We were snuggled tight on the back seat of my parents’ white 1986 Caprice Classic. The big, bulky model, with the boat-like suspension so smooth you thought your were floating on the concrete. We were driving back from Key West after a day trip to the funky cosmopolitan island.
How to burn an ISO to a USB drive on Mac OS X
Sometimes it is handy to burn an ISO to a USB stick. And there are plenty of tools on the market that let you do this. But on Mac OS X, you have all the tools you need already. Just follow these steps.
How to open a Mac OS X application with command line arguments
Mac OS X doesn’t use short cuts like Windows does. So it may not be immediately evident how to best run an application with command line arguments in a “short cut” style, as you might in Windows. What I mean by this is, if you have a short cut to an application and want to add command line arguments, you could just edit the short cut and modify the ‘run’ field to add the arguments after the exe file declaration. In Mac OS X, there are no short cuts like these. (Mac OS X has aliases, but they cannot be edited in the same way.)
It’s still possible though, of course.
Problem solving and the False dilemma
I was standing there, as I usually do at 10:30am on a weekday. The developers on the team were taking turns sharing their status, their concerns. Monotone, typically. I was standing because we’re suppose to stand: it’s a stand up meeting so that you don’t get comfortable. Discomfort is the motivation to share your status, hear from others and get on with it. Quickly.
Grails plugin failed to resolve dependencies
In small window of time (not any more at the time of this writing), trying to install Spring Webflow into a Grails 2.0.3 application caused some errors “out of the box.” When I say small window, I mean… for like a week or two.
I’m not sure what the problem was precisely, but I think it had to do with how the dependencies were initially defined for Grails 2.0.3. While Grails 2.0.0 was setup properly (didn’t cause the error), Grails 2.0.3 caused the error. Grails 2.0.0 depended on Webflow Plugin 2.0.0, which is correct. But with Grails 2.0.3, the dependency was mixed between Webflow plugin 1.3.8 and the Spring Webflow library 2.0.8. The latter was precisely what was not being mapped properly.
I had a long blog post about this prepared, but I’m changing it because, well, it’s working now. But just in case, I will share some of the information I learned because it might be valuable across any plugin that has dependency issues.
The transient nature of life
When I was young, I loved my family. My brother and sister were much older than me, were married and had children that were near my age. Between my parents, my brother and sisters and their respective spouses and children, we had a big family. I used to love when we all got together to celebrate something, like a birthday or a holiday. Or go on family road trips.
Results always inform reality
One of my biggest pet peeves of IT projects in general is the lack of a proper feedback loop. Not shying away from pointing out what’s to blame or who’s to blame, not for punishing but to enable learning, progression, improvement.
Someone should have told this kid cardboard does not handle heat well.
Thankfully, I always try to be self-critical. It’s not easy, no. It hurts. My pride hurts. But it makes me better. It helps the team. I’m happy to be this way naturally. I’ve benefited from it. If someone asks me how I’ve developed my career and got to the level I am today, I always point out that you do yourself a disservice when you don’t admit where you’re weak.
“But doesn’t it hurt your reputation?” “Doesn’t it inspire weakness when your team is looking for leadership?” “How can your team trust you?” Covering it up may seem good short term, but you’re not doing yourself any favors short or long term. You are doomed to repeat your mistakes if you don’t own them. How will you cover it up every time?
Feedback. Ask for it. Give it to yourself. Check yourself regularly. Admit where you can do better then strive to do better. Don’t worry about the short term fallout. In the end, results always inform reality.