Weblog:
Week 6
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Monday 23, 2003 16:35 At State today. Am getting
ready for my trip to Salt Lake City! We're leaving tomorrow morning early. My
mom is going to be able to give everyone a ride to the airport. We're all on
the same flight out. There was no reading group
today because Dr. Williams is already out in Salt Lake City. Worked on modifying JUnit. Jason needs a version of JUnit that
gives more output than the initial download. (And since I'm going to be gone
tomorrow he asked if I could send him a version by today.) I was able to
finish a version that prints out the name of the test method and if it passes
or fails by 3:30. Hopefully, Jason will be able to implement my JUnit before
I go back next week. Tuesday 24th, 2003 23:50 Dright, Lynn, Lucas, and I all left for Salt Lake City this morning. We had a layover in Atlanta where we had lunch at Chili's. We got to SLC around 3:30 their time. Lucas immediately had to run off and volunteer so Lynn, Dright, and I explored the hotel. We all have rooms on the 14th floor, but Lynn and I got the room with the awesome view. We can see the mountains and a lot of SLC. The guys just look out on to more tall buildings. We explored the downstairs area of the hotel. The conference area is on the second floor along with the pool and fitness center. We were able to go to the Icebreaker this evening. We were told to mingle and get the conference people involved in the activates that were provided. There were belly dancer, jugglers, magicians, tarot card readers, and a characture artist. Lynn, Lucas, and I got our fortunes read and I got my caricature drawn. Lynn tried to learn how to juggle. We met the conference chair, Alistar Cockburn. We also met a bunch of other people from all over the world. After the Icebreaker we went to a pub a few blocks from the hotel with a bunch of the attendees. There were some guys from RadSoft, Robert Martin, and Boris (from Austria). There was much discussion about pi. We all left a bit early because we have to volunteer tomorrow morning (except Dright). Wednesday 25th, 2003 23:15 We got up incredibly early
to help out with getting the first day of the conference set up. I helped out
at Scott Ambler's and Robert Martin's
sessions. After the morning sessions started we were able to go and sit in on
a session. I sat in on Robert Martin's session. I missed part of the first
half because I was working, but it was only about the history of Computer
Science and how we got to the Agile ideas of today. The second part of his
session covered a testing tool called FitNesse, which is a Wiki Server that
runs Ward Cunningham's testing tool called FIT. These tools use HTML tables
to write easily understood test cases. After the morning sessions
were over we all ran out to grab lunch at McDonalds. In the afternoon we had
the Welcoming Address by Alistar Cockburn and the Keynote Speech by Jerry Weinberg. Later we went with Dr.
Williams and her family up to Park City where a lot of the skiing events were
held for the Winter Olympics. It was beautiful up there. We went up to a ski
resort to ride the Alpine Slide, a concrete slide down the side of the
mountain. Lynn, Lucas, and I all rode down the slide while Dright took some
pictures. Lucas also went down a zip line. The door guy at the hotel said
that it goes about 55mph (which it didn't) but it still was a bit too much
for me. Then we rode a bus to Main
Street in Park City. We had dinner there and bought postcards for everyone
back home. We hung out in the hotel for the rest of the evening, checked out
the hot tub and pool. It was a blast! Thursday 26th, 2003 22:30 Grabbed lunch at the Olive
Garden (isn't it funny how people seem to travel somewhere new and go to the
same old places) and attended several afternoon sessions. There were two
sessions every half hour. I attended: -Hugh Robinson's and Helen Sharp's
XP Culture: Why the Twelve Practices Both Are and Are Not the Most
Significant Thing In the late afternoon we
explored Salt Lake City. We went to the Mormon temple and a couple of the
malls. Ate dinner at a food court. I had to buy a pair of shoes and socks for
our hike down a mountain tomorrow. I only brought sandals with me. Friday 27th, 2003 23:45 Pain... such pain... but
I'll get to that! This morning I attended Ward Cunningham's (Lynn's
"uncle") session called Customer Testing with FIT: A Hands-On
Introduction. It was a great session that allowed us to play around with the
FIT software. This afternoon was left
open so that conference attendees could get out of the third day slump. Lynn,
Lucas, Dright, and I signed up to go to Snow Bird Mountain. We road a tram up
the mountain and hiked back down... well that's the short story. Lynn had talked with
someone at the information desk downstairs that lives in SLC. They said that
we would be fine wearing shorts to climb down the mountain. Well it was a bit
chilly when we left, but it was cold when we got to the bottom of the mountain.
It was almost freezing when we got to the top (40 degrees!) Well, it had
snowed this past Monday so there was still snow on the ground. We had really
yummy (and pretty) boxed lunches and then started our hike down the mountain.
Being the smart engineers
that we are we decided to go the way with all the snow. At one point both
Lynn and I had fallen in snowdrifts up to mid-thigh - in shorts! Well, the
trail that we were following got lost in a huge hillside of snow so we
decided to climb right on down. We are incredibly lucky that no one was
killed or that we didn't start an avalanche or something. So we walked, skied,
slid, and fell down the mountain. At the bottom where a bunch of rocks where
we held a stand up meeting to figure out where to go next. From there we refund
the trail and kept walking. It was absolutely beautiful up there. Along
the way we found a sign that said "Expect Unmarked Hazards",
a ski, and a pair of glasses. At one point we started a snowball fight.
It took us 2 and 1/2 hours to reach the bottom of the mountain. When
we got there we had to wait for the vans back to the hotel. [Pictures]
The entire way down we
were talking about relaxing in the hot tub to relax our muscles. That was
probably a bad idea for me at least. There was another problem with wearing
shorts besides the snow. I got sunburned... BADLY!! So not only am I sore
from walking, I'm also sore from the sunburn. I stayed in the hotel room
while Lynn, Lucas, and Dright ran out to the convince store for food and Swedish
Fish! Sunday 29th, 2003 17:56 Yesterday was such a
blast! First we attended some
morning sessions. There was only one session at a time, but they were only 30
minutes long. I attended: Jeff Patton's
Unfixing the Fixed Scope Project, Jennitta
Andrea's An Agile Request For Proposal (RFP) Process, and Curtis Cooley's Daily Iterations:
Approaching Code Frost and Half the Team is Not Agile. Before the sessions we all
met with Dr. Williams and
Forest Shull to discuss what we would be doing in their afternoon
session. Mostly we were going to keep track of the ideas that people
discussed during their session. Lynn typed the information into the laptop. After Dr. Williams'
session was over we had a break and then talked with Cem Kaner, a testing
guru. I got a chance to ask him questions about GUI testing. In the evening we were
able to attend the Banquet and Reception. We had a wonderful dinner and I got
to talk with quite a few people that we met at the conference. After dinner
they had a drawing for donated books and software. I was able to win an extra
shirt because Curtis and his table started a chant of my name. However, the
big surprise was that Lynn and I won the Lewis and Clark Explorer Award.
After the awards were
given out there was dancing. They had great DJ's there. They even stayed
later that they needed to. After the DJ's left we went up to Alistar
Cockburn's suite for the "after party." We were later kicked
out for being to loud!! It was great fun. Lynn, Lucas, and I tried for
a while to stay up until we had to leave to catch our plane, but we
decided that a 3-hour nap would be okay so we went to bed around 3.
[Pictures] We caught early planes
back on Sunday and Lynn and I got home around 5. I'm glad to be back in my
own room, but it was an awesome trip!!
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