches of the models – none matching the current project features – indicated there was a need for rigor. On the development side, we had only an ad-hoc process for accepting model changes, regenerating designers, and realigning all associated work. Now that our pains are understood, both teams (and our GPM) agree on the importance of defining and formalizing these processes. By getting all parties on the same page, we can make steps toward parity. (No one person can do it alone.)

Overall, I feel I have at the very least achieved my commitments. They were aggressive goals with the intention of causing both tactical and strategic change. I have been employed at Microsoft for six months, and had solid commitments for less than half that time. While simultaneously learning the culture and currently existing processes, I have been influential and some cases instrumental in both team and project improvement. I have had some setbacks, personality conflicts, and have been overly optimistic in some goals; but, thus far have allowed none of my overall commitments or personal goals to slip.

Self-Assessment of Commitment Rating: Achieved<h2>Manager’s Overall Assessment of Employee’s Results Against all Commitments</h2>

Scott join the company in January and was productive in his role very quickly. I have been impressed with his attitude toward creating maintainable and quality code, and drive to have the right environment and practices. When working on the build system Scott quickly learnt the tools (TFS, MSBuild, C#, VS SDK) and then made the right design trade-offs to get what is needed and support a build that does not require SDK installation. His ability to dig into issues was great.

Scott was able to ramp up on the DSL toolkit, VS SDK and validation framework and our own toolset to get a number of sprint work items done and go beyond that to looking at the approach we take to generating the DSL designers and the associated code. He was able to come up with a number of ways to improve this process. He did not follow through with carefully written set of features for vendors to complete. I would have liked to have seen that.

Scott also influenced the way we work with his drive for and creation of the process developers follow in order to get code reviewed before check in.

For all Scott’s promise he has shown some behaviors which if not addressed will prevent his ability to be successful in the team and long term. If he is able practice better behaviors and show a shift in these I see Scott being very successful in the future at Microsoft.

The first pattern is attendance. The hours he keeps in his office have been erratic and he has been late to or missed many meetings. Both have resulted in Scott being hard to find and I have received feedback from multiple team members that they are unable to locate Scott at times during core business hours. The result of this is not just lost time but erodes the level of trust the team can have in Scott.

The other, and this is often related to the first, is that Scott needs to do better at remaining in contact with his team mates, particularly other disciplines. Missing daily scrums have been particularly harmful and resulted in others not knowing what his focus is and how his tasks are progressing. Some have viewed this as Scott taking a very Scott centered view of the project.

Addressing these issues should allow Scott to show a great cadence of delivery.

Final Commitment Rating: Exceeded
Final Contribution Ranking: 20%<h2>In English</h2>

Nine to five, Robinson.

And, talk with your PMs more.

Otherwise, you rock.

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Syndicated 2008-09-05 02:22:21 (Updated 2008-09-05 02:28:13) from David Ryland Scott Robinson

3 Sep 2008 »

My awkwardness over informal grammar will be damn near the death of us all.

Sam: Yo
Sam: Car got broken into when I was at the park today
Me: Shit!
Me: What got stole?
Sam: I had to put it in the garage until I can get the window fixed tomorrow
Sam: Nothing
Sam: They’re shitty thieves
Sam: They tried to take the stereo but failed
Me: Fail.
Sam: Yeah, but the passenger side window is all busted
Me: See, if you didn’t lock the door, this wouldn’t have happened ;-)
Sam: I FUCKING KNOW

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Syndicated 2008-09-02 16:40:47 (Updated 2008-09-02 16:42:03) from David Ryland Scott Robinson

2 Sep 2008 »

Period.

Portugal. The Man's new album, Censored Colors, leaked a while ago. Today, they sent out an e-mail to all their pre-orders with a download. Which is great; because, I had been too lazy to fire up Bittorrent up to this point.

And I will sell this album.

Meanwhile, I'm still noodling by way through Elephants...

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Syndicated 2008-09-02 07:05:03 from David Ryland Scott Robinson

2 Sep 2008 »

Functional over-engineering

It’s a simple and common problem:

You have a directory structure with files in it. You want to find all the files with certain extensions. “jpg”, “jpeg”, “png” and “gif” for argument’s sake.

The language for this exercise is Python.

It’s important to use the standard library. A search for something like “python directory find recursive” will lead you very quickly to os.walk. Which is exactly what you want for walking the directory structure.

But, there is the file extension to be checked. endswith is not appropriate because it’s case-sensitive. What you want is fnmatch. You know that because you either glanced at File and Directory Access when you found the standard library documentation. Or, because you searched for something like “python match filename.”

We’re ready to code. Nothing complex:

def image_files_1(directory):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
        for extension in '*.jpeg', '*.jpg', '*.png', '*.gif':
            for fn in fnmatch.filter(files, extension):
                yield os.path.join(root, fn)

If this was a barrier to getting your job done, mission complete. But, dude, iterators and list comprehensions! And, when all you have is a hammer…

def image_files_2(directory):
    return itertools.chain(*[[os.path.join(root, fn)
                              for fn in fnmatch.filter(files, '*.jpg') +
                                        fnmatch.filter(files, '*.jpeg') +
                                        fnmatch.filter(files, '*.png') +
                                        fnmatch.filter(files, '*.gif')]
                             for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory)])

But, what about new file formats?

def image_files_3(directory, extensions):
    return itertools.chain(*[[os.path.join(root, fn)
                              for fn in sum([fnmatch.filter(files, '*.' + ext)
                                             for ext in extensions],
                                            [])]
                             for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory)])

I am, appropriately, embarrassed that I wrote any of this.

Embarrassed enough to share.

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Syndicated 2008-09-02 06:45:16 from David Ryland Scott Robinson

2 Sep 2008 »

He sent love and happiness into the next car.

I cleaned my room as part of the 100 things challenge.

On the floor were two items that, sadly, had been separated:

A strip of forever stamps.
A pack of postcards.

I hope addressees figure out what they have in common (besides knowing me).

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Syndicated 2008-07-23 18:30:22 (Updated 2008-07-23 20:56:52) from David Ryland Scott Robinson

19 Jul 2008 »

STP 2008

STP! No, no wait! I meant STP!

noisybastard and I planned finishing in a single day. We then woke up two and a half hours late.

It was the world’s most relaxing back to back centuries. (riding 100 miles) And, this time not on a cruiser bike.

Highlights?

Cross-dressers on cross bikes.
Running into friends like Katie J., Aden, and Elise.
Camping under the stars at Centralia College.
20 mph “sprints” for 50 miles.

And, I even rode to work the next day.

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Syndicated 2008-07-19 06:58:15 (Updated 2008-07-19 07:00:21) from David Ryland Scott Robinson

19 Jul 2008 »

I can see the future.

I’m increasingly becoming addicted to flickr.

David, one of my best friends in high school, would take me out on evening photo trips. I would borrow my Father’s Topcon and try my hardest to not be terrible. It’s better for mankind that none of those exposures made it past the negatives.

Since the Topcon went away, I’ve gone from borrowed camera to borrowed camera. And, I’ve built up a modest set of galleries. But, next week, things will never be the same!

The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com: --------------------------------------------------------------------- Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal --------------------------------------------------------------------- Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC): 1 Transcend 4GB SDHC CARD (S... $15.65 1 $15.65 1 Canon PowerShot SD770IS 10... $241.24 1 $241.24 1 Canon PSC-1000 Deluxe Blue... $14.10 1 $14.10 Shipped via DHL (Delivered by USPS) Tracking number: 23653128586

It’s a good little point and shoot. When I want to go full manual, there will still be two film bodies and Sam’s A410.

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Syndicated 2008-07-19 06:43:40 (Updated 2008-07-19 06:59:43) from David Ryland Scott Robinson

19 Jul 2008 »

¡Sí, se puede!

I’m back from Cuba. This has been the case for two weeks now.

I don’t have anything to add to my letters. The visit gave me a different appreciation on my life at home. I think that’s a good return on my investment.

And, isn’t that what travel is about?

noisybastard brought a digital camera and took some vibrant pictures. Meanwhile, Sam and I took two film cameras: an EOS, and FTb. Most of these developed shots, in my opinion, are more true to how I felt life was there...

Gritty.

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Syndicated 2008-07-19 06:15:31 (Updated 2008-07-19 06:38:43) from David Ryland Scott Robinson

19 Jul 2008 »

The end.

Dear Sarah, It's the last day. We're so far ahead in our budget, Sam has made the well regarded decision to "live like Kings." This means taking taxis to visit the last of the sights in Habana: the Monument of Jose Marti and the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana. The monument is located in the center of Revolution Plaza. Jose Marti is a national hero to a degree that may be hard to appreciate. Sam disagrees; but, I don't feel we have any equivalently worshiped personalities. Regardless, the monument is a towering structure of concrete. It makes an imposing image in the skyline - vultures actually circle its heights. When Castro makes his appeals to "direct democracy," it is at the steps off the monument. We paid 6 CUC$ a piece to get entry. There's a museum in the base, dedicated to not just Marti, but the pantheon of Cuban heroes. (the most recent is Che Guevara.) In the center is an elevator - express to the top! Or, almost the top. The observation deck is small, with windows providing a view of all of Habana. On the floors are misaimed compasses, with distances in kilometers to the great cities of the world. The fort was far more interesting. It sprawled several acres. And, it was literally littered with cannon. Cannonballs could be found stacked in piles at every turn. The walls were tall and study, and the inside well protected. Funnily, the massive fortress was one of the most expensive of its time. (Spanish colonial) But, it was also never used. Too fearsome, perhaps? Standing on the highest of its parapets was an odd experience. I thought about how the defense of this harbor was apparently vital so many hundreds of years ago. Countries don't war over the bay now; because, despite so much potential here, there is so much to be had elsewhere. We're ready to leave. Chris had stomach sickness last night. My appetite and strength have long since returned. But, my bowels are still unsteady. Sam is the only one of us to not have been nauseous but, his tacit admission of finally being sick of mango is damning. This nation of constant revolution and politics, a place with police on every corner, and informants on every floor... it drives you to develop your own political thought. I intentionally avoid this mindset normally. But it's so hard to escape now. I find myself reflecting on how to describe the freedom of choice. Sabado,

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Syndicated 2008-07-07 02:06:19 from David Ryland Scott Robinson

19 Jul 2008 »

This letter was never completed.

Dear Sarah, It's impossible to shop for souvenirs in this country. Everywhere we go, no matter if we enter a storefront or stroll through an open air market, we see the same things. Sam made the poignant statement, "the problem is they don't make anything in this country." Chris thinks everything is made in China. They do have art. A lot of it. But not much outside of the "deco" that here is a characterization of kitschiness.

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Syndicated 2008-07-07 01:58:32 from David Ryland Scott Robinson

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