2009 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials

The Canadian Olympic Curling Trials run December 6 to 13 in Edmonton.  For the last trials, I correctly picked the women's winner, Shannon Kleibrink, but stumbled badly in my men's pick, choosing Randy Ferbey.  Ferbey coughed up a furball, and made me (and a lot of other people) look bad.

Here's the list of qualified teams, and my picks.

Men:

Randy Ferbey, Edmonton
Jason Gunnlaugson, Beausejour, Man.
Glenn Howard, Coldwater, Ont.
Kevin Koe, Edmonton
Kevin Martin, Edmonton
Wayne Middaugh, Toronto
Pat Simmons, Moose Jaw
Jeff Stoughton, Winnipeg

Who I'd like to win:  Glenn Howard.  Class guy, class team.  They would be instant favourites to win a medal in Vancouver, and likely a nice shiny one.

Who I think will win:  Kevin Martin.  Tough team to beat, but last year's world championships showed that it is possible.  Kevin will be motivated to improve on his silver medal from Salt Lake.

Dark horse picks:  Kevin Koe & Jeff Stoughton.  Don't be shocked to see either of these guys in the final, or even winning it all.  Koe is [over]due for win in a big event.

Women:

Cheryl Bernard, Calgary
Amber Holland, Kronau
Jennifer Jones, Winnipeg
Shannon Kleibrink, Calgary
Stefanie Lawton, Saskatoon
Krista McCarville, Thunder Bay, Ont.
Kelly Scott, Kelowna, B.C.
Crystal Webster, Calgary

Who I'd like to win:  Shannon Kleibrink.  I think they can get it done.

Who I think will win:  Jennifer Jones.  Nobody else is as cool under pressure, even when her team is starting to shake uncontrollably around her.

Dark horse picks:  Stefanie Lawton.  Also [over]due for a win in a big event.  The sisters have won big at the junior level, and all they need now is to come up with a good week at the Trials.

I may feel a bout of swine flu coming on, just in time for TSN's coverage to get underway...

Technorati Tags: Curling,Olympics

Punch the monkey

There comes a time in every software project's life when it must be set free.  You know you've reached this point by the volume and quality of the defects being reported by your testers.  Crash reports go way down, and the trivial bugs go way up.

For example, if you get a defect report that says the window frame is blue and the tooltips are yellow, and that doesn't match your application's colour scheme, it's time to ship (or stop running on XP).  If you get a defect report that says your application is doing nothing, but it's not actually running at the moment, it's time to ship.

Our application has a user interface feature where certain elements appear in tabs.  These tabs can be activated, deactivated, or closed.  To make it intuitive for the user to close, we added an 'x' button, similar to those found in IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc.  It's a standard, well accepted way of closing content.  Except for the defect report that tells me it's too easy to use.

I think I'll add a "punch the monkey" feature to close the tabs.

Headline: man uses saw, keeps fingers

I can still count to 10 without taking off any clothes.  Yes, after using a mitre saw for 7 hours on Saturday, I still have all my fingers.

Not much of an achievement for those skilled in manual labour, but I type for a living, so the fingers are a must-have.  I’ve seen voice recognition software in action – it doesn’t cut the mustard.  The cheese, maybe…

Anyway, the basement work is almost done, and looking good.

TV Commercial of the day

Digging in the dirt

One thing they don’t tell you in software development school is that not every fix will be a thing of beauty.

You don’t frame every code change and hang it on the wall.  Sometimes, you feel so dirty after making a change that you need to hit the shower.

Although, once you get your hands dirty, sometimes it’s fun to put on the headphones, crank up the tunes, and get in touch with your inner cowboy.  Playing in the mud is fun.  Just remember to commit the code under someone else’s name…

 

Technorati Tags: Software development

Conversation of the day

I was sitting with a colleague yesterday, watching him fix a tricky bug.  One of his monitors started flickering.

Me: That doesn’t look good.

John: That’s not too bad, actually.  In a few minutes it will get worse.  Then it will get a lot worse.  Then I have to reboot.

Me: You’d better save that file.

John: It’s not the losing work that bothers me, it’s the seizure I’m going to have from all that flickering.

Me: That’s not good either.

John: I don’t know.  Sometimes I wake up, the bug is fixed, and there’s a full tank of gas in my car.

Tailpipe emissions

Here’s a study that says dogs leave a larger footprint than SUVs.

They argue that a medium-size dog consumes 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily, resulting in a footprint of 0.84 hectares, while a Toyota Land Cruiser uses 55.1 gigajoules yearly, equating to a footprint of about 0.41 hectares.

It’s a bit controversial, of course.  They made some assumptions about mileage driven, and dog food.  Perhaps the biggest error in the study was not taking into account tailpipe emissions.  Although, I think my dog’s tailpipe emissions can beat any SUV on the planet…

That’s why they call it “beta”