I went down to the Crossroads

I have an interesting choice to make immediately. I had to completely quit cigars (which I smoked socially so don't lecture me) and go through an indoctrination program or I had to pay my employer $600 more a year for my insurance. The problem isn't quitting cigars. They are tasty and I will miss them, but they are expensive and obnoxious as well. The problem is the social life. My life is a pattern. If the pattern bends, I am fine. I can adjust. I can be flexible. But if the pattern breaks, I am at a loss. Not being able to go to my favorite cigar hangout after a put my kids to bed changes the vast majority of my social life. I don't get a chance to be social before bedtime. It isn't that I can't, it is that I won't. My kids deserve a dad that is there, suited up and ready to go from the time I am off work until the time they drift off to sleep. My social life isn't allowed to disrupt my family life. So now, with this choice made, I am at a loss on what to do with my time after 8:30pm. I don't watch much TV. I like to read but tend to read obsessively so that it becomes a liability. I have considered taking up my paintbrush again and maybe doing something on canvas. If I dedicate myself to my original love, I know I can do some cool stuff. Maybe it is time?

A question on mobility. To this point in our history, we approach a technology, stand still to operate it and then proceed to the task at hand. Computers have slowly become the task at hand as software has grown more sophisticated. Now come the tablets. Are tablets the open door to cyber-living? Looking at the new glasses that Google demo'ed at their tech conference, are we far off from wearing our technology? I think the gesture software combined with wearable computing devices are not just a theory or sci-fi anymore. They are coming. What will these devices do to our work?

I am working on getting a world-record setting number of Zombies to walk around the historic Delano district in Wichita, KS. I have never tried to organize an event for 11K people, much less a zombie walk. It is interesting the number of permits, the resistance from the people who *should* benefit from this. The community organization in Delano loves the idea at least. I have that going for me. I will be posting more as the plan comes together.

So MaxelSoft just got accepted into the Microsoft incubator called BizSpark! I am beside myself with excitement. This is going to save us a fortune and should speed up our development quite a bit. Hopefully as we put the prototype to bed, I will be posting more about what I am doing. Right now, we can't really talk about it. I am so excited but my head is swimming with everything we need to get done.

A new company is born...

I am excited to announce the birth of a new company, Maxelsoft LLC. Maxelsoft is in the process of developing and designing a game-changing system that will allow small-to-medium business to reach their customers in ways previously only available to large and international businesses. It isn't just another marketplace or portal.

Product versus Process

So I created this testing tool that can theoretically create over 7000 web transactions per second. I say theoretically because the software it tests right now is only capable of accepting about 30 per second. So now I have this awesome rig that I lovingly call the Nutcracker Suite for all the right reasons and have *no development process* on which to hang it. In the focus to create, we have made a product that serves no process. We are supposed to be moving to an Agile process where we have some kind of continuous automation testing. The nutcracker suite is supposed to be part of that to ensure and validate data as well as validate load. What is needed is a development process that checks in code more than once every four months and actually has expectations defined.

Distributed Web Services Test Harness

I am finally done with my server crushing load test device. It can do a lot more than I started out to do and it does it well. It feels really great to have it code complete. I wrote it with an eye on being extensible so it is service agnostic. I have asked my unnamed employer if I could sail it out into a project like Gallio. They don't have a good service test model. It would be nice to contribute to Open Source.