Last week, I had worked enough hours that I came home and decided to finally deal with the mess that was my dresser and closet. Both were overflowing; I didn't wear most of it and, when input my clothes up, I just crammed them wherever I could, regardless of where they went or whether there was room to put them where they were being shoved. So, I took out every piece of clothing I owned, touched them all, and determined whether I wanted to keep them, given them away, or just get rid of them. It took two hours, but I finally got the mess under control. Now, to apply Continuous Integration to this problem, I need to define some tests that I check every day.

Here are the tests I came up with, in the form of a check list:

• Ensure that the top of the dresser is clear
• Ensure that the top of the cedar chest is clear
• Ensure that there is adequate spacing between hanging clothes so I can see what is there
• When opening drawers to remove clothes, ensure that the remaining clothes are neatly folded

These basic tests that I mentally check every time I go in our room or closet have helped me, in the last week, make sure that the clean up I did last week does not suffer a regression. If, like this morning, I discover something on the dresser, I consider the build to be broken and revert the change (I removed the offending article and worked to make sure that the problem was fixed). Over time, I hope that incremental changes like this will help make sure that the master bedroom and closet are neat and tidy. Then, I can tackle the other rooms in the house. The keys to make sure that problems are taken care of as soon as they occur, just like in Continuous Integration.

Posted with Blogsy

When did she get old enough to go to school?

First day of Kindergarten

As a possible solution, Dubner describes something called Prize-Linked Savings (PLS) accounts. Basically, it is a special savings account where you get slightly less interest than normal. Periodically, maybe once a month or once a quarter, one winner is chosen from those that contributed (likely proportional to their contributions) for a big prize that is composed of the reduced interest on all of the contributions. That way, it is revenue-neutral for the banks offering the product and it plays on the needs of people to gamble on the “big win” to get them to save. Even better, if you don’t win, you still get to keep the money in the savings account, plus the interest that it accrued. Nobody loses.

Well, that isn’t quite true. You see, even though no one is actually risking any money, the States still consider it gambling and in competition with their own, State-run lotteries. The States argue that they would lose revenue for things like education if people were not participating in their lotteries. So, it is actually illegal to have the PLS accounts in most States. Personally, I think that the PLS accounts are a great idea. If the States see revenue fall from a lack of people playing the lottery, then the programs that revenue stream supports should be re-evaluated for necessity. If the programs are necessary, taxes should be raised according so everyone shares the burden of the necessary programs. That would reveal more about the true costs to each citizen of government and open the door to programs like the PLS accounts that might actually get people to save money for emergencies.

In the book, Ende covers the nature of the Nothing, what happens to the Fantasticans (I actually like the name Fantasians much better) when they are taken by the Nothing, and how the Nothing affects the real world. The scene with Gmork, where all of this is explained, could not be more different than it was in the movie since the brief spurt of action found in the movie is not present. Once Ende gets beyond the end of the movie, he starts to explore the idea of what happens when you allow yourself to get too wrapped up in fantasy and who you wish you can be and begin to forget who you really are.

if you loved The Neverending Story as a child, I highly recommend reading this book as an adult. Be prepared for your conception of Fantasia to be forever altered, though.

A few weeks ago, we went to Bridge Street to walk around on a Friday night, when the bands are out playing. Since Emily loves to dance, she just had to show off her moves.

Then, over Thanksgiving, Emily got together with her cousin Colin and had a good time playing at the park. I took some video and stitched together a couple of clips and still shots into this little movie.

I also have a goal to get Emily off of her Disney movie obsession. We have watched about half of My Fair Lady and she likes that so far, so I am going to let her watch the original movie version starring Rex Harrison. After we finish reading Heidi, I am going to show her the Shirley Temple version of the movie. This won’t break her of the Mouse, but it will expose her to other classic films that will not drive me nuts to watch.

Since before Emily was born, Ashley and I have paid the extra money every month for digital cable because we wanted to get high-definition channels. However, the past few months, I have realized at we, as a family, really watch very little TV. Further, the TV that we do watch is mainly found either on the local channels or on Netflix Instant. So, after talking it over with Ashley, we are going to drop cable entirely in favor of receiving our local HD channels over e air. The one show that we really enjoy and are current on that is not on local networks can easily be downloaded to the Apple TV for a small charge per episode. All in all, I expect this to be a fairly easy transition that should save us somewhere around $70-80 every month.

The second challenge for September is more of a personal challenge for me. Since I do most of the cooking around here, when I get home and don’t feel like making anything, it has become entirely to easy for me to declare that we are going out to eat. Lately, we have been eating out at least one weeknight and just about every meal except for breakfast on the weekends. Also, this does not count the 3–4 days a week that I have been eating lunch out instead of taking a lunch or coming home to eat. Now, that is really ridiculous since I work five minutes from home and it almost certainly takes me longer to grab something for lunch that to come home and heat up leftovers or make a sandwich. So, for the month of September, I am challenging myself to not eat out unless it is meaningful to me. I am making an exception for Ashley and my date night this Saturday and I am debating whether or not I will make an exception for the weekly lunch group I meet with. Hopefully, by the end of this month, I will have broken the eating out habit. It is a bit on the embarrassing side, but we spent almost $500 on eating out this last month so by breaking this habit for me, we will probably save at least 80% of that for September.

These personal spending cuts are inspired by financial reading, but the reason is not really austerity related. While the amounts that we spend, both of cable and dining out, are high, neither one is really breaking the bank for us. Granted, I can find better things to do with the money, but this challenge is more about just making myself do it.

Ok, Netflix, I realize you want to emphasize your streaming service. I want you to emphasize it to. In fact, I would happily use it exclusively if I could get anything I want to watch over it instead of having to rely on discs for some things. I can even accept that you changed your API so that application developers (including yourself) can only manage streaming content using the API, requiring management of discs to be relegated to the website. I don’t like that as much because your website is a bit of a hassle on my iPhone and most of the time I hear about new movies that I want to watch, I am remote.

However, this final irritation takes things one step to far. I have the Netflix-provided app for my iPad. I can accept using the website for managing discs on the iPad, because the screen is big enough and the experience doesn’t completely suck. But, do you really have to tell me every time I access the site that an app exists for the iPad? I know that already. The reason I am not using that app is because you, in your infinite wisdom, restricted what it could do. Now, you have raised the price of having streaming content plus content delivered on discs. I do not begrudge you the extra money; I known that the content providers are squeezing you to charge more for streaming media. But, do you really have to make it even more difficult for me to access this content that I am now paying more for? Do you really want me to drop the discs completely? For some reason, I think that the answer is yes.