Reading circle!

One of the other teams started a reading circle. Its pretty crazy. I think the dude who runs it is a Zen Buddhist or something, but basically on the 1st of the month a book get posted on the Twiki. We then have three weeks to read it and on the fourth week we all meet to discuss. Awesome I thought, plus I saw Geek-Babe had signed up.

This is when it got a bit weird. We all went up to the boardroom, there were candles and incense burning, we all held hands and chanted for like about 20 minutes. Then for the next three hours we had a shouting match on the pros and cons of the book in question. Man it was intense, people calling each other mother this and mother that, shouting at each other, throwing the books across the room. It was like telling a Republican that its all their fault the banking sector just cut its own throat! Franks-Mom tried to keep things in order, but it was crazy!

At the end, Zen-Dude got everybody together again and we all chanted for 10 minutes, we all hugged and then Zen-Dude pulled out the largest bottle of tequila. Technically I think that means we are all now sacked after we finished every last drop.

The book? Tracy Kidder's Soul of a new machine. Man, I almost cried in the chapter about the missing NAND gate, its was like my Spring nightmare all over again, I could not help the emotion and horror of it all.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!))
Shots : 8 (I think I'm sacked!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

Spring is totally evil and must be killed!

Ok, Ok. The title of this weeks post is perhaps overkill. But boy, Spring is totally bogus.

Now you recall that I said Spring was like an Aston Martin, with Spring the Aston knew me, what I liked and ensured that my model girlfriend could not drive. Well it turns out that in fact Spring is some "pansy" scheme.

This is what happens. You take a big messenger bag full of money to the Aston Martin dealer on Van Ness. You hand over the cash and drive home with a huge smile on your face and errr... well you know what else! You park the car in the garage of your cool SOMA or NOHO loft.

Next morning you wake early, you intend to pick up your model girlfriend and then drive down the coast for some lunch at the Moss Beach Distillery. You leave your lovely loft and wake up the the Aston after its snuggly warm sleep in the garage. You make the first stop at your girlfriends condo. You get back in the car, it feels different. You are not sure, perhaps slightly down on power, the turn in a little less sharp. You drive a little further and stop for gas. After jumping back in the car is totally wrong, it has the get up and go of a Prius and some of the interior feels cheap and from a Ford parts bin.

This is Spring. In fact, Spring is worse than that. Instead of opening up the hood to check on the engine with the full complement of tools that you are used to, with Spring you are left with your favorite editor (mine is emacs) and XML to debug the ever changing system.

It was designed by a narcosist, implemented after one too many for the road and used by people who would never normally be left with a sharp instrument within 100ft of them.

I'm not a fan anymore.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 6 (up 6 from last week)
Shots : 6 (same as last week)
Dinner : 5 nights (5 x pizza)
Weight : 182 lbs

Spring is cool!

Its way cool that I'm in an environment with super techies like me. Spent the week learning and using Spring for Dependency Injection. Its so cool I think it could total deal with the whole global warming thing.

If you are not technical, then let me explain. Basically it does this. Say you have a car, lets say its a cool car like an Aston Martin. Carrying you keys around is a pain, it ruins the line and cut of your Giorgio Armani suite or Diesel jeans. What you really want is this. As you get close to the car, the door unlocks and opens and then as you sit down the car starts itself. The car has auto-magically inserted the key since its a dependency for the thing to work correctly for you.

Now lets say you had a super tall model like girlfriend. You want her to open the car, operate the stereo and check out her make-up in the mirror. You are never going to let her drive. So her key is auto-magically inserted but has a different set of dependencies. She can get in but not drive. If some random person shows up at your Aston Martin it locks the doors and kicks the James Bond machine guns into life.

That's the magic of Spring. In my case I get the cool car and super model like girlfriend. The reality is that its a bunch of XML files. My boss, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir showed me around and I think I now have the hang of it.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 4 bottles (down 2 from last week)
Shots : 2 x Bourbon Shots (same as last week)
Dinner : 3 nights (2 x Indian, 1 x Thai)
Weight : 182 lbs

Awesome waffle breakfast!

Wow. I was blown away. All the VPs got together this week cooked all the employee's breakfast. Hey it was Bisquick Shake & Pour but it was super tasty, in a processed kind of way. I've never seen such a controlled form of chaos in my life, must be the fact that Henry was not there. He did say at the last company meeting (from his cell phone) that he would be there leading the charge, but apparently some Red Sox game was playing so decided to stay on the East Coast to watch it. He loves them Sox.

I chatted to Geek Babe, you know, her best advice on Spring dependency injection and so forth. I think she recognizes talent if you know what I mean.

One of the teams has started a bake-and-bring weekly event. Apparently, you bake something and bring it into the office. Sounds totally yuk to me. Why would I want somebodies homemade cookies, coffee cake, etc. when I can just go to Starbucks and get the real thing. Don't people know that home style stuff is so like my grandmother would do?

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 5 bottles (down one from last week)
Shots : 3 x Tequila (same as last week)
Dinner : 5 nights (4 x Una Mass, 1 x Thai)
Weight : 171 lbs