Yeah, but that does not change what an interesting time it has been. Or the directions I’ve been toying with in terms of my career. Damn you Corey Haines – one more nugget of awesome – the happiness bot – to hate or envy you for.. I really like where you’re going with this stuff.

I started owning my finances a bit better – I have a checklist of things to get for my financial planner. This is helpful – any goal can be scheduled, motivation created if it’s scheduled too far out for my liking.

I did really well competing with Jess in Hearts against Joe and Mer. Not so well against Miles Jess or Erin in Quatro ! But I think i can get that game under the correct circumstances- just have to be more systematic and less ‘intuitive’.

Skiing was awesome – the videos, the stairs, Joe’s fall, Mer’s worry, all of our relative equal levels to do the same slopes (mostly midwest-blacks together), the planning to have another trip. The late night talk with Jess about companionship. The riding on the springy foot of the bed. The fun, fun, fun… The new bridge for Deep Freeze, the new verse for Call&Answer. The new songwriting class beginning. The occasional (but not enough) stretching/yoga throughout the week. Life is good. Here’s to good-night, tomorrow’s gonna come too soon.

I have agreed to audition for a band – a more established band than I’ve ever beeen part of – one I hope, but don’t quite know that I am ready for. It will mean a pretty drastic leap for me if it happens – but following leads like this was just the kind of thing I visualized when I moved to Chicago 8 years ago.

The amount of time I spend in isolation recording, forcing myself to document songs, processes, and other things that I largely just feel- it serves double duty. The introspection is important for a person coming out of a long relationship, as I am. It’s a time of life where I truly feel not accountable to anyone – there’s an aspect of growing up here. It’s a time of life when I have bought a place with concrete floors and usually no chance of disturbing neighbors. There’s nobody I’m worried about walking in the door and forcing a change to my flow. My flow is really my own. It’s interesting getting to know this flow.

It’s hard to remember to maintain joy and excitement when playing/recording. That joy is ultimately what makes a recording worthwhile to listen to – but it’s a hard thing to ask of someone going over a song for the 50th time in his bedroom alone ! I’m inspired when I hear others’ recordings (pro or amateur) that really carry through that happy intensity. When I hear those – I think I have that, I can do that ! I can feel the rhythm through every fiber where I don’t want to go to work, have sex, eat – just become that beat – that feel ! I can disappear inside lyrics that mean something to me. I can make people feel. Time is my only enemy. Fortunately the things that take me away from music I enjoy about as much as music, so I’m usually not upset, only torn between more than one thing I like. Not a bad problem to have.

The one thing i struggle with is whether to keep the project pinned down to the 1-original, (n-1)-cover vision I had- with all the licensing it requires, forgone opportunity to pimp more original material… I tell myself, I can make more originals, my first recording can be true to the original intent of being the songs I worked through my divorce with. But in 2012 divorce is fading. I guess that’s my reason to git ‘er done, and move on to those new possibilities. I don’t *have to* finish the 2011 stuff – but why not start my new musical adventure with a known quantity. I don’t have to spend all the time in the world on it. I don’t have to be a perfectionist. All I ask is that out of it I have a 1) product and 2) process both by which to lift myself to higher levels in 2012 and beyond.

I think the best is yet to come.

Since then, my fitness is more baked-in (with a few accomplishments picked up along the way). My pot smoking is way down. I’ve gone through karate and on to yoga. I have dealt with plantar fasciitis – it is a consideration every day now, but I hope to manage / reverse it through conscious use- i’m optimistic about yoga to do that

I’m not juggling dating friends like this summer-  I may revert to that phase at some point (is summer just good for that?), but right now its Jess Jess Jess all the way ! She makes my day – she really pushes to enjoy life – she loves adventure like nobody I know, listens to me when i lay down what i need, gives me space. She quit smoking, has been working out – good stuff there ! She’s fun flirty and sexy, makes me distracted and lets me distract her. Our ski trip was really the thing to make it feel like a boyfriend girlfriend thing rather than simpls FB’s – though we are good at that thank god It was nice meeting her friends, and bringing her to Rosemary’s where she met all the bros but Paul. I saw Paul on my own.

My cousin is driving me crazy. IT’s going to be a long road to transforming the relationship with him from one based on events and city-based escapism for him, to one of honest sharing and relating. To be honest I don’t know if it’s possible – he doesn’t really seem to know what self-work  is.. Lisa is happy and healthy. My mom and I are in touch but she’s not super healthy – an eye infection her most recent woe, and several falls suffered this year.

I’m not doing dance like I thought I would, but doing more singing and banjaring – both out and at home recording.

I’m still coaching with Jillian, but not otherwise involved with the Wright. Not seeing Paul M.

I’m in touch with Maria (not her family), but not in any deep level right now. I have moved on. Our debts are settled. The dust has settled. The relationship went up in smoke. It was a good show, but one I don’t need to repeat – too stressful and expensive.

I’m settled in my place. I’m the master of trains, time and space. I have musical potential, and will go to SXSW this year – and debut my 5 song EP in Q1 before that event. I’ll have streaming content. I’ll fill out the banjar site. I love when people call it the banjar (which is what it is !). I’ll do more yoga. I’ll do a full triathlon, visit several states I haven’t been to.

I don’t have any specific plans for relationships. More choosy of who my ‘nieces and nephews’ are. More connected to my family. I intend to be open in my heart. Closed To Open, Dean Davis Radcliffe, 2/12/2012 will be the album.

No specific plans for jobs (a subset of relationships, anyway), though no concrete plans to leave Backstop. Grub Hub has looked fun to me for a while. Going for it musically a not ridiculous possibility once I budget for some padding. Maybe as Starkey says, the best time to take a vacation is in fact in the middle of things, not at the end – I think fewer vacations would be postponed with that philosophy.

I hope my cat, mom, and loved ones have a healthy wonderful and growing 2012 with me as I begin my next 36 years. At least if physical decline is inevitable, let it be less than my peers, and let my knowledge and sharing of that knowledge grow enough to make up for it- at least sowing the seeds in the next generation like Vlad and others do can make me feel I did something with it.

Cheers, love and light..

Dean

Several days a week I am working on parts/sequencing/recording for my 7 song EP. Learning so much about the software, what I like and don’t, how to notate things in ways that are specific yet not cumbersome, and most importantly – staying connected to other musicians and forcing myself to be accountable to and inspired by others who are in exactly the same boat.

Rob Reid is a fascinating musician, nerd, and growing friend whose embrace of and curiosity around the creative process show me there are many ways I can challenge myself.

I booked a plane fare to SXSW tonight Thanks to Milan Shah’s helping me to share resources with him, and just generally being a helpful and encouraging guy, I’m going to have the week of a lifetime in March, or at least a huge anchorstone to kick of the 2nd block of 36 years in my life – a more openly musical one.

As recent experiences show me –  my last 10 years doing really basic amateurish music stuff just for fun – without any goal of ‘finishing’ or ‘producing’ anything – have taught me a lot- some things are actually easy for me to do fairly well. Others still take quite a bit of work. But the vision that I have for my first album- it actually turns out it is somewhat ambitious ! Having people to chase like Dave Grohl, and the nerve to even believe I can chase them – it has brought me quite a way. Some time in January at the latest, I believe I will have a product that shows what I can do vocally, as an arranger, a percussionist and just basically what my lyrical and musical ethos is/has been. This means alot to me – I’ve spent large amounts of time becoming this musician while being a nerd.. I am glad when I see my musical work actually look pretty respectable..

And that is why I need SXSW – I’ll be in a major-league place – I’ll have a product in hand – I’ll have my openness, gregariousness, and willingness to jam. I’ll try my damnedest to make connections, and I’ll for once feel like I’m not an empty-handed musician. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – it’s just something I’ve decided I need to be on the other side of now. Rob has done it, and I want to join the ranks of people like him and Julie. The singer-songwriter land fits me – not my every need – but some really deep ones. I really need to write more of my own stuff..

I’m following my dream – I’m showing my banjar around – and people dig it – and I want to become my own spokesperson for it, and that is happening… I will need to do a push to get my banjar content online by the time of SXSW.. It may be premature, but it should be ready. I am grateful and lucky that I have the resources to do it, and glad that the tough experiences I’ve had have given me the cojones to go for it.  I owe it to myself to keep assigning myself challenges along this path.

• The autumn moon, and chilly but not crisp night air
• The company of two great folks, one a new friend, one going back half my life to high school
• An inspired air of coincidence, calm and gratitude, that flowed right up to Mr. Simon himself on stage only 7 heads in front of me

“Paul Simon delivered an awesome acoustic show” is how my review should read. I should mention his 12 guitars, including a great Gretsch rolling-tremolo-bridge in white and gold.

I should focus on something other than the sugary-sweet feeling of being full of oxytocin, and smiling and laughing and dancing to songs of our youth and our parents’ early life as parents, and even their young-adult phases.

But instead I’ll mention some things like PS’ agility with his fingers at 70, the fact that he never once sat down in the > 2 hour show, the fact that he didn’t use in-ear monitors and had a very natural way of controlling the band the whole time.

The command he and each of the musicians had of the multiple instruments they played – how the drummer led a guitar song while playing the bass drum and hihat with his feet !

The multi-instrumentalists were:

Keyboard/percusssion/vocals/trumpet…  Sax/flute.. Master of Many Guitars (and penny-whistle).. Drummer/guitarist.. Master of African Rhythms percussionist.. Piano/percussionist… Low End Man

And of course, Master Simon himself

The setlist was:

The Boy In The Bubble; Dazzling Blue; 50 Ways; The Afterlife; Mother And Child Reunion; That Was Your Mother; Hearts And Bones; Mystery Train; Wheels; Slip Sliding Away; Rewrite; Peace Like A River; The Obvious Child; The Only Living Boy In New York; Love Is Eternal Sacred Light; Gumboots; Sounds Of Silence; Kodachrome; Gone At Last; Here Comes The Sun; Crazy Love, Vol. II; Late In The Evening; Graceland; Pretty Thing; Still Crazy After All These Years;

The segueways when done were well timed. And Paul had acoustic control of the environment the whole time..

It was amazing to bathe in the sounds and love of a master musician giving his life to his trade for all of us to enjoy. Hello Darkness, my old friend, you are still in fact Crazy After All These Years

What remains to be done is to burn them to CD and put them on the web, and just so I don’t lose momentum, I’m going to go to my office tonight (3 blocks away in the Sears/Willis Tower) and use their CD burning facilities to make sure I finish tonight.

I really hope the sound quality is good, or remotely salvagable. There’s a lot that I’m learning, particularly about balance between instrument and voice- and I’ve no illusions that it’ll be perfect. There are the occasional wrong chords. But it’s a good snapshot of where I’m at today.

Buck helped me come up with a stage name. This is a relief- it’s a good name, and it will segue into my album title. It pays respects to two tremendous influences on me who are parts of my musical personality.

At this moment, I am so high on life and emotion and results that success doesn’t exist, my divorce didn’t exist, the girl I’m seeing doesn’t exist. I just know exactly what to do. And it’s as if everything in my life up to this point has set me up for an easy execution tonight. Do I care if I fall asleep in the office tonight, wake up and start working ? Not in the least. But I can come home – it’s only 3 blocks away.

2011 D.C. has been recorded, and if it’s not a total disaster, it will be released to friends and family and web within 24-72 hours. That is a fucking thrill, I don’t know how else to say it. So many distractions keeping this at bay, and tonight is the breakthrough. Thanks Chris, you have no idea how good our meeting up has been for me – it’s turned a lack of drummability for me into a godsend of banjar playing, and writing. But… To work !

Fear- Fear is often accompanied by a redirection of blood from the extremities to the core (and to large muscle groups like the quads, should you need to run). This is why someone’s complexion may pale… The deer in the headlights look of freezing in place, followed by either freezing up, or random attempts at getting safe.

Anger- A vein popping out of someone’s bright red forehead is the picture of anger. Anger may make you flush, you may grab something in your hand, or clench your fist or other muscles subconsciously. White-knuckling. Raised blood pressure, pulse and voice. Getting over anger may take time, like getting over drunkenness – you have to metabolize that adrenaline away, or you will still be under its spell, and not fully ‘logical’. Anger doesn’t allow room for doubt, an angry person is always entirely certain of what to do – that’s a sign you may need to step back until you can scrutinize your own course of action.

Hurt/insecure – Do you want to break eye contact, curl into a shell, or give up and come back another day ? I feel this one as though my knees are about to give out. You may subconsciously put an object between you and your perceived cause of discomfort, or find yourself crossing your legs or arms – putting up walls, pulling away. Sometimes this is caused by a misunderstanding, and the course of action is to ask whether or not you understood correctly. Often its’ not as bad as we think at the moment.

These are animal responses, rooted in your endocrine system, there’s no making them ‘go away’ since they are part of what you are made of. Locating your emotions can help you name them, and naming them can help you manage them. Your emotions are a kind of immune system – but sometimes we develop ‘allergic responses’ which overreact to outside stimuli. By learning how to recognize our response, and filter out ‘false positives’ from things we really should be concerned about, we can keep from changing the ships course for every little action.

A leader needs to be better at this than the average team member, as the leader may have to absorb someone else’s emotional response in order to stabilize and keep the team from falling off track, if it is their team-member’s false-positive. Everyone can be on a continual path of catching their own emotional mis-steps, as well as being aware of and forgiving for their colleagues’ mistakes. Trust can be built when everyone feels safe to go into and get through their emotional episodes without it turning into work-stopping drama.

Or something !!

In my continuing saltiness over the demands the *DD’ers are making on our community, I realized yet another angle for scrutinizing their claims, which I’ll present with an example. But first – my thesis for those who won’t read any farther without it: Engaging in Peer Review is a superior use of a developers’ time to writing tests, and ought to replace all but integration tests- just because we can spend more time with our hands on the keyboards writing around our actual product (production code) doesn’t mean we get a better product by doing so. Here’s the example:

Let’s say I’ve written some code that transforms a list of (date,value) tuples into a crosstab-table with months in columns, and years in rows (and a year-end aggregate column as well).

If you know me, you know that I didn’t write tests for this first – I pondered the approach to use, then I coded up the approach. I evaluated it on a couple of sets of data, including some edge cases. When I passed those cases, I stepped back and looked at my code – does it read like it does what I intended to do ? Yes ! I showed the code to a couple of other team members – got nods of approval – they didn’t raise any edge case questions I wasn’t already handling. I was done, right ? In record time ? Well, not if I have to write tests, I’m not.

At this point my objection to writing tests is that I’ve already proved that the code meets the standard me and my coworkers have thought of, so I feel like I don’t want to do the pessimistic monkey-work of writing low-level assertions on what data is actually in row 2, column 1, given a set of inputs – my console-based way of verifying results showed me that writing these tests up will not reveal more.

But not content with that first answer (it could be laziness masked by rationalization), I decided to antagonize my answer with these questions:

• But don’t I want to find problems in my design ?
• But don’t I want to regression-proof my design ?
• But don’t I want to preserve the value of the inline testing that I did ?

And my responses, in order are:

• But don’t I want to find problems in my design ? Yes, I would love to, but the mechanics of writing up tests will not reveal them. The brain-work of coming up with edge cases to test – this has been done – and may continue to be done – and the code has been adjusted. The proof of having dealt with the edge cases lies not in the tests, but in the code that safely handles those cases. Writing those edge cases up as tests is monkey-work – the code *is* the proof. Also – I asked some of the brightest in my company to challenge my design.. Peer review is what all of Science is based on – that’s a high enough standard for me. I trust my coworkers. And I really want them or me to find a flaw in my design, but for the time being, it appears one is not discoverable. To believe that tests will find a problem before a brain finds a problem is to confuse cause and effect.
• But don’t I want to regression-proof my design ? My code to create the crosstab lies in a function, the internals of which depend only on core library functions of the language I’m using. The code is readably, if not provably, correct. Must I double the amount of time I’m spending on this feature, only to protect the ass of a hypothetical future person who violates the Rule – Do Not Change It If You Dont Fully Understand It ? Sure, tests could help explain what it fully does (and rule out accidentally correct behaviors of the code), but that person has no out, as far as I’m concerned, whether there are tests or not, for not fully understanding what they’re about to change. In fact, coming up with the tests themselves is more likely to educate them on what it does than my doing it for them.
• But don’t I want to preserve the value of the inline testing that I did ? Ahh, yes. Cory Haines has mentioned this angle to me. I think it has some validity to say that I’m Bad for throwing out the console evals that I did. But to reify those into Unit tests just may not be worth it. I visually verified a whole lot- to code all those up as assertions- tedious and time-consuming !! When the problem is already solved per the standard of Peer Review, not too appealing. I’m comfortable the only thing that will break this particular code is – core library changes, and incautious changes by other developers. Perhaps the time to write the test is best bundled up with the task “Upgrade the core library and be sure it all still works”. Perhaps integration-level tests will be sufficient to catch any breakage.. I can’t be sure, but I can be sure there are other things I can be doing with my next 60 minutes that have greater value – like explaining to a QA how they can write an integration test against this bad boy.

In closing, I find there are many valid reasons not to write unit tests, and particularly to not practice TDD. I of course believe there is a place for them, and particularly integration tests, but to say that every elegant code solution needs an ugly verification unit test is to forget that tests are only as powerful as the Brains that write them. If you pass 100% of brain tests, that may be good enough.

Appendix: Here’s the code. What edge cases would you suggest I test ? I’ll send a dollar via US Postal Service to the first person who proposes an angle I haven’t considered (you’ll have to trust me on this, of course )

I had rationalized that my working out was like a vice, that it was a crutch I was using to get through some hard times. But I’ve tried doing without for 3 weeks – completely letting comfort habits take over – and I don’t like the result. So now I’m trying to explain working out in a healthier way, one I can’t talk myself out of.

- It gives you more energy in the day
- It makes you feel more able in physical situations – helping move something heavy, throwing up your hands if someone’s about to collide with you
- True, athleticism breeds more athleticism in a kind of cycle, if you’re passionate – but it beats the sloth-begets-sloth cycle
- My mental sharpness isn’t helped by not working out – it’s helped by doing more mentally sharpening things – that’s all
- I didn’t do enough work to – in advance- fill the gaps created by ducking my workout routines
- I did not lean away from working out tentatively – I just bailed -so when certain other things didn’t fall into place perfectly, there were holes

I was starting to feel guilty about how fit I was – what a luxury to spend that much time solely on my body and abilities to do things with my body – but there’s no nobility in settling for less. I had no proof that I was out of balance, I just wanted to swing the other way, and so I called what I was doing unbalanced. While there certainly have been some benefits of doing that, I now want to reconcile the new benefits with the old and not call it simply a trade. I expected to put on 3-5 pounds, and I did. I had hoped to spend some more time with girls – and I did. I certainly liked the workout benefits in that kind of situation

One thing I do like is that my last musical performance was different- better, actually. I sauntered into it, making it very natural, and my aerobic ability for singing is still pretty strong, yet I feel less rushed when I perform, because more time in my schedule is devotable to it.

So I am returning to my promise to myself to run 3 times a week for 20 years (4 years, down – 16 to go). I’ll have athletic goals, and I will program various workouts toward those goals, but I’m not going to cut off fuel to the engine. I need to be a musician with alot of energy and social drive, so I need to feel good in my skin, in my clothes, etc.. I’ll keep the schedule music and late night friendly, but the schedule will have running.

I’m going to do my first 3 mile run in over a month right now – I’m excited. I will sleep really well when I’ve come down, and my training for the Nov 11 stair climb up the Sears Tower will have begun ! Wish me luck !

I owe a lot to the TDD movement. But I can no longer stay silent on a number of issues that I have with the philosophies preached by its adherents. If you see a logical hole the size of a barn, you don’t just pretend it doesn’t exist.

Weak or faulty assumption #1: It is worthwhile for you to put in tests to help enable future changes of implementation. Defeated by: not every module changes at same rate – some never change- having the same standard of coverage for every module/feature is wasteful/speculative.

Weak or faulty assumption #2: Every desirable aspect of code can be covered by tests. Defeated by: memoization example. When you add memoization to speed up a method, writing a test to prove that you’ve done it is a fool’s errand. A given public API can have several implementations, each varying in quality. By definition those variants all pass the suite. Ergo, much of the value is not even asserted by the unit test suite (performance testing is usually not done at the unit level, but the integration level for good reason)

Weak or faulty assumption #3: Mocks make a system more changable. Defeated by: mocks by definition lie about performance, collaborators, and side effects, and usually require intimate knowledge of the implementation to write, so that even performance-oriented refactorings can break the test suite. Solution: supply links to external systems via configuration, and have ‘bit bucket’ style configurations for testing. If you have to rewrite code at runtime to do simulation- you’re doing it wrong.

Weak or faulty assumption #4: Data should be provided/instantiated in test code, close to the assertions. Defeated by: this is the least sharable place for important test cases (aka fixtures, scenarios), a ‘gold’ seeded database schema being the most sharable, and it’s more effective of a team shares these tests. If I want to name a scenario ‘customer over 60 days overdue’, it’s best if that lives in some staging environment where people can run it interactively. I think burying important, name-able sets of data inside of ruby code and describe and ‘it’ blocks is muddying the point. Give me CSV fixtures, easily cloned ‘gold data’ databases, fitnesse in/out files, and don’t let me see you wasting a good test case.

Weak or faulty assumption #5: You can focus your attention up to 50% on stuff that is NOT production code.
I don’t have proof that you can’t feasibly do this, I just appeal to reason, that if you write 1-1.5 lines of test code per line of prod code, you are investing >50% of your time on ‘improving’ your prod codes value in a very sideways way, and introducing duplication in the process. If you need to know it handles dividing by zero, make sure the code is so readable that any idiot can see that it does. Or if it doesn’t handle zero, write code to raise a meaningful exception, and be done with it. All you would do with a test is be asserting that this exception was raised, then have duplication of a) the class of exception and b) the asserted message between prod and test code.. The person who updates it in both the test and the code has no idea what other parts of the system may depend on what they just changed. It’s still incumbent upon the changer to learn about what they’re changing in reasonable ways. Test what you are not sure of, but don’t roll the dice on your prod code, and test just to cover your butt

So this may have gotten a little less focused, but there it is. Don’t tell me every situation of writing/adding prod code calls for tests. Don’t tell me your rule of thumb is one-size-fits-all. TDD has not eliminated bugs, and not all time spent writing tests is always the most important thing that can be done for the feature in question. I think every developer should both learn how to write tests, and clamor for integration level tests to prove and insure that the prod system will do what it is configured to do, but writing up a micro-universe of code that talks to imaginary friend collaborators, and learning a new DSL for testing/mocking when a new one comes out- if your time is best spent learning those than learning how to write more perfect prod code for your business, then we simply have different values. Yes, code is maintained longer than it takes to write, and that tradeoff still weights the curve toward the benefits of testing. But it’s not clear that the problems solved by testing exceed the problems caused by turning attention away from the prod code. Who knows, maybe you could be coming up with the next killer feature instead of preserving the old boring one you just wrote off the top of your head in 5 minutes without any tests.