Those were the odds stacked against the Phillies winning the pennant going into mid-September (according to Baseball Prospectus). Just when the Eagles are becoming unwatchable, Philadelphia sports fans get the rare treat of seeing the home team play some October baseball.  Thank you Phillies for displaying perserverance and determination and a semblance of a legitimate pitching staff and giving us fans a (regular) season to remember. 

I have been tempted recently to shake things up and start driving into work instead of taking the Metro.  On empty roads, it would take save over an hour of commute.  The problem is there are never empty roads.  The Texas Transportation Institute reports that Washington DC has jumped up two spots past San Francisco and into a tie with Atlanta for the 2^nd worst traffic in the nation.  Combine that with a report from last year stating the 270 spur, a necessary part of my drive, as the 8^th worst traffic spot in the nation, and I will be continuing to add money to my Metro SmartCard, at least until the rate hike.

In Macy’s at closing time, I headed for the exit that goes directly into the Metro Center station, only to find a locked door and a guard telling a confused tourist “The Metro’s closed.”  ( I assured the now frantic woman that the Metro was actually still quite open, that this guard had simply locked this door). 

How much would it cost Macy’s to keep that same guard (or one better at communicating with customers) stationed at that same door, but leave it unlocked until the store was emptied? Wouldn’t that simple act provide the convenience of allowing Metro customers to use the exit they are familiar with?  Instead Macy’s forced this tourist, and I and all their other paying customers out onto the streets of downtown DC at night to find our way back to the Metro ourselves.

Has no one ever wanted to display a slideshow in the order they choose?  This can’t be a new idea.  Yet, unless you are uploading your slideshow onto the web or importing it into Powerpoint or Flash, this is unachievable.

-Windows Explorer will not save your custom order, once you leave that folder it reverts to the sort by name or date.

- Picaca 2 will allow you to create an album and set the order, but does not provide a means for saving that album.  Trying to export the album will result in a new order that is not only not your intented order, but not sorted by date or name either.  It’s a completely random new structure.

Perhaps one of the Apple apps has a solution, but for me and my PC, we are left with having to rename every picture (A001.jpg, A002.jpg…) so they will be forced to keep the intended custom order.

This can’t be the best approach.  What have you discovered?

Spec. documents are faulty, they are often too cumbersome to read (let alone write). They dive into such specifics that the developer may assume that all the details is addressed. That’s when pragmatic thinking and common sense are taken out of the equation.The preferred method is to tell the development team a story; a very simple one sentence story. This story has a single character who is trying to achieve a single task, such as “As a frequent flyer, I want to be able to check how many mileage points I have” or “As a parent, I want to be able to see my student’s grades”.   That’s all that’s needed that’s the story.

Unlike a spec document, this story is not contractual, it is the desired goal, which can be complimented with the criteria of how this was be deemed acceptable (i.e. “All grades are displayed together; Parents can see grades, but public can not.”).

Suddenly, the development team is back to doing what they do best, providing solutions.  They are driving how they will technically achieve this goal to fulfill the story, based off the acceptance criteria.