status: $20,000
Sat Sep 30 17:35:08 EDT 2006
MATT JOHN MVHUB $20,000 AGILE WORK STUDY UTEC GYM MATT This weekend, between school, his two jobs, the gym and walking home up hill both ways through the snow, Matt Ouellette is re-packaging Mon [1] to include bug fixes. [2] for the etch [3] release of debian [4] [1] http://www.kernel.org/software/mon/ [2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=mon [3] http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200609102259 [4] http://debian.org/ JOHN John's working on SAMBA [5], so we can be a Microsoft file server to a UML academic department who fears that after 3 months, the University's IT Dept isn't going to get back to them. [5] http://us2.samba.org/samba/ I'd initially figured that the project would take 2 weeks since the last time we setup Samba, it took a weekend. I forgot that the last setup dude was MSCE [6] and that ldap/samba synchronization is harder than /etc/passwd and /etc/samba/smbpasswd synchronization. [6] http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcse/ There's no cash in this now, but experience suggests we can trust in the future with this group. There is definitely cash in running the http://cbacre.org file server, We're just not sure how much. Right now we're at: "We'll take whatever you paid the old market rate consultant that you say you don't like as well as us because our service is better" MVHUB $20,000 When you are Sheriff Rosco [7], Bo [8] and Luke Duke [9] are in the lockup and Daisy Duke [10] is suddenly extra friendly, you should be double checking jail key security procedures. [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_Rosco_P._Coltrane [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Duke [9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Duke [10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Duke I was a little surprised when two years after a single meeting, Chris Shannon [11] [11] http://www.lmvwib.org/ said: "$20,000 for mvhub development" and "We get the money pretty much by asking for it". On reflection, David Siegal and Eric Marc Adum did the hard work that is needed to make things simple. Everyone else in Massachusetts and possibly the US didn't. For an untrained member of the public http://mvhub.com sucks less than the alternative [12] (Yes, they really don't have DNS) Apparently the state is spending $200,000 [13] in fiscal year 2007 on the alternative. [12] http://209.6.11.171/rlocator/ [13] http://mass211.org/Mass211About.html#eohhs We'll know for sure that we have the money by January. Assuming cash comes in: Plan A is to fund raise like rabid crank crazed weasels [14] to match the 20K, offer David half his market rate for a year, go after a piece of the 200K the state is paying, the 150M the federal government might pay [15] and the billions Google makes. [14] http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj97/spr97/cornum.html [15] http://www.211.org/legislation.html Plan B is to scale the fundraising back to the level of merely rabid weasels, use a chunk of money for me to quit my day job and a chunk of money to compete with Red Hat or EMC for a clued Computer Science student over the summer. Thank You to Felicia Sullivan and Melissa Carino. They are quite generous with their time in the preliminary fund-raising and feature specification efforts. Right now the Parker, Casey [16] and Greater Lowell Community [17] Foundations and the Google summer of code [18] are the top prospects. The Casey Foundation funded the bulk of mvhub v1 and David Kronberg of the GLCF was encouraging when I talked to him. [16] http://www.aecf.org/ [17] http://glcfoundation.org [18] http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3634981 AGILE WORK STUDY Given that the study of computer science is more relevant to our work than keeping printers full of paper, that the typical work study job doesn't require much more than showing up and that serious full time CS students spend 60-70 hours a week studying, our work study labor (Manny) is assigned the task of showing up and studying. I've been trying to avoid being too much of a hypocrite by studying along with him for part of the time. I'm working on "User Stories Applied".[19] Putting aside, Prof Lechner's forwarded link to a good anti-agile rant [20], I think light weight is better than heavy weight when it comes to requirements. [19] http://amazon.com/User-Stories-Applied-Development-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321205685 [20] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html To quote page 135 of the book and a maybe somewhat contrived example of a IEEE 830 requirement fragment: 3.4) The produce shall have a gasoline-power engine. 3.5) The product shall have four wheels. 3.6) The product shall have a steering wheel. 3.7) The product shall have a steel body. and to quote parallel user stories from the same page: The product will make it easy and fast for me to mow my lawn I am comfortable while using the product. UTEC For the first time in a long time, I am only partially consumed with guilt at the lack of progress. We, (Jeff Blakely the UTEC staff and I) had two good requirements gathering sessions. This weekend if the creek doesn't rise, we should go into production on the script to synchronize the UTEC fundraising database with their newsletter listserv. GYM The week before last, attendance was pretty spotty. This week I demanded a stupid meeting. There was a long awkward silence while I waited for everyone to read my mind and volunteer to do to what I didn't want to order people to do. Officially, We're all re-committed to exercise and early rising. Unofficially, I fear I may be found stuffed in a locker some day soon. I might be sorry. Maybe there is a fine line between being a butthead and forceful leader. Maybe a butthead is just a butthead.