Dinner out at a local restaurant ups my belief in humanity

Last night I ate dinner a local Japanese restaurant. I was walking from the hotel down to North Beach. It was nasty, windy, raining so I was thinking that maybe I should turn around and eat at the hotel. I went past this little Japanese restaurant – Hotaru (1059 Powell St, Google Street View helped me find the name) Hotaro or something like that. It was nasty so I decided to forgo my usual rule for restaurant selection (learned from a colleague – find the first restaurant that looks good enough then go to the next better looking restaurant) and dive back in.

A little four year-old girl, Rosemary, brought me my menu. Roy, a 15 month old, toddled around holding onto an elderly woman’s hands. A younger woman sat braiding another older woman’s hair. The woman with Roy said, “look at my Sister’s hair”. Everyone looked up and cooed appreciation. There was much discussion of how the young lady did her hair and the fact that she did it without a rubber band.

A man walked it and the elderly woman with Roy asked, “are you Willard’s brother? I’ve seen you at the library.” “Yes. This is Willard’s niece, Christine” he answered pointing out the young lady that he entered with. “Where is Willard?” ‘He is parking the car.’ “We haven’t seen Willard for a while.” ‘He usually comes early after work.’

Willard walked in a couple of minutes later. Everyone said hi. WIllard took up Roy and played with him. He introduced Rosemary to Christine. Others diners came in and said hi. Everyone moved around from table to table, chatting and catching up. I was quickly brought into the conversation.

It was a wonderful neighborhood hang out for these China town people. They walk over drive in from around the city to meet up and chat on evenings when they don’t want to cook. Everyone listened patiently to the elderly woman describe how she was just laid off from her job. They jointly watched the owners children while she ran the restaurant.

It was really a wonderful step into a welcoming local scene.

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Etsy – On-line store for hand-made items

Etsy (http://www.etsy.com) is a store where crafters can sell their objects to the public. Etsy also supports spaces for the crafters to work and share their skills and ideas.

The Etsy website also has cool navigation methods for finding objects. There is a color search system that lets you pick a color to start with. You can then throw and move the objects around to view and sort them. There is a geo-locater for you to search for crafters near you. Very clever web design as well as fun stuff.

Below is a video that describes Etsy. I know that I’ll be doing shopping at their store – it is too much fun.

http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fetsy%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F408975&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf

From Laughing Squid.

KnitML – Knitting Markup Language

You know that xML (small x to mean x=X,BP,XAC, et al) has now hit the mainstream when people start developing a mark-up language for knitting patterns:

The KnitML Project’s main goal is to develop and promote adoption of a standard content model for knitting patterns. By developing a community-supported specification (KnitML) and providing basic rendering and transformation tools, the KnitML Project aims to make KnitML easy to use and valuable to the knitter.

From knitml.com via Boing Boing.

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Black Bean and Chorizo Soup

This was dinner last night. It worked out well especially for a “found this in the freezer” dinner. Note: I did not measure out the ingredients exactly. Somethings are pretty easy – a can of X is a can of X. Other things were by eye and taste.

Ingredients

2 Chorizo Sausages – cut into 1/4 lengthwise then chopped to 1/4 inch long pieces
2 small onions diced (about 1 cup diced onion)
1/2 red bell pepper diced
4 small carrots peeled and sliced (about 1 cup)
3 cloves of garlic minced
1 Tbls butter
3 Cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 14oz Can of Hominy – drained and rinsed
1 14oz Can Petite Diced Tomatoes – drained (save the juice for something else)
1 Tbls Chili Powder
1 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 Tbls Buffalo Chipotle Hot Sauce (the best, most useful stuff)
2 tsp Dried Mexican Oregano
2 Cups cooked black beans (we had made these the day before), drained
1 tsp Sugar
Salt and Pepper

Garnish: Avocado and Lime

  1. Melt the butter in a large sauce pan over medium heat. Cook until the butter stops foaming
  2. Add the onions, bell pepper and carrot and a pinch of kosher salt. Cook, stirring often, until the vegis are soft. (about 5 minutes)
  3. Add the chorizo and cook until the fat starts to render out of the sausage (about 5 minutes)
  4. Add the garlic, chili powder and oregano and cook until fragrant (about a minute)
  5. Add the broth and bring to a boil
  6. Add the hominy, tomatoes and beans and stir to combine
  7. Add the hot sauce and cayenne and taste for spiciness. Adjust these for the level of heat and smokiness that you want
  8. Add the sugar. Note: this won’t make it sweet it will just balance out the smokey flavors.
  9. Simmer partially covered for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  10. Near the end of the cooking time, add a healthy grind of black pepper and test for salt.
  11. Finish in the bowl with chopped avocado and a squeeze of lime.

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Driving to work makes me crazy

I drove into work for the first time in months yesterday. We had snow, followed by sleet, followed by freezing rain. The sidewalks and roads are a mess so I drove in. Commuting by car is just crazy-making. Some people are such egocentric clueless stress-monkeys when they are driving to work.

Example: I’m going North on Segoe Road. I come to the light at Mineral Point Road. I want to turn right on Mineral Point. There are lots of cars on Mineral Point. It is a four lane commuter route into town. A car, coming from my left on Mineral Point, slows to turn right on Segoe Road. This makes a space for me. I pull out into the space. The car behind the turning car, accelerates through the intersection and up on my butt as soon as the other car turns right. They then: honk at me, move left one lane, pass me, move right one lane in front of me and then (THEN) drives the, rest of the way, in front of me, behind the car in front of both of us at the same speed as traffic.

What did they get? One car closer to their destination. If I hadn’t turned in front of them, what would have happened? They would have arrived at the exact same time. If they had slowed and followed me, what would have happened? They would have arrived maybe 3 seconds later. Driving makes people act like crazy lunatics.

On the bike path, I see people all the time who I only know from the bike path. We all smile and say, “good morning”. Everyone is having a good time going to work. Even when I have been caught in torrential downpours and we are peddling with water squishing out of our shoes, everyone is laughing and smiling and winking and saying with a flash of the eye, “What are you going to do besides laugh at this situation. No need to get angry. You’ll still have to ride home.”

In an absurdist attempt, I tried to imagine what the analog behavior would be on the bike path. A bike pulls onto the bike path in front of you but ahead of you 10 to 20 yards. They are going the same speed as you. You sprint to get behind them so you can yell at them, pass them, then ride the rest of the way into work at the same speed you were going before. The thought is so ludicrous. It is laughable. It is absurd. It would never ever ever happen.

Today, I took the bus. I read my book and watched people come and go. I helped an oriental woman across the icy berm that has been plowed up along the road. I’ve had enough of driving to work for this year. Much rather have a pleasant commute than join in the crazy-making even if it takes a little longer.

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SOA – Bumps in the Roadmap

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Some time ago, I was on the circuit talking about Service Oriented Architecture and a roadmap for moving forward. Since then, we have had many false starts and hit many snags along the path. There is slow movement: we are standing up an ESB for testing, we have started a project to expose Course Roster data as an enterprise service, and groups are moving towards Web Services as there preferred integration technology. This is still a long way away from from SOA as an enterprise architecture.

Continue reading →

EDUCAUSE ITANA Constituent Group Meeting

ITANA’s Constituent Group meeting was on Thursday at 4:55PM. Approximately 40 people attended the meeting. Many of the attendees were from newly formed architecture groups.

The notes from the meeting are posted on the ITANA.org web site: EDUCAUSE 2007 CG Meeting Notes

itanacg.jpg

My slides are posted on the EDUCAUSE Annual Meeting Site: IT Architects Session

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Future State Models

The Gartner Group describes Enterprise Architecture as:

“The EA group will translate business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution.”

The statement that caught my eye was “models that describe the enterprise’s future state”. Keith and I talked about future state models. We both agree that it is impossible and not very productive to produce and all-encompassing future state document – a single document that describes the future state of the whole enterprise. It is impossible because of the complexity of our enterprise and the fluidity of the various disconnected portions.

We do future state documents for small project spaces. For example, there is a future state document for our Course Roster Interface project. This future state describes an Web Service and Event Driven architecture for all services that need Course Roster like information.

I am currently working on one with Human Resources for their employee forms delivery systems. Having the future state model gives them a star to guide by. It also provides them with talking points as they work with other campuses and stakeholders.

This started me thinking about what is the right level for a future state document? Is it just project by project? Should it be at a higher level like a domain within the enterprise (e.g. Student Enrollment Information, HR Employee Information)? Are others doing future state models?

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Beautiful Data Visualizations

These movies of air traffic flight patterns are making the rounds on the internet. They are really gorgeous and intriguing to watch. One of the cool things about movies like this or Hans Rosling’s work is the fact that they transform pretty boring data into beautiful moving pictures. These pictures let the larger patterns emerge. These movies make the data easily understandable by almost anyone.

Rather like what I try to do at work in some ways. Make pretty pictures that display complex systems in simple terms.

Very cool stuff.

Planesinflight

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