OK, I haven't been so up on keeping the news fresh, so here's a few tidbits just to affirm my continued existence on the interspace...

The new motorcycle is running and gets nearly daily use. A few rainy days have kept it in the garage, and sometimes when the wife comes along we take the Jeep instead since she would rather chat than have helmet hair. I'm quite happy that we bought this one instead of still waiting to save for a newer bike. I think it'll last quite nicely for the next few years while we continue saving in case we feel we need to replace it. Parking in the lot here at work I see that it is much larger than the bikes like the 1100-1300ish I have been considering (Harley Dyna, Yamaha Star, and Honda VTX), and after riding this for a while, I'm not sold that I would want to go back to a smaller bike. OK, probably, but it's opened my consideration for a larger bike still, like the big Harley cruisers, like the Road King or Electra Glide. We'll have to see how I feel about it in a few years, I guess.

I've been remiss in many things related to computers. A few weeks ago we undertook the homeowners' nightmare of a home improvement project. We have started building a deck in the back yard. After much discussion, consideration, sketching, and other research, we decided to go with a free-floating deck that is very close (1/2-inch) to the house, but not attached to it. This gives us a few nice things such as arguably easier construction, and no inspections. Because the structure isn't permanent (dug into the ground) and isn't attached to the house, we don't need a permit or instructions. The deck is about 2 feet high, basically giving us a hard surface at a level just about even (slight step down since it snows here) with the back door. It's been literally a ton of bricks and another of stone, and a half-ton of wood, but it's looking like a deck. We get about two or three hours on days it isn't raining between the time we get home from work until the bugs decide to see what's for dinner. It's been about three weeks so far, and I anticipate some final screws going in this next weekend, so call it a month of construction.

Work's gone like usual. Too many changes in requirements in a project that's not being handled with an agile approach (although this homie rolls like that), and a bunch of finger-pointing opportunities as quirks come up in different environments when the software is deployed. I've made a trivial app to help GE Fleet users find "nearby" contracted suppliers in the US and Canada (go ahead, check it out http://gefleet.com/supplierlocator). Two simple JSP pages (well, technically four as the state/province list is reordered depending on whether you want US or Canada...something I plan to change in the next version) and a couple of supporting Servlets. It took about two weeks to write, and another month to nail down the requirements and data (no one wants to own it, so it's static for now...go figure), and then three more to work it through the system to deployment, including one week wasted reworking code that didn't have any issues until it reached the production servers, where they had some environmental problems. Due to the finger-pointing nature of groups in workplaces, the fix was not so quick as no one else wanted to have the problem be theirs. I proclaimed "I hope the problem is mine, because then I can fix it and we can move on" in one meeting, which gained me some accolades after the meeting as I evidently showed some exceptional responsibility in a sea of "not-me" types.

Now that I've mangled the English language long enough...I have to get back to work. My big build on the next project, which I'm sure I'll gripe about in some manner later, is finally done.

Until next time.