Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation

Fun With a Raspberry Pi 5

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:57:09 -0600

For 2026 I opted to serve a dual role for the Horsemen of the Hopocalpse homebrew club - VP and IT Guy. To reduce friction around a monthly style competition for members, I looked inot hosting an instance of BCOEM .

Claude Sonnet 4.5 helped me dockerizing the latest release version and was happy to get MySql and PhpMyadmin running alongside the BCOEM code. Then I started looking at hosting options.

Github Webhooks for Fun and Profit

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 17:42:06 -0500

I’m in the middle of a fun little exploration for work that bled over into personal time. Our CI/CD pipeline runs a dependabot-ci every evening. When everything is calm and well in the world our Jenkins server is quiet. When new CVEs are published, Mr. Jenkins becomes chatty, posting failure notifications to our team’s Slack channel. The last thing developmers want to see after hours is CI failure messages in Slack.

Dockerized Rails

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 10:32:38 -0500

New gig, new technology stack, and a ton (metric, not old money) to learn. I’ve used Docker for containerizing services before, but now I’m learning a slew of new root causes for exceptions when I’m building/compiling/deploying applications. It’s enough to make a brain hurt.

When I first started with Cover My Meds I knew that I was going to need extra help to try and catch up to my teammates, who have been developing in Rails and Docker for years. I reached for one of my favorite learning resources, the fine authors at The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Low and behold, I found a book that was 100% fit for my purpose Docker for Rails Developers and I’ve been following along with Rob Isenberg ever since.

Identity Server 4

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 08:47:12 -0500

Two years ago I created this draft. Today it is relevant to the client work that I am currently doing for another API project. Everything old is new again.

My client’s product helps customers manage collateralized loans. Customers asked for more openness in the product. To empower those customers the client wanted to create API endpoints. These endpoints required security.

Identity Server was an interesting option to protect access to various web API endpoints. I dug into researching it and created a proof of concept application. An Active Directory authenticated user would need a token to access the API endpoint.

Proud Debugging Moment?

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 09:35:10 -0500

I recently started searching for a “forever home” and found a compelling posting by You Need A Budget. They are searching for a Humbly Confident Senior Full Stack Developer. One of the questions required to complete their application is the seed for this post.

Briefly (no more than a few sentences) describe a proud “debugging” moment you had, where you found and fixed a bug.

Is there such a thing as a proud debugging moment? My bugs usually involve missing punctuation or a reversed boolean comparison. Two experiences sprang to mind, and they need more than a few sentences to explain.

Github Readme

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 14:20:01 -0600

I started this calendar year off without a development contract. Not surprisingly, updating all the profiles for my online presence became a priority and I started by updating my resume. My linkedin profile soon thereafter got a fresh coat of paint as well.

This “freshening” must have caused a disturbance in the force. It wasn’t long before the magical tracking cookies of the internet aligned and I started seeing article suggestions for making my github readme more awesome. I remembered listening to a Hanselminutes podcast episode where the guest had mentioned awesome github readmes.

Fun With Hugo

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 14:04:46 -0600

Fun With Hugo

It seems every time that the Muse inspires me to hammer out a blog post I spend most of my time caring for and feeding Dependabot or wrestling with ruby gems. In an effort ot reduce that maintenance cycle I took advantage of a PragProg Thanksgiving offer and purchased Brian P. Hogan’s very helpful Build Websites with Hugo.

I followed along with Brian’s example site and learned some neat things about the archetypes and creating themes which will be very handy when I get to work on my home-brewed beer site and need templates for the beer styles and recipes.

Forbidden Island Team Dynamics

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

While at The Path to Agility 2019, I had the pleasure of attending Team Dynamics on the Forbidden Island, hosted by Paul Boos . This session used a co-operative table-top game, Forbidden Island to explore team dynamics and illustrate Tuckman’s stages of group development- “storming, forming, norming, performing"

Here’s the publisher’s description of the game:

Join a team of fearless adventurers on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. Your team will have to work together and make some pulse-pounding maneuvers, as the island will sink beneath every step! Race to collect the treasures and make a triumphant escape before you are swallowed into the watery abyss!

Involvement With Resilience

Sun, 06 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Finding brews to keep everyone happy is no small feat. Care and feeding of the twin kegerators"_blank"} at the Dallas Improving office has been my side job for about six years. Yes, I’ve done extensive market research. I’ve met many people who are passionate about their products, community, and profession. The depth of involvement and connection within the brewing community is amazing.

In June, I attended Ken Grossman’s keynote talk, “Lessons I’ve Learned in 50 Years of Brewing”, at Home Brew Con 2018. He told us of his homebrewing roots and recounted how Sierra Nevada Brewing came to exist. Ken shared many humorous stories with us there in Portland, Oregon. His drive and ethics are commendable. His commitment to the environment and passion for it is awe-inspiring. We’ve all heard the phrases “be the change you seek” and “put your money where your mouth is”. As a homebrewer, who has watched gallons of water run down my driveway, I have tremendous respect for Ken’s sustainability efforts. Sierra Nevada invested in power generation through solar and co-generation hydrogen fuel cells. The Mills River facility is the only brewery in the US to earn a LEED platinum certification.

Brewing For A Cause

Sat, 05 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

To make a really long and detailed story short: I brewed the home version of this delicious beer to help out with the fund raising. It will be on tap at the Improving Dallas office starting on January 10th. Here’s the link to a GoFundMe which feeds directly into the fund created by Sierra Nevada.

Longer More Detailed Version

November 8th a wild fire, later named Camp Fire, broke out in Chico, California. It is the most devastating wild fire in US history.

The Act of Transforming

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What does transformation mean for an organization of people? Organizations treat an agile transformation as a singular event. It is a budgetary line item, a noun, a one-time metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. Expert agilists who have “been there, done that” are sought to guide the transformation. While one gains credibility by having “been there, done that,” what impact does that have on our vision? How does this distort our ability to be empathetic? To meet the organization where they are?

Lose the lies

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

An interview that Patty McCord did to publicize her new book bubbled up in a social media stream. A few friends commented about the powerful truths she was telling, so I followed the link.

Here are some excerpts from that Patty McCord interview which resonated with me:

…we’re gonna be your paternalistic employer for the rest of your life and provide you with career ladders and promotions forever. It hasn’t been true for 30 years, and it’s certainly not true now.

Was It Worth It?

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A few of us from the office headed out to an acclaimed BBQ joint during the holiday lull between Christmas and New Years. I expected the last workday of the year to be slow with a bunch of the workforce out on vacation. Boy was I wrong.

When we arrived, the line snaked from the cash register, around all of the picnic tables and looped back upon itself once without making anyone wait in the cold. I told my lunch companions that our wait would be at least forty-five minutes. They were cool with that, but they didn’t have two hours to lollygag at lunch. I took note of the time. Sixty minutes later we had our food and were shuffling through gaps in the line - which still filled the dining hall - to find some seats.

Demotivation

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a flashback from the late winter of 2015 in a winning environment: Starting a team meeting with a mass scolding isn’t that great of an idea. But it seems to have become the modus operandi of Fearless Leader at Mega-Corp.

He chose to start the new year something like this: Why is everyone late? This is important and everyone should be on time. (Never mind that the last three scheduled meetings had been cancelled at the last instant)

Agile and Brewing tags:["team dynamics"]

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

During an interview for Agile for Humans, Ryan asked me about parallels between agile and brewing. At the time I mostly blew it off. My thinking then was that the feedback loop was too long and the inspection bit was a tad too fuzzy. Ultimately there is a link with the inspection and adaptation.

In my short home brewing arch, there have been many experiments. Most of them have worked, but a few have them haven’t been so stellar. Our, I brew with my wife, first beer was an Oatmeal Stout. Once it had been bottled and cellared for the recommended time, we sampled it. It was good, but not spectacular.

A Journey Begins

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

What happens when an agile CTI coach gets bored and knows someone that they believe has something to contribute to the agile software community? You basically get invited to co-present a conference talk, a helping hand to find your voice, plus an opportunity to start sharing your experience and point of view with others.

Some time has passed and the memory has faded, so forgive me if I don’t get this exactly right in the telling of the story. It began with a simple question: How’d you like to co-present a talk about “Bitter Beer Face Communications”?. The AgileIndy 2017 conference was the week before an open-wheel car race weekend at “The Brickyard”. I’ve been in the audience plenty of times when Allison has co-presented, and I suspected that she wouldn’t let me look like a complete fool.

Welcome Back

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been awhile. I was gently shamed into this resurrection by a friendly text message - “YOU HAD A BLOG”. Certainly not the most impressive place for conference attendees to see what I’ve been up to and what I’m about.

Let’s correct that now.

Brewing Great Agile Team Dynamics

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Ever find yourself making a sour face after talking to a coworker?

Wishing your team meetings felt more like an engaging social hour?

There is hope. Those everyday conflicts where something seems “off” after a conversation are often related to differences in communication styles. When team members understand themselves and others, there’s less conflict, more collaboration, and better working relationships.

The DiSC model can help you understand why your team behaves the way it does and how to build trust for a more agile team. In this interactive session, agile coaches Allison Pollard and Barry Forrest will introduce the DiSC model to explain the four behavior types that are the ingredients in any team, then explore the characteristics of these ingredients and how they react with one another.

Talks

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Oops, We Inflicted DevOps on our Business–Now What? with Allison Pollard

It seems that everyone is aflutter with DevOps, the shiny new panacea for all of our software ailments. What technical goodness can DevOps bestow upon us? What riddles does it unlock for us as technologists? How do business goals align in order to wring the true value from DevOps?

Delivering value faster is a desire of many business and IT leaders, and it often looks like a win-lose proposition to achieve it. Metrics and edicts seem to have competing interests, like the car racer being told to “go faster” and “save fuel.” Barry and Allison will share their experiences with organizations and teams embracing DevOps and how it impacted both IT and business. We’ll explore the dynamics of goals and the conflict they can incite through an interactive game to further dive into what happens when DevOps is and isn’t in tandem with agile coaching.

TIL => ReportViewer Control, Less is More

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “Their IT staff is going to take care of that development …” And so it was recently on a project I am developing.

A separate development activity was spun up to create the required SSRS reports which were to be hosted on a Report Server. Well the Report Server uses Active Directory accounts for authentication and authorization. The portal that I’m building essentially uses the ASP.net Membership Provider and its services.

e*trade has buggy client-side javascript

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Once a month I get a little reminder that I need to go pay my e*Trade credit card bill. Every month for as long as I can remember I’ve tried to use their user interface to pay off my current balance and been told by an error dialog that my selection is not valid.

I have clearly selected a frequency of “One Time” and not “Once a Month” as the dialog box indicates.

console.log anywhere

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My current assingment for Improving has me writing much more client-side javascript. I’m not a javascript ninja, so I lean on the console window to confirm that the script is doing what I expected it to do. This approach works great until I view a page in IE, which has no clue what “console” means and acosts me with script error popups.

Doesn't Play Well...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working on some “prototypes” for a new Improving client. One of our UX people told us to use Twitter Bootstrap and don’t look back.

These prototypes are for a data entry focused application, so we’ve been using the Autocomplete Combobox to help speed things along. I tried to also use the bootstrap-buttons plugin in conjunction with it, but the buttons weren’t working as expected.

I changed the markup to load the button plugin prior to the jquery ui script and the radio buttons looked and behaved as expected, but the auto complete comboboxes looked funky and were no longer acting like text boxes and default to select boxes. When I switched back to loading the jquery ui first, the comboboxes resumed their normal operation.

Adding CoderWall Badges

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve picked up a few badges via CoderWall and I wanted to include them on the blog with the rest of the information in the right side column.

CoderWall has instructions under the sub heading “Official blog badge” that detail how to interact with their web api for retrieving badges. My main investigation was how and where to include these snippets within the octopress templates.

The comments included in the Octopress _config.yml were quite helpful. This was exactly the guidance that I needed.

Fixed Navigation Bar With Twitter Bootstrap

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Twitter Bootstrap has many very interesting features available. I really liked their fixed sub navigation menus for the feature pages. As you scroll past the subnavigation, it docs with the top of the scroll window and stays there. It also enables click navigation to other feature sections.

I wanted to have the same functionality for my own html pages, so I started digging around. Looking at the page source, I saw an include for “/js/application.js”, which is included in the github source project, but is not part of the downloaded assets. At the top of the file is this nice disclaimer:

Everything Old is New Again

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I spent some time over the weekend dragging along old posts from my tumblr blog that deal with programming. I didn’t bother with the instagram pictures or the four square checkins. After a few failed attempts to get the tumblr posts where the were suposed to be, I opted to stash them in a working directory and move them by hand.

Now all of my <scarcasm>glorious code related posts</sarcasm> are in one place, it’s time to dust up some posts about my shiny new play things Twitter Bootstrap Octopress and Markdown. Stand by for more intesting things in the very near future.

Programming & Barriers to Entry

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A fellow learner has posted “Programming & Barriers to Entry”. Cori has much to say in this article concentrated around command line tools, vim and Ruby. I’d like to comment on some of the perceptions and share my own opinions.

I picked up on some discord with regard to this type of interaction.

…Intellisense (or lack thereof). Ctrl-spacebar is my friend. It’s what I’ve grown to love. Typing /?—>enter—>up-arrow—>space—>command-I-really-need is a bit of a PITA. It feels like a clunky waste of time.

treetrim: Trims source code trees

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Treetrim:

I’ve used this spiffy utility many times. Every time I see a need for it, I’m working on a PC that doesn’t have it installed and I can never remember the magic incantation that allowed Google to reveal it to me. So, since I’m starting to suffer from old-timers, I’ll keep a handy link for it right here ;-)

EF Code First & AppHarbor

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Since my employer, Improving lined me up a new gig that uses Entity Framework Code First, I thought I kick off a learning side project with MVC3 and deploy it to AppHarbor. Everything seemed simple enough. Use Nuget to install the code first bits, hammer out a couple of model and a datacontext and BOOM! data goes into a database.

It wasn’t anything pretty, but I was ready to deploy it to AppHarbor. That sounded great, but my first deploy failed. The local build compiled and worked as expected. The source that I pushed to AppHarbor compiled without problem, but the deployment failed.

Javascript Programming Patterns

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Javascript Programming Patterns

Nice reference material that I got from JR Garcia

I’ve been away from web development for just a bit too long and have a lot of catching up to do with respect to all of the great work going on in the javascript space.

Css for Developers from Dallas TechFest

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some of my take aways from Eric Sowell’s presentation at theDallas Tech Fest

Semantic markup makes reading html simpler
Modernizer of Html5Shim make older browsers work with semantic tags
Using a “css reset” can save you lots of grief and frustration

The css reset Eric used came from Eric Meyer’s site. I’ve seen settings in the Blueprint Css style sheets.

I also heard the phrase “In general, you should be more specific;. That sounds rather odd, but given a context of trying to cascade styles to UI elements, it makes more sense. When you can be more specific with your selectors, you will be less surprised by the result.

The Flat Tire Principle for Source Control

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Flat Tire Principle for Source Control

Here’s an oldie but a a goody by Eric Hexter on why you should source control your dependencies and 3rd party libraries. He uses an automobile which carries all the tools required to replace a flat tire to illustrate how we should treat our source control systems. Anything that code depends on to do it’s job should be stored in the same version control system right along side of the code.

Why Johnny can’t build a decent user interface.

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Why Johnny can’t build a decent user interface.An interesting read by Jeffrey Ellis that I picked up from a @shanselman tweet. It is a reminder of why I write software -> for end users to get something done. There’s a list of questions that I need to keep top of mind when developing applications:

+Who are the users

+What are their goals

+What are their tasks

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Born in Vermont, Barry grew up outside Orlando, Florida. He actually did work for a “Mickey Mouse” outfit during high school as a “Food & Beverage Host” in Fantasy Land of the Magic Kingdom.

Barry is a fan of automobile racing in many flavors. He also enjoys wondering aimlessly, accompanied by Silvia, through wooded areas or parched deserts, pointing a camera at wild critters, bees, birds and anything else that may catch their eye.