My thoughts, rants and musings on technology, life, or otherwise

Today Christine and I lounged around. I’ve been itching to put up some retractable sun shades on our patio for a while now. Today was the day to do it. We stopped by our nearby Home Depot and picked up some Coolaroo sun shades. We picked out two 8′ shades for the sides of the patio and two 10′ shades for the larger front of the patio.

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Each shade went in with relative ease and each one rolls up out of the way when not in use. Pretty nifty if I do say so myself. Check out the photos of the finished job.

Now that I’m back from Seattle, I’ve had some time to digest everything that I’ve learned.

I need to take more time to unit test. I half ass it right now and it hurts me so much more later in the development life cycle. What it comes down to is that I need a way to make my testing easier and I think I’ve learned a new way to do that.

XUnit
The XUnit framework provides a standardized way to test your code. Each unit test can then be combined into a test suite that can be run during each build cycle. Its own added value ensures that new code conforms to existing tests.

I’ll be looking into ways to utilize XUnit in my C development (CUTEST or CUnit) as well as my switch56 PHP development efforts. I will also be looking into such frameworks as FUnit and FlexUnit to assist in some of our switch56 Flex development.

After today’s training class I went for a drive from Bellevue, to downtown Seattle again. Yesterday I had been at the Pike Place Market for dinner at Cutter’s. Tasty.

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Today I went down to Seattle Center. I took some pictures of the Seattle Music Experience Project and the Needle. No, I did not go up to the top of the Space Needle. I’m going to save that experience for when I can travel here with Christine. After a futile attempt to find some food around the Center, I decided to go for the sure thing and head back down to Pike Street. I hit up the Pike Place Brewery and Pub.

A few pictures of the Pike Street Market from the window I sat next to in the pub… fish and chips… some live drunken mexican music (Cinco de Mayo today) and I was on my way.

I took the I-90 from downtown back to Bellevue. On my way I realized that this is the same I-90 that cuts through Buffalo. For a split second I pondered how long it would take me to drive to Buffalo from Seattle, and what Hertz would say about me “borrowing” the car and returning it to them in Buffalo.

The company that pays the bills has sent me to Seattle for a training course evaluation. This is the first time I’ve ever traveled to Seattle. It is very beautiful. The mountains, the trees, the views are just awe inspiring. I’ll be here for two nights and I’ll take a bunch of photos and get them posted up here.  This first shot is of Mt Rainier from my seat on the plane into Seattle.