Interested in getting started with Test-Driven Development but not sure where to start? Fear not! Get you some! That's right, you can now get your TDD at the front desk of your local Crowne Plaza. Wait... what do you mean its not that kind of TDD? I saw this sign in the hotel lobby during my recent trip to the West Michigan Day of .Net, I swear! Tim and James saw it too, just ask 'em! Technorati Tags: tdd, dayofdotnet, funny

The crazy-hott company I work for is getting ready to move into new, swanky, techno-stuffed digs. Yesterday was packing day for the delivery center - where my group of super-consultants live - and in honor of the event my grand-boss, Brian Prince, started a little meme: How does an XXX guy pack? Brian tagged several of his minions with variations of the meme and surprise, surprise... I'm Open Source Guy. In OSS, this is how we roll... Similar to how a tools nerd packs, an Open Source guy would first take a look at the lay of...

After last night's Columbus Ruby Brigade meeting several of us were over at a local watering hole soaking up some Guinness and a great conversation. Like all great conversations, at some point the conversation devolved into war stories, then then one-upsmanship, and finally a lot of hero worship. And no adulation is complete until some one points out that those folks we put up on pedestals are normal people, much like the rest of us. Of course being a bunch of Ruby enthusiasts, with several bordering on fanatics, that statement when something like They...

During a hallway conversation at CodeMash a few of us were telling war stories and/or fish tales about some of the coding horrors we’d seen over our careers. At one point the conversation was focused on code churn and compulsive refactoring. And then suddenly, without warning, I blurted out a single word that caused the entire discussion to screech to a halt. That word: refactorbation. When I looked around I saw a smile on nearly every face, but could tell that no one knew what I was talking about. And why would they... I didn’t...

The tech support for a certain large computer manufacturer, who shall remain nameless... but their initials start with an H and end with a P, recently stole more than eight hours of my life. Yep, that’s a whole work day’s worth of my life that I’ll never get back. Sound familiar? It should. Anyone who has ever owned or been responsible for any significantly complex piece of technology and/or equipment (read: magic) has at some point called tech support or customer service. Calling tech support/customer service is never fun. No one likes to spend their already limited...

As a geek there is only one thing I love as much as shiny gadgets - pictures of shiny gadgets I have yet to acquire! It should come as no surprise that Jeff and Scott’s recent posts about building the Ultimate Developer Rig have triggered a fair amount of geek envy among the community. Want it, want it, gotta' have it! In attempt to curb my desires to go out and build a new rig, or buy in the case of the MBP I’ve lusting for, I’ve decided to post a little geek pr0n of my own. Be...

I'm sure many of you wonder how the hell a geek like me ended up with girl like her... I know I do! I think I may have stumbled upon an answer. Apparently we (geeks) make better boyfriends, at least according to an article titled 15 Reasons Geeks make Great Boyfriends. Lucky for me it seems Carli also subscribes to this most brilliant philosophy. I mean, how else can you explain it? :) A few choice quotes 2.) They’re useful. In this tech-savvy world, it’s great to have a b/f who can make your laptop, desktop, and just about anything...

Phil recently went public with his pending career shift - he's leaving VelocIT to make waves at Koders. Naturally I wish my friend only the best... but I've got to get something off my chest. My gut reaction When Phil first called me to break the news I thought I took it rather well. I mean, I certainly understand where he's coming from when he talks about his love for OSS and the communities that are built around great projects like Subtext - boy do I understand! I also tend to agree with his there are only two kinds of...

Aww yeah! After a bitter cold couple of days central Ohio is finally seeing some nice weather. It's fitting that today was such a nice day - seeing as it is officially the first day of spring. The image above is a screen shot of the Weather gadget on my PC's Windows Vista Sidebar. I'm hoping to see a lot more days like like in my gadget as spring really starts to show up. Now I just need to pony up for that new laptop I've been wanting so I can work outside! Donations are always welcome. :)

I was wondering how long it would take before some one pulled me into the latest meme making it's way across the blogosphere... and Phil finally tagged me, so I guess now it's my turn. 1. I almost died at birth. I know this is supposed to be a fun trip down memory lane and not some morbid tale from the crypt... but you'll notice I said almost. According to my mom, there were some complications with my birth and I was deprived of oxygen in the last few minutes before I... um... came out. She says that I was so...

Tonight on the way back from dinner (Ok - pizza and beer at Byrne's Pub) Carli was asking what I did today so I started to tell her, in all too much detail, about how I helped a buddy install a new Subtext blog, built a new Virtual Machine for some development work, read some blogs... yadda-yadda. Then she brought to my attention that my blog "has way to much geeky stuff". To be honest I didn't even know that she looked at this site, but she said that she usually just reads the headlines, looks at the pictures, and then...

Apparently there have already been several problems reported at the polls today - and no Robb, I'm not referring to the poll worker who smelled like mothballs down there in Florida. However, as I mentioned in a comment to Robb's post, I actually ran into some difficulties at the polls myself. How it happened. The poll workers in my district asked me for my ID, which I expected. They even found my name (with current address) in the registration book... where you sign your John Hancock to indicate that you are - well you. So I whipped out...

These are a few pictures that a friend sent me (via FWD, of course) showcasing some really great Jack-O-Lanterns. I can take no credit for any of these images, but I thought they were pretty funny and they should be shared - seeing as All Hallow's Eve is just around the corner. Enjoy!

I was just reading this funny post over at Haacked's place [go read the post now, then come back here] about a guy who back in 1998 wrote a program on his laptop to calculate pi to the billionth digit and the calculation took 7 years! Long story short - he forgot to output the result of the calculation, and Phil suggests that possibly the bozo stored all one billion digits in a string and then forgot to display that string. Now, I know Phil meant for this to be a funny/amusing post... but my inner geek is just screaming too loud to...

Doctor... who needs to go to the Doc. According to this AP story, you should just grab a few pints of your favorite brew and drink it down to help your body fight off the "Big C" - Prostate Cancer to be exact. And there's even more good news... researchers say don't rush out to stock the refrigerator because the ingredient is present in such small amounts that a person would have to drink more than 17 beers to benefit.Sounds like a challenge to me, no?

You may have noticed that my comment count just dropped a bit, but most likely you didn't. I was trying to delete a single piece of comment spam from my blog, when I accidentally deleted the last 20 comments instead! I was just clicking away, not paying attention to what I was doing, and the next thing I know subText is telling me that is successfully deleted 20 comments. I think that I will be able to restore all of the comments from my SQL Server's backup logs... but it could take a while. Wish me luck!

Now, I'm not big on viral marketing... but I am a huge fan of viral videos! Unlike Haacked, I've not been pulled into the gaming world (not yet anyhow), but I must admit that I could easily burn hours on end browsing YouTube. And apparently I'm not the only one. In just five months, YouTube has gone from a beta testing video sharing website, to a massive community where visitors view over 40 million videos a day! If you've not yet discovered the wonderful world of viral videos, let me introduce you to this excellent clip entitled Evolution of Dance....

According to this article at The Sun Online, it looks like Matt Groening and the makers of the popular cartoon The Simpsons have a filmed a version of the show's opening titles using real actors (yeah, humans). The live-action version of the opening follows the cartoon version almost scene for scene... starting with the camera panning over the nuclear power plant and zooming into Bart writing on the chalkboard and ending with the entire family cramming onto the sofa to watch the hit cartoon on their TV. It reminded me like something out of The Twilight Zone.You can download...

As some of you may be aware,a while ago I started keeping an archive of all of the funny/disturbing/oddforwards that find their way to my inbox. Because I'm not really onefor contributing to Memes, chain letters, or the like the archive is really only for the images that those Fwd's contain. However, when I saw the subject line of this particular Fwd (I'm a sucker for office humor), and that fact that it was from a friend who always send quality material, I just had to have aread.I was notdisappointed*. Essential vocabulary additions for the workplace (and elsewhere): BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in...

My girlfriend and I were in our home office this afternoon, each at our own desk working (or in her case, trying to find the end of the Internet), and every few minutes she would burst out in laughter. After 15 minutes of this, I finally had to see what was going on. When I asked her whats so funny and she replied:Drunk guy: Here's hoping you're in Heaven ten minutes before the devil knows you're dead.Drunk girl: What's that mean?Drunk guy: It's an Irish toast.Drunk girl: Oh. Well, here's to bread, eggs and cinnamon.Drunk guy: Huh?Drunk girl:...

First off, let me just say Go BUCKS! It was truely was an exhilarating and hard fought game last night. Second, I would like to offer my condolences to all of you Notre Shame fans out there. If you need help coping with the loss, I got this from a coworker who happens to be a huge Fighting Irish fan. Now lets hope that the rest of the Big10 (only Penn State has yet to play) can win the big games and show how great this conference is! On a related note (and because I think USC is the most over-rated team in...

Seeing as this is Beat M*ch*gan Week here in Buckeye Country, I thought that I'd share a little (and probably very obscure) bit of the history of this great rivalry. Well, its at least a possible explanation for the great animosity between O-H...I-O, and Meeeshagun.The Michigan game. Just mention this in Columbus and you can see emotions stir and blood pressures rise.But why is the Ohio/Michigan rivalry one of the most intense and most well-known rivalries in the country? The Michigan vs. Ohio saga may have started in 1803.The Toledo War.The Rotary Club of Toledo is the largest club...

So, I'm at work today typing out an email to an internal environment support technician -- something about getting my VOIP phone setup correctly or something -- and I had the following phrase:...I called the helpdesk, and they of course had no idea what I was talking about...Now, our email client at work (Lotus Notes) tries to spellcheck every email before it sends in an attempt to catch/correct the most glaring mistakes. I'm all for this because if you've spent much time reading my posts, you'd realize I have horrible grammar skillz. But, I digress... So I...

Well, it's not exactly enough to retire on... hell it's not even enough to pay rent & eat for a month*, but according to this site, my blog is worth... My blog is worth $1,693.62.How much is your blog worth? I guess it would help if I posted more than once every few months (which has been my average lately... sorry), but recently I feel that Quality is more important that Quantity.  So maybe I shouldn't post this story... nah!   * = at the time of this post, this blog was valued at $1,693.62... so depending on when you're reading this, it might only be...

-- Happy St. Patrick's Day! -- I know that none of you want to be at work on this FINE drinking holiday, and neither do I! The 1st round of the Tourney is kicking off today, its a warm 50-degrees outside, the Green Beer (or Guinness for Irish at heart) is plenty cold! Just take the day off or if you don't have any vacation days left, call in dead... At least quit reading this and get your work done so you can get to the Pub and Go Drink Your Arse Off! Cheers!

If you're reading this, then I'm sure you've got some extra time on your hands and you'll probably enjoy some of these grand illusions. This site has all kinds of cool illusions that are sure to soak up hours of your day! Someone at work brought us the Dragon Optical Illusion and we spent half the afternoon with one eye open, walking back & forth, and jumping up & down as the dragon watched our every move. We even constructed our own and he now stands guard over our cubes as passersby double-take and then stare in...

Summary from a post on slashdot:MacDork writes "CNNMoney posted a short article this morning about new Ohio regulations set to become effective May 2 this year. If you are in the state and selling on eBay, you will need to pay $200 for a license and post a $50,000 bond or face possible fines and jail time. Getting the license also requires a one-year apprenticeship. When asked to which eBay users this bill applied, the bill's author, Larry Mumper responded with these very specific guidelines.... 'It certainly will not apply to the casual seller on eBay, but might apply to...

Okay, so perhaps this isn't exactly Lighter Side material, but it is pretty weird! It seems that the tragic end of William Shakespeare's famed tale of two star-crossed lovers was nearly recreated last week by an Italian couple. According to an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer an "Italian man killed himself out of grief for his ailing wife, hours before she came out of a coma." Now, if you'll remember back to your High School years, in Shakespear's play Juliet drinks a potion that put her into a coma-like state in a plan to elope with...

It appears that some students at IT-University in Copenhagen have given an entirely new meaning to the phrase "FREE BEER!"  From their website: Vores Øl (Our Beer) is a great tasting energetic beer and it's the world's first open source beer! It is based on classic ale brewing traditions but with added guarana for a natural energy-boost. Version 1.0 is a medium strong beer (6% vol) with a deep golden red color and an original but familiar taste.Sounds interesting... it's like RedBull meets Budweiser! Now, you can't buy this in any stores (yet), but you can make your own! ...

To set the stage for the pictures: a while ago Carli and I were at a local grocery picking up some food for the week. It was just the boring everyday trip, until we got to the Frozen Foods section. I was over picking up some adult beverages (read: Miller Lite), and all of the sudden I heard Carli burst into laughter. I went running over to her and she was practically on the floor, pointing to a sign above the Hot Pockets. I took a look and at first didn't understand, but on a second take I realized a...

So we got some snow and ice last night, and yes, we are under a Level 2 Snow Advisory, but that is not an excuse for people to become complete and utter dumb-asses! On my home today, this is what I came across (in the roads/parking lots w/in my apartment complex):<rant>Some dumb-girl got stuck backing out of her spot... she was stuck right in the middle of the road (going through the complex) so a few of us were trying to help her get un-stuck. ÂI told her to "Keep your wheels straight while we're trying to get you out,...