Wiffle Ball: 2-on-2 Game Play – The Purest Form

This post is the second in a series about growing up playing Wiffle Ball in our Alley. In the first chapter in this series, I described three varieties of Wiffle Balls used in our Alley games and their associated strengths, weaknesses, and impact on game play. In this post, I will focus on the predominant style of game that we played, 2-on-2.

Though we would play with many different permutations of players in our Wiffle Ball games, the purest and most pleasing form of game play had to be 2-on-2. It was a perfect coupling between the athletic ability of the players and the physical properties of the main Alley Field. While well-played 2-on-2 games had scoring that mirrored the games our major league heroes were playing in, the single biggest strength of 2-on-2 play was action:

• When your team was batting, with only two hitters in the order, you were generally either on base or at bat.
• When the other team was batting, you were either pitching (initiating play on every pitch) or covering the entire field on defense.

Along with the idiosyncratic ground rules of the main Alley Field (to be covered in a future post) and the normal Wiffle Ball rules, 2-on-2 games carried a handful of special rules that evolved over time. These rules weren’t haphazardly applied. They were extracted out of a natural selection process that was several hundred games in the making. Two of the more important ones follow:

Dark and Mysterious

The blogging platform I use is Blogger.com. Over the last couple of months, they have come out with a new Template Designer tool and some new templates that allow bloggers to tailor the look of their blogs. So I thought I would ditch the old boring template I had been using and, in the words of George Costanza,  just do the opposite.

So I have moved from a lighter neutral color style to a darker style. The template I am using is called Awesome Inc. The new Template Designer is quite nice and is worlds better than the old one that Blogger.com had been featuring.

I was also playing around with a third party template from Templates Block called Copper Dust, which I thought looked great. But that template exploits PNG image transparency and I found a couple of issues with that:

• It made it hard to to read the text of the posts. My writings are difficult enough to digest without introducing additional burdens on my dozen or so readers.
• I also had to do unnatural acts in the CSS and HTML of the template to get things to look decent under Internet Explorer 6, which doesn’t support PNG transparency.

Too much of a hassle, so Copper Dust bit the dust. 

For actually composing the content of my blog, I have moved on to a tool from Microsoft called Windows Live Writer. I find this tool more pleasing to use than the default post editor that Blogger.com uses. I always struggled like hell to get paragraph breaks to behave consistently in the post editor from Blogger.com – you have may have noticed that in some of my posts. WLW has a nice plug-in architecture where third-party developers can augment the base functions in WLW with additional custom functions. So there are a better selection of plug-ins for adding video, audio, and pictures to the blog. Two thumbs up for this tool.

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

One of the components in our product, (let’s just call it DW for this discussion), is basically the fruits of one man’s labor. It was designed and developed and has been extended and maintained by one developer, my colleague Pierre.

This is an anomaly. Most non-trivial components in commercial software development are built by a team of developers. The composition of the team usually evolves over releases of the component This is good for the company and for the developers as well.

For the company, you always want to have multiple engineers that are capable of working on a component. This gives project leadership more flexibility in developing the project plans and in responding to unforeseen plan challenges and changes. Above all, it provides some redundancy in case that one-man-gang elects to leave the company.

Bobbleheads Part Deux - Destruction

As the first of Cody and Joan Nedimyer’s grandchildren, Paula Jo certainly held a special place in their hearts, of course. But this fondness was only intensified because of the lack of opportunities that my parents had to be around Paula, due to my brother Steve’s career in the USAF.

Make no mistake about it – when Steve, Kathy, and Paula came into Altoona for a visit, it was a very big deal. Time stood still in our little neck of the woods.

My mom’s love and devotion of Paula was almost over the top. On one visit around 1976 or so Mom was wearing this Bishop Guilfoyle sweat shirt – must have been a hand-me-down from Rich. Thing was old and tattered -purple letters on white fabric – the kind of ratty old shirt that you keep around to dust with during heavy duty spring cleaning or to wash a car with.

Did She Just Say What I Think She Said?

After working on my birthday this week, I came home and discovered 4 six packs of IC Light bottles in the refrigerator, courtesy of Joe, Jr. Nice touch and very much appreciated.

Helped myself to a couple of those cold ones and then I grabbed a bite to eat with Chris and Tony at Champps Americana at Southpointe Mall in Durham.

After being seated and perusing the draft beer selections and appetizers on the menu, our waitress, a young woman named Patricia, stopped and asked us if we would like something to drink.

NC Pro Am League – July 6

The period between the end of the NBA/NHL seasons and the start of college football is such a dead sports period for me. (I have forgotten what it is like to have a competitive baseball team to cheer for in the dog days of summer.)

Fortunately, for a basketball junkie like me, we have the NBA Summer League games to watch, and, in basketball crazy North Carolina, we have the North Carolina Pro Am League.

The NC Pro Am is a yearly NCAA sanctioned league that runs for several weeks in June and July and features many of the players from Duke, UNC, NC State as well as mid-majors like UNCG and NCCU. The league also pulls in stud local high school players as well as the occasional NBA player with ties to the state of North Carolina.

The league is sponsored by Kinston, NC native Jerry Stackhouse, who went on to UNC and a long career in the NBA. Games are played on the campus of North Carolina Central University at the McLendon-McDougald Gymnasium (which seats about 3000). The arena namesake, John McLendon, is a historic figure in the sport of basketball.

Don’t Worry, I Am On It

(A little context for this post. My niece Paula’s husband, Matt, is a Distribution Center Manager at PepsiCo.)

In our mini-kitchen area on the first floor at work (the one with the Flavia Coffee Machine that I discussed here), we have, side-by-side, two vending machines that dispense Pepsi and Coca Cola products. I came into work on Monday, July 12, and noticed that a sheet of paper was taped to the Pepsi vending machine. It had the classic 8-bar blue logo (so it must be official) and stated:

Due to slow sales, this machine will be removed the week of July 14th. Please use the Pepsi machine on the 2nd floor.

No such notification was affixed to the Coca Cola vending machine a foot away.

This doesn’t pass the smell test. I could understand if overall consumption of both Pepsi and Coca Cola products across the first floor population of my building had declined. Maybe the economy is at play or software engineers in our building are starting to wean ourselves off our addiction to high-caffeine beverages (yeah, right).

In any event,why would the reduction in consumption (assuming there is one) be affecting only the PepsiCo products?

I’d also like to highlight that the phrase “week of July 14th” is fishy? Weeks don’t start on Wednesday and that day has special significance for Your Faithful Servant.

The mother ship has all sorts of channels for me to leverage in the pursuit of truth in this matter. Starting with my next bi-monthly meeting with my manager where, rest assured, this will be item 1 on the agenda.

In the words of Matt Drudge: Developing!

Haven't Seen It Spelled Like That Before

The company produces these publications called Redbooks which supplement the official user manuals shipped with a product. They are produced by a group of 4-8 team members working in a residency over 60-90 days. They install and use pre-release drivers of the software (not yet generally available) and document implementation experiences, usage scenarios, and detailed step-by-step how-tos.

They work closely with the developers of the products in the lab (like me). A team in India is producing the Redbook for the next release of our product. They published an early draft of the Redbook and distributed it for review. In a section where they were thanking team members for their contributions they spelled my name as Joseph Niedemeyer :-)

That is only a couple of letters away from the spelling used by cadet commander Doug Neidermeyer in Animal House. Wonder if that movie is big over in India?

Pimping My Blog

Relatively speaking of course. 

I have added some new gadgets and features to my boring blog. Hope it is a little less boring and that you (all 10 or so of you that follow it) find the new features useful. 
(If you haven't already figured it out by now, basically, I was really bored on a Sunday afternoon. Who knows, I might even get adventurous and radically change the color scheme and background images.)

Actually, I just needed an excuse to include a picture of A Pimp Named Slickback from Aaron McGruder's excellent Boondocks cartoon in my blog. I understand that by admitting I am a Boondocks fan, there is an outstanding chance that I will be labeled a Socialist, or whatever term Conservatives are calling Liberals these days. Have they advanced to using the term Communist yet? Or is that being reserved for the big push in 2012?)

1. I've started labeling my posts with keywords so that you can use the Labels gadget on the right side of the page to search only posts that apply to certain labels. So, for example, clicking on growing up link in the Labels cloud would list the posts about my experiences growing up in Altoona.
2. Related to this, at the end of each post, you will see a You Might Also Like... section that lists other posts that have the same labels as the post you are reading.
3. I have integrated a Facebook Like gadget that allows you to register your approval of a particular post - just like on Facebook.
4. On the right hand side of the page, there is now a Recent Posts list.
5. After each post, there are a set of Share Buttons that allow you to send one of my blogs posts to a variety of targets. For example, there are buttons for emailing a blog post or for  posting a blog post to your Facebook Profile. There are some other Share Buttons for sharing my posts to Google Buzz and Twitter.
6. Check out that digital signature - talk about eye-candy! Obviously that isn't my handwriting since it is legible.

Bulls vs Braves - July 3

Took in a Bulls game over the 4th of July weekend. Since I was a little tardy in getting tickets, we ended up in the Diamond View seats in right field. Right field in the Durham Bulls Athletic Park is a sun field, so it was a bit of a challenge battling the sun for the first three innings or so. But the weather was beautiful - cool and in the upper 70s/low 80s.


Last year the new Diamond View 2 building opened in left field and, this year, they have opened up the walkway (previously closed) between center field and the Blue Monster in left. As a result, the DBAP is now a 360 degree ballpark (for the first time in its 15 year history). 


There is a now a brand new Tobacco Road Sports Cafe on the first floor of Diamond View 2 building. The cafe is accessible from inside and outside the ball park. The Bulls have also set up some nice seating options on top of the Blue Monster. Along with the many options for pre-game and post-game drinks and eats in the American Tobacco Complex adjacent to the ball park, the DBAP gets better and better. What a superb venue to take in a game. Have been to a ton of minor league parks, but Durham Bulls Athletic Park is at the top.

Why Did It Have to Be Hawaiian Punch?

As Thanksgiving Holidays go, I have had better than the one I experienced in 1976. 

I was a freshman at BGHS that fall, struggling through a very long year on the basketball team. I was floating between slots 8 and 12 on the depth chart of a 16-man roster, not seeing much playing time, but working really hard and sticking with it. I ended up starting one or two games at the end of the year, but I was strictly a role player.

It is silly to carry that many players on a team - 10-11 is the ideal number - enough so you can scrimmage with an occasional sub in, and everybody gets adequate reps in the drills. 16 players and, unbelievably, only 15 uniforms - so to close out every practice the day before a game, there would be a 1-on-1 game between the poor souls sitting at slots 15 and 16 on the depth chart to see who got to suit up. It was such a wonderful morale builder. 

You'd think with all the hush money the Catholic Church was throwing around those days to abuse victims, they could have ponied up some coin for a complete set of decent uniforms. The ones we were wearing looked like they were in use when my Mom graduated from Altoona Catholic High in 1944.

So at the end of practice on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Coach said that the next practice would be on Monday evening, with an outside chance of a practice on Saturday. 

The holiday started off well enough. Rich came in from DC on Wednesday, which was always a big deal at our house, and Mom prepared her usual turkey feast. 

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!

Several times over the last 3 or 4 weeks, I have moved my leisurely 3 mile jog (2-3 times a week) from the climate-controlled treadmill outside to the mid-90 degree soup on the little loop around our development. The loop is a much more challenging course, with lots of hills, which, combined with the heat and humidity, usually forces me to wimp out after running 2 miles or so and finish the remainder in a walk-a-little-then-run-a-little pattern.

(Have to chuckle a little about the folks up north belly-aching about their recent heat wave. Though we did have a wonderful break of cooler weather the last week in June, 90 degrees with high humidity is pretty much the norm down in the mid-South it seems.)

With this heat (yesterday it was 93 at 6:45 PM when I ran), there are not many folks out and about, so I had the road to myself. Our development hardly has any children and is mostly older and, in many cases, retired folks. You'll see the occasional folks out walking the dog in good weather, but nobody generally ventures out in the evening heat.

The more upscale development across the street, Grand Oaks Estate, does have a more traditional suburban mix of families with kids and often times, you will see them extend their walks into my neighborhood.

That is Some Form of Inspection, I Guess

In the summer of 1979, my Mom and Dad took a trip out to Tucson to visit Steve, Kathy, and Paula Jo. Steve was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB in those days. Mom was diagnosed with cancer in January, 1979, so this was a nice break from her chemo. Though they both were looking forward to the trip, they were also pretty nervous about flying. Those anxieties weren't helped when 6 weeks before or so, the deadliest airliner accident in US history occurred. Poor Dad and Mom couldn't catch a break.

(I hope this history is accurate, but will gladly correct it if not. I believe Steve spent time in at least the following locations: Dover, Alconbury in England, Nebraska, Johnston Islands in the Pacific, Spain, and Tucson. For some reason, I think that this trip was to Tucson.)

They got out there and back safely though and had a great time. They both brought back a ton of stories about Paula from the trip. One that stands out in my mind, and that Dad must have told hundreds of times, involved precocious Paula at a local zoo. (Dad loved to tell this story too, particularly after a couple of cold ones - "Cold ones are in the back, Rich").

They walked up to the elephant exhibit and peered into the cage where a large elephant and a smaller one were positioned. Apparently, right around the time they all reached the elephant exhibit, mother nature made a call to the big elephant, who promptly dumped a massive #2. (Isn't it great when a plan comes together.)

No big deal - when you got to go, you got to go. But then the smaller elephant, for reasons I don't even want to know, lowers its trunk (a quite versatile appendage), and scoops up one of the massive dung boulders deposited by the big dog, examines it, and then gently drops it down.

Pregnant pause while the adults try to come to grips with what they just saw. Paula, nonchalantly, nets it out for everybody:

Mommy and Daddy....The little elephant is the poopy inspector.

Often Wrong - Never In Doubt

Sometimes you come across some writings or a research paper that perfectly crystallizes (and in many cases, validates) some thoughts that you have always internally harbored, but could never quite tie together in a coherent fashion. 

I have always had a suspicion that there are a large set of folks whose confidence level has way outstripped their chops. It always amazes me how these folks could be so damn sure about something, when they really don't have any right to be. 

Did I Read That Correctly?

So I was struggling at work one day in May, battling a psychological affliction whose clinical name is, I believe, the black ass. 

You've all probably been there. Events, out of your control, seem to be conspiring and collaborating against you. Annoying little roadblocks get thrown in the way of the simplest activities, slowing progress and increasing internal frustrations. Personality quirks of colleagues and managers, which usually roll off of you like water on a duck, stick in your craw (like the piece of food that got stuck in Garrett Jone's throat). Then things start to mentally snowball and you find yourself facing one of the most destructive emotions in the human condition: self-pity. Not a good place to be.

(The stimulus for this condition, in my case, is that I was given an assignment that I really didn't relish - fix this mess of a project called CMS.)

My personal self-help plan (free of charge) when attacking this condition is to basically sack up and remind (scold) myself of one or more of the following:

• This crap that I am worrying about is comically inconsequential when compared to the really important things like the health, well-being, and happiness of my children, family, and friends.
• The Frozen Snowball Theory. 
• As an American living in the year 2010, I have it better than %99.999999 of the people that have lived on Earth. Ever. Is my life really that bad?

Well, the old self-help deal wasn't really doing the trick for me this time, but relief came from the most unlikely of places for me - our Test Team.

As in any product development organization (software or otherwise), there is a natural and healthy tension between the Development Team (me) and the Test Team (them). The job of the Test Team is to find defects in my work product. Their effectiveness is judged by the number of problems they can flush out of the product before the product gets to the field. Bugs that escape to the field are much more expensive to fix for the company than those found internally before the product ships. 

As a result of this dynamic, very rarely do you hear compliments from the Test Team. When they do come. it is usually in a begrudging fashion with a caveat or two attached. That's just the way it is.

The day that I was batting the black ass, I was poring over my email, rummaging through one of the 50 or 60 that come through my in-box daily. One that caught my attention was blind-copied to me concerning a component called PSI from my colleague in test, Gary.

What PSI does or doesn't do is not pertinent here. What is pertinent is that I lived and breathed PSI from July, 2005 to September, 2009. It was my baby - I designed it and developed it and drove its adoption into about 12 or so shipping products. Gary was the lead tester for PSI. From that relationship, we both gained a lot of respect for each other - Gary was one of the most thorough testers I have ever worked with.

The email thread in question was a discussion where the Test Team (Gary and Amy) were trying to convince Development to use PSI for some feature that was being developed. This, in and of itself, was heartening - Test obviously appreciated the value of the software that I had developed had for our paying customers. 

But it gets better. Buried deep in the email thread was the comment was Amy:

I can't imagine anything being easier for a customer to use than PSI.

Now Amy has a well-earned reputation as a very hard-to-please tester. I knew of her since she had been on our Test Team for quite awhile. But she had tested other components in our product. I hadn't had much direct interaction with her - I wasn't even aware that she had ever used PSI in her testing. So this remark came out of the blue. 

I made a decision back in 1986 or so, that, for better or worse, I wasn't going to sacrifice job satisfaction for money. At that point in time, I was faced with the decision between continuing on with a career in Systems Engineering or jumping into Software Engineering. 

From my perspective, there is nothing quite as satisfying as receiving compliments on my software design or implementation from other peers.

The black ass cloud was instantly lifted - for a little while anyways.