Category: All Posts

Here we go again

• “In lockdown, Zoom expands to fill all of the manager’s available time.”
  I’ve been feeling the Zoom fatigue, and I’m not the only one. This article makes a valid (!) claim that the above quote is the third amendment to Parkinsons Law.
• I’m not very fond of scrum. Not because it’s necessarily bad – I just think it’s too easy to phone it in and do the wrong thing by focusing on the rituals rather than adapting and learning. Anyway – this article, Scrum Is Dead. All Hail Kanban, the New King is interesting
• Considering Cypress for a web automation project – here are some pros and cons
• My latest fave in tracking covid-19 outbreaks is https://rt.live/us/
• Apparently, Amazon asked their employees to remove Tik-Tok from their phones – then said it was an error. I’m sure there will be more to this story.

Another week of random stuff. Let’s see if anything is interesting…

• There’s a pair of excellent articles from the team at Slack about a recent incident and how they handled it. A Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day at Slack, and All Hands on Deck
• I think I mentioned last week that I’m learning Rust (for no particular reason). I’m enjoying using codewars for random kata.
• It’s too bad that this is the last season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D – it’s a fantastic show
• Speaking of television, I’ve been a long time user of youtube tv – but there’s a lot of discussion this week about their recent price change. While I can certainly afford the change, it’s enough of a change that it’s made me realize that I don’t really have any need for live tv streaming. Between the ESPN bundle I get with Disney+, plus locast, I realized I’ve just been wasting my money.
• I, for one, am completely unsurprised that Dr. Fauci says that he’s “concerned”. Cover your face, stay farther apart than you think you need to, and stop being stupid.
  Please stay safe and healthy.

I like to think that this FfF series (which has lasted a long time now), is an eclectic slice of the internet – but it was cool last week when one of my links was posted by someone who actually reads this thing.

Pretty cool – let’s see if I can do it again.

• I finally read the latest Patrick Lencioni book, Motive – which sums up a lot of the ideas in some of his previous books. It’s on the short side, but worth the effort, as the points it makes are relevant and fantastic.
• In Corona news, looks like the results of stupidity in my home country are coming to fruition – The U.S. Has Officially Unflattened the Curve With Its Worst Day of the Coronavirus Pandemic Yet
• I have a software patent or two. I don’t remember exactly what they’re for, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that unique of an idea. My experience with the patent process was that they don’t look really hard, and although I’m pretty much positive my patent has been “infringed” – I don’t care. Here’s another take – Software patents are another kind of disease
• I’m not sure how to pull this off myself, but this article on Implementing a No Meeting Day really gave me a lot to think about.
• For no reason in particular, I began learning Rust last weekend. I’ve kept at it for 30-40 minutes a day, and I’m becoming a bit of a fan.

Happy Juneteenth everyone – I hope you all find your own way to celebrate today. Here are some interesting things I found on the internet this week.

• First, I want to share an article about Juneteenth that I liked. Juneteenth: are we really woke this time?
• I enjoyed this article on the relationship between culture and taking on chaos engineering
• Camille Fournier is on the Maintainable podcast this week – one of my favorite listens of the week
• I started using PomoDoneApp in conjunction with my to-do list in ToDoist and so far, it’s been really helpful.
• Every Michael Lopp (aka Rands) blog post is worth sharing – here is his latest – Management via Worry and Crisis

Here’s a few interesting things to read this week.

• Unity has made Juneteenth a yearly company holiday. Here’s some history of the day.
• A former colleague of mine, Sue Loh, has an evil plan to save the world. I’ve read the book, and it’s a fun read (even for an adult). Please check it out.
• I was talking with quite a few people this week about “chance meetings” – and how we’re missing them with everyone wfh. Was happy to see this article telling me how wrong I am.
• CHAZ already has a wikipedia page – for those not in Seattle, this is just outside of downtown, and it’s been peaceful ever since the police left
• Well, this is a mess. Recent Windows 10 updates block programs from running

No intro or text this week – just links. I just can’t.

• https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/10-ways-white-people-can-help-make-black-lives-matter-dg/
• https://www.allure.com/story/black-lives-matter-where-to-donate
• https://www.papermag.com/where-to-donate-protests-minneapolis-2646128317.html
• https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/health/protests-racism-talk-to-children-wellness/index.html
• https://twitter.com/search?q=%22The%20police%20are%20the%20terrorists%22%20(from%3Aqualityfrog)&src=typed_query

This has been one of the most fucked up weeks I can remember. I hope everyone reading this is doing well and staying safe – I only hope I can provide a few minutes of distraction.

• First up – and the item weighing heavily on me right now is everything going on in Minnesota. I just gave a substantial donation to Minnesota Freedom Fund – if you care about what’s going on – and have the means, I encourage you to donate what you can
• I’m a firm believer that product quality starts with team culture – and that psychological safety is a huge part of that. This article on Building Psychological Safety is a good introduction to the topic
• I just read Always Day One – which along with some ideas from big tech companies on staying fresh, contained this all too accurate quote about what’s often called Microsoft’s lost decade. While there are exceptions, a lot of this culture still exists (or at least existed 3 years ago)
  
  Microsoft was different. Under its then-CEO Steve Ballmer, who rose through the sales function, the company was bureaucratic and slow, and clung to the past. Focused on protecting its lucrative legacy businesses, Windows and Office, Microsoft prioritized profit over invention, developing a command-and-control culture that optimized for the short term. The alpha males running Windows—the dominant desktop operating system in the age of personal computers—almost always got their way.
• I always find something interesting in the Stack Overflow Development Survey Results – you may too
• Finally – for something a big lighter – some genius at an amusement park put 22 Teddy Bears on a roller coaster. Enjoy.

The days keep getting more blurred. This is the Friday before a three-day weekend. What is a weekend anyway? Here are some things I thought were interesting as I stumbled through the last week.

• Lisa Crispin gave a talk this week comparing the Agile Test principles with the Modern Testing Principles. Not surprisingly, they overlap a lot.
• I’m really enjoying this series on organizational silos, by Len Lagestee. Part 1 and Part 2
• I gave a presentation at the Online Test Conference this week. My dog, who accompanies all of my office calls slept behind me, but made it into a few tweets about the conference. She and I have spent a lot of time the last few weeks exploring these trails and enjoying a little aimless wandering during these times.
• I forgot to mention this last week, but I started an AB Testing instagram account. It’s low traffic, but just a little more marketing for the podcast
• A long, long time ago, I tested text rendering on Windows, and learned way too much about fonts and font rendering. I avoid paying attention to a lot of that stuff today, but still found this article on font rendering in Chromium on Catalina – specifically the discussion of a regression and fix.

Here we go again…

• I saw that Google is asking employees to take a day off to avoid burnout – and thought, hey – good idea. A second later, I realized that the day they’re asking employees to take off is already a paid holiday at Unity.
• In Coronavirus news, this morning, I read an article stating that a biotech company had a cure for Covid-19 – the same link now has this title: The Trouble With Tiny Biotech’s Coronavirus Cure Claim – nevertheless, I found it interesting.
• I forgot that I knew how to do this, but this writeup on custom git commands is well explained and easy to follow.
• I read The Coaching Habit this weekend, and I highly recommend it to anyone who finds coaching to be part of their job.
• This is sad (but still a bit funny). Software ‘bug broker’ Zerodium to stop buying iOS exploits due to oversupply

The days are all blurring together – but I still found some things worth sharing.

• I’m presenting at the Online Test Conference – it’s free, it’s well run, and it’s happening May 19th-21st..
• Gregory Paciga had a nice post recently on naming tests – Don’t “check” or “verify” in your tests
• I stumbled across Deadlock Empire this week – it’s an interactive game that helps you understand just how easy it is for deadlocks to occur on multithreaded systems
• A lot of people have read the Basecamp Shape-Up book. It’s good, but there’s enough I don’t quite like that I only recommend it with caveats. That said, I like Scrum much less than I like Shape Up – but I still found this article –Basecamp’s Shape Up: how different is it really from Scrum? interesting
• A flash from the past. Zork