Minimal

Forget the result and the performance—they were depressing enough—I was more surprised by the poor reception Michael Owen got from the Liverpool fans. Actually, I was stunned. The guy clearly bleeds Liverpool and, before the game, I’d have been surprised if he didn’t return there in the summer. After various insulting chants and a general lack of appreciation yesterday, however, I’m left wondering whether he might have second thoughts.

*pause as Mal re-reads last paragraph*

Nah, who am I kidding? He’ll be back there soon enough. :-/

Yay! Santa did bring me seasons 1 & 2 of Family Guy. Result! :)

Despite him not wanting the publicity, I feel compelled to link to James Raine’s latest foray on the web. Not a fan of weblogs, he’s decided to do one himself to see how it goes. Only 3 posts in and already I’m laughing. Nice one.

I love a bit of politically incorrect humour, but even I was surprised—nay, shocked—at one of the lines in season 3 of Family Guy. Upon finding a gagged and bound schoolgirl in a toilet cubicle, Quagmire utters the words “Deary Diary... jackpot!”

Now, that’s not too out of character for Quagmire upon spying an attractive girl, but the fact that she was gagged and bound made it sound like he planned rape! Holy cow. I’m not surprised some Americans got their knickers in a twist over it.

Still, I can thoroughly recommend the series for some off-the-wall humour. A number of the gags may be biased to an American audience, but it’s got plenty of the funnies for everyone else too. Fingers crossed Santa brings me seasons 1 & 2...

Recently, the word accretion has been popping into my head quite a bit. I like it. It neatly describes the process by which a large software project can accumulate a mountain of legacy code. One little hack might not seem that bad when you’re doing it, but over time they build up.

Still, if working with legacy code can present difficulties, there’s always a silver lining to be had. Even a compromised design for new code can be a major improvement over what’s already there. Big gains can be relatively simple to come across. I used to dread working in legacy code at my last job, but these days, I’m learning to enjoy it. I may not have the comfort factor of unit tests, but development doesn’t have to be hell. Just managing to understand code can provide its own rewards. Today, I’m a happy bunny. :)

Two weeks on the trot now, I’ve scored a goal past Pete, our star keeper in 5-a-side. I was delighted enough to get a very average goal last week, but this week I even scored one that might be considered good. Yay for me!

A few years back, I set myself a target of getting 5 goals in a year that I could be proud of. While the “in a year” bit turned out to be quite ambitious, I must have a total of about 4 by now. Why, it’s just like Shearer striving to beat Jackie Milburn’s record.

Almost.

Well, okay, not at all. But I’m really enjoying the games these days. :)

Things are looking up at work. I did my first spot of TDD today since I joined the company 6 weeks ago. Not only that, but I’ve now been asked to give a presentation on unit testing to all of the testers and developers in my department. Crapping it? You bet. There are more testers and developers in my room alone than there were in the whole of my last company. And my manager wants me to help them adopt TDD. *gulp*

It may be daunting, but it’s also rather nice to be given such a vote of confidence. Certainly made my Friday. :)