Finally found the solution.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/oepe/index.html

Tags: Eclipse, Weblogic

Expectations:

1) Be a pro.

2) Act like a champion.

3) Respond to adversity; don’t react.

4) Be on time. Being late means either it’s not important to you or you can’t be relied on.

5) Execute. Do what your supposed to do when you are supposed to do it. Not almost. All the way. Not most of the time. All of the time.

6) Take ownership.

Tags: Inspirational

7 days in paradise. It’s not a matter of if we go back, but when. So let’s start from the beginning.

Continental from Houston to Roatan. Got upgraded based on status so upgraded wife. First class to Roatan is a great way to start. Airport in Roatan is tiny. Two gates. Line for incoming passport control can be long (unless you are in 1st class and off the plane first). Wait for bags. There are drivers for the different resorts waving signs and asking if you need a ride. Got bags. Headed for door, got a cab, asked for the price (which is NO LONGER 10 bucks, but rather 15), loaded and was off. No problems. That being said, our neighbors on the trip, PJ and Samantha got to Luna Beach and realized someone had tried to slit PJ’s shorts to get his wallet out. Deep cut through shorts and into wallet itself. Keep your eyes open and keep the 3 foot rule in effect.

Drive from airport to West End/Luna Beach takes you down the south side of the island and then up into the mountains and over to the west side of the island. The island is dramatically mountainous and there are basically no laws or common sense for driving. For those renting a car, I would recommend experience prior to driving on Roatan. And again, just like in Cozumel, if you enjoy your life, I would recommend against scooters anywhere else other than on the beach.

Luna Beach Resort (LB)
About 20 minute drive from the airport, again 15 bucks. Luna Beach is situated about a half mile south of the south edge of West End. The location was great because the party escalates as you head south. Perfect for us as we walk home.

The room we were in was facing the ocean and we got to enjoy the sunset (almost) every evening. The rooms were nice. Check in was fairly simple. Basic accommodations. AC worked too well. Hot and cold water. Maids were great and on time. The common areas were well kept and the place was overall clean and very pleasant.

That being said, the waitstaff and bartenders were horrible. I am a veteran of “island time” and definitely understand the cultural differences involved in customer service but the lack of attention by the wait staff was absolutely unsatisfactory. Until our final meal - which was handled by Spencer and Chuck’s granddaughter and was great - we were sitting for up to 10 minutes as we made eye contact and were even passed by several times by wait staff before even getting a menu. On one occasion, my wife went in early (2 hours) to order lunch for us prior to me getting back from a dive trip. After 30 minutes of waiting, she finally got up and went and had to force the waiter to pay attention to her. Even after ordering 1.5 hours early, she was told it might not be ready in time. Then, when the food never came out, we were given an excuse that she thought the food was for the dive crew - even though she had personally taken the order from my wife and my wife sat right there by the bar.

Other than that, the food was OK but not great. On rainy days or breakfast, it was fine but I would not recommend eating there unless absolutely necessary.

Luna Beach Dive Shop
So I went in on Sunday and met Joanie, who is the dive shop manager. Got all signed up for the next three days. She checked my creds and my dive log and was very attentive to all my questions. Got me suited up with equipment (yes, I still rent my equipment and don’t have any issues with it) and was ready to rumble.

The next morning, I was up early for the 9 am dive. Got the equipment on the boat and ready to go. Got going a bit early to talk a bit and get to know some of my fellow divers, along with just not having to rush prior to my first dive. The LB dive boat is wide and downright comfy. Lots of room and relaxing. If you want to chill out, you can climb on the roof and catch some rays.

Met with Martin the divemaster for the briefing. Meticulous and thorough to say the least, Martin is one of the best DMs I have experienced. I was singled and this was my first dive of the trip so I got buddied with the DM and off we went. Spent quite a bit of time talking with Martin and really enjoyed his amicable and carefree personality. He seemed to be one of those kinds of people that take what they do very seriously yet can encapsulate that professionalism in a “no worries” feeling that sets the divers at ease.

Dove with Martin most of the time, since he was the true DM of the group and Joanie and Hailee were both instructors, mostly working with specialty students. There were several groups of divers doing specialties, AOW certs, getting their c-cards, find diving and one guy getting his Rescue. I did get to dive with Hailee for the wreck dive and found her to be quite good as well. She is a bit younger than Martin which might make some people nervous, but her demeanor was similar. Was well versed and through in her briefing, especially because it was a wreck and divers tend to do stupid stuff around wrecks.

The actual size of the group tended to stay around 12, including DMs. Most of the time it was split between around 5 or 6 doing certs or specialties and 5 or 6 fun diving. Big boat. No problems.

Frankly, I was a bit worried about the LB dive shop, especially after the unexpected and abrupt farewell to Wolfgang and with the plethora of available choices in town, I was ready to jump ship at the first sign of any questionable behavior. Joanie, Hailee, Martin and Fermin all did a great job and I would definitely dive there again. I might even dive there even if I was not staying there because of the boat. I am not a fan of diving off of skiffs and it looked like most of the other shops were skiff divers except Coconut Tree and the big resorts like AKR.

The Shark Dive - Waihuka

The shark dive was everything they said it was - and more. Let’s preface this with the fact that this was the second day of diving (Tues) and I had a few Port Royales the night before. Really, based on the first day of diving, I didn’t think much of it because the north side was like glass….

The south side is different. The place is actually east of the airport on the southern coast. The wind was kicking that day and the seas were pretty bad. We went through a nice 20 minute briefing of the dive, from start to finish, and all the precautions one should take when diving with sharks. They are all basically females because the males don’t like us. Basically, don’t act like a fish is the advice.

15 to 20 foot seas rocked us on the way out and my stomach, despite the Dramamine, was really not doing well. We finally got hooked onto the mooring and had to use a drift line due to the currents. Finally, after a lot of wasted air and pulling, we got about 20 feet down and there they were. I thought I heard a dinner bell on the way down.

The sharks were standoffish at first, and then they just started multiplying and getting closer and closer. You know when you dive and you usually see something in your peripheral vision, it’s usually another diver - well, on this dive, it’s a freaking shark. We get down to the bottom, get situated after a hurried entrance and the currents, even 70 feet down, were swaying us 2 to 3 feet. Like I said, pretty rough but you didn’t think about it because there were sharks everywhere.

The DM carries a blue bucket full of fish and we swim from one place to another. The sharks get closer and closer with each minute until you can actually feel them swim past you. We had about 15 or so on this trip and they were ready.

At the conclusion, the bucket is opened and the frenzy begins. No. Seriously. You’ve watched the discovery channel thing about it. I watched it from 20 feet away. So you are sitting there, on the bottom (I had added a couple extra pounds to ensure I stayed put if I wanted), 20 feet away with your extremities glued to your body. It’s really breathtaking. One of the first sharks to get to the bucket stuck it’s whole head in and got stuck. Didn’t care. Just sat there, twisting and chomping. You can actually see the shock waves through the skin of the shark’s jaws on each bite. Yes. It’s that close.

Once the fish were gone, so were the sharks. A couple late comers were circling but they were soon gone as well. We all just relaxed for a minute and pet the friendly grouper then headed back up to the boat.

The seas were rougher than before. My stomach was teetering on full yack and of course, everyone is having trouble getting on the boat. Once we got on, it was sweet relief and I spent the next 20 minutes praying and keeping my eyes on the island, hoping to get back to the dock.

All was well after we got back. Overall, a great dive. The only funny story is when my buddy tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a huge green eel. I looked back at him and pointed at all the ******ing sharks. It was pretty funny.

Diving with Coconut Tree

Coconut Tree Divers are a great shop. We met with Gaye the first day and talked about island life and such. PJ is a character (I don’t think the man owns a shirt) and Tree is a great host. Spent a lot of time nerding it up with Steve (the guy who does their website) because we are both software developers. Here’s his blog: The Scuba Geek. He had some great stories about diving in North Carolina and hopefully I will be able to get some “contract” work that brings me back to Roatan soon.

As for the actual diving with them? It was good. Professional staff. Really nice dive. Their boat saved us on the first 2 tank because a front was coming through and we went down in 2 foot seas and came up in 10. Rough ride home, but Wish You Were Here cut those waves like a hot knife through butter.

Dives themselves

I didn’t do as much diving as I wanted. Particularly because there was a storm coming through so my night dive got canceled, and I made the mistake of assuming the weather patterns were going to remain bad so on Friday, I tried to drink all the rum on the island thinking there was no way we were diving the next day. Woke up the next morning in no shape to dive and guess what - it’s beautiful. No worries though.

Day 1 - Dixie’s Place and Bikini Bottom
Maybe I am just spoiled from my Belize trip, but I was seriously underwhelmed by the wildlife. Saw some turtles the first day (3 actually) and got some seriously close pictures with them. Other than that, it was the usual suspects. The diving was good though and reminded me much of the channels outside of San Pedro.

Day 2 - Shark Dive
Day 3 - Odyssey (Wreck Dive) and Blue Channel
There are two wrecks on the north side. The Odyssey is the bigger one and it is pretty sweet. We didn’t get to penetrate but it was fun anyway. It goes from about 60 feet at the top to close to 110 at the sea floor so you really have to stay conscious of your air/time. Blue Channel was like day 1 other then these 3 connected swimthroughs that were pretty flippin sweet.

Day 4 - Spooky Channel
This was supposed to be a 2 tank dive but got cut short because of the weather. The name says it all. You start down and then you go into this cave/swimthough. When you come out, you are in this underwater cave with a small slit at the top. Really surreal. Closest thing to Blue Hole I have seen. You swim through this cave then breakout into the wall.

Day 5 was scrapped because of weather.
Day 6 was scrapped because of my rum habit.

Overall, I would say Roatan is about on par with Belize. So far they are #1 and #1a on my list.

West End Restaurants and Bars

Where did we eat? Everywhere. What did I eat? Everything.
Pinnochios - very underwhelming. Wouldn’t go back.
Pura Vida (the restaurant, not the dive shop) - Rocked. Great pizza. Good service.
Mavies and Dixies - Great view but that’s about it. Food was nominal.
West End Restaurant (by the sub place) - Awesome.
Argentinian - Awesome.
Eagle Ray’s - Great view. Decent food. Lobster quesadillas.
Breakfast at the shack next to Coconut Tree - Baileadas - Yes, they are that good.
Luna Beach? Don’t bother. Only eat there for convenience.

The Bars
One of the bonuses of staying at Luna Beach was the party goes south at night. Start at Sundowners after dinner, then on to the Purple Turtle, and then late night at FUBAR. Regardless of what you hear, stay away from the nitrous balloons unless you want to get dumber. That was our nightlife and it’s all you need. There were some other “clubs” along the way but I am a bit too old for that.

Other Dive Operations
I spoke with several other divers about the dive shops and really heard good things about Native Sons and Reefgliders. When I go back, I will probably split between Coconut Tree and Native Sons although I would almost definitely go and hang with Martin, Joanie and Hailee at Luna Beach for some dives. They were great.

Rum and Beer
It’s good. Drink it. Port Royale was my fav but Barena was a close second. With a lime, it tastes like Corona.

Additional Notes and such.
Book your dives and excursions. We tried to book the dolphin encounter when we arrived and it was booked solid. My wife was very disappointed. Another excuse to go back.

If you have child divers, you need to dive with them. We were on a dive boat with a 14 year old and although he ended up having more experience than me, I still didn’t feel comfortable buddying with him. I don’t mind younger divers but it’s unfair for a 31 year old man who weighs 200 lbs to be paired up with a 14 year old. Sorry if this offends anyone but it’s reality. FWIW, I didn’t get paired with him but others did and they grumbled. He was a great kid and behaved very mature but if I am 100 ft down, the last thing I would want would be a buddy that was that young. You can disagree with me all you want - it’s just my opinion.

The sunsets are amazing.

Our next door neighbors, who we got to be great friends with, did the submarine thing. Evidently, the guy built it himself and everything. Took them down 2000 feet. One the the funniest stories I heard was that he will routinely tie dead dogs and animals to the sub to attract predators. That week, he had gotten hold of a horse. No bulls**t.

I have named two new physical ailments - scubanose and flippertoe. Scubanose is when the lower part of your nose gets sore after days of equalization. Flippertoe was because those tendons on top of your feet are not used that often and after 2 days of kicking and walking on sand, my foot was swollen.

Next step - Roatan Consulting. Matt is sales. I’m development. Maybe PJ can get us some funding?

Tags: Diving, Roatan

http://blog.notedpath.com/2008/02/10/using-jmeter-for-load-testing/

This thing is awesome for load testing.

I am still waiting on pictures from the last HJUG meeting to talk about Groovy. I am also planning on researching some more into OSGi next week.

Just read a post on a book called Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering with might be the most solid list of truths in software engineering.

People

1. The most important factor in software work is the quality of the programmers.
2. The best programmers are up to 28 times better than the worst programmers.
3. Adding people to a late project makes it later.
4. The working environment has a profound impact on productivity and quality.

Tools and Techniques

5. Hype (about tools and technology) is a plague on the house of software.
6. New tools and techniques cause an initial loss of productivity / quality.
7. Software developers talk a lot about tools, but seldom use them.

Estimation

8. One of the two most common causes of runaway projects is poor estimation.
9. Software estimation usually occurs at the wrong time.
10. Software estimation is usually done by the wrong people.
11. Software estimates are rarely corrected as the project proceeds.
12. It is not surprising that software estimates are bad. But we live and die by them anyway!
13. There is a disconnect between software management and their programmers.
14. The answer to a feasability study is almost always “yes”.

Reuse

15. Reuse-in-the-small is a solved problem.
16. Reuse-in-the-large remains a mostly unsolved problem.
17. Reuse-in-the-large works best in families of related systems.
18. Reuseable components are three times as hard to build and should be tried out in three different settings.
19. Modification of reused code is particularly error-prone.
20. Design pattern reuse is one solution to the problems of code reuse.

Requirements

23. One of the two most common causes of runaway projects is unstable requirements.
24. Requirements errors are the most expensive to fix during production.
25. Missing requirements are the hardest requirements errors to correct.

Design

26. Explicit requirements ‘explode’ as implicit requirements for a solution evolve.
27. There is seldom one best design solution to a software problem.
28. Design is a complex, iterative process. Initial design solutions are usually wrong and certainly not optimal.

Coding

29. Designer ‘primitives’ rarely match programmer ‘primitives’.
30. COBOL is a very bad language, but all the others are so much worse.

Error removal

31. Error removal is the most time-consuming phase of the lifecycle.

Testing

32. Software is usually tested at best to the 55 to 60 percent coverage level.
33. 100 percent test coverage is still far from enough.
34. Test tools are essential, but rarely used.
35. Test automation rarely is. Most testing activities cannot be automated.
36. Programmer-created, built-in debug code is an important supplement to testing tools.

Reviews and Inspections

37. Rigorous inspections can remove up to 90 percent of errors before the first test case is run.
38. Rigorous inspections should not replace testing.
39. Post-delivery reviews, postmortems, and retrospectives are important and seldom performed.
40. Reviews are both technical and sociological, and both factors must be accommodated.

Maintenance

41. Maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent of software costs. It is probably the most important software lifecycle phase.
42. Enhancements represent roughly 60 percent of maintenance costs.
43. Maintenance is a solution– not a problem.
44. Understanding the existing product is the most difficult maintenance task.
45. Better methods lead to more maintenance, not less.

Quality

46. Quality is a collection of attributes.
47. Quality is not user satisfaction, meeting requirements, achieving cost and schedule, or reliability.

Reliability

48. There are errors that most programmers tend to make.
49. Errors tend to cluster.
50. There is no single best approach to software error removal.
51. Residual errors will always persist. The goal should be to minimize or eliminate severe errors.

Efficiency

52. Efficiency stems more from good design than good coding.
53. High-order language code can be about 90 percent as efficient as comparable assembler code.
54. There are tradeoffs between optimizing for time and optimiZing for space.

Research

55. Many researchers advocate rather than investigate.

This book should be required reading for every single person involved in software development.

When a developer says their done, make sure to ask “how done”…

1) I’m Done - I’ve coded but haven’t even though about cranking up the debugger. It looks good though.

2) It works - I’ve completed coding and debugged it a few times.

3) It’s Ready - Coded, debugged and wrote a unit test that covers about 10% of what really needs to be tested.

4) Ok, seriously, it’s done and ready for integration - I’ve added another 5% of coverage to my unit test after finding a bug.

5) My code works, just ask ___________ - It’s been integrated but again, only tested with a couple of normal use cases.

6) I’m Done - But I still haven’t integrated it completely, integrated the unit test into the build process, commented or formatted my code, checked it for loose strings and such, and I haven’t even thought about being able to present it in a code review.

7) Is it done? - The code is in User testing.

It’s Done.

I got to spend 2 days back in Nac for some presentations and on-campus recruiting at SFA. I drove up on Tuesday morning and made it there in about 2 hours (going the speed limit, of course). Drove straight to the campus, got a visitor parking pass from the UPD (University Police Department) and proceeded to the UC - or what used to be the UC.

There was some major changes to the campus since my last visit including a brand new Student Center and it was big. Much bigger and nicer than the old UC. To my surprise was the commercialization of the campus. Trying not to sound too old, back in my day the choices to eat on campus were all Aramark-run, cafeteria style meals and they were absolutely horrible. People always laugh about the freshman 15 at other campuses but st SFA, the freshman 15 meant you LOST 15 pounds because the food was gross. What do they have now? Chick-Fil-A. Starbucks (2 of them). Panda Express. A retail type convienent store. They even had a branch of Commercial Bank. How things change. I got my starbucks and headed for the business building.

The core of the campus was pretty much unchanged. Beautiful as ever and the students have changed only slightly. They are still all walking around oblivious to the real world and not fully appreciating how nice they have it (but I digress). Headed for the 3rd floor of the business building and took the stairs I walked a million times before. Memories flowed like a river as I walked into the computer science department.

The professors were as great as ever. Dr. Pickard and I spent some time prior to class discussing some of the major developments to have happened since my graduation, such as technology changes and outsourcing concerns. I met with Mr. Harber, Dr. Dunn, and Mr. Long for a few minutes as well and discussed the same things - what they are doing, what I am doing, etc. Everyone seemed truly excited for us to be there and everyone remarked they looked forward to the Scrum presentation later that afternoon.

The presentation to the 426 class went very well up until the end. The overview of my current employer as well as the information related to business procurement, project management policies and methodologies were all well accepted by the audience and they seemed to enjoy the discussion. Then I got to the technology and I completely lost them. I started talking JSF, Hibernate, Spring and patterns and the “glaze” came over their faces. I had made the age old mistake of going in to a presentation without fully understanding the audience. I made the assumption our current CS students would be more worldly to the technologies that run the internet but I guess not. I could have spent another 3 hours just giving background but decided to wrap it up, chalk it up to experience and opened for questions.

The Scrum presentation in the afternoon went a lot smoother. Scrum is not very technical and is considered more of a common sense, logical approach to software development. I actually had a couple of guys, Ian being one of them, who were already aware of agile and scrum. Based on the feedback from the professors and the students, I need to change a slide or two but overall, they enjoyed the information. Quite frankly, I enjoyed acting like a professor for a day. We ended with a huge feast of pizza and some additional discussion about consulting and my expereineces in general. Headed to the hotel, got changed, met with some friends at Bullfrogs and then headed to Shack. Overall, a great Tuesday.

On Wedsnesday, the job fair went well.  I was targeting only a small portion of people (about 10 to 12 total) so I was idle for much of the day, spending my time answering the basic questions (”so, uh, like, what do ya’ll do”) and trying to chat it up with some other booth attendants. Got to talk more with some of the CS students throughout the day and again, I was very impressed by the graduates of SFA’s computer science department. To this day, I’ll put my guys against any other school and not worry.

So let this hopefully be the start of a recurring theme. I’ll be headed back soon to do some on-campus interviews and will be back in the fall, hopefully as part of the advisory committee.

Tags: Recruiting, SFA

I just finished a meeting with one of my collegues in which we discussed our recruiting trip back to our alma mater, Stephen F. Austin State University. For those of you who do not know, SFA is a smaller state school located in beautiful Nacogdoches, Texas and has a reputation for being an excellent forestry and teaching university. But what most people do not know about SFA is that the business school is accredited by AACSB International-The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Only about 29 percent of the business schools in the United States share this distinction. I graduated from SFA in December of 1999 with a bachelor of business administration in computer information systems and coincidentally, sat next to one of my best friends, pledge brother and roommate for 3 years - Jason Ortega - during graduation.

The other fact that is not well known is the quality of the computer science department at SFA. The faculty doesn’t mess around with teaching visual basic and calling it a computer science degree. When I went through the CIS program, I was enrolled in all but two classes in the true computer science degree plan. When I graduated, it was almost as if I had double majored in CS and business. Most schools nowadays are selling MIS degrees, where they teach “analysis” and a few computer science courses. While those students are learning how to build a requirements document, SFA’s CIS students are doing 8 dimensional arrays on a mainframe (RIP Dr. Dailey).

So now I get to go back and mingle with my old professors as a colleague and not a student. It will be interesting to see how my perceptions will change seeing them in a new light. Not only do I get to present in front of the 426 class and do a presentation to the Computer Science Club later that afternoon, but I get to spend the better part of 2 days just hanging out on campus talking with students and enjoying the academic side of things.

Tags: SFA

First off, I would like to thank Peter Borsella for addressing my detailed questions during breaks and during the class. He did a great job not only presenting the material, but also addressing our individual concerns and inquiries without hindering the progress of the group. It was just the right mix of personal attention.

So what did I learn?

• The books on Scrum are fantastic but do not accomplish what you need completely. After reading some of the scrum books such as Agile Development with SCRUM and User Stories Applied, I thought I had a good idea on how a team would react to planning poker and estimating. I was correct on many of my assertions but again, we would continuously find ourselves having the basic discussion again and again about the meaning of this or the meaning of that. The books are great supplements but you need to watch this process living and breathing.
• It’s amazing how much everyone differs in their definitions of certain words in the IT industry. When one of our non-functional requirements of “use proper security and data protection”, it started a wide array of discussions, going all the way from offloading SSL to black-box machines to the data protection requirements in Swiss banks. The variation of definition is not something I am just now realizing but it never ceases to amaze me how much 7 or 8 people can differ on a simple word - such as “complete”.
• SCRUM is a structure, not a process definition. I was thinking it would be implemented in a more strict control setting but it amazingly light and flexible.
• The majority of people’s concerns did not seem to be technological issues or subject matter, but rather people and logistics. We continuously brought up themes of personality management and how to hedge dependencies and get away from waterfall. I was not surprised at all that we spent quite a bit of time discussing how to handle executive intrusion into the process and roadblocks from outside forces.

Overall, it was a good experience and nice refresher about Scrum. Now, if I could only get deployed on a project actually using it. I also took a bunch of notes with phrases and terms used by both Peter and my classmates which will be subjects for the blog for at least a couple of weeks.

Tags: Agile, ScrumMaster

Getting to the building promptly at 8:30, we got started almost immediately. We jumped right into project histories and getting a feel for the groups overall knowledge about scrum/agile as well as some opinions about how recent project experiences have been. For day one, we went over the basics of the framework and some of the background source info for the reasons behind Scrum. We also did some excercises showing some of the positive effects of empowering the individual to get the job done.

My overall thoughts:

• I have always assumed that longer sprints would be the way to go, but the more and more I look at the timeline, 2 weeks or 3 weeks might be the longest you would want to go. Most clients I have worked for in the recent past (and current) change their minds weekly (sometimes daily) about requirements or implementations so therefore 2 week cycles would give the business the ability to buy into the process and let the team run.
• There are a lot of conflicting views just on the basics of Scrum.

I will post more at the conclusion of today.

Tags: Scrum