Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior by Suzanne Robertson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As with most pattern books, this is one you flip through in an hour and then save it to refer back to. The strength of software management and development pattern books is describing problems that commonly occur, not really telling you how to fix them. Thus, hey tend to be frustrating because you’re left thinking, “how am I going to get this to work in my organization?” There is a certain level of detail in some of these patterns that’s refreshing, but most are just brief outlines of a software management or team-work problem.Still, they’re extremely helpful things to keep in mind which you may be forgetting (“The Empty Chair”) or no longer think applies to you (“Young Pups Old Dogs”), helpful advice if you must do it (“Offshore Follies”), to some that can be reduced to a clever quip, as in “War Room” where DeMarco says, “I’m beginning to think that a project not worth a war room may be a project not worth doing.”There’s solid advice in here, but the 0th pattern is “Be humble: never assume you have this shit figured out.” After that, many of them are extremely good advice.

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Charles and I finally start off The Burger Beat, here with the Jo’s on 2nd street burger. Both of us enjoyed it. Sprinkled through-out, there’s of course much other commentary, including some shockingly technical talk.

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While Kim and I drive around to do some errands, we discuss:

• The Texas Freedom Network fund-raiser thingy, pictured above. Culture wars in Texas.
• We decide to drive downtown the have an “urban” outdoor day. On that topic, Kim and I discuss things to do when the weather’s finally nice outside, as it is now in Austin. Top on Kim’s list, going to town lake (which we ended up doing later in the day).
• After deciding to go get a Jo’s burger, Kim is flummoxed by the non-removable batteries in new Apple laptops.
• And then Kim remembers one of her current topics: does she nag and sigh too much?
• Resolving Auggie’s hacking cough.

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Join Kim and I as we walk around the neighborhood and experiment with sound. Also, the dream I had where I had to marry the drug king pen’s little sister.

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After walking into the house, we go over common sounds that Kim makes as she feeds out dog. Also, “combo locos.”

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Driving back from the gym, Kim and I talk about exposure to swine flu, which we never suffered from, except to be bored. We also go over a revolutionary, funny head crank mime move I came up with it. The “crank thing” was a big hit with Kim.

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While driving to the Austin City Hall, Kim and I figure out MMS on the iPhone. We also discuss topics like my driving “issues,” what The Kids are learning these days, downtown condos (“that’s the thing: when you live downtown you work downtown”), The Bubbagump Shrimp Company, and simulacrums. It’s thrilling!

Westin Bonaventure, originally uploaded by cote.

While at Adobe MAX this year, I stayed in this place, the “Bonaventure” as everyone calls it. It’s sort of a weirded out collection of five cylinder towers with a low-key hotel-mall inside.

As a plaque next to an elevator noted, there was a scene in True Lies shot in one of the elevators.

Down the street on 7th, there was a just dandy sushi place called Octopus (a local chain, I think). In fact, when I looked up sushi in Yelp, the neighborhood was crawling with ‘em.

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I gave up reading this one because it never seemed to get to a plot. And, you know, it was like a “bad things can happen” book that got a bit repetitive and (given how cynical we all are now-a-days, without even thinking about it) unoriginal. I feel like a schmuck for not reading a book written by a Nobel Prize winner, but those episodes of Mad Men aren’t going to watch themselves.