Sunny, playful weekend

On Friday we met our land-lady for the second time. We took her to this nice Italian restaurant and had a nice evening. Even the Chef himself came out to ask if the food was OK. And it was, as always. Be sure to try La Veneziana, if you're ever in Bochum.

On Saturday, we went to visit a Finnish family living in Herne. We played Robots on the XBox, then we played the board game of the year, Niagara and decided to stay overnight. Sunday was, as its name says, sunny. We drove to a nearby field to fly two kites. It was fun. And once again the laws of physics and Murphy combined meant that the wind was best just when we were packing the kites away.

Today, we were visited by a terrible trio. I don't know what these dwarfy monsters had done but they wanted candy from us. We were luckily well prepared. We actually buy candy every time we go to the store (once a week) just for this kind of case. If a small monster, or a ghost or troll appears at our doorstep demanding something sweet, we have something to give. And today it worked, the bloody bandits disappeared as soon as our lollipops had vanished into their bags. Virpi is still shaking from the encounter.

Impressions from a Congress

I just found out that some pictures have been published from the 3rd World Congress for Software Quality. You'll find all pictures here.
The second picture in here shows me in full Oktoberfest-getup along with Tim Kasse of Kasse Initiatives. He's Texan, as you see.

It's +25 degrees centigrade here in Germany and in Finland it has already snowed! I just came from skating. I make an 8km round around an artificial lake (Kemnader See) with my inline skates as often as I can. I thought the season was over already a month ago, but no, it's still possible to skate, although there are a lot of wet leaves on the way.

Decided, or are we?

Today was another busy day. It started fairly early after only a few hours of sleep. The boys of Lodger were a funny bunch. We took them to Mandragora, our favorite bar-restaurant in the Bermuda 3Eck. On the way there we passed the Bratwursthäuschen, of which Herbert Grönemeyer's song "Currywurst" is about. The grill was closed, though.

Ten o'clock I went to my coaching and we worked on my CV some more. It's starting to look like the real thing. At 13:30 we were waiting for our counselor, who helps us in starting the company Qualiteers officially. She had a little bit of trouble finding us, apparently there is another Breite Strasse in Witten-Stockum and that's where she went first. That's not where we live. She arrived an hour late so our appointment was cut a bit short. At 17:00 we went to see the charming two-storey apartment, which is situated a bit further than the more expensive one. We wanted to make up our mind about it. Was it really that charming? We did some measurements, which showed that there would be slight problems with some pieces of furniture. The need to make a 2000 Euro renovation before moving in, was also a negative aspect we had to take into consideration. Over dinner we made the decision to choose the more expensive but better situated apartment.

We had dinner in the nice Italian restaurant, La Veneziana in Bochum centre before we went to see the Three-Storey-House. The lady of the house had called me at noon and we agreed to come and see the flat at 20:00. The family had the whole house to themselves and there was a toilet for each floor! They admitted directly that living in the house is a lot of running in the stairs. A lot of small rooms in three floors with a nice terrace for barbecue. At least there would have been enough guest rooms as the house was next to the hotel Acora...

I feel - I think we both feel - a huge sense of relief now that the decision has been made. Tomorrow we'll contact the old lady and hope that the flat is still free.

Now I'll go and watch David Attenborough DVD, "Trials of Life" and have a muffin (blueberry or chocolate, I can't decide!).

Qual der Wahl or the Trouble of Choosing

Today has been excrutiating. Yesterday we found ANOTHER candidate apartment and in a better area than the one from Saturday. Unluckily, the rent on the apartment is somewhat higher, too and the apartment is nothing special. It is just big enough to suit us and situated in the best part of Bochum close to all the places we like to visit.
The other apartment is special, it has something that appeals to both of us emotionally. And it fulfils all our requirements, too.

How do you choose?

We have consulted our friends, who live in Bochum, we've asked them stupid, difficult, silly and revealing questions to try to ease the decision process. All to no avail. We're still undecided. Our friends tried all to help, apart from Stefan who flew to South Africa yesterday, so we'll let it slide. Especially our architect friend Holgi was a big help.
But maybe nobody can really help us in this case. WE have to make the decision. I'm thinking now that no matter which we choose, we won't be making a mistake.
So we postpone the decision. Like that's going to help. It might, if somebody snatches one of the apartments in front of us. Is this one of those cases, which time handles? You know the saying: "Time handles some things, and some things it is time to handle."

Soon, we'll be going to see Lodger perform in Bochum.

Thought about Courage

Here's a thought:

"It takes as much courage to try and fail
as it takes to try and succeed"

It made me think about this whole looking-for-a-flat adventure that we've been on for a week now. Last week I had to make my first call in German to ask an unknown person for a flat he was offering. Without any previous knowledge about how such a call is made I dreaded the whole thing for at least half-an-hour. When I finally made the call, it went fairly smoothly. But the thinking before it, "If I say this and they answer that, what do I say then?", "What if they don't understand what I'm saying?" and the more I thought about it, the more I was certain that something would not work. And when I made the call, I could find out all I needed. The person on the other end of the line actually wanted to help me in renting the apartment! Who could have seen that?

Since then I've made several of those phone calls and I'm also getting quite good at going through the classified ads for suitably situated, reasonably priced and big enough apartments. I go through all the ads and mark the ones that fit the description and then Virpi uses a tighter comb to select the few candidates that we call. The net has been getting tighter and tighter during the week. Soon we won't accept anything outside the ring road in Bochum center (diameter of maybe 700m).

But anyway, to try I needed a lot of courage. And I used it to succeed. I might have failed, although thinking about it with hindsight, I don't see how.

Looking for an apartment

For the past week, we've been searching for an apartment. We're moving to the center of Bochum to be closer to our friends and to be able to travel faster. There are about 400 000 people living in Bochum , so it is already a good size city here in the Ruhr Area. So far, we've been living in Witten, which is a much smaller place. There is nothing going on in this 100 000 people town. As Garth Brooks so aptly puts it "Nobody gets off in this town". So we'll be moving to Bochum.

If only we could find a suitable flat. Luckily, Virpi has all the requirements clearly stated. Unfortunately, they are not the easiest requirements. Today we saw a super apartment. This flat had character! The tour of the two-storey flat had Virpi gasping for air. And I guess there was nothing left when she saw the second bathroom and almost fainted. The only consideration now is that it is in an area that we don't know so well. As the land lord said "Das Haus ist mitten im Leben" or "The house is in the middle of life", the area is very tightly built and there are some houses with smaller flats closeby.

But being afraid is not an option in life. You can always find things to fear and your life just becomes smaller and smaller if you only stick to your old, known and secure areas and habits. Change is good.

This flat would be ideal for inviting visitors and accommodating them. Tomorrow, we'll see at least one more flat (was it with Penthouse character or for one?) and on Monday, we'll decide.

Thought for the Day

I used to forward a thought a day to some of my colleagues to cheer up their day or make them think. I'd like to continue this tradition, so I'll be posting some thoughts from different sources.

More or better is not always the best road to success. Sometimes it is simply enough to do what needs doing.

This thought makes me think how often goals and targets can be harmful. Not everything needs to be planned. Not every step needs to be enjoyable or even successful. Some things just need to be done and they have no glory in them whatsoever.

Challenge for Stefan is all prepared. Soon we'll be off to deliver it.

My new favorite singer is Katie Melua, whose first album gets miswritten very often at least here in Germany. The album "Call Off The Search" has become in the German papers "Call Of The Search", which makes absolutely no sense. Interestingly enough "melua" is a Finnish word and means "noise".

Rules of the Game

Every year there is a huge game exhibition in Essen. This year it was called SPIEL '05. The exhibition focuses on board games. Like every year, we visited it again yesterday. There were clearly less people this time because we'd decided to visit the exhibition on Thursday (the first day) instead of the usual Saturday. It seems that EVERY PLACE is packed in Germany on Saturdays. The supermarkets are full of people and the only time they are even fuller is on a Sunday when the supermarkets are unusually open because of a bank holiday on Monday or some other reason. The way people behave seems to be that when the weekend is a day longer, you absolutely must buy groceries for four extra days.
I'm really into all kinds of board games and I've been wondering why. It is perhaps the clear rules and limited time that appeal to me. Unlike in real life, the rules have been spelled out and each player knows them. It is also very clear what the object of the game is, i.e. how to win. And even a game that's going badly will end sooner rather than later. After which a new game can be started with hopefully better luck/tactic.

This fascination with rules is clearly visible in my technique of code inspection. It makes a lot of sense to clearly dictate the rules required of the software source code. There are a few ideal things, which all source, no matter in which programming language it is written, should fulfil. These ideals can be spelled out as absolutely correct rules, which nobody should ever violate. Then the authors of code can try to follow these explicit rules, or advice, as best they can. The checkers in code inspection have an easy task of just looking for rule violations. That's almost all there is to it.

Anyway, yesterday was spent in the exhibition, today I had a business lunch with a former colleague. Yrjö (I can't tell you how to pronounce that, but it's not pronounced Y-R-Joe like a customs officer in America once thought.) is thinking about starting his own company and he wanted to know what I know. So I told him. Now we know approximately as much about starting a company in Germany and it isn't much yet. But we are learning.

I also bought a router to get both of my computers connected to the Internet at the same time. That would be neat. Now I'm going to start preparing for tomorrow. I'm going to deliver a challenge to Stefan, another former colleague and friend of mine. He's still my friend, I mean.

By the way, we managed to buy 7 new board games in the exhibition. Most were older games in discount, and we only tested one game. I don't enjoy playing the games in that kind of crowd, there's a constant humming of hundreds of human voices in the background. But we test played Louis XIV, which seemed like a decent enough strategy game, which we bought.

A new week..

The flu is almost gone now. The weather has been extraordinarily wonderful the last couple of days. Sad to say, but I've had to watch the sunshine from inside the apartment. Today I finally went out for a walk. I ended up in Saturn buying CD's and accessories for my computers. But it was nice seeing the terraces open with people enjoying them in T-shirts. It is the middle of Oktober and it's 25 degrees centigrade! It should be raining cats and dogs by now! At least that's what I think is going on in Finland.

Here's a thought (not mine, but I liked it):
Why should one be like the others, there are already so many of them?

The stacks of stuff that have been all over the flat for a week now were cleared away today. Most of the stuff I just put in little cardboard boxes to wait for further organizing. I started thinking about my white paper. I should definitely write one. And try to get it approved by a committee for some conference. Or write for a professional publication or magazine. Something titled "What's wrong with traditional code reviews?", naah, that's not catchy enough. But the idea is to present some typical ways of doing reviews (document or code) and contrast them with the technique I've developed over the years. There are many things that can go wrong and actually make the practice of reviews so inefficient that they eventually don't get done at all.

For one thing, why are you doing a code review/inspection in the first place. If you're doing it to find errors, you're probably already on the wrong track. If you're trying to explain what the code is doing (a typical walkthrough), you're not doing it right. The code should explain itself (along with comments, of course). If you're trying to execute the code in your mind, wrong again!

If you think you always need to have a meeting to have code reviewed, think again. If you have no role division or don't divide the material and responsibilities among the participants, you're wasting effort. And such things. By presenting the current practice, I could easily show how much more effective and efficient my practice is and how it therefore has a higher chance of becoming a habit in an organization. Getting a quality assurance method to become routine is the best you can achieve as quality engineer. Through regular usage, you have all time in the world to achieve your quality goals.

Comments, anyone?

Back home recovering

We returned back home on Monday already. I felt the flu coming on Sunday and by Monday the coughing was constant. So, sorry about the radio silence.

On Friday I went on an excursion to the Audi factory in Ingolstadt in southern Germany. It was extremely interesting to see this one line of cars slowly creeping and winding through the factory floor. There really was just one line and each car was different! They made a couple of different models, each with various possible variants like the amount of doors, what kind of motor and gearbox they would have, what color and on which side the steering wheel would be mounted. All that configuration information was stored on a databox fixed to the chassis of the car-to-be. The assembly-line robots would wirelessly read the configuration info from the boxes and know exactly where to fasten the screws on this models, or whatever.
The guide mentioned how the chassis would be painted with its doors, although the doors would be mounted later. This was to achieve the same shade of color in the whole car. He also mentioned that just painting the car adds about 35kg to the overall weight of the car.
Another interesting fact about the painting was how they would atomize the paint (or maybe ionize) into a mist of paint having a negative charge. Then they would positively charge the painted surface which would attract the paint atoms and thus create a really smooth surface. You can't use this procedure with metallic paints where you have flakes of metal. You actually want the flakes to be completely randomly distributed so that the paint looks brilliant no matter from which angle you'd look at it. If you'd use electric charge, all the metallic flakes would align themselves and the brilliance effect would vanish. I wonder if the car would be blindingly brilliant from one angle and completely ordinary from every other one...

In the evening we went to the Hofbräuhaus. It is a massive brewery restaurant in the middle of Munich city. Every night there is special program for tourists and that's what we had booked. We (me and my wife Virpi) were seated in an empty table for ten people (you know, the Finns tend to be prompt, contrary to the myth about German punctionality). Later eight or nine lovely ladies from Ruhr Area (where we come also) were seated in our table. Lines and lines of Japanese tourists started flowing in to the other tables. We noticed also a few Russian tables and behind us were sitting employees of Rentokil from the UK, Norway and Denmark. The evening was a lot of fun with strange, probably very traditional southern German program. I'll post a few pictures once I learn how to.
The band greets each nationality of guests in the house one by one with a flag that's brought on stage by a dancer. I guess we were the only Finns there that night but we got quite a nice cheering from the Englishmen in the next table, the German ladies in our table and I'd guess, the Scandinavians nearby. Everybody loves a Finn. And we're proud of being Finnish.

On Saturday we almost got stuck in the centre of Munich. We left our car at a Park-and-Ride place on an underground station and went sight-seeing and shopping in the centre. We wanted to come back in the afternoon and start for Schwangau (which was about 2 hours away). We were supposed to be at our hotel at the latest 18:00. So it is about two in the afternoon, we are in the centre and go to an underground station with the goal of stepping into a train and riding to our car and continuing from there. We arrive at the platform and there are already hundreds of people there all waiting for the next train. Suddenly it dawned on us, today Bayern München must have a home game at the stadium, which just happens to be located one stop before the station, where our car is parked. It looks really bad and tight and sweaty and hot and not at all nice. We find an alternate route eventually but it still took us for this normally half-an-hour long underground trip probably one-and-a-half hours with underground, a few busses and another underground. So close to four o'clock we start for Schwangau and our hotel.

We arrive a little late, about 20 minutes, which is quite a good timing taking into account how we tend to follow the speed limits even when there are 'just' roadworks there. Most don't. The mountains grew slowly during this south-westernly trip and in our destination they were so mist covered that it was hard to tell how high they were. We had a nice supper with a view to two castles. The staff in this restaurant were apparently trying to make the ceiling black with their huge flambéing activities. Especially the main courses used to make huge flames.

On Sunday we spent in the rain checking out the Neuschwanstein Castle, of which I hope Virpi will tell more about. And I hope to publish a few photos, too. We drove then to Ulm and had a look. This birth-town of Einstein's was celebrating the 100th anniversary of Einstein's "miracle year" when he published three major papers on physics. One of which earned him later the Nobel prize.

On Monday, we drove home and rested.
On Tuesday, I went to Nokia for the last time to return all company property. The colleagues had arranged a card and a huge amount of merchandise so there was a small farewell gathering. I want to thank all my former colleagues for the years we got to work together. Let's keep in touch one way or another.

Yesterday, we experienced German bureaucracy up close and personal. We were helping a former colleague, Simo, deal with all the issues related to moving back to Finnland. It took 2 hours to take care of everything, but now his address is changed, the post will be forwarded, electricity bill is sorted and he even managed to transfer some money to Finnland.
In the evening, we went to see the movie L.A.Crash (original title: Crash). What a GREAT movie! Go see it!

Today we rest and recover from flu.