I remember how when the month started, I was thinking “maybe December will be the month that I average a post every other day…”

I’m off to a great start on that one.

Applications to grad schools have been submitted and I’m just waiting on letters of recommendation from one professor. And then, the long wait to mid-March. And then we’ll see what happens after that. I bet a lot of places throw their entire scholarship budget at me.

In personal screwing around, I’ve gone back to using BitlBee, an IRC to AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo!/Jabber gateway, meaning I can chat on all of those crazy IM networks I barely use via Irssi, the best IRC client ever. While this itself is mostly for my benefit, tying my IM presence to IRC means a couple things for you, the intrepid chatter:

• I’m online more, because I make a point of being connected to all my IRC networks
• I disconnect (and thus forget to reconnect) less, as with screen I can shutdown the desktop and keep Irssi running on my server
• There’s a better chance of me not hiding behind away messages all day

And hey — the logs are in a convenient format, too. And since those are backed up via Subversion… Okay, gotta stop linking to software. Especially software only I really use.

In stuff you can actually participate in, I’ve started using del.icio.us again, a “social bookmarking” site. You get to see what I’ve bookmarked, along with others. Join in on the fun and we can get some networks going, and stuff. Or whatever. I want to try integrating it with the blog, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. For now, if you care to know what random stuff I’m bookmarking, just keep an eye on that URL.

That’s all for now.

Productivity! Enterprise! Hi-keeba!

I got stuff done today. Like actual, legitimate, I’m-slightly-less-behind stuff! One document is nearly done and on track to be fired off to the professor on Monday. And the other thing has been the target of some slight yet motivating support work, so while no progress on that was made today, I’m not feeling as horribly doomed with it.

Happy days are here again.

I celebrated by doing two things:

• Gently prodding my Grand Scheme of MST3K Obtainage, which some have heard about. Slow and steady wins the race, some insist. On the subject, The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide that I got from Josh has been a wonderful read. The writers of the show are, astonishingly, quite the funny chaps.
• Working on my anime backlog. I have Ah! My Goddess from early 2005 to watch. I said I’d get to it eventually. I’d forgotten just how much the opening theme to the series (or the first season, anyway) reminds me of spring 2005. The series was a nice piece of comfortable routine in an otherwise hectic first couple months in La Crosse. And it meant I got to abuse the new broadband, which was a bonus. Such a happy theme, very soothing. I’d even save the episodes for after my one evening class, so I had something to settle down to.

Industry!

Dr. Victor R. Basili of the University of Maryland was in town yesterday for the Fall 2006 Distinguished Lecture to give two talks, "The Role of Empirical Study in Software Engineering" and "Defining a Software Measurement Program: Matching Software Measurements to Business Goals". Being the not-very-business-minded fellow that I am, I found the first much more engrossing, but both were interesting and Dr. Basili was a very enthusiastic lecturer.

The summary of the first lecture is that software engineering, like any other field of engineering, has some sort of relationship between the process (what we do) and the product (what we get), and that it's vital we discover patterns and trends in that relationship in order to improve our process, which is something the community at large has been very lax in doing, ultimately to the detriment of the outlook on software in general. The method described involved collecting useful process metrics, beyond the merely technical ones commonly collected, such as lines of code, and creating an experience factory which is designed to aggregate this data and allow for analysis. The analysis then feeds back into the process. Real results after years of use were then shown to provide very impressive productivity and process quality benefits, and the lecture moved on to more detailed concepts and framework expansions of the knowledge base. I enjoyed this lecture heavily, especially since it echoed a proposal of mine for the MSOE Software Development Lab which, as far as I know, regrettably never got off the ground.

The second lecture involved tying these concepts into the business world, defining a process with which to define meaningful business goals less vague than "increase customer satisfaction" and then tie those goals to software development measurement and processes. The CMMI came up, which I've always been a fan of (I guess, it's an odd thing to have fandom for), but a heavy portion of the lecture was for manager types, which is not me. Yet, as I said, still an interesting lecture.

So it was a good day, all in all. I met with Dr. Basili after the first lecture to chat for a bit and ask a question or two. The University of Maryland is on "the list" of universities to apply to as well, so it was a nice opportunity to at least do the old meet and greet with a very influential member of their faculty.

(Hey, at least this post wasn't about music again. :)