In a 1 on 1 meeting with one of my senior developers today the topic of Continuous Integration with Cruise Control.NET was brought up.  We have a unique situation were we have Team Foundation Server as source control and backlog tracking, but not being used for Continuous Integration, instead we use CruiseControl.NET.  Needless to say with approximately a dozen developers working on our solution, we've encountered some weaknesses in trouble shooting broken builds.  Ultimately our weakness lies in a lack of experience...developers are so afraid of breaking the build and causing other people pain that they just don't try much and therefore don't gain much experience in troubleshooting broken builds. 

Ultimately, my conversation with the senior developer revolved around what he could do to further educate the team and get us using CI more extensively.  In hindsight I would have recommended that if he could get people using CI at home on their own personal web sites and projects their knowledge would increase exponentially faster than any effort we could do.  Funny how hindsight is so clear. 

After experimenting with the Time Value setting on my Canon 10D setting it on about 1/10 of a second, I was able to get some nice river pictures.  I really like the photos and the effects that they were captured on our vacation this month.

In case you didn't know one of my Grandmother's favorite plants was the Elephant's ear.  In her honor we have several in our front yard...somehow this little boy got lost in the Elephant ear jungle.

One of my grandmother Charlene's favorite plants is the Elephant ear.  Growing up she had an entire patch of at least 30 bulbs, and I keep that tradition alive in my home, although mine is scaled back.  I may be a software developer, but with photos like these I got a new career brewing...Gosh, I like those elephant ears on this girl.

This time my computer based task hails from the Sister-in-law, Shari Valdez.  She called Chris asking how to add music to her Stepson's graduation PowerPoint presentation.  Of course, being a programmer for a Fortune 500 company, I have no clue how to do this.  But I do possess the research skills to and technical savy to get the job done!  I typed into Google 'music PowerPoint' and the very first hit was all I had to look at. 

http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/powerpoint_music.htm

This article will walk you through adding music to both 2003 and 2007 versions of PowerPoint with almost no fluff and just a few screenshots.

One last note, does the brother-in-law who saves the day, get to pick which song the graduates presentation is set to?  If so, Davey gets the Ice Man.  ==>who looks a lot different than back in my day.

First tip.  Don't buy a wheel barrow bigger than yourself.  Also, watch out for your kids and wrenches, for some reason the bolts *always* end up looser than when you started out.

Tornados aren't something you mess with, especially when they hit your childhood hometown.  I got the call last night from Mom.  You know the voice of bad news...the kind were you know something bad is coming and you don't know exactly what.  My Mom and Dad lost a lot of trees and siding but physically their OK.  My Dad's childhood home was hit hard.  I remember playing an organ in a room that is now gone.

This year we set out two garden beds and planted a small variety of plants, including strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries.  The vegetables that we planted are okra, green beans, carrots, radishes, leaf lettuce, cherry tomatoes and better boy tomatoes.

The image is my 6 year old sons rendition of our building experience!

I've been stuck on Windows XP for the last 5 years.  I've avoided Vista since the beta (driver issues) and have had the desire to build a machine that could really make use of all the new capabilities.  Today, I started the process by visiting my favorite computer store, Microcenter and buying a new motherboard for the P4 that's been collecting dust since it's been dead for the last six months.  Fortunately, I was smart enough to buy a Socket 775 CPU Cooler.  Too bad for me I got the only one that didn't work.  I thought I'd set the whole thing up wrong and finally arbitrarily decided that the fan didn't work because I had too weak of a power supply.  So, I bought a new one on my second visit to a bought a new power supply, a 3 port fire wire card and another Socket 775 CPU Cooler.  I put the new cooler in and it worked like a champ, and the new power supply is  a lot quieter than the one that sounded like an old helicopter.  After half a day of banging in everything to get it all to fit, I'm sitting back installing Vista Ultimate.  Hopefully, tomorrow I'll be writing about how wonderful Vista is!

Until then, Adios!

Bowling tournaments are a fun time.  You travel to cities and places you'd never find again.  This year the Kansas State Tournament was practically in our own backyard.  Also, this year was a little different in that the team I normally bowl with fell apart.  Most of us bowled in the tournament, just with other people this year.  I was just about to not bowl at all when Chris and I decided to bowl together.  Let's just say it was a winning combination.  My average puts me in the division I, while Chris bowls in division II.  As of today, April 24, 2008 my 724 series stands as the 24th best in the state in the singles division, while Chris' 698 series is in 34th place in division II.  By the way, it's a Men's tournament and she's beat 681 of them so far!

What can I say, other than the Reynolds' know how to bowl, as for the *other* bowlers... let's just say, not so good for them.

2007 KSBA Tournament Results