Stefan

I'd like to tell you something about my friend Stefan.

Stefan is one of my best friends. He is an easy-going, intelligent, friendly, a little camera-shy and amiable fellow. Time flies with Stefan. Suddenly you just notice that the bar is about to close, it is five in the morning, soon the first trams will start driving again. Time just whooshes by. Another example of time flying is when he borrows stuff from me (more likely I've pushily lent it to him). Just now I noticed that he's had the first season of "The Office" DVD since September. It has the massive amount of six (6!) half-hour episodes to watch. You see what I mean when I say that time flies with Stefan. And I know that he's trying to find time to read Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen" at least as long already. It's not that I need the stuff back right now, no.

Time just flies with Stefan.

Icetainment

In half an hour Finland plays Russia in the Olympic games semifinal in ice hockey.
Sweden will play for gold.

Finnish men just lost silver in curling. You never win silver in team sports, they say.

Feedback requests

I've just sent emails to the people who I trained two weeks ago. I asked them for feedback. Let's see what happens. The verbal feedback at the site was positive, but that's how it tends to be. You're more likely to get complaints in written feedback. I hope I get a lot of feedback, not like the feedback I've been getting on this blog, mind you.

There're still a couple official things to be done, one insurance matter to clarify (I have to perform an EKG-measurement under stress) and an application to hand in in the unemployment office. Then everything should be smooth sailing and I can concentrate on the business itself. Yeah, right...No, then I can say that the first challenge has been fulfilled. The first challenge was to start a company in Germany, in German.

I intend to concentrate in the mean time on my writing. I plan to start with a few articles and practice with smaller, condense writings before jumping into my big dream of writing a book. I've been thinking about writing a booklet about code inspection, in the "Tick-The-Code" way, also. My "Qualiteers Handbook" is also in planning already.

So, that's the next challenge: write and have a book published. This time the language is English. And it seems safest to try and write a short book and do it in the professional area I know something about, software quality. It doesn't seem likely that I could write something interesting just out of thin air. Although that might be the next challenge...

This just in, the first feedback mails have arrived. Here a few excerpts:
"Your class was very helpful and I enjoyed it."
"Your training was very useful and a simple and effective way to come out of the vicious cycle of busyness - I hear the similar things from many of my colleagues."
"Again, thanks for giving us a wonderful lecture."

Wow, that feels good.

Back home, safe and sound

I'm home. It's a wonderful feeling to arrive anywhere, where you're welcome. But coming home after two weeks, there's nothing comparable.

Everything went fine on the trip until London. The flight from Heathrow to Dusseldorf was first announced to be one and a half hours late, which later changed to a full two hours. The plane was coming from Milan, which had had a strong fog so that no planes got out of there until later in the morning. So we left at about 12:30PM, right after lunch time. Arriving in Dusseldorf had its problems, too. The flight in itself was fine, but somehow the staff managed to forget to unload half of the luggage! Imagine that, people are waiting for their luggage and a lot of it arrives. The band goes around and bags are arriving. Some people are happy, get everything they are expecting and leave. Some like me, get half of their luggage and the rest get nothing and are left wondering, what has happened when the band stops. Slowly everybody goes to the Lost and Found office of British Airways to make the paperwork so that the lost luggage can be sent to the right people. The official start making the first forms and after five minutes one of them notices that there are so many people waiting outside their little office, that something must be wrong. This isn't normal. So they make some enquiries and they find out that one whole container has been forgotten to be unloaded from the plane.

So it was back to the band to once again wait for the lost luggage and best. I think that after the rest of the luggage arrived, there were only a normal number of people whose luggage had been lost, standing in line outside the little office. That kind of standardized thinking can often be linked to regular processes and routine situations, where you can use your past experiences to estimate the expected outcome beforehand. In this case the officials must have known (although they didn't explicitly count anybody) that maybe only about six people in the worst case should be complaining after a flight. Probably it is an exception to lose one's luggage. So when they noticed that more than 20 people were coming in from the same flight, they knew to make something extraordinary.

In manufacturing industry they use standardized tolerances to measure every umpth piece to see that it is within limits. If it is too small of too large, outside of agreed, something in the process has gone wrong. Maybe the raw material low on quality or the machine that made the piece is broken. Something is wrong.

In the software industry, this has not generally been possible. Most of the times the problem is with repeatability. How do you set limits, when you always do completely different kinds of software. Each piece of software accomplishes a different task, works in a different environment or is in some other way unique. How could you set limits? The answer is to take big enough samples and not focus on the details. One way is to use the "Tick-The-Code" Inspection method and measure the quality of any manufactured module. Now, you might not be able to set completely precise targets for tolerances, but at least you can say if a piece of software seems to be "Good-Enough" or if it better fits in a category called "Rewrite". If you inspect modules regularly, you can note the results and make a database of historical values, which shows the quality level of your organisation where it really counts, in the source code. That is your bottom line!

On the Road

I'm in New York, at the JFK International Airport. I have a few hours before my next flight leaves and I'm enjoying a light lunch at the McDonalds. What kind of trip to America would this have been if I hadn't eaten once at McDonalds?

Sitting here, I thought I'd update my iPod and just for fun turned the Airport feature on (that's WLAN in techspeak). And it found a network! I am connected, there's no fee, and I can update my blog. What's going to stop me from missing my flight now...

This time the airport is familar stuff, I knew exactly where to go for lunch and I could operate the train like a breeze. The plane from San Diego was packed and in the row in front of me was sitting a Jewish family. The man was a rabbi and he had some weird rituals to perform before the flight. Reading a holy book I understand (although it seemed to contain only strange patterns and no text and he seemed to be reading it backwards ;-), but what was the leathery band he wound around his arm? And what about the black cube he put on his forehead like a mine worker's helmet lamp? His young son (who wore an impressive black fedora) performed the same ritual later on flight. I wondered, which would have come first, religion or safety, in the case of hard turbulence? They performed the ritual standing up and quietly. Interesting.

The family had also a little girl and the father would compliment the girl saying "shoine medel", which the woman sitting next to me also repeated revealing her religion, I guess. I understood exactly what they were saying because the German words "schönes Mädel" means "beautiful girl". I guess they were talking in Yiddish.

Going home

My work here is done. For now. It is time to return home.

I have packed. I know how to drive to the airport. I know where to return the rental car.

The first flight is American Airlines flight number 160 to New York, JFK. It departs at 7:30AM. I have to be at airport at 5:30. I plan to leave the hotel at 5:00AM. I should be sleeping already. The flight arrives in the afternoon at 3:34PM.

The second flight is American Airlines flight number 104 to London, Heathrow. It departs at 7:45PM. It arrives on Friday morning at 7:40AM.

The third flight is American Airlines flight number 6508 (operated by British Airways) to Dusseldorf. It departs at 10:20AM. It arrives in the afternoon at 12:40AM.

Then I take a taxi to Bochum. That's the whole itinerary.

Thank you all in San Diego for a very friendly reception. Thanks for having me. Thank you Jenny, Adam and the helpful ladies at the reception desk. I hope to see again.

Comic hunting

Another week, another pair of training sessions. Today I met the person who's responsible for me being here. He had heard from Southwood that my training sessions are apparently good and wanted them here. It took some organizing because I had left the company by then. All they reached was my former boss, Sedat, who was kind enough to give them my details. And that's when the real negotiations started. Thanks Prasanth. I hope your people got what you asked for!

Went comic hunting. The shop/warehouse was easier than expected to find. I just exited from the freeway and drove down a ramp and from the corner of my eye I happened to notice the shop. Then it was just to find the next xing, make a U-turn and park in front of it. The place was not massive, but it was full of comics and stuff, just like the name of the shop promises (Comics-n-Stuff). There was a guy who wasn't unlike the comic book guy in The Simpsons. He told me several storylines, which he seemed to have memorized. He didn't talk about anything else but comics and I got the impression that he might not know much more, either. He was a fascinating character to meet. It was a good visit, I found many books to buy, but not all. It seems very hard to find the America's Best Comics, which are all written by Alan Moore, my comic writer hero-genius-idol. I've heard often now that he's trying to write too many stories and that's why the books are published so rarely and irregularly.

Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. Hearts, hugs and kisses all around!
Special Valentine's Day greetings go to Virpi back in Germany, alone in a cold apartment. Now you can open the pink envelope. I'll still have to sleep before I can open your present.

Headline stories from here: Snowstorm in New York (I'm sure the chaos will ease up by Thursday, when I'm supposed to fly). They were calling Central Park "a winter wonderland". Another story was vice president Cheney, who accidentally shot another hunter with a shotgun during a pheasant hunt. The victim is recovering in hospital.

Sights and the beach

Here's my hello to everybody from a beach on the Pacific Ocean.

Yesterday, I took my rental car for a spin. The intention was to find nice places to take photos. First I visited Coronado, which is a kind of island connected to the downtown of San Diego with an impressive bridge. I took many pictures of the bridge and even more where I tried to be with the bridge. I carry a small tripod so that when there's nobody around, I can take my own picture. It also works wonders when it is dark, but not too dark. When there is enough light, but it just needs to be collected by the camera over a longer period of time. The tripod offers a "steady hand" that really helps.

The Coronado Bay Bridge and I.

Then I drove past the airport to Point Loma, which is the south-western most point of California. It was discovered (as also San Diego Bay was, although he called it San Miguel) by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. He was the first European to set foot on the west coast of North America.

The Cabrillo National Monument stands proudly overlooking the city of San Diego.

Today, I went to the beach to relax. I had prepared a few jam sandwiches for lunch. I set myself on my towel (Do you know where your towel is?) and decided to eat my lunch. Suddenly a small dog appeared out of nowhere and without a sound. It was on my towel, behind me, trying to take a bite of my sandwich. I patted it, but kept the sandwich from it. Next it went to sniff around in my bag, there was the other sandwich. At this point its owner, an older lady appeared. She was shouting "he doesn't eat peoplefood at all." I was relieved. I had been under the impression that it would have gladly eaten my jam sandwiches. Suddenly the little dog made its second attack, from behind my back it licked my lips. It was so quick, there was nothing I could do. I told the lady that I had apparently been successful at making a delicious lunch. I might also have mentioned that the dog might like me because I have a tail, too. I've noticed that some dogs are driven wild by my ponytail. I was covered in sand after this surprise attack. There was even sand on my sandwiches, it made a grinding sound between my teeth. Ah, well.

Later the dog made a few other friends. Two other dogs joined it and together they stole a child's sandal. When the girl started after them, they understood immediately that it was a game. The girl must not catch them and get the sandal, so they ran away. It was hilarious when the girl came back to her parents with the sandal shouting "I GOT IT BACK! I GOT IT BACK!"

There were some surfers in the water and the waves were quite impressive. When my left cheek felt hot and started making sounds like a frying pan, I decided to head back to the hotel. It is the left cheek that points outwards while driving, too. Coincidence?

I was just in a "shoppingtown" in National City (a strange name for a city, isn't it?) It seems to be "a city on the move". It's almost as imaginative as the town I was born in. It's called Lahti, which translated means "bay" (or "slaughter" depending on who you ask) and it is located - get this - on the Lake Vesijärvi, which translated means "water lake". One of the parts of town is called "Tonttila", which means a place that contains building lots. Isn't that kind of obvious in a city? And their slogan is - or used to be - "Lahti - The Business City". Has all the imagination leaked out of town or are they just so straightforward people in Lahti? I don't know.

Anyway, I was at the mall looking for a comics shop. The one I found was small, too small to have anything of interest for me. But the man there gave me the address of their biggest store in the city and adviced me that that's the only place I need to go to. So that's where I'll be tomorrow. "Comics-n-Stuff Super Store" on El Cajon Boulevard.

Pink Panther and Physics

This evening, I went to the premiere of the new Pink Panther. I was, to be frank, expecting the worst. The movie wasn't a total disaster, though. There were some funny bits, and although some internet references didn't quite seem to fit to Clouseau's character, they made the movie more up-to-date, nonetheless.

I also visited the local Barnes & Noble bookshop and found this book about Richard Feynman, a brilliant physicist.

Cracking already

I've held eight sessions this week and it starts to show. Yesterday, somebody seems to have missed one Tick-it. At least, when I counted them back at the hotel, there was one extra red Tick-it. So if somebody in Wednesday's class notices that they are missing one Tick-it, you can catch me every day until and up to next week Wednesday in room Cardiff. I'll have your Tick-it ready for you.

Today I noticed that I forgot to give the Nutshell cards to the morning session. The afternoon participants luckily knew most of the morning participants and promised to deliver the cards to them. One card will be sent in internal mail. And when I wanted to know if I could mail it and asked "how the internal mail works?" I got the answer, "Slowly."

Went to Walmart Supercenter and bought some exclusive music there. Mostly country. There are some CD's there that will make a particular person back in Germany very happy, indeed. I'm just ripping the CD's and my iTunes Library has now grown to more than 4300 songs.

Talking about Virpi, she wanted me to point out that the zoo pictures I posted a couple of days back, are actually videos. Click them, wait for a while and enjoy the joys of moving picture!

Meanwhile in Bochum

This week I've been mostly doing accountancy. And it has been raining. Really raining. All the time. Can't go out when it's raining so hard. Have to do the accountancy.

I can't wait to get my husband back. And MY new iPod. One week and one day to go, but who's counting.

Now I have to go on with the accountancy. By the way, it's raining.

Shopping spree

The trainings are going great. The people seem to be interested in what I have to say and nobody's fallen asleep even after lunch. Maybe they eat light lunches here.

I found a mall today. And got a little carried away. There was even an Apple Store there, which I couldn't resist. Now I'm finally a proud owner of an Apple iPod. I bought the 1GB iPod Shuffle, which fits to my personal profile perfectly.

San Diego Zoo

Yesterday, I visited the San Diego Zoo. I saw many kinds of animals, snakes, a hippopotamus, an elefant, koalas, pandas, apes, monkeys, and gorillas. Here's a couple of films from the zoo.

Gorillas playing. This looked extremely amusing as the smaller one seemed to always drive the bigger one to run away. And they were clearly just playing. Born performers.
An albino python like this one would not survive for long in nature.

Trip to San Diego (long version)

I'm writing this on Saturday at 18:15 (that's 6:15PM) and I'm falling asleep. I'm trying to fight it to change my rhythm, but it's not easy sitting at the computer.

Anyway, the trip yesterday was long but mostly uneventful. I woke up at 5:00 in the morning, stepped into the taxi at 5:30 and was in Dusseldorf Airport 40 minutes later. The first flight from Dusseldorf to London was routine, it didn't take too long. To come clean, I've no recollection of it.

The second flight was the longest of the whole journey. London-New York. Estimated flight time: 7 hours 45 minutes. 3452 miles. The plane was almost empty; I counted that only every fifth seat was taken. The room came in handy later when I tried to sleep. I could use three seats and really sleep horizontally for a couple of hours. I used my laptop for the first time on an airplane after I woke up. I had a few DVD's to watch so I did. I was again positively surprised by the picture quality of QualiBook (Apple iBook G4). David Attenborough in Living Planet, episode 3, The Northern Forests and Crusade, episode 1, War Zone couldn't be visually improved.

Next in the program was a six-hour wait at the JFK International Airport in New York. I had contemplated the idea of going to Manhattan or just somewhere downtown but decided against it. There's just not enough time to wander about. There's a very convenient AirTrain system at the airport. Three lines connect all terminals with a few railway, subway and bus stations. I made at least three full circles during the stay to find different things. My own terminal was 9, but everything interesting seemed to be in terminal 4.

Houses located near the JFK International Airport in New York. Photographed from the AirTrain.

For example, I went to terminal 9 and asked the information for a post office. She said that "there is a mailbox, but it's in terminal 4". Well, I had the time and I needed to do something so I wouldn't sleep. I didn't just find a mailbox, I found a whole post office desk, where I could buy stamps and all. Before I had been to terminal 4, because they had all the stores and many restaurants, which were actually snack bars and I didn't eat there. I was getting hungry, though so I went to terminal 9, noticed that there's nowhere to eat, asked at the information and got the answer "in terminal 8". So it was off to terminal 8. And so on. In the end, I settled down, read my book, "The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde and waited.

The plane to San Diego was packed. I had decided to try and sleep so that I wouldn't be overly tired at the time when I had to drive to the hotel. The in-flight entertainment was, of course, this time something truly new and interesting, namely the movie about Johnny Cash called "Walk the Line". I would have liked to see it and I still do because I kept my promise and tried to sleep. Unfortunately, there wasn't too much room in one seat, and the backs of the seats didn't seem to go back at all. So I slept vertically as much as I could. The flight took almost six hours and one and a half hours before landing I decided to start watching the Eagles Farewell Tour I DVD, which woke me up by being a very good quality concert recording. The old men seemed to enjoy being on stage in Melbourne. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it.

In San Diego International Airport, a courtesy bus of the car rental agency was waiting and took me alone to the office. Everything's so BIG in America. I rented an intermediate class Chevrolet Malibu, with two criteria: it wasn't white and it had a sun roof. Almost all the other cars in offer were and didn't have.
The next challenge was learning to drive a strange automatic. After a twitching start at the parking lot, I started to get the hang of it. The car was comfortable to drive and I could concentrate on the route. That was what concerned me maybe the most. How would I find to a hotel in the dark somewhere I had never been? I had printed a route from the airport to the hotel using Google Earth. The problem now was that I wasn't at the airport anymore (remember the courtesy bus?) and as it turns out, the hotel wasn't my destination after all, either.
After some route reading in the dark (why can't they have lights on the interstate?), I arrived at a Marriott hotel. I wasn't sure that this was my hotel so I decided to ask the reception before lugging all my luggage to the reception. Halfway across the yard I noticed that the street number matched with the one in my itinerary and I turned back. I unloaded my luggage and dragged them to the reception, now tired as a bear in November. Imagine my surprise when the receptionist couldn't find my reservation!
It turned out that I had been "upgraded" to the nearby hotel (I had first driven to it) because it would be more comfortable to stay in for a longer time. The rooms have their own kitchens, etc. Like it is a treat to be able to cook myself. Maybe for people who can cook, it is. I can boil spaghetti and fry minced meat, that's it. If I have to cook for a fortnight, I'll have minced meat pouring out of my ears.
Anyway, I dragged my luggage back to the car, loaded it, drove to other hotel (maybe 300m away), unloaded the luggage and dragged it to the reception. Right when I entered, I thought I was making the same mistake again. "I'm surely going to get a room at the other end of the hotel. I could have driven closer, probably." That could have happened but luckily it didn't. I got to my room, found out the room has a complimentary high-speed internet access, read an email and wrote a blog post before crashing.

I decided to try and wake up at 9:00AM so I would have time enough for breakfast. I woke up already at 7:30 and when I got to breakfast after a little exercise and a quick shower, the forgotten alarm on my mobile went off. I had even had time to write a list of groceries, which would be delivered later to my room. I ordered among other things spaghetti and minced meat.


After the breakfast I drove to check where the Nokia offices in San Diego are.

Then I drove to San Diego downtown and eventually found a parking spot. I walked around town wondering how different everything is. There's a cheerleader competition or event in town, and it's hard to miss, there are girls in cheerleader outfits everywhere. One group was even practicing in a park.

Here's a picture of a statue called Flame of Friendship, which has been "presented to the people of San Diego. As a symbol of international goodwill and friendship that exists, and shall always prevail, between the people of Mexico and the people of San Diego." Just goes to show how close to the southern border of US this place is.


Here's one picture of many I took from the San Diego skyline. This kind of houses I haven't seen in Europe. To me they are very American.

In San Diego!

I have happily arrived in San Diego, California. Everything went fine, and I'm now too tired to write anything else. According to my calculations, which have a higher than normal likelihood of being wrong because of this, I have been travelling 29 hours! I've slept, badly, maybe five hours in between. So, now it's off to bed.

Hey, the hotel has a swimming pool!

JFK

I'm in New York!

Finding America

Hi, this is my last post before America. A taxi's going to be picking me up at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Then it's off to the airport in Dusseldorf. The first flight goes to London where I'll change to a plane flying to New York. After a six hour wait I'll board a plane to San Diego. I'll arrive there at about 22:00 (that's 10PM), still on Friday. The plan is then to rent a car and drive to my hotel, where I'll be staying for the next 13 nights.

I've no idea how good my internet connectivity will be in the next two weeks, and you'll find out as I do, if I'm able to write my blog entries or not.

A thought before I go (to sleep first):
"Had Columbus turned back, nobody would have blamed him for it.
On the other hand, in that case nobody would know that he had existed in the first place."

I'm following Columbus' footsteps.

The Introductions page has been updated, likewise The Snack.

Fanmail

I don't know if you know this already, but I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman and I was delighted to notice that his journal has received a makeover. It's actually a blog I try to read daily. It has some seriously interesting links in it often and the stories Neil relates from his homelife are enjoyable. I've read most of his books, short stories, comics and children's book. I even own one audio book, which had the extremely funny poem "Crazy Hair" on it. Recommended for anybody.

For children, I'd recommend "The Day I Swapped My Father for Two Goldfish" and "The Wolves in the Walls", which is pretty scary. And if you want even more scary stuff, you can read "Coraline", which might not be suitable for the smallest children and gives the heebie-jeebies to bigger ones up to adults, who are going to be really scared by it.

For comics that can make you think, I'd recommend "the Sandman" books. There's a long story told in 10 or so collected trade paperback books. If you want to read 'proper books', try "American Gods" or "Anansi Boys". If you like mythology, you'll be right at home in both of these godly stories.

You'll find pictures to all the books above in here.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. I am officially no longer unemployed, I'm a freelancer starting today! On Friday, I fly. Today I received the training material (the Tick-its) and I'm mostly satisfied with the quality. Luckily I ordered twice as much as I absolutely needed. This is a good starting point. There's room for improvement.

The First Link

Kaj sent me this link: Deleting code by Ned Batchelder. It's the kind of thinking my training also enforces. The gist of it is
"If you have a chunk of code you don't need any more, there's one big reason to delete it for real rather than leaving it in a disabled state: to reduce noise and uncertainty. Some of the worst enemies a developer has are noise or uncertainty in his code, because they prevent him from working with it effectively in the future."

I'll add this link to my list of useful links, too.