More Clinton Shenanigans

Ugh….this ticks me off…

Here’s a quote from Hillary:

I have a lifetime of experience. Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience. Senator Obama’s campaign is about one speech he made in 2002

link

 So let’s get this straight.  Hillary is basically saying the following:

Hillary = more experience than Obama
McCain = more experience than Obama

Should Hillary lose the nomination (which still looks quite likely) she’s just given the GOP even more ammunition against Obama.  She doesn’t care about the Democratic Party.  She just cares about herself and she will bring down everyone else with her.  Just wait until she tries to get Michigan and Florida delegates seated…

The Agile Manifesto – Principle 1

As more and more software development teams and companies adopt agile development (mine included) I figured it would be good to periodically review the principles behind it. Coming from a more traditional waterfall approach to software, this was a big paradigm shift for me, much like the shift must have been from procedural development to object oriented development.

It’s a shift I’m still getting used to. There are some parts that are working well and some parts that aren’t.

So anyways, there are thirteen principles behind what is called The Agile Manifesto and I want to use this space to periodically review them one at a time and see if I can discover anything.

Principle #1: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software

Looking at this principle, it is very easy to interpret it as “deliver early and often”, but there is a key word in this principle that cannot be overlooked: valuable. Is delivering a web site skeleton that doesn’t do anything useful in 2 weeks better than delivering a fully-functional system in a year? Doubtful.

In order to achieve this principle, development and business partners need to come to an agreement on what “valuable” means for the particular project. Then, and only then IMO, should a plan to deliver early and continuously be formulated.

The goal of all software development is ultimately to satisfy the customer. Proponents of waterfall argue (with justification) that the best means to achieve this is to have a fully designed application signed off on by the customer prior to development and change is handled through careful review and tradeoff discussions. Agile on the other hand argues that the best means to achieve this is to release early and often, so as to get continuous feedback from the user. Is one clearly better than the other?

Wednesday

Still tired this morning. I think I’m going through caffeine withdrawal. I noticed that I had been leaning on coffee and soda regularly which is a big no-no for me, so I’m making a conscious effort to cut the cord. Based on previous experiences with cutting out caffeine, I can expect these symptoms to last 2-5 days. Now playing: a tension headache right between my eyes.

Back is still progressively getting more sore. I’m not sure what I did to reaggravate it. The ibuprofen has basically stopped working so I switched to Aleve this morning and that seemed to help a bunch. I need to be more diligent with my exercises too.

So, as expected Hillary won 3/4 state primaries yesterday, with the Texas caucuses still undetermined. And also as expected, Obama still leads Hillary by a strong margin. And also once again as expected, the Clintons are pulling out all stops to try and put Hillary in the White House, even if it means damaging the Democratic party or further polarizing the nation.

Right now, it looks very unlikely that Hillary could win the nomination, even if she pulls off a huge string of sizeable wins, thanks to Obama’s wins in February. But what she can do is repeatedly attack Obama which will ultimately give the GOP ammunition against him, presuming that he goes on to win the Democratic nomination.

Now, it’s fair to say that Obama will need to deal with these attacks whether they come from Clinton or from McCain. The attacks were going to come anyway, that’s just the nature of politics. The question is, is Hillary so blinded by her own ego or deluded by reality that she’s willing to sacrifice her party’s best shot at reclaiming the White House just to fuel her own agenda?

Between winning the GOP nomination and Hillary’s wins last night, John McCain must be feeling pretty happy this morning.