Old Boar's blog (Old Boars blog)

Somewhere at the front of this blog it says that I'm interested in motorcycles and technical oddities. I was looking for something else and found this:

Diesel Bike.

I'll leave it to you to decide if this is a good idea! Every previous one I've come across (Enfield, MZ and some specials) repelled me. This one looks interesting (but I don't think I'm going to rush out and buy one).

The weekend was very successful but is quickly becoming a fond memory (and it's still only Tuesday). At long last I got started with a minor building job at home in Kanturk. It's nothing complicated (simply fitting plasterboard sheeting to studwork and joists to create a new room). For one reason or another I have been delayed starting it but now, at long last it is under way and has made good progress. Another couple or three days (of concerted effort) and I should be able to move on the the next stage (fitting out the plumbing in the associated en-suite) before I go about hiring a plasterer.

I really shouldn't have travelled back the way I did. Arriving in Pembroke at 1 am and then driving to London and starting work the same day cannot be a good idea. I did it anyway.

Here at work I'm still on the interfaces. We had a conference call today with "the customer" and the other supplier. We resolved a few issues but I can't help feeling the whole thing is a bit like watching paint dry.

Still, must get back to "drying the paint"!

Phew, it's sweltering! It's baking outside (BBC weather says 28 deg Celsius) and there is no air conditioning in this office. Things are not too bad though. With a few fans and the windows open and some trees outside, at least the air is moving.

The project architect and I sat down and looked at the Non-Functional Requirements for the interfaces yesterday. The exercise was useful if a little discouraging. Discouraging because it hightlighted that we are trying to design something(s, 4 things actually) and we've not been given the most basic sizing information by either the ultimate customer or the system with which we are trying to connect.

Examples are:

• We know the structure of the records (and therefore their size) but we don't know how many we are going to be sent. Sizings could vary by up to 4 times.


• We don't know when we are going to receive the request, or when the other system requires a response.


• Of course, there are several steps between them and us, none of which are under our control and we have no idea what latency they introduce.

Ho hum. It's going to be fun. Requirements from nothing, building on sand again.

Today I'm sitting in a half-empty office in sunny England pondering how to collect the information my team needs to design the interfaces I've been talking about. We understand what has to be on the the interfaces and how we are going to produce it. All the problems seem to come back to "when".

We have to provide data in response to requests from another (new, being written) system. Unfortunately, they have decided to deal with this as a single, large request at the end of the day. At present the equivalent interface consists of a number of smaller requests made throughout the working day. So, the new interface contains more records and each record contains much more data than its predecessor.

I find myself struggling to identify a way of attacking this problem.

The job of the moment is interfaces (bl**dy interfaces!). I'm specifying some interfaces between an existing (and somewhat aged) system and a new system which is in the process of being built. The customer has outsourced the old system to one supplier and commissioned another supplier to build the new one. Maintaining clear communications with the other supplier and our customer is turning out to be something of a challenge but it is more interesting than the interfaces themselves (which, frankly, are quite simple).

On a quite unrelated point, I've been taking a "self-improvement" course called "effort free" from Lifetools. It amuses me and may do me some good. "effort free" provides some insights, one of which makes me associate myself with the "BUSY SID" character (believe me, that is not a good thing).

Everyone have a good weekend!

Do you every have a task to do which you keep on putting off? I know I do. I have one in particular where the problem has got a bit beyond simple procrastination and I feel positive resistance to doing the job. The silly thing is that this is some simple admin which I really want to get out of the way (because then I can stop even thinking about it).

After a little while wrestling with this problem (and experimenting with various bits of elementary psycholgy and self-motivation), I think I've got it licked, but we'll have to wait and see if I actually finish the darned thing. As always the hard part seemed to be getting started. Once over the initial hump the trick is to keep going!