SnupNow: Persistence Matters

Eye on the Ball

dwolthuis — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:16:07 +0000

It is a project management week for me on three fronts. 1. I’ll be teaching Gantt charts as well as Scrum burndown charts in the OOAD (Object-oriented Analysis and Design) class on Tuesday. 2. We are testing out Scrumy this week for SnupNow. 3. Our first pilot site is a project management consulting company, specializing in earned value. [...]

When to Bake Crackers, When to Mash them Up

dwolthuis — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:10:12 +0000

Friend: Just try making something from scratch the next time you need to bring something. You might enjoy potlucks more if you don’t feel guilty for buying whatever it is. Dawn: OK, I’ll give that a try and see what I think (later) Potluck coodinator: Dawn,why don’t you bring crackers and cheese on Saturday? OK, so which one should [...]

Remotely Close

dwolthuis — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:19:37 +0000

When I saw this sign, I was surprised, even delighted, to find this in Fargo, ND. Yes, Fargo! My next thought was wondering if those inside the building were embarrassed to have this designation outside, given the amount of bad press regarding the Vista user experience. We took this drive up to North Dakota so that I [...]

Mastering the Art of Web Development

dwolthuis — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:45:42 +0000

I loved the Julie and Julia film, which my husband, somewhat surprisingly, also liked. Julia Child wrote Mastering The Art of French Cooking, a book that is missing from my cookbook stash (I don’t cook, but I do read). I might have to remedy that someday. Julia Child was a delightful TV personality who I remember [...]

Grateful Management

dwolthuis — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:14:41 +0000

This is a reflection about management, particularly the management of people. I have been in management of one sort or another for more than twenty years. As with most of my roles in life, I’m good at some aspects of it and not so good at others. Somewhere around 1986 my business cards listed my title [...]

On the Label, Label, Label

dwolthuis — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:36:18 +0000

Our server is OTL right now after an attack, heavy sigh, but while others were doing some of the heavy lifting at various times, I had a few extra minutes to do some reading. Yesterday I decided to dive into details of interest to me related to html forms. Forms are the face of web [...]

Hey, Here’s an Energy-sucking Feature

dwolthuis — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:23:15 +0000

I use this software, also known as a web site, named WordPress. You knew that, right? It was working well for me and it didn’t take much to set it up, so I set up a blog for my husband at wordpress.com too (http://twolthuis.wordpress.com). That’s when it stopped working for me. I know, I know, [...]

MJ to JC, God’s DRY Humor

dwolthuis — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:21:06 +0000

Michael Jackson was remembered this week, having died last week at the age of 50. John Calvin was born 500 years ago this week. He died when he was 55. Both of these men were odd ducks. (Trust me, I knew them both very well.) It is a stretch to fit them into this blog [...]

Crap Code

dwolthuis — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:29:18 +0000

I wrote a lot of crap code the summer of 1977. It was COBOL and not of the structured variety. Oh, it had a structure and I developed and adhered loosely to many standards I dreamed up, but I knew nothing of structured programming at the time. My boss and mentor hired me based on [...]

The Lewis and Clark UX

dwolthuis — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:19:10 +0000

We had a lovely day on Lewis and Clark lake, behind an Army Core of Engineers dam on the Mighty Mo (the Missouri River) last Friday. We had been to Lake Okoboji on Memorial Day, a fun, busy lake that reminds me of lakes back in Michigan. Lewis and Clark lake is surrounded [...]