Clapping - always a big moment...

Lincoln is making leaps and bounds in his development in recent weeks.  Some of the major milestones include talking (just a couple of words) and standing.  Today, we add clapping.  Well done little dude.  Well done.

Father's Day gift ideas for the geeks among us

Every year people ask me what I want for Father's Day, and I point them to my Amazon wishlist. In an effort to short-circuit that issue, I figured I'd post a couple of options in some typical gift categories. Hopefully this helps anyone else struggling to find that perfect gift for their geeky dad/husband/etc.

Reader Dad
	If you are on this page, either for yourself or your dad/husband/brother/uncle/etc., you should just go ahead and buy this.  Ken, of Wired's GeekDad fame worked his tail off on this.  Trust me, this is a winner.
	Remind your dad of all the crazy things he did when he was your age.  He obviously turned out terrifically since he created you!
	2009's Nebula Award winner in the novel category.  It's hard to argue with a book that won the same award as Dune, Ender's Game, and Rendezvous with Rama.
Gamer Dad
	Rockband has a special knack for getting families to come out of their shell and start jamming together.  I've seen my mild-mannered family stay up until the wee hours of the morning trying to perfect just one more song.
	Multi-player Mario will excite and infuriate your dad all at the same time.  Teamwork is key, but your teammates can also "accidentally" bump you off course mid-jump.  Just don't admit that you pushed dear ole' dad off that cloud on purpose...
	If your dad is a hard-core gamer, you can't go wrong with pre-ordering the latest version of Halo for him.  Sure, it doesn't ship until September, but Halo Reach is well worth the wait.
Grilling Dad
	Skewers are skewers, right?  Wrong.  These flat blades prevent your food from spinning as you try flip your kabobs over for a nice, even cook.  It's never a bad idea to give your father one more reason to turn on the grill.
	Those skewers get HOT, so protect your father's hands with these handy gloves. You'll appreciated later that night when he can actually feel the buttons on the Rock Band guitar.
	Don't let your dad turn those burgers into hockey pucks any more.  Now he can wirelessly monitor dinner and be alerted before he ruins another meal.
Movie Dad
	2009's big movie is worth seeing again.  Is it the greatest movie ever?  No, but pops will love showing of his home theater system to his friends with this movie.
	Finally, LOTR on blu-ray.  The greatest book ever written will look even better now that your dad can bask in all of it's 1080p glory.
	Worst. Movie. Ever.  So bad, it's good.
TV Dad
	Lost is the first TV series I've ever wanted to have in my library.  It is actually worth watching again, from the very beginning.
	You could pick a handful of great titles from Discovery Channel, but MythBusters seemed like the best fit.  It's always fun watching Jaime and Adam blow things up.  Although, maybe Dirty Jobs fits your dad a bit better...
	A sneaky little sci-fi series that developed a bit of a cult following.  Plus, it has Captain Hammer in it.  Sorry Nathan, but you will always be Captain Hammer to me...
Web Dad
	Captain Hammer, Captain Hammer, Captain Hammer.  This also single-handedly vaulted Neil Patrick Harris into my wife's favorite actor.  Maybe it will do the same for your Mom.  Beware, the songs are catchy!!! Oh yeah, and it has Felicia Day in it.
	This was the first web series I ever cared about.  I tried others.  I really did, but this one is captivating.  Sure, it helps that Felicia is hot, but she writes a great story with tremendous characters.
	More awesomeness from Felicia and her crew.  Season Four is in the works!!

While you are shopping around for dad, enter this amazing contest brought to us by the wonderful folks at ThinkGeek.com and GeekDad.  Good luck on the search for the ultimate gift for your dad and good luck in the contest!

LEDBLOA FTW - My team's new build status "light"

Having been a part of many software development teams that firmly believed in the goodness of continuous integration, I always wanted a build light for our team. First I wanted just a plain old light that would turn on if the build was broken. Then I moved on to dreaming of a siren flashing on a bad build. Next were ambient orbs and lava lamps. The final lifeless idea was a traffic light. All of those ideas never sparked my imagination and interest enough for me to actually do anything with them.  Then it happened...

Our team was really struggling with build stability and breakage ownership, so I knew I had to do something...

... and so the LED-build-light-of-awesomeness (a.k.a. LEDBLOA, pronounced like Rocky Balboa, only cooler) was born!

This seemed to solve all of my problems. I could alert the team that a build was broken, tell them which build broke, and when it happened. Sure, a flashing light is cool and all, but you still have to run back to your computer to see what really happened.

I didn't have a lot of money to spend, but I found a good deal and picked up a three-color, programmable ,40"x6", Ethernet and USB enabled, LED sign. That sounds nifty, but the icing on the cake was the .Net reference libraries this company provided (I'm purposefully not naming the company because my team is already trying to hack into it).  The documented protocol was easy enough to follow, but the wrappers provided in the interface really made my life easier.

Truth be told, the hardest part of the whole process was physically hanging it on the wall.  I wanted it to be clearly visible from anywhere in the team's area, so I was limited in choices and ended up having to mount it on a pillar at the end of our room.  It's not perfect but it works.

Speaking of not perfect...

That's the little app I wrote to feed the data to LEDBLOA.  All it does right now is parse the RSS feed our CI server spits out and sends the data over USB to LEDBLOA.  The team already has a bit of a backlog of enhancement requests built up, as you can see below:

1. Display all guilty parties (those people who have new/updated code checked into the failed build)
2. Display current bug counts (internal and external)
3. Display number of test failed in a broken build
4. Add a few more of these throughout the office
5. Use a stock ticker-esque display for our day-over-day backlog count (i.e. ^4%)
6. Turn red builds yellow once someone claims responsibility for a broken build

I'm trying to keep this post to a reasonable length, so I'll save the gory details of how this all works for a couple of subsequent posts.

I <3 LEDBLOA

Presentation - Becoming an Effective Agile Leader

Last night, I unveiled my latest Agile talk/presentation at my local AITP (www.rtp-aitp.org) meeting. I've been working on this talk for quite some time now and I was excited and nervous to unleash it on a live audience. The feedback was great and it was received very well, so now let's see what the inter-webs thinks of it...

Becoming An Effective Agile Leader

View more presentations from Josh Anderson.

I certainly have to give some credit to Jurgen Appelo and his super-sweet presentation styles. I may have lifted a few ideas form his slide layouts (I guess we will go with the "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" approach on this one)... :)

Best. Music Video. Ever.

Best parts:
1. Boba Fett - Fett always rocks
2. "Now Han Solo's a coffee table"
3. Dancing Chewie

Wow, so I was right all this time...

I found this image via one of @donttrythis's (Adam Savage from Mythbusters) tweets today and just had to share it.  Once, and only once, did I pay for Monster Cables.  After the hundreds of dollars wasted, I promised myself to never do that again.  Never ever.



The silver lining in this post is that it also proved that Mint.com finally offers me something useful!!!

Stuck

Well, we made pretty good progress on the swing set yesterday, but we are missing eight pieces of wood!  Sadly, these are pretty critical parts and we can't continue building until the company ships them to us.  For some strange reason, their "help hot line" is only available Monday through Friday from 7AM-4PM CST.  That doesn't seem very hot...

Fear & Suffering

Yeah, I am scared.  Will I be angry?  Undoubtedly.  I already hate this pile of metal and wood, and I most assuredly suffer.  I've done this before and I know the time, frustration, and splinters involved in putting this bad boy together.

That seemingly innocent stack of boxes, through thousands of screws, bolts, and other fastening devices turns into this beast:

I assembled a very similar playset back in Ohio and vowed never to do it again.  Alas, I could not bring myself to pay the $600 assembly fee.  So, this weekend, out of love for my kids, I will spend virtually every waking hour working on this.  I'll be chronicling on this blog and via twitter, so stay tuned.  I know many of you will get a chuckle out of this whole process, so I expect my page views to skyrocket...  :)

Best. T-Shirt. Ever. Period.

Yeah, I period'd a period.  That's how cool this is.
Go buy this, now!

For those of you who have no idea what this means, Crom has pity on your soul.  However, here is step one in your education:

My new Dr. Horrible - I'm on a horse.

I was really hooked on Dr. Horrible for the longest time.  I mean REALLY hooked.  The songs were stuck in my head for months, I'd sing them to my wife and kids, and I forced most of my family to watch it.

Actually, I must admit that the songs still are stuck in my head.  I may never shake free from their "horribleness", but this Old Spice commercial is working hard to help me.  If you haven't seen it, I am glad I could introduce it to you.  If you have seen it, trust me, it gets better every time you watch it.  I'm on a horse.