Coffee as a teaching tool

Regular readers will know that I like things coffee and things geek. So I really liked this article I stumbled across today which analyses the production of coffee at Starbucks using standard information system design patterns; Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit.

Illustrating abstract architectural concepts using real world processes is actually a very powerful teaching tool; for example, illustrating the concept of a correlation identifier by reference to Starbucks' practice of writing your name on the cup when you order.

It's a simple and effective solution, but I did have a little trouble with it when I was working regularly in the Philippines a few years ago. Filipinos are mostly accustomed to American accents; when I gave my name as Dan almost anything would end up on the cup. So I experimented for a bit until I found a name that the staff would always get right despite my Australian accent; at Starbucks Philippines I am therefore known as "Freddie".

It also reminded me of the Order Cappuccino Use Case that I used to teach how to write Use Cases; that was in South Africa where the "cappuccino with foam or cream" heresy originates.

Order Cappuccino Use Case

Basic Flow

1. The Customer asks for a cappuccino; the Waiter prompts for Foam or Cream
2. The Customer requests foam; the Waiter submits the order
3. The Barista makes the cappuccino
4. The Waiter collects the order from the Barista and delivers it to the customer
5. The Customer drinks the cappuccino
6. The Customer requests the bill; the Waiter delivers the bill
7. The Customer pays; the Waiter collects the payment
8. The Waiter returns with the change
9. The Customer collects the change and the Use Case ends

Alternate Flow (branch at Basic Flow Step 2)

1. A South African Customer requests Cream; the Use Case ends because that’s not a Cappuccino!

What a difference one letter makes

I've obviously been spending too much time reading and thinking about the Global Financial Crisis.

I say that because I was driving from the Gold Coast to Brisbane when I saw the following on a variable road sign: "Unsecured loads cause crashes."

My reaction was to ask "why is the roads department commenting on economic policy?". Because I read it as: "Unsecured loans cause crashes"!

What's Steve Jobs got against left handers?

I often say that left handers are the last group in America that it isn't illegal to discriminate against. And it seems that Steve Jobs is taking advantage of that fact. Here's an image from Apple's latest attempt to obfuscate on the iPhone 4 antenna problems showing how not to hold your iPhone.


As a left hander I'm wondering how else I could hold an iPhone with my left hand. I'm also wondering how the signal on an iPhone would be affected if I shoved it down Steve Jobs' throat.

Should I show this to my boss?

World Cup Cappuccino

In the past two years I've spent a total of about seven months in South Africa. In that time I've tried plenty of cappuccinos (including a "cappuccino" with cream).

Until recently the best of them were merely OK (and the worst of them, you don't want to go there.) About three weeks ago I discovered a really, really good cappuccino - not quite as good as the perfect cappuccino I found in Rome - but close. Here it is.


And this is the barista Clarence who makes this excellent cappucino.


Where did I find it? In the cafeteria at the Woolworths department store in Irene Mall!

World Cup Fever

I'm not a big soccer fan - in fact I've been heard to say that I don't like soccer - but with two teams in the World Cup (Australia and USA) and being right on the spot in South Africa, well it's hard not to get caught up in the excitement.

Especially so when my colleague offered me a ticket to the USA-Algeria game being held less than 30 minutes from where I'm staying.


So for a few hours I became that rarest of beasts, rarer even than the fabled unicorn, a one-eyed Australian-American soccer fan.

However there was no shortage of fully decked out USA fans in the crowd. Even Elvis was there supporting the US team!


To top it off we had seats right in front of the goal where USA scored the winning goal in the final minutes.

A builder's truck

The place we've been staying at in South Africa for the past few weeks has been having some remodelling done. This is the truck the builder uses to carry his materials and tools and his workers to the site.


Back home in the US anyone who needs to carry more than a box of tools seems to have a great big F250 pickup truck. We'll this thing could fit in the back of one of those.

Leave home without it

If you have a US-issued American Express card and you're planning to attend the Soccer World Cup in South Africa in June, I strongly recommend that you bring another credit card with you.

South Africa is following Europe's lead in requiring a PIN rather than a signature for over the counter credit card transactions. Credit cards issued by US banks don't have PINs. The South African banks are supposed to cater for that by programming their point of sale terminals to recognise a US-issued card (you can readily tell which country a card is issued in from the card number) and not ask for a PIN for a card that doesn't have one. Based on my experience in the last week they've done so for Visa cards but not for American Express (I don't know about Mastercard since I don't have one to test).

Given that Visa is a Soccer World Cup sponsor it all seems a little too coincidental to me. I wouldn't be happy if I was American Express.

Will I be attending a game if I'm here in June? I'm torn between the fact that Australia and USA (I'm a dual citizen after all) have qualified and the fact that I hate soccer!

Interesting* birthday

Yesterday was my birthday; what I had originally planned to do was ski on my birthday, but due to the fact that I'm in South Africa rather than at home, that plan didn't work out and I went to a bunch of customer meetings instead.

The day did end up interesting* though because around midnight I ended up in a South African emergency room. I'd had a stomach bug earlier in the week that I though was over but by Friday night I was double over in agony. Nothing some intravenous pain killers couldn't fix. It wasn't quite the high tech experience of an ER visit in the US, but it was quick and efficient and cost about 20% of what it would have at home.


* That's interesting as in the traditional Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting times".

Season summary

I promised on Thursday to post a summary of my ski season, so here it is.

I set out to ski every day. I didn't make that goal, but I did manage to ski 116 of the 135 days the mountain was open (the season was to be 137 days, but there were two days when the lifts were completely closed due to wind). And I managed to ski the first 107 days straight (November 26 to March 12).

I had a subsidiary goal of skiing 1.5 million vertical ft and I did make that with my season total being 1,537,544 vertical ft at a daily average of 13,255 vertical ft, although the distribution of that is quite uneven as you can see from the chart below. In particular, my daily average before Christmas was not great, mostly because so little of the mountain was open.

The statistic that really surprised me was the distance travelled. MY GPS shows me covering 2,369 miles (3,813 km). About 40% of that is the ride up on the lift, so it means I covered about 1,400 miles (2,900 km) on skis!

Here's the combined track for the entire season.


As you can see, my favourite place to ski is the trees on the Priest Creek face, so here's a closer look at that.


I didn't particularly set out to improve my skiing this season, but in the end I definitely did. Time on the snow and two rounds of local's clinics (10 sessions) with Jamie certainly contributed to that despite my primary motivation going in being to meet some locals of similar ability to ski with. My bump skiing in particular improved out of sight, which would not surprise those of you who noticed how often I posted on skiing bumps.

It wasn't the greatest season in terms of snow; it looks like the season total will be around 250 inches compared to the average of 350 and the past two seasons of over 400 inches. I still got in some really great skiing despite the shortage of powder days and not one of those truly epic days when the snow is so deep that you feel transported to another world. The best day of the season was probably February 26, followed by New Years Eve. December 31 actually had more snow, but the lack of a base made skiing the trees that day a bad idea.

Powder finish

I'm off to South Africa tomorrow for work so today was the 116th and last day of my season.

I was originally going to ski yesterday but the conditions didn't look great and there was snow in the forecast for today. So I was disappointed when the 5am report said only two inches and decided to continue with my travel preparations. But it kept snowing all morning and by noon I had everything under control, so I went out.

I'm glad I did. Six to eight inches of fresh - not too light which was good since it stuck to the hard pack underneath- and deeper in the trees.

Best run of the day was nearly 3.30 trees (where I ran into my friend Tom for the second time in a week - seems like we both like this run!); nearly but not quite because Shadows, my last tree run of the season, was even better. A great way to finish.

Here's today's track. 13,078 vertical ft (season total 1,537,544 ft) in 1:58.


I'll post a detailed season summary tomorrow or the next day, probably while I'm killing time in an airport somewhere.

Winding down

The season has another two weeks to run, but I'm pulling the plug at the end of this week to get back to work (specifically on a project in South Africa that I was working on 12 months ago).

Today was a total contrast to Saturday's wintery conditions; very warm so once again it was all about slush bumps. The Ridge was good, Twister was excellent, Whiteout was great apart from the last few turns which I muffed (I'll put that down to fatigue after hammering the previous fifty turns) but the best run of the day was the super slushy bumps on Vertigo on the way home.

Here's today's track. 12,740 vertical ft (season total 1,524,466 ft) in 2:18. That rate is a little slow because I skied most of today with my friends Ted and Wendy and their three young daughters, so lots of stopping and waiting.

March surprise

To my complete surprise given the trends of this season and last night's weather report, today was a powder day. Not an epic powder day, but a true six inch powder day nevertheless. On top of that it continued snowing quite hard for much of today. The snow on me and my mate Rob in this photo is simply the accumulation whilst we were riding the Bar-UE chair.


Here's today's track. 20,407 vertical ft (season total breaks the 1.5 million mark at 1,511,726 ft) in 3:48.


There were so many good runs today it's hard to pick the best one. Probably Shadows, but 3.30 trees, 2.30 trees and Typhoon all come a close second.

Rob returns

My Aussie friend Rob from St Louis who was here over Christmas with his wife and son is back for a short spring break ski trip with just his son this time, so I skied with him and some of his friends today.

There was a couple of inches of fresh this morning and it's been snowing all day. It was a little "dust on crust" but not as bad as I would have expected, probably because it didn't get cold enough last night to freeze yesterday's slush really hard.

The powder bumps today were especially nice. Best run of the day was a non-stop bump-fest straight down the fall line of Whiteout which really got my heart rate up (175 bpm). Twister was also good as was The Ridge (twice).

Here's today's track. 15,612 vertical ft (season total 1,491,319 ft) in 3:42.

Very nice

Today's skiing was much better than I expected. We only had two inches of snow yesterday (despite the fact that the Front Range got hammered) and some wind last night, so I expected a rerun of Saturday's horrible conditions, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was.

Here's today's track. 18,270 vertical ft (season total 1,475,707 ft) in 2:31.


1. Rudi's / Lightning - I discover to my delight that it's packed powder rather than the dust on crust I was expecting

2. Triangle3 - often when it's been windy the snow is dropped here. Not today. a bit disappointing

3. Tornado - the bumps to skiers' right had enough soft snow in the troughs to be pretty good

4. Upper Buddy's - nice packed powder

5. Cyclone - nice bumps to skiers' right

6. Storm Peak Liftline - this section between Vortex and Drop Out was unskied at noon, so I laid down these tracks


7. The Ridge - whilst a little crusty from the wind, the snow was at least five inches deep here

8. Drop Out - nice bumps off to skiers' right

9. Sideburn - pretty good snow in the trees here

10. Lower Rainbow - perfect packed powder for carving high speed GS turns

11. Storm Peak Face - there was a section in the middle here about five metres wide where the snow was several inches deep and largely untracked

12. Hurricane - excellent bumps to skiers' left

13. Twister - largely untracked freshies at 1 pm! This was definitely the best run of the day

14. Nelson's - not quite as good as Twister but still nice

15. Norther / Vagabond - with the exception of one small icy section of Vagabond packed powder all the way home.

Slush bumps

I said yesterday that I wanted to ski slush bumps and today it was warm enough for me to get my wish.

First run was skier's left of Surprise (which gets the sun earliest) which was nice and soft as expected. I follow that with the middle of Storm Peak face / Rainbow then 2 O'Clock and Quickdraw which were all OK.

The next run - after a quick burger on the deck at Rendezvous - was non-stop down a bumped up 3 O'Clock which really got the heart pumping and by that time the sun had softened the bumps to just the right consistency. Sundown Liftline after that was even better (and got the heart pumping even more, at least according to my heart monitor) and 3 O'Clock a second time was still great. Whiteout wasn't as soft was I expected even at 3pm, so I hit the bumps on Surprise again and Norther and then Vertigo on the way home.

Here's today's track. 19,218 vertical ft (season total 1,457,437 ft) in 2:40.

A little better

The best thing I can say about today is that it was a little better than yesterday, but not a whole lot. It was a beautiful sunny day, but it simply didn't get warm enough to melt the hard snow. Fortunately tomorrow is forecast to be warmer because I've got a burning desire to ski some slush bumps...

Here's today's track. 10,848 vertical ft (season total 1,438,219 ft) in 1:31. I won't even bother to try to nominate a best run for today because it was all quite mediocre.

Low expectations met

I went out today with very low expectations and they were well and truly met.

Why was I so pessimistic? Because of the following chain of events:

1. It was warm on Thursday so the snow got very soft
2. A cold front moved in Thursday night so the snow refroze very hard
3. It started to snow on Friday morning but only a couple of inches, and then the wind blew it all away
4. It stayed cold today, so despite the fact the sun was out the snow didn't soften at all.

I arranged to meet some friends, John and Alta, today. Alta was the smart one; she bailed after one run whilst John and I persisted in the hope that we'd find something better. On that note, the best run of the day is hard to pick because none of it was much good. Upper Sundown Liftline or skier's right of Tornado where snow had blown into the troughs between the bumps were both sort of OK, but you had to ski so much rubbish to get to them it wasn't really worth it.

Here's today's track. Only 9,296 vertical ft (season total 1,427,371 ft) in 1:52.

Closed

With my unbroken run having come to an end earlier this week, I decided not to ski yesterday. I'd been finding our two hour tai chi class on Tuesday and Thursday nights very hard going when also skiing the same day. Plus it was supposed to snow last night, so I thought I'd wait for the freshies today.

Whilst the forecast also included some wind, it didn't say anything about 70 mph winds that would close the entire mountain for the second time in less than a week! At least the wind is forecast to drop off today whilst the snow is expected to continue through tonight, so fingers and toes are crossed for a powder day tomorrow!

P.S. If you are thinking of Tai Chi as those slow, gentle, flowing exercises old Chinese people do in the park, it's actually a martial art; the full name tai chi chuan translates as "supreme ultimate fist". And the slower you do it, the harder it is. You will understand why it's tough after skiing if you think of it as two hours of lunges and squats and standing on one leg like this.

I'm back

Those of you who have been paying attention (yes, that's you Rob K) will have noticed that after 107 consecutive days of skiing reports I've not posted anything in the past few days. The cold I could feel coming on last Friday laid me flat.

So it was great to get back on the mountain today, even though conditions were nothing special. It's Spring skiing right now, but it was a little cloudy meaning the snow was slow to soften. It's also not helped by the fact that a few years ago our idiot politicians decided to move the start date for daylight savings from the beginning of April to early March. So it's even later in the day before the snow softens.

Best run today was definitely the slush bumps on Surprise.

Here's today's track. 15,810 vertical ft (season total 1,418,075 ft) in 2:22.