I've been reading each of the Software Factories articles with great interest. Part 1 and part 2 did a particularly good job describing the elements of the problem space, I thought. However, when I get to part 3, I was ready to see a solution. Instead what I got was a long abstract piece defining the bits of what makes up a software factory. This is the kind of thing I'd be ready to read after I was shown a concrete example or two of working, running software factories. Do other people like reading these long, abstract articles? I find them tedious unless they're filling in and generalizing the details of something that I've already got a handle on.

Here. Jeff Barr of Amazon has just informed me that Amazon now provides a distributed, shared, always on message queuing service which allows you to create and delete queues, enqueue, read and dequeue messages that can stay put for as long as 30 days. It's free right now and I don't quite know how it will be used for porn and spam, but I have every confidence that you guys will figure it out. : )

Here. The one where I lead you through my thought processes to chase down the answer to a problem that doesn't need solving in the slightest...

Here. The one where my boy is falsely accused of pantsing a kid and avoids suspension because he’s known as a “good kid.”

Dammit. The trailer for Star Wars 3: The Revenge of the Sith, actually looks good! I just know I'm going to get my heart broken again...

I've never really seen anyone use speech recognition for real and after watching Jon Udell use Dragon Naturally Speaking 8.0, I'm flabbergasted. I had no idea working with it could be so natural. Wow.

This map of physical area that Bush won over Kerry (3.28M vs. 741K square miles) paints a pretty stark picture of just who the country wants to be their president. The choice they made makes me want to emigrate to Ireland with Robert Redford, but that’s another story…

[both links from Rick Childress]

My youngest son was called into the office today for pantsing a kid on the school playground. That is not at all like my son (he’s the sweetest kid you’d ever want to meet), but the principal was new, so she was talking about suspension. Luckily, the secretaries knew my boy, so they were able to point out the inconsistency of that behavior with the reputation he had built in 4 years at the school. It turns out that the pantsed boy was cutting in line in front of my son, who didn’t like it, so pushed him right back out of line again. The “cutter” took a swing, my boy swung back and in the process (they’re only 9) they both fell. My son reached out to grab the boy’s shirt to catch himself, not knowing that the other boy was also falling and got the pants instead, causing the aforementioned “pantsing.”

The moral of this story is an old saying I heard when I was a kid and have lived by since: “If you rise at dawn, you can sleep ’til noon.” In other words, if you build yourself a reputation for good things, when occasionally you stray, folks will cut you some slack. The converse of this rule is that if build yourself a reputation for bad things, that could well stick with you for a long, long time…