DatabaseCleaner and Materialized Views We’ve been using DatabaseCleaner for a long time. So, the past couple of days I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why data wasn’t getting cleaned up between tests for one specific Rspec test, like it does for otherw. Finally it occurred to me that […]
Be the Jim Weirich you want to see in the world
Today marks 1 year since the unexpected death of my friend Jim Weirich. A year ago, this was really hard to process. I tried writing, though these things really just take time. More recently, I enjoy just recalling some of the many great memories of him. It’s not surprising that his name still comes up […]
The Jim Weirich Tech-Interview Experience
From Twitter back in June 2014 It’s taken me 5 months to get around to writing this up. I’ve been too depressed to think about it, and that made it way too easy to procrastinate. Then a couple days ago I realized that recounting this is actually a happy thing – the chance to […]
Jim Weirich. Teacher. Mentor. Friend.
The other day, I tweeted 2:04 PM – 20 Feb 2014 – @gayleforce: My whole subset of the world is mourning w/me over @jimweirich today. What a wonderful person. Teacher. Mentor. Friend. Miss you already Jim. I became acutely aware of the suddenness of Jim’s death when I realized: 5:43 PM – 20 Feb 2014 […]
Testing a rails before_filter method
I finally figured out a kind of cool way in Ruby using Rspec to test a controller’s before_filter method a few days ago. While trying to figure this out, I came across all kinds of posts saying why you shouldn’t test the before_filter because it means looking too closely at the implementation by doing that. […]
On self-confidence, and self-criticism
I came across an article this week, titled “The Trouble with Bright Girls” by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heidi-grant-halvorson-phd/girls-confidence_b_828418.html This may be the first thing I’ve ever read on self-confidence and self-criticism that makes sense to me. I know I’m good at self-criticism. I know I lack self-confidence at times. But, I never really knew why. So […]
CodeMash 2011
Following CodeMash ’11, I’m still here at the Kalahari. Today was spent winding down from CodeMash w/ some nice water park activities this afternoon followed by a very long & much-needed nap. Weird but cool: CodeMash ’08 inspired me to start a tech blog. My first post was on 1/19/08. My blog’s busiest day (162 […]
RubyConf 2010, keynotes, and maihem. Oh my!
It’s now a little over a month after RubyConf 2010, but I still want to finish and publish a blog post that I started right after getting back from RubyConf about some of the keynote talks and some of my experiences and thoughts. Whenever I go to a tech conference, I’m often in the minority […]
Never be ashamed of where you came from!
I am frequently asked my opinion on how to encourage more people people to get into software development. My response frequently is: “if people aren’t interested in software development, why force them to be?” I enjoy hearing people’s various responses to my often unexpected follow-up question. All the while, I have my own answer to […]
RubyConf 2010 Highlights
This year, I attended my first RubyConf on Nov. 11-13. It was a blast! I’ve attended lots of local and regional conferences in the last few years, but it’s been awhile since I’ve been to a larger conference. I went to a lot of great sessions, & learned lots of things from lots of people. […]
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