The Hobbit Hole XX - And take the hidden paths that run...

To: Corin Stormhands

Hello, and you're most welcome.

I was thinking about my good friends in the Hobbit Hole and decided it was time for a visit.

I must visit more often.

3,561 posted on 03/29/2005 7:00:57 AM PST by Soaring Feather (Hello to everyone!)

To: RosieCotton; JenB

Are you familiar with "Cracker Barrel" restaurants? You'll find them all along the Interstate.

They have a program where you "buy" the tapes or CDs. But you can turn them back in at any Cracker Barrel location and get all but $3.00 back. The selection isn't always that great, but sometimes you get lucky.

There aren't any in Vermont, but here's their list of locations in New York. Seems like you should hit at least one.
http://www.crackerbarrel.com/location.cfm?state=NY

3,562 posted on 03/29/2005 7:02:23 AM PST by Corin Stormhands (Some days my tagline has nothing to say...)

To: Corin Stormhands

I love Cracker Barrel! I don't know if that'd work, but I'll keep it in mind.

The library here also has a good selection, at least of classics, Harry Potter, and LOTR. Not much else...but not bad. ;-) So that might be an option. I want to discuss it a little with Margaret. The only thing that worries me a bit is the chance of damage on a long trip like this.

3,563 posted on 03/29/2005 7:05:08 AM PST by RosieCotton (6 days until my Colorado adventure begins!)

Just don't let the cats eat 'em and they'll get back fine!

3,564 posted on 03/29/2005 7:07:56 AM PST by JenB

To: Corin Stormhands

3,565 posted on 03/29/2005 7:49:53 AM PST by RMDupree (HHD: Anybody wanna give me a lift to Scotland?)

Morning to you, bentfeather!

3,566 posted on 03/29/2005 7:51:14 AM PST by RMDupree (HHD: Anybody wanna give me a lift to Scotland?)

To: Corin Stormhands

That's a darn shame. Uploading some prayers for yall

3,567 posted on 03/29/2005 7:59:14 AM PST by TalonDJ

To: TalonDJ; 2Jedismom; RMDupree; RosieCotton; SuziQ; JenB; osagebowman; g'nad; All

Thanks for all the prayers. Nana came thru surgery just fine.

Now we find out about the recovery process. Not sure what all that will involve.

3,568 posted on 03/29/2005 8:03:34 AM PST by Corin Stormhands (Some days my tagline has nothing to say...)

To: no one in particular

I1nd if I rant? I am not normally one to vent…4744444444444444444444444444444Just getting over a insidious cold. It seems it only got worse over the holiday weekend. I ended up not driving to see virtual family in Chicago because of it. It finally broke over night so back to work for me… Ug. This requirements document is the worst I have ever seen. How do you tell your boss that the requirements he wrote are a steaming pile of… argh… For those that don’t know (or probably care) what and engineering requirement is, it is a contractual statement of what a system is or does. They MUST be unambiguous and verifiable. You can’t have several people read it and think it means different things or you WILL get in to trouble later when your costumer wanted something different than what you built. They have to be verifiable or you will never be able to prove you did what you were paid to do or built what they ordered. Imagine a statement that says “The Plane shall have maximum fuel efficiency.” How do you ever know that you built ‘maximum’. There is no such thing as maximum since you can ALWAYS squeeze in some infinitesimal more. So that is a BAD requirement. It should read the, “The Plane shall get no less than XYZ fuel efficiency over a fight as outlines in table # PDQ). That is a verifiable statement. You can run a test and prove that if the plane flies as specified in table PDQ then it at least XYZ efficiency. Now you have a statement that lets you get somewhere. Also requirements should NOT be to specific. You don’t want to write in constraints that lower level engineers have to follow except in extreme instances. THAT is hard to do. Imagine the statement, “The car shall have 4 wheels.” Why do you want 4 wheels? What other thing dictates 4? That the car might tip over in a turn? But what if an engineer invents something that makes a car stable on 2 wheels? Do you STILL want to require 4? Maybe not. So the REAL requirement might be that they car will be at least XYZ stable in a turn. It is not easy to write these things. One of the tools we use is standardized wording. A good requirement is written like “Something Shall blah blah blah when .” Standardized wording prevents a whole lot of misunderstanding. Another thing you do is keep them as simple as you can. You don’t want to cram several unrelated things into on requirement. Also you don’t want to cram several levels of detail in one requirement. Requirements are written as a pyramid. At the top of a requirements tree for a microwave you might have “the microwave shall have a user interface system that gives information the user on current operations”. At the next level down you might say “The user interface system shall consist of a keypad and display” and the level below that might talk about how the display shows time remaining. All of those requirements are ‘linked’ to the ones above. This forms a pile of layers starting at the top talking of broad terms about the entire system and moving down each level breaking the system in to smaller and smaller subsystems. Below the bottom lay of requirements you have the ‘design’ which dictates the specifics of what you are going to build. Each layer must be internally consistent and all written at the same level. You would not want to talk about how the buttons beep at the highest level unless the customer had already specified that the buttons MUST beep when you push them. Technically that is a low level requirement (should be on a lower layer) but in the real world you often get low level details passed directly from the highest levels. These should be the exception however and not the rule. So, all this explaining leads to my current document. Whoever wrote this (in part my boss) did ALL of that wrong. They did NOT use standard wording. They crammed several levels of details into all the higher level requirements. The paragraphs of text and called them single requirements and specified all kinds of design details at the top level. To top it all of none of these things are clearly verifiable. If they were just poorly worded they might be fixable but this whole damn thing is fundamentally screwed. Whoever conceived of them had a horribly flawed view of what they were doing. It is no wonder that the program the originally came from flopped big time. Now I get stuck trying to deal with stale leftovers of really bad cooking. Weeee fun fun.

3,569 posted on 03/29/2005 8:43:32 AM PST by TalonDJ

hmmm, all those '4's are because I spilled tea in my keyboard again this morning... :P

3,570 posted on 03/29/2005 8:44:08 AM PST by TalonDJ

We don't mind if you rant.

We do mind if you don't format!

;-)

3,571 posted on 03/29/2005 8:44:51 AM PST by Corin Stormhands (Some days my tagline has nothing to say...)

To: Corin Stormhands

:P
It was formated when I copied it out of Word, honest!

3,572 posted on 03/29/2005 8:56:02 AM PST by TalonDJ

3,573 posted on 03/29/2005 9:22:35 AM PST by TalonDJ

I hope y'all are well today. I have heard reports of some kids having gotten very sick at the fair this year. Something about one girl having come into contact with e.coli.

3,574 posted on 03/29/2005 9:34:56 AM PST by msdrby (Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen and defended by its citizens.)

That is beautiful, Bentfeather. Thank you for posting.

3,575 posted on 03/29/2005 9:55:03 AM PST by msdrby (Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen and defended by its citizens.)

Wow...that's an impressive rant! ;-)

Hope you feel better now!

3,576 posted on 03/29/2005 9:58:20 AM PST by RosieCotton (6 days until my Colorado adventure begins!)

Yeah, yeah, so we need requirements.... sigh. One of my classes this semester is all about requirements. First we did this horrible language thing called Z, and now we're doing UML diagrams with OCL constraints. I hate it. But whatever.

Sniff... got an email from second-youngest brother today about reading some Heinlein novels for his birthday (ACK! I totally forgot that, and it was two weeks ago! He's twelve... I think? Maybe 11.). They grow up so fast...

3,577 posted on 03/29/2005 9:59:28 AM PST by JenB

3,578 posted on 03/29/2005 10:36:45 AM PST by msdrby (Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen and defended by its citizens.)

woops, posted too soon.

3,579 posted on 03/29/2005 10:37:07 AM PST by msdrby (Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen and defended by its citizens.)

Those things are apparently attempts to make requirements less usable and more burdensome. They are more than a little evil.

3,580 posted on 03/29/2005 10:37:26 AM PST by TalonDJ

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