Changing default locale for Java in Windows

I was trying to test something for a different locale and make the mistake of assuming that what I did actually changed it for java without confirming it. I smartened up and actually tested it and lo and behold it didn't actually change it. The correct way is to go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options, then update the Standards and formats to the desired language and click Apply. If you run a Java program to check out the default locale it will show the new locale.

Mixing horizontal menu styles

In dealing with my horizontal menu issues and finding issues with item wrapping in Firefox when trying to use display:inline and then hitting up against the infamous z-index issue with IE (nicely explained over at mahzeh.org) when trying to use float I decided to experiment with using both. By default (since it is generally IE that is the culprit) I set things up to use float. Then I use some hacking tags to identify specific IE versions and set float:none which then makes use of the display:inline tag. This seems to work fairly nicely and avoided me having to change the structure of things too much or add a bunch of javascript to get z-index to behave.

Firefox issue with wrapping in horizontal menu

So I've been trying to make some modifications to a style sheet to get around some funny mapping that is happening when the items get too long. Unfortunately the CSS has gotten pretty complex and looks like it could stand for some refactoring, but I was able to distill out something that I didn't expect for behavior from firefox. Here's what is happening with the menu wrapping that just isn't right:



Then menu consists of an unordered list and list items that each contain a sublist. The quirk of this menu that I'm not used to seeing is the list items for the main menu are organized using display: inline and white-space: nowrap. As it turns out the offending line was in the html file.

<li class="mi-top">
Third Menu

Once I remove any white space from between the > and the "T" everything is fine. My understanding is that it should ignore any line feeds inside of the li tag. I'm going to switch this over to using floats instead of display: inline to see if that will take care of the issue as well.

9/17/2008 - Float followup: Floats took care of it without having to worry about the white space.

Measuring Teams

I had recently read The Wisdom of Teams which left me with the idea that I've never worked on a real team. In fact any of the jobs I've had have had an averse environment for them, even though some could have benefit from having real teams. Now I've found myself thinking in my current job how I'd define some goals that are clearly defined and something the rest of the potential team could get behind and I keep getting stuck. Even if good goals were eventually around how would we know we got there.

This lead me into measurements where I poked around for a good book on that and decided to read Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations. Robert Austin develops an interesting model for behavior and a compelling case for concern when measuring the performance of employees. It seems that a critical base for helping teams form is likely in working hard to ensure informational measurement can be kept while avoiding motivational measurement. This ties back to the need for trust among team members that is mentioned in The Wisdom of Teams.

That was silly...remember measurements do not make teams, but if a team has measurements then they should strive to be informative instead of motivational.

"Controlled Versus Open" Source Control

I've started working on a project that is using ClearCase as it's source control tool and I'm still learning how to use it and what it does for us. My previous background has been mostly with CVS and dash of Subversion thrown in. My initial impression is that while CVS seems to focus on keeping it simple, ClearCase seems to be more concerned with making sure there are checks and balances.

As I was looking through the code and seeing things that, while they aren't causing any harm, probably should be fixed (like, unused imports, typos, etc...) I'm realizing that in CVS I would've just done it. By in my new world I'm going to need to submit a formal request explaining what I'm changing and why to get a approval so that someone can create a ticket that I can then check the code out against.

There are times where that checks and balance stuff is really nice - I imagine. Possibly when you're trying to change a piece of code that is central to the application. I wonder how much it squashes peoples desire to clean things up. There must be a happy middle ground, which is something I need to research and think about some more.

Requiring Estimates for Everything!

This could just be the programming side of me that doesn't want to worry about estimates coming out too strongly, but it seems odd that managers want everything to be estimated ahead of time. The current item in question is knowledge transition. I'm leaving the company I'm currently working at and need to sit down with the developer taking my place. We've come up with a number of things to review and we've got about 10 days to do it in. So I'm trying to figure out what the estimate would be giving my manager.

I suspect the concern is that the project needs to continue moving forward even while we're working on this knowledge transfer. So they want to account for this time in the main project. So that we have an "accurate" end date for the project. My issue that I have not faith in any accuracy of my estimate. The project has been in the works for three years and during that time we've been working in fairly isolated roles. So while I'm really not certain what it's going to take for my replacement to pick up on the stuff. I almost forgot the other catch is that my replacement is part-time.

Hrm - I just don't see how beneficial having the estimate is in the grand scheme of the project.

Smorgasbord of games

John showed up first this past Thursday and after a quick bite of pizza we decide to sneak in a quick game of Carcassonne. We stayed fairly close through the game, but about a third of the way through John played his big meeple down for a nice bit of farming and I kept focusing on the city life. Towards the end of the game John had most of his meeples tied up and wasn't getting tiles that would allow him to score immediately. I was able to take advantage of several quick road scores and still had meeples for city placement which allowed me to pull ahead. In the end it was just enough as John's big meeple pulled in 36 points to end up 2 points behind me.

After that Chris, Jim and Colin showed up so we pulled out Through the Desert since we had never played with five people. It was a bit chaotic with nobody playing favorites as the game began Chris and Colin getting cut off from an oasis. Chris got himself a nice area blocked off on one side of the board and I got one on the other side. John did a good job getting to the oases, but failed to ensure he had the maximum number of one caravan. Thankfully I picked up that extra one, which combined with a nice blocked off area gave me the win. Scores were me 67, Jim 55, Chris 52, Colin 46 and John 40.

Chris had brought over my copy of Shadows Over Camelot which we hadn't played for a while so we set it up. We were having some poor luck with how the black cards were coming out with a number of grail cards followed by all of the Saxon cards (which hit Colin since he had gone there to fight them) interspersed with Excalibur cards. Four of us ended up at the grail quest and managed to take it out, but we lost Excalibur. Then the cards for the Lancelot quest came in quick turns and before anyone could get to it, it went down. I failed to pay attention to who the traitor might be and was beginning to think we didn't have one so when people started going for the Dragon quest and it was going to give us 7 white swords against 5 black I thought we had it. Sadly since it had been a while since we played we had all (except the traitorous John) forgotten the fact that an undiscovered traitor turns two white swords black. John ended up winning and the rest of us were miffed (especially Chris who had actually thought John was the traitor).

Then we finished with a game of Citadels. We've taken to playing to only six districts because eight seems to take too long and I've found the game stops being enjoyable at that point. Additionally, we prefer using the Emperor instead of the King and this time we also chose the Wizard instead of the Magician. The Thief and Assassin stayed hidden for several rounds during the game, but when they did appear Jim and I took the brunt (even though that was only being affected one round by each of them). Colin intimidated everyone by starting with a building that cost 6, but was worth 8 at the end. Chris was able to build three 4-point buildings in a row which gave a good foundation. I made the mistake of not taking the Emperor when I needed to leaving Chris (who was on my left) and John (who was to Chris' left) starting the round for most of the game. Which is probably why Chris won - the final scores were Chris 26, John 19, Colin 18, Jim 14 and myself 13.