• equinox
  (tags: java spring hibernate appfuse)
• Does Your Company Belong in the Blogosphere? : Technology : HBS Working Knowledge
  Bloggers have damaged a number of companies, but it’s time to think of the blog as your friend. Skillful blogging can boost your company’s credibility and help it connect with customers. From Harvard Management
  (tags: blogging)
• Scott Manley - imeem
  (tags: Rackspace)

• The Open Source WRT54G Story
  news article
  (tags: wrt54g)

Both Spoon and 37 Signals both get it right, it’s an uphill battle. It’s one thing for a customer/user to make uninformed implementation assumptions on a project, but managers do it as well. And not only do managers make the assumption, they may have promissed it informally to others, maybe even their bosses. So not only do you have to convince your boss that they underestimated, but that they have to tell their boss they underestimated. You are now battling on multiple fronts.

Of course, managers who are former developers, or at least those who have a firm technical understanding of the project are usually less inclined to make this mistake. On the other hand, this knowledge of the application and development in general makes their “guesses” feel all the more informed and accurate.

The good news is that acurate or inaccurate, the guess doesn’t change the amount of time it will take to complete the project. The bad news is that the guess does change the amount of time you have to deliver the project.

It was 86º today, I wore shorts and a t-shirt. And we bought a Christmas tree. I have lived in South Texas my entire life and this still amuses me on some level. I think we have started an unofficial tradition no by going to the Pipe Creek Christmas Tree Farm to cut our own tree for the second year in a row.

Thanksgiving at my parents in Fort Worth (actually Azle) was tons of fun. Amy had lots of work (photoshoots, client visits etc) so she couldn’t be up there the entire time, but she was there for Thanksgiving day. Ben had fun playing with his cousin Jayden, paddling in my parents new canoe, visiting the Fort Worth Zoo and chasing the cat around the “rain forest”.

My Dad had a lot of fun playing with his new toy, a Nikon D70.

• Revealing hidden assumptions in estimation - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
  (tags: development)

Elvish

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

I took this test twice and came up with slightly different sub-classes of Elf. My mother would be so proud.

• meebo.com
  (tags: im)

• Wordpress Gallery2
  Wordpress + Gallery2
  (tags: wp wordpress gallery)

This summer was filled with lots of fun activities. We made several trips to the beach and camped there once. We went camping at Garner State Park and had a great time. We didn’t camp nearly as much this year as we usually do though, mostly because of Shutter-Happy keeping Amy so busy. She’s averaging several photo shoots per week now and has lots of clients visiting the house for slide shows and proofs. She has been mostly taking portraits (families, couples, kids and infants) and small events and also covered a large Rackspace Customer Event

And for the record, I think after 30 my body is starting to fall apart. In the last few weeks I got a cold, then the flu, then needed a root canal.

I got tired of the default WordPress theme and found a simple one that I liked. I also setup automatic posting from my del.icio.us bookmarks.

• Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms
  Web developers loathe the task of building forms almost as much as users loathe having to fill them in. These are both unfortunate facts of the Web, but some smart JavaScript and intelligent CSS can go a long way to remedying the situation.
  (tags: html css)