specimens

But there isn't any fossil evidence.

Well, yes there is.  I'm bookmarking it here for my next argument on the subject.

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html

pancake statement

pancake statement, originally uploaded by captaint.

Too cute, I know. Made pancakes for Poopsik this morning (as she does demand them on Saturdays).

juggling

So, I watched Jason Garfield's FIVE ball juggling routine to Golden Slumber first.  And I read all of Jason's hype about how he dissed Chris Bliss.  And I was impressed - yeah, he juggles five balls to Golden Slumber.  Pretty darn cool:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QYUXaYCkv-A&search=jason%20garfield

Finally, my mom sent me a link to the original Chris Bliss three ball juggling routine, the one so soundly dissed by Jason.

http://s158645047.onlinehome.us/video_5290_10558.html?sid=5290&aid=10558

But honestly, Bliss's lame-o three ball routine was more fun to watch.  Bliss was frickin singing the song.  He looked like he was playing air guitar  with those balls.  He was rocking out.

But Jason?  He looked too busy juggling five balls to enjoy the song.

This is very freaking cool: ajaxwrite

http://www.linspire.com/ajaxwrite.php

Credit Bureaus

From:  http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/optoutalrt.htm

Credit Bureaus

The credit bureaus offer a toll-free number that enables you to "opt-out" of having pre-approved credit offers sent to you for two years. Call 1-888-5-OPTOUT (567-8688) for more information. When you call, you'll be asked for personal information, including your home telephone number, your name and your Social Security number. The information you provide is confidential and will be used only to process your request to opt out of receiving pre-screened offers of credit.

want one

. . . of these:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-y3ZNaCqs

WITH the soundtrack please.

Re: The Secret of XPlanner revealed

On 3/9/06, The Colonel emailed:

I figured out what the XPlanner problem is wrt metrics and accuracy.

When you blow an estimate, it prompts you to change the estimate by adding
the delta to the estimate field. DO NOT ACCEPT XPlanner's prompted
estimate, simply put the original estimate back in the text field. It will
allow you to continue.

This is non-intuitive because the screen flow leads you to believe that
you cannot enter an estimate that is less than the time spent. This is not
true at all: you may elect to ignore the prompt to change the estimate
entirely.

I think the reason the screen flow is as such is typically for iteration
planning purposes. The only reason you would change this in development is
if your customer and you renegotiated stories mid-iteration and you are
now changing all your estimates and the time spent on the tasks at the
same time: not to mention you don't care about analyzing your estimating
accuracy.

A simple fix would be to always prompt with the original estimate instead
of trying to be helpful by prompting with the aggregate time spent as the
original estimate.

Nope - I think you are wrong, Colonel. I've been looking at forums where the author(s) seem to interact with users.

There are two purposes served by two separate estimates maintained by XPlanner:
1. XPlanner tries to keep the original estimate AS OF THE START OF THE ITERATION. (See my recent blog entry on this topic at http://tombrowse.blogspot.com) It keeps that in a separate field. If you fail to start the iteration, or close it and restart it, THAT blows away your original estimate. The current version of XPlanner is not much more than an ITERATION planning tool, not much help for release/project planning.

2. XPlanner then keeps a SEPARATE, constantly updated estimate that represents how you are doing this iteration. And it needs a value that makes sense when reporting "how much work is left." If you are over your estimate, and you are not done because there is still more work to do, XPlanner feels dumb reporting that you have a negative amount of work to do. So XPlanner defaults to giving you a new estimate that is not negative - I think. I haven't examined the details of this behavior myself, only read the XPlanner author(s)' comments.

If you have drawn your conclusions by examining the actual database columns and values, then just ignore me.

By the way, I recently was forced to close and re-open our BandCamp iteration because some bug in XPlanner was preventing me from filling out my time on a task that was carried over from the previous iteration. So, I believe I clobbered our statistics for this iteration. Sorry.

Xplanner: "accuracy" page explanation

The last post in the this forum topic describes some detail on the "accuracy" page of xplanner:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1350686&forum_id=161119

Turns out, "starting" an iteration is an important user action.  I believe it takes a snapshot of the current story estimate, whatever that may be, whether made up of its tasks or not, and saves that as the estimate that will be used to calculate velocity during and at the end of the iteration.

Again, I am guessing, but I believe that means that if you "close" and re-"start" an iteration, you will potentially mess up any iteration velocity statistics you were hoping to get . . . since that will take a new "snapshot" of the story estimates, based on whatever they are right now . . .

Creep

So, when you're listening to your purchased version of Creep by RadioHead, and you get to that one line, and you realize Poopsik is in the car, listening in . . ..  I mean, how do you guys handle that situation?

Mmm, Pony

In reading to Poopsik at bedtime tonight, we came upon the part of the story where the main character dreams about having a beautiful white pony.  At that point, I interjected, "Mmmmm, Pony" in my best imitation of Homer.

With unaffected sincerity, Poopsik came back with, "I've never tried pony before."

Which reminds me of when we were at her cousin's house spending the night.  I was putting Poopsik to bed, and I handed her one of her cousin's stuffed animals - a huge, cute, pink pig.  Poopsik held it up over her head and said, "Mmmm, bacon."

Poopsik has a thing about food.

out tech geek

I dumped my second FM Transmitter.  The whole point was to be able to plug the Treo into the car stereo with as few wires as possible.   But the transmitter was so weak on just batteries that I was constantly getting static no matter what station I tuned it to.  The suggested solution was to plug the transmitter in using the lighter adapter - but that is another wire to mess around with.  So I just got the cassette adapter - still wired, but if I have to have one anyway, I'd rather have the good sound.

Then I got a call, while listening to the Treo play music, and of course I could hear the phone call over the car stereo, and the speaker phone worked to pick up my voice.  It was awesome.  Except I was getting some interference depending on how I held the Treo and the wire to the cassette adapter during the phone call.  Anyone know what that is about or how to stop it?

In other news, I am still thinking about getting some kind of Intel Mac.  I want something that is better at video editing than this crappy Windows software (currently Pinnacle is bombing on me - hate it).  I was looking at the Intel Core Duo Mac Mini - but then I read some grumbling about it on some gadget forum.  They were whining about the integrated video card.  I'm interested in the Mini cause I already have a monitor, keyboard, etc.  I was also interested because I thought maybe I could get what I want for around five to eight hundred bucks.  Dream on!  With my desired configuration, the mini was up to twelve hundred bucks.  Humph.  Anon E. Mous says I should screw the larger hard drive - get the minimum and invest in a cheap external.  He also suggested that buying the RAM separately to upgrade might get the price down.  But still.  At that price point, as mentioned on the griping forum, why not just get an iMac?

Lastly, I'm using XPlanner on two different efforts - the latest beta version.  I really like the idea - pretty much just for that gratifying feeling of checking off tasks and seeing green bars, and fancy charts I can show my project manager.  Mmm, charts.

lost an hour!

Here's where it went:  Bungie Bill!

http://javaunlimited.net/games/view.php?id=61


Nuts.