Start of the second half

Well, looking back over day 1, my biggest Lions disappointment comes from picking Stanton over getting any other of a myriad of Defense and Offense players.

1. Calvin Johnson: Can't say I am excited to spend another draft pick on WR but he is an incredible player. (1st round)
2. Drew Stanton: I am leaning two directions on the Lions drafting a QB, they should have got one in the first round or one in the third round. He is seen as a project and I am inclined to agree with that assessment. I don't know if I like high 2nd round projects... (2nd round)
3. Ikaika Alama-Francis: DE that was injured in a late game. Fast, strong but had a poor showing in the individual workouts. Yeah, maybe a replacement of James Hall. (2nd round)
4. Gerald Alexander: A SS that is likely to add some depth in either the nickelback position or could pan out to be a decent SS with some coaching. (2nd round)

The thing with the late second round picks, I am not sure if those would have been available for the 3rd round where Lions had picks before trading up.

NFL draft day

Well, it is that time of the year again. Time for my Lions to make another selection that will make low impact. There have been exceptions to the case, but they have been rare. So now what.

Also watching this morning on ESPN, they have been highlighting the higher standard of conduct that is going to be required by the NFL. No other career path (speaking of all of sports) puts such young individuals in the possession of so much money and media focus. I am think they will have some luck in curbing this behavior just based on what they have done in the past with their drug policy. They will still have incidents but hopefully these kids can really learn the lessons of responsibility at such a young age.

So how am I going to blog this draft. In the past I have just watched it and ranted about it later. This time, I will likely just leave comments on this post talking about surprises only. Otherwise, it is just kinda ridiculous.

Running out of storage space?

Saw this staircase storage idea on Jana's blog. This is a great idea. I worry about it structurally but other wise there is a ton of wasted space with staircases. Makes me think we should just have lots of ladders or maybe elevators in our houses.

Cubicles and Accountants, the new D&D

This will be short one covering mostly a complaint I have about some implementations of Agile software development processes. The number 1 thing that people should remember when using these is that Agile is about people and relationships (stolen from the words of Scrum) as opposed to that of the process itself. What all the Agile processes have done is create a framework to start from. Not saying that I have hit where this is the bad case. Every case I have had the opportunity to be a part of focuses in the right directions, but I have seen where the Scrum bible is consulted, or things are rigidly adhered to, with no benefit to the team. A happy team is a productive team.

I guess I can finish this off with a second side rant, that Agile should mean just that. Priorities change and you can flow with them. I have seen this work well enough. The problem is when other teams or other customers come in with requests, most agile methodologies have no way of dealing with these. Or they do, and that is to let the single main customer (aka boss) dictates the priorities. The secondary customers get screwed. This is very intuitive. However when the secondary customer has a very valuable proposition, it might behoove the teams to internalize this sort of work.

Miranda goofing...

Don't really know what to say about this one...

NFL draft thoughts and how the wii kicks butt

Well thanks to Cory, I was able to nab a Nintendo Wii. I don't think Michelle is yet too keen on it, but she does laugh when I try boxing. Out of the box, I have not complaints. The device is nice and small. It takes minimum setup although the sensor bar took a little bit of reading to figure out positioning and whatnot. But once in, creating a me and navigating the menus are a breeze.

I have a couple of usability complaints. You can't swap controllers around (haven't read the manual so not completely certain of that) so if one fails or accidentally hits the wall... not real sure. Second, if you are playing two player and player two quits and turns off their wiimote, it shuts off the machine. Ug. Also the whole friend code stuff is super not intuitive. Maybe I have spent the last 5 years with xbox live and that has corrupted me, but entering a 16 digit code for a friend and waiting for them to do the same is a tad weird. I would rather send an invite to a meaningful name. Your know.

As for the NFL draft, I am still debating if I want to spend the hours it would take to actually put together my predictions. On top of that, I see both the Raiders and the Lions looking to dump the first and second pick which makes the whole thing up for grabs. Problem is that no one wants to pay the compensation for a number one pick. But at the same point your have a 12 year OT waiting up there as well as a multi-year pro-bowl WR. I am not sold on the QBs this year, but there is quite a bit of talent in all positions to make trading up not worth it, unless you really need a QB or a great WR. So maybe I will throw together a last minute one... depends on how much temptation I suffer.

Definition of crave

I saw today that UBIsoft is going to release another rhythm game but this time for the Nintendo DS along the lines of guitar hero. The only difference is it isn't about the rhythm as much as it is about the actual playing of music on this small handheld "guitar". Jam Sessions seems to create some sort of weird desire deep in my music creation center of my brain.

What the hey?

Well, I have a bunch more photos to upload to flickr and wouldn't you know it, it's down. Sigh. I guess at some point we begin to become dependent on our technology even in little ways (like loading pictures for family). Although I have had some other wonky network related problems that maybe this is actually comcast and their packet shaping in full effect?

So I guess no pics tonight. Maybe I will just photo edit them so they look a tad better.

By the way Miranda had her 1 year checkup. 18lb 10oz and 31 inches.

Downfall of man

Maybe it is just Western Civilization... maybe it is just United States... in the end, all I know is that compassion and community are surely dying. Common decency is no longer common. Mr. Virginia Tech shooter, why did you first shoot 50+ other people before killing yourself. Surely it would be much kinder to have just gone someplace quiet and ended your life, instead of taking so many with you. My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by this horrendous act.

Seems many times my reading always get related to what is going on in the real world. The latest example is Friday by R.A.H. The plot of the story is not important, but at one point in the book, it creates a world of anarchy created by a group of terrorist who seek to remove the world's corrupt which happen to be in power. One of the rotating main characters states they built their bomb shelter not for fear of an atomic bomb, but in fear of the day when social disorder occurs, based on the logic that there was a time when people could go outside and walk at night without fear of mugging or rape and that you could leave your door unlocked without having your life stolen away. Slowly society got worse and worse and that the inevitable conclusion would be mob rule. It seems that this self first attitude of the solution, could be a part of the problem as well. Sigh.

One other thing to mention on a related note is that we don't seem to care about how we interact with those around us as much as how it impacts us. Yesterday on my train ride home someone on the train took a cell phone call. Now the immediate portion of this you can probably already see is that this individual talked very loudly on the train without care for anyone else. He was so involved in his discussion of how he was created a RPG character with shapeshifting, regenerative properties over a crappy cell signal (he repeated regenerative over 15 times) that he failed to realize that the entire ... ENTIRE train car could care less about this conversation (don't get me started on the lady who once sat across from me taking to her lover about what he was wearing at that time). This only got worse because of the passive aggressive nature of our society. I was slightly annoyed but in the end, I blocked it out and continued to read my book. Others were not so tolerant of this anti-social behavior and mocked this individual for "being a nerd and that is just how 'those' people are". As a nerd/geek/etc, I am offended by how intolerant the other people are with they way they are applying this label. The proper way would have been to ask this individual to not shout at the top of his lungs or to save his RPG character discussion to place where it would not be subject to poor cell reception. Instead, we ignore this behavior and instead retaliate with equally bad behavior.

Happy Birthday Miranda!

Scalzi on Blogger code of ethics

Scalzi has made some excellent points about this blog about A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. I agree with all of John Scalzi's points infact, but I do have concerns about how nasty humans can be. It seems to only get worse with the level of anonymity that the web provides. What in a person to person level interaction where one individual is irritated or dislikes the other person, on the net it becomes full out hatred with scathing things said.

I personally feel that treat others how you want to be treated. And it is my blog, I can remove comments, but since you are all my friends and family, that is highly unlikely.

Saturday...tired...kids...frosting

Well, we threw Miranda's birthday party on Saturday (a couple days early) and things went pretty well. Leading up to the party we were not sure if we would get everything ready, but we made it and had plenty of food. Easter sausage, quiche, stuffed mushrooms, veggies, smoked pork loin were all well received. I must note it that I definitely ate way to well. So then we had an easter egg hunt out back. Miranda walked around the grass a bit and watched the other kids run around. Then back inside for some cake and sugar bombing.



Miranda wasn't really interested in the cake but managed to not cry and just watch everyone. She had missed a couple of naps so, this was pretty much expected. The kids played and burned some energy off.

Ummm... yep.

Teh Intarweeb creeps me out sometimes

I have a flickr account. Flickr accounts let you mark photos that are your personal favorites. As such you can see which photos of yours, that others have marked as a favorite. Below is a list of my photos and the people that marked them as favorites.

	AEA (mundoacuariofilo.or g)
	I'm not Jom
	AEA (mundoacuariofilo.or g)
	leapleg
	trixiebedlam
	(^_~) [Markus Masataka] (~_^)
	Mike A.

Partly this post was to pimp my photos but the other is to highlight how 1 good link deserves another.