wrightin.gs

Why I am Writing yet another Issue Tracking System

Someone asked me several years ago why I am writing yet another issue tracking system, "There are literally hundreds of them" he said. "I know", I said, "but this one will be different". How many times has that been said?

I am fully aware that almost everyone at some point in their software writing careers has thought of or written a bug tracking system. They write these because their specific business need is not satisfied with the "hundreds" that are on the market today. Or, more likely, the ones on the market are just too feature rich and overly priced. Why wouldn't you write your own if you are just trying to capture some common information so you don't use half of the "features" but you still have to pay an arm and a leg? Or the tools are the market do not fit how you work. Some developers like to use Outlook tasks, some developers like to use an integrated IDE, some developers like to use a TODO.txt file. Everyone is different and so to find a tool that fits the needs of a whole team is difficult.

Throughout my career, I have used many tools to try and make the software development process a little more organized. Organized projects obviously have a better chance of getting done on time and on budget.

The tools that I have used however have been lacking in one area or another or they are just too "feature" rich and complicated. They all contain some sort of major pain points. I am just trying to reduce those major pain points.  Those pain points range from having too much information to enter, too painful to add multipe work items within a session, too painful to edit multiple work items, too many fields to enter, not fast enough, to not enough integration into other applications that developers, managers, and testers use.

The system that I am building will address these pain points and concentrate on simplicity. It will not corner the users into a certain way of collecting work items for a software project. It will have integration points with the other software that you use. The first release will concentrate on collecting and editing the information followed quickly by the integration piece. After that release, I will look at actively using that information to help users manage a project. That is a whole 'nother conversation.

For those that already know about the history of this application, you may want to know what the heck have I been up to. I started working on the application several years ago and I have been working on it in between client projects for a full year. I was close to releasing it but when I started using it, I found that it sucked. So I scraped it and started over. I am happy with how the new one is looking and I am definitely going to dog food it a little earlier.

If you are interested in learning more, you can sign up at http://teammorale.com. You can also follow the development process and release process on Twitter at http://twitter.com/morale. We want to be very transparent and share with you our ideas and thoughts behind the application.

What I Have Been Up To [Video]

Just a quick update on what I have been up to in glorious video form...

Here are some links that were mentioned in the video:

• Innovativ Studios
• Brilliant Fantastic
• Made from Dolly
• Morale

Ninject Example Code and Slides from NWNUG Lightning Talk

I lightning did a talk at last week's (11/18) NWNUG meeting on Ninject. I have posted the demo code and slides (in PDF form) below. In this example, I show how easy it is to swap out your data access layers using Ninject as the dependency injection framework.

Please do not hesitate to email me if you have issues or questions about Ninject or this demonstration. My email address is on the sidebar of this blog.

Download Demo Source Code

Download Slides [PDF]

More Random Thoughts from the milk carton...

So it's been a long time since I last published a blog entry. Hell, it's almost been 3 months. Time flies when you are having fun. I have been using my twitter stream a lot which caused me to sort of ignore my blog. No more though as I am going to try and publish at least one blog entry a day on either this blog or my business blog.

Here is a collection of thoughts and happening I have had over the past couple of months in no particular order...

1. Segways are a lot of fun and hella useful. I don't know why everyone in major metropolitian areas does not own one.
2. SugarSync is the best file syncing application out there. Period.
3. Segway needs to do a better marketing job. Pick someone at random and let them borrow a Segway for a day. You will sell a lot more.
4. SmugMug is a better photo-sharing site than Flickr because it shows the photos as large as it can. It caters to your monitor size.
5. I am going to stand and wait in line for the iPhone again. I want to make sure I get a 16 G one.
6. Black vs. White iPhone 3G is actually keeping me up at night.
7. Gary Vaynerchuck is a very good speaker. He taught me the importance of personal branding.
8. The SEED 3 conference was worth every penny.
9. I need a new car. I want an Audi A5 but it is very expensive and spending money on cars is a waste of money.
10. I should just get a Segway.
11. Ordered a new Aeron chair. It's expensive but I sit in a chair all day so it should be good.
12. I want to start doing a video podcast about anything technology. Any takers for co-hosting with me?
13. I have seen someone really screw up the MVC pattern.  It doesn't count as MVC if you are still doing everything in a code behind file.
14. I need to blog more. This is fun.
15. Thinking about writing for the local newspaper on technology subjects.
16. Outlook always crashes when I exit it.
17. Internet Explorer always crashes if I go to Newsgator.
18. Windows works great as long as you have a quad core machine.
19. Launchy is a must have on Windows PCs.
20. I have been using less and less tablet functionality as of late. Thinking about making the switch to the Macbook. I just love tablets though.
21. I am selling my Lenovo X60 with extras for cheap. Email me jwright AT wrightin DOT gs if you are interested.
22. I am fed up with my Motorola DVR box. It sucks at the only thing it has to do, display television.
23. I ordered a refurbished Tivo HD DVR for $199.
24. There is a "hidden" (not thought of) cost when buying a Tivo.  Each cable card will set you back $100.
25. I hate dressers. They are very inefficent in placing clothes in and getting clothes out of. Someone please design something that is more effecient.
26. I am in love with Castle Active Record.  Seriously, it's true love.
27. CSLA.NET + Active Record = Complete Bliss. This is kind of stuff you stay home on Friday nights for.
28. Alex Albrecht's girlfriend Heather Stewart has some serious music skills. She made my iPhone cut.

Microsoft Stole From Me

Well, not really, but I did loose out on another opportunity.  If you haven't heard, Microsoft released the Beta 1 of Internet Explorer 8 at their annual Mix conference at the beggining of March.  One of the features that are available with the new Internet Explorer is the idea of "activities", as Microsoft calls them, which allows you to perform some context sensitive action based on the content of the site you are on.

I came up with this idea last summer.  To "prove" that I did, here is a screen shot of the OneNote notebook I used to jot down my ideas.  You can see the date/timestamp on the top left corner (click for full version) under the title.

You can see that I was going to call it (codename anyway) "Sprout", "Context", or "Connect".  The idea came to me when I was trying to add a bunch of books to my Amazon wishlist from a person's blog.  I had to click on all the links to bring up new windows and then add them to my wishlist.  That was silly and I thought "why should I not just be able to right-click and say "Add To Amazon Wishlist?"".  Then a little "Ajax-y" window would pop up with the results.  Obviously Microsoft thought of the same idea.

Anywho, I am sad that I didn't implement it but Microsoft would of came out with this in IE 8 and my idea would of been all for nothing anyway.  I have to start listening to those little voices in my head a little closer.

Codemash 2008 Review

This post is a duplicate from the istu blog.  The original can be found here.

I attended the CodeMash event from Wednesday, January 9th - Friday, January 11th at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, OH.  This event was intended to be a "mash-up" for developers of various languages like Java, .NET, Ruby, and Python.  The schedule contained all sorts of sessions that convered all of these various languages and topics.

This was the second annual CodeMash event whose idea was started by several developers and leaders in the development community over lunch.  It was a very different event because of the wide range of topics covered and the venue it was held at.  It made for a very relaxed atmosphere.  Here are some of my thoughts on the event.  Sorry in advance for the long post, I just had a lot to say about it.

Event Organization

The event was very well organized even before I stepped foot on the venue.  The web site for the event had various rss feeds so you could get up to the minute news about the event.  News such as when the speakers and sessions were announced, when registration could take place, etc.  That was a very good thing because it didn't require me to go out to the site every so often to look for any updated news.

Another great piece of organization that was present is that the CodeMash organizers developed a scheduling application that allowed you to schedule the sessions you wanted to attend before you got there.  You could then email these schedules or print them off and be ready before you got the pamphlet the day of the event.  The only downside to this was that it was written in Silverlight.  I know the developer probably wanted to experiment with Silverlight and that is why it was used but it was total overkill for the application and it required me to go and download the new Silverlight plugin to use.  This was a pain in the butt but the idea was great.

I arrived to the event on Wednesday evening at 5:30 and checked in to the hotel.  When I checked in, the resort knew that I was there for the CodeMash event and gave me a flyer for the event which gave a brief overview of what was going on.  This was a nice touch as well so I wouldn't be sitting there going "OK, what is going on now".  The organizers have arranged with the resort a great price.  I got my single room for Wednesday night for $88 and a suite for Thursday and Friday night for $159!  I stayed at the resort before and the suite costs me $350 so these were great rates and another reason to attend this event.

After I checked in, I went down to the convention center which was just down the hall from my room to register for the event.  I told them my last name and they gave me my pre-printed badge, a ticket for the raffle at the end of the event and a t-shirt ticket to claim my free t-shirt.  The shirts were well designed and a nice touch to an already cheap event.  I also recieved a printed program for the event that mapped out the session rooms, the schedule, and the information about each session.  It was very well organized and had all the information I needed.

The sessions were well spread out and scheduled well.  There were only a couple of sessions in which I had a conflict of interests.  This was not a big issue as you could pop in and out of any the sessions you wanted.  There were plenty of time in between each session to mingle, network, grab a quick drink, or grad some juice for your laptop.  The event was scheduled very well and ran without a hitch.

Believe it or not, the organizers also organized breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire event!  This was included for the cheap registration fee.  They did a GREAT JOB on the sponsors.  From what I understand, you will have to thank Jim Holmes for bringing all these sponsors together for this event.  He did a great job on keeping the event cheap for the attendees.

Overall the event was organized near perfection!  I was very pleased with how the event was organized.  Great job to everyone who was involved.  I only know a few so sorry for anyone I am missing.  Great job to Brian Prince, Jim Holmes, Josh Holmes, John Hopkins, and Jason Follas.

Venue

Like I mentioned before, the event was held at the Kalahari resort in Sandusky, OH.  It is a huge hotel with an indoor waterpark.  It recently went under some new construction and it opened a new larger part of their park on Christmas so we were lucky that we were able to be there after the construction.  They added a wave pool, a swim up bar, and some sweet new waterslides.  My family came over from Toledo on Thursday night and I was at the park with them on Thursday and Friday night.  It was a lot of fun.  My favorite was a new water slide that is like a giant toliet bowl and spun you around this bowl and then dropped you out at the end.  I must of went on that at least ten times.  My 1 year old daughter also enjoyed the new kids section.  She was in awe most of the time.  Did I mention that the $150 rate for the suite also gave 8 people access to the waterpark for our entire stay.  This was possible because of the organizers.

There were a couple of things that I didn't like about the resort.  They seem to be understaffed at the checkin/checkout desk and they totally do not have enough luggage carts for all the rooms they have.  These were just minor details but they definately improved on the service since the last time I was there.

Content

The content was probably my biggest disappointment of the event.  I thought it was good but I thought it would be better.  The content I didn't like was the stuff I didn't learn anything at.  That was probably due to the fact that I should of attended something else and expanded my mind but I really was expecting something else in some of these sessions due to what I read on the session description.  Here are my thoughts on the sessions that I attended:

• Keynote : Software "Engineering" & Polyglot Programming by Neal Ford - This session made comparions between tradional engineering (example used was building a bridge) and software engineering and how they differ.  This was a very, very good keynote and it set the expectations for me for the event.  I liked the "theory" keynotes as apposed to the technical ones (the other two).  Score: A+.
• Coding in Silverlight by Jeff Blankenburg - OK, I am going to be honest, this was the worst of the ones I attended.  To be fair though, Jeff did fill in for the original speaker at the last minute.  The session demoed putting a spinning button in a web form using XAML and Silverlight.  Seriously.  After all the people saying "I don't want to do a spinning button", that is what was done.  I left the session early to check out of my current room and into my suite so it would be ready for the family when they arrived.  Score: F.
• Crash, Smash, Kaboom Course in Python by Catherin Delvin - I have never looked at Python before so I was excited about this course.  It was exactly as it says, it was an introduction to Python, it's development environments, and third party controls.  I thought it was very informative and it got me excited about Python.  Score: B+.
• Keynote : Mashing it up with IIS7 by Scott Hanselman - This was perhaps the funiest session I have ever seen.  The first part of Scott's keynote was him talking about himself in a sort of stand-up comedy routine with some slides and what it is like to work at Microsoft.  He bashes himself and Microsoft several times.  At one point in his slides, he talks about how he has met so many great people and he shows a Photoshoped picture of himself with his arm around the picture of the guys who are pictured during the Visual Studio install.  Very funny.  He had the whole room cracking up.  The second part was him talking about the new features in IIS and implemented an HttpModule in C# for a PHP program running in IIS.  It was good except I dodn't learn that much plus I do not like technical keynotes like I said.  He gets a higher score for being so funny.  Score: B-.
• Applied Service-Oriented Architecture by Brian Prince - I love going to Brian's talks as he talks bout real world issues and doesn't talk about spinning buttons (see above).  He talked about how to architecture your service oriented applications and how much work should be done in designing them.  I did not learn much in this because I have read these sort of things before but it was a good talk and discussion.  Score: C+.
• Putting the Fun into Functional with F# by Dustin Campbell - Dustin lives in Toledo and so I see a lot of his talks at local user groups.  He always blows my mind with his talks and he makes me feel really stupid.  He did sort of an introductory talk about F# and functional programming.  It was good because he taught me how to get functional programming and I had an "Ah-ha moment" as he talks about.  Plus you can hear him on the recent Hanselminutes podcast talking about similar things.  Score: A-.
• Party and Jam Session - I didn't attend this because my family was at the resort and I wanted to spend time with them.
• Keynote : Concurrency: Past and Present by Brian Goetz - This talked about the issues surounding concurrency  and how it is a hard problem to solve.  Brian demostrated how some of the issues can be solved and gave code snippets in Java.  I think this talk was way too technical (and frankly boring) for a morning keynote session.  I did not get anything out of it.  Score: D+.
• Real World C# by Bill Wagner - This was a good best practices for C# and the new features in the 3.5 .NET Framework.  Since I live and breath C# day in and day out, I did not get much out of this presentation but I thought it was good.  Score: B-.
• Hands-on Agile Practices by Brian Prince - This is second time I have seen this presentation and there is a reason for that.  Brian talks about how his company uses some concepts from Agile practices to implement software for his clients.  I love the approach and I plan on implementing some of these concepts into Morale.  Score: A+.
• RESTful Web Services by Dave Donaldson - This talked about how to make web services RESTful and the theories around REST web services.  The problem was that the first half of the talk implemented a WS-* based web service in .NET.  I didn't care about that and that is not why I attended the session.  I think most people felt that way as I looked around the room.  The rest of the talk was informative for me though as I never really knew what made a good REST service.  Score: B-.
• Building Custom Workflow Activities in Workflow Foundation by Keith Elder -  This talked about how to implement a custom workflow activity and implement designer features for the end user.  It demostrated an activity that sent email and built the designer pieces around that.  I just started in WF so I was excited about this but I did not learn a thing because it is something I already knew how to do.  It was good but again, I did not learn anything.  Score: C+.

Final Thoughts

Overall I thought that the conference was well worth the $125 registration fee and the hotel costs.  I killed four birds with one stone.  I learned some things, networked with several people, caught up with people I used to work with etc., and allowed my family to have a great time.  They have already announced CodeMash 2009 and I will definately be attending that as well.  I will go for the sessions that I do not know much about though such as Ruby and PHP.  If you want to hear the sessions from CodeMash 2008, all of them were recorded and you can listen to the podcasts here.  Hopefully I see many of you next year.  It was fun and I plan on being a sponsor next year.

Random Thoughts from the milk carton...

I have been off the chart as of late.  I am having a hard time trying to find time to blog because I am working like mad on some client work and my business.

Here is a collection of thoughts and happening I have had over the past couple of weeks in no particular order...

1. Fake Christmas trees are expensive for no particular reason...especially when you move into a new and larger house.
2. I finally sent out Christmas gifts to my clients and potential clients.
3. The iPhone is the best gadget in 2007....2006, 2005,....2008, 2009, 2010...
4. Threadless is addictive.  I have ordered at least 2 new tshirts a week for the past 3 weeks.  They are only $10 a piece so how can you beat it?  They even made one that resembles my business logo (which I am wearing right now).
5. I want some Threadless retail art but they have sold out of everything and have not released anything new.
6. iTunes on Tuesdays is also addicting.
7. I need to send my tablet back to Lenovo because of a loose screen.  They sent me a box to send it back in but I can't let it go :(
8. I wanted the new Dell tablet until I found out it starts at $2600.  The new capactitive touch screen may be worth it though...giant iPhone with a bad UI (stupid Vista).
9. The ModBook finally has a ship date of January 4th.  I am not going to get one until I hear El Jobso at the MacWorld in January.  If Apple does not announce one, I will get that.
10. ActiveRecord is cool to get apps out the door but it still forces you to give up some control over your business object architecture.  May be a good DTO framework for CSLA though.
11. I can't wait to try ASP.NET MVC pattern (it has been RC'd but no time yet).
12. I love the MVP pattern for web apps....maybe the ASP.NET MVC pattern will change me.
13. My time per week = 40 hours for one client + 30 hours for another + family time + keeping up with other clients + marketing business + Morale = > 168 hours
14. Morale is going slowly...will cut out some features to get it out the door.
15. So many more ideas for Morale...it will be freaking awesome once I get the features I want in it.
16. Company blog is suffering...must find time
17. Diggnation is the funiest video podcast out right now
18. I've been trying new beers.  I get a six pack of whatever each time I get my usual and give it a whirl.  I have found a few that I like but the only problem is that I can't remember the name the next day.
19. Field mice + new house + new housing development + winter = mice in house = Orkin visits = wife standing on chairs and screaming
20. Looking into opening a new business next year...that should become fun
21. Working from home with no hours is awesome
22. Passive income rocks
23. Working with Fanzoo Technology rocks
24. Ava has about 20 days to start walking...doesn't she know she has 1-year pictures coming up?
25. Still need to get Ava birthday party invitations out
26. How did I live before my 30-inch monitor?
27. I love Method Man's son's name....Pinky Fat Fat...maybe for our next one?
28. I am starting to get the hankering for designing t-shirts again...maybe next year
29. Paranormal State is a pretty good show...I get a lot of Goosebumps
30. Writer strike sucks for The Office
31. Can't wait for Lost to start again
32. I am indifferent about Ohio State going to the national championship...don't get me wrong, I am glad but the winner will not be seen as the best team in the country because of the crazy season
33. Looking to go to LA next year for the OSU vs. USC game...any babysitters, please call me
34. Michigan...stop crying, lick your wounds, and go find someone besides Les Miles...get your wallets out and pay Bill Cowher
35. Finally reserved my room at Kalahari for CodeMash.  This better not turn out like before. It was a lot cheaper with the CODEMASH discount code.  $150/night for a suite compared to $350 the last time I was there in a suite.
36. Kalahari will open their new expansion on Christmas.
37. Jott still rocks.  I use it all the time.
38. I have a new idea for a "family organization" application...Time will tell if I can develop it.
39. I hate everything about the winter except the concept of snow.
40. I have wanted to go on a snowmobiling trip for about 5 years now.  It is cold when you snowmobile.
41. Weightwatchers sucks but it works.
42. Weightwatchers.com is expensive but it works.
43. I can't wait for the iPhone SDK.
44. Ava is a hell of a lot of fun.
45. Alecia is growing up....really, really fast.
46. I want a casino party for my 30th birthday...real tables, real dealers, real money....is that legal to have a casino in your garage for one night?
47. Where did the college football season go?
48. I have no time to play my Xbox or Wii but yet I still buy the games.
49. Mario Galaxy is not as good as I had hoped.
50. Call of Duty 4 is really, really good.
51. I am not that into Guitar Hero or Rock Band but they are fun to play at parties.
52. I hate scraping ice off of my car
53. 2 car garages always only fit one car...no matter what
54. CodeRush and Refactor! are the best tools you can get for coding in Visual Studio....if your company won't buy it for you, buy it yourself...you will save 3x that in the first week.
55. I will miss Marc Orchant even though I have only had email conversations with him.  He was a great person and I wish the best for his family which I know he was very close too.  Life is too short.
56. Blog entries take a long time to polish

Going to CodeMash

I have just signed up for CodeMash.  If you have not heard about CodeMash, you can find out more information here.  Basically it is a developer conference that does not focus on one core technology.  The idea is that you can attend and find out about the different technologies such as .NET, Java, Ruby, Rails, PHP, etc.  It is the second one but I was unable to attend the first one last year because if the birth of my daughter.

It is January 9th - 11th in Sandusy, OH at the Kalahari (yes, that one) resort which has an indoor waterpark.  It should be a lot of fun hanging out with other pasty nerds and talking nerdom.  I plan on making a whole weekend with it and taking my family down on Friday.

If you sign up now, you can get the early bird special and it only costs $125 (until November 9th).  It is well worth the costs.  Post a comment if you plan on being there.  I look forward to nerding out a little.

Reward Thyself

I have been wanting to get an OQO model 2 since they have come out.  I have finally convinced myself that I could really use one to be more productive while on the go.  Instead of just ordering one on a whim (which I often do), I have decided to get one once I finish work on Morale as a reward for myself.  That will get me to work on it harder and faster so that I can allow myself to buy a really cool gadget without any guilt.  Has anyone else tried this in the past?

Developers: What Do You Want?

This post is a duplicate from the istu blog.  The original can be found here.

I want to get some feedback from all of the developers out there who may be reading this blog.  It would be very helpful on my development on Morale.  I would like to know what you would like to see on a dashboard.  The dashboard would tell you what you need to know at the beggining of your work day.  It would point in you in the right direction on where you last left off and where you need to go.

Here is what I was thinking that would help me when I start my development again.

1.)  What do I need to do today, right now?  I want to see deadlines and items that are broken down by day such as Today, Tomorrow, This Week, and Future.

2.)  What has happened over the previous past days.  I want to see what everyone has done over the past couple days and week.

3.)  I want to see how the project is doing overall.  Is it on schedule?  What is the velocity of the project?  Are there more things getting solved than those that are being added?

What do you think?  How do you get started on your day?  How do you remember where you left off in between all those useless meetings you attended and all of the interuptions you handled the previous day.  Please leave your comments.