Lunch in London

In another few weeks, I'll be making my way to the ThoughtWorks Toronto office. Having never been to the city before, the end of December seemed like a perfect time for Ginger and I to head north while visiting our families in Greater Detroit.

Since 2005, 1.8 million acres surrounding Greater Toronto have been deemed a greenbelt in an effort to prevent urban sprawl. As it happens, once you get out of that protected acreage, it's mostly farmland as well on the drive from Detroit. London, Ontario is one of the few towns along the way and felt like a good stopping point for lunch.

Just like you'd expect from a city, parking in London isn't free. It took $3, and while we nearly paid cash — I handed Ginger the $3 I had and a folded up $10 fell out of it — I went with my American Express.

The first restaurant we stepped into looked delicious, but clearly said cash only by the register. We both prefer the cashless life, and knew it'd be tight anyway, so we moved on to the diner across the street. With no clear mention of cash only, and an ATM right there, it was a safe option. Or so we thought.

Me: "I'll have the chicken tenders... and do you take credit?"
The server responded, quickly: "Okay. No, but we've got an ATM right there."
Me: "Any chance you take US cash?"
The server, quickly again: "At par, so a dollar is a dollar."

Not feeling great about our cash situation, I headed over to the corner to try the little non-bank-affiliated ATM. I wasn't concerned about fees, because Ally Bank is awesome and just reimburses them. It let me get all the way through the transaction, and then denied me as an Invalid Acquirer. I let Ginger know and she headed over to try her bank card. Same thing; those little ATMs must not like international cards.

Turbo Button ATM by *USB* on flickr

We scraped at our pockets and came up with $23. Doing the math in our heads, and not knowing the tax rate in London, we knew it'd be close; closer than ever before.

Heading to the register the guy tallied the bill and came up with $22.85. Just barely made it, but only with the awful feeling of stiffing the guy who was so nice to us. We'll be back, just with a giant tip.

For more on our Canadian restaurant experience, check out Ginger's Float Me Down the River.

Project 1 Lessons: Part 1

It's amazing how fast weeks go by on a project.

It feels like just yesterday I found out I was headed to California for my first project. Suddenly a month has passed and we've cruised through one-and-a-half iterations. A few general lessons have been learned along the way that I'll surely be applying in the future.

Be Uniquely Identifiable

I made an attempt early on in the project to go by SG Hill. This was a new venture in person that didn't quite pan out for a number of reasons. The need for a name other than Steve was obvious and pressing. As is so often the case, I have a teammate named Steve. Ultimately the problem has been solved with the kind of class and style only software developers could pull off.

I'm now new Steve(); whilst my elder teammate has become known as Steve.Instance();

Learn Over Lunch

One of the great things about bringing together so many people of different backgrounds and experience levels is the knowledge transfer that could potentially happen. Getting it to actually happen requires some effort. Three weeks ago we made the effort to have lunch in the office one day a week for a little thing we're calling Lunch & Learn.

The response to L&L has been better than anticipated, and we've covered some varying topics so far over pizza and sandwiches.

1. ASP.NET MVC - Testable software designs
2. Feature Toggling (nToggle) - turning features of software on and off from a switch in the codebase
3. Automated Functional Testing - Automated testing of web applications through a browser with Selenium

Perhaps the biggest benefit to giving these presentations over lunch is not the new ideas being shown, but the discussions generated around them from the questions being asked.

Quote of the Day as said in a Russian accent "Pizza without beer? This is...crime"