So there I was, minding my own business and happily ignoring my complete and utter lack of blog posts since May. Then Katie went and referenced my happily sleeping blog.
On the bright she did call the blog “hilarious.”
So in the time since last we talked I’ve done three major things.
- Pwned people so bad in lunchtime basketball that I tore my ACL. I then had said ACL reconstructed and generally crutched, limped, and hobbled around until it was mostly as good as new.
- Cut the TV cable at home relying on my wits, guile, Internet, big old over-the-air antenna, Netflix and AppleTV to entertain myself.
- Developed a new product for Seapine
Whoa you say. Look at that #3, “Developed a new product for Seapine.” That’s some dope stuff there what is it and what is it all about. What is written in? Is it awesome? How awesome?
Don’t worry we’ll get to that. For right now, since it has been a while since the last post we need warm ourselves up before getting into something like that. If you don’t you could pull a hamstring. Or worse…
Item 1: Do something nice for you knee today
Before (where did that ligament go):
After (oh there, it is. Too bad we had to build a new one from my hamstring)
In short, if you can, don’t rip up your knee. It sucks.
Item 2: Cable TV, you’re not the boss of me
For the longest time we had considered ditching cable TV in favor of something less costly. Also we found if we had cable we’d end up having inane things on like shows about buying houses or remodeling houses or cleaning houses that are packed to the brim with junk. We already had Netflix (and so should you) so when the new AppleTV came out we figured we’d go all in and ditch cable.
After living this way for a few months I can say I don’t miss cable much at all. Here are some keys to success though.
- Install a big, directional over-the-air antenna outside your house and connect it to your TV. While we don’t have a DVR for this stuff I do have free HD for ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and a metric ton of PBS stations. I also have two kids under six years old so I’m basically always at home after 8pm so missing something I want to watch doesn’t really happen anymore.
- Get Netflix. Stream stuff from their site through the AppleTV. Get the past seasons of Mad Men on DVD delivered to your door.
- Pick a year when your favorite sports teams are either going to have a down year or just plain suck. Xavier basketball is a little down, the Cincinnati Bengals, well, if you can’t say anything nice…
- If you are going to rent something from iTunes, DON’T use the AppleTV. Rent it through your Mac (you should have one of those too) and then AirPlay it to the TV. I’ve tried to rent one HD movie and it said it would take 18 hours to download. Granted I think my ADSL connection was being, ahem, temperamental but since it is all streaming if you reboot the box or anything it has to start over.
- Fast internet is your friend.
Clearly this isn’t for everyone. I mean if you HAVE to see how the clean out the super messy house show turns out the day it broadcasts then this probably isn’t the answer.
Item 3: The software of awesome
Ok, how we doing? All stretched out? Feeling loose? Let’s get to it then.
A very common feature request from our customers is the ability to report across all of our products from the same place. So say you have fifty TestTrack projects and five Surround SCM mainlines and you want to see all the activity that user Joe has done across all of these things. You want to see this information because Joe is an idiot and the chances of him ruining your company increase exponentially the more stuff he touches. On the plus side Joe has a lovely singing voice is nearly unbeatable in toss-the-pencil-at-the-ceiling-and-make-it-stick. It’s a gift.
What you used to have to do is write a report or a filter in every single TestTrack project and every single Surround SCM mainline and then run each of those to see what was going on. Then if you wanted to see them all together you’d need an industrial sized printer, a lot of tape, and a little patience.
Starting with the v2011 product releases we now have the ALM Reporting Platform. This guy is a Grails app that does the work of pulling TestTrack and Surround SCM data from their RDBMS databases and imports it into a SQL Server or Oracle database that is specifically designed for reporting. A bunch of sample reports are even shipped too because what good is breakfast without bacon.
I’ll talk more about this later, especially since the first version is finally done and I can crawl out of my secured Groovy coding bunker.
The big conclusion
Ok, that’s enough of a workout for the first post back. It is proper to have good nutrition after a strenuous activity, particularly after having been laid up for so long. To that end for your view enjoyment I present Epic Meal Time.
Warning: The language is somewhat crude, but bleeped out. Its a cooking show, sort of, although I’ve never seen Julia Child use that much Jack Daniels. Probably be careful if you’re a vegetarian. Or a cardiologist.
How did someone find out about my secret breakfast?!?! Glad to see they were able to give you a new ligament, that looks painful..hope you get back to normal soon!