Michael Rice

Untitled

michael — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:54:03 +0000

It is not enough to do your best. You must first know what to do, then try your best.

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A is for Agency

michael — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:09:59 +0000

My first bar exam review topic? What else, but agency law. Section 1, subparagraph A of my outline says, “Agency is a consensual fiduciary relationship where one person, the agent, agrees to act for and under the direction or control of another, the principal.” The outline authors cite to me the Restatement (Second) of Agency sec. 1.

Abstract, clinical, and pointless sounding definitions like this are, of course, why I did so well in law school. For some reason my brain latches onto this stuff. I’m good at it. But I also understand that the outline authors miss the most important point when they start off like this–the point that makes the study interesting to everyone else: who cares?

And the answer to that question is actually interesting because, usually, somebody is going to be accusing someone of being an agent when they did something bad. For example, a real estate agent who botched a transaction, or a guy driving a company truck backed into your Mercedes. Suddenly, that abstract issue can have real life implications.

Trying out the new WordPress app

michael — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 06:21:55 +0000

I used to use the WordPress app all the time, then they started updating it. And that’s when it started crashing. I’m hoping for better with this version (2.6.3).

The harsh (maybe imaginary) scrutiny of the git push

michael — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:43:12 +0000

When you’re thinking about how other people will think about your code, it changes the way you code a little, doesn’t it?

I am in the really early phases of Complykit, so I have the freedom and the luxury to do whatever I want right now. I can just go straight to code, I can use some modeling software, and I can dig around in my backpack for that wadded up piece of paper I scratched some ideas on a few weeks ago while I was getting my oil changed. I don’t care where the ideas are or how I wrote them down as long as I don’t forget them.

But now that I have Github set up and I’m checking things in now and then, I’m not feeling quite as care free as I normally would. It’s like I’m having a conversation with some mythical, hypothetical, nonexistent stranger—maybe even a hostile stranger much smarter than myself (not hard). Maybe the reviewer will misunderstand and see my kludgy, temporary stuff out there and assume that it’s the best I can do. And that thought makes me just a little insecure.

I may have been sitting by myself in a bagel shop writing code, but I suddenly felt like I was under the harsh glare of scrutiny “social coding” and the git push. For now, however, I just want to think in code, make a bunch of mistakes, have a bunch of half-baked ideas, write lots of kludgy but fun stuff just so I can see it working. I don’t want to care about what you think right now but I don’t want to not check in until it all looks “perfect.” There will be time to make it all pretty later, for now I just want to play.

I’m going to pretend nobody’s there for a while.

First JUnit test run

michael — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:15:54 +0000

It’s kind of a slow blog day, so I just thought I’d point out that there are a handful of new changes to Complykit on Github, and that I got the first JUnit test to run tonight:

Making some progress on Complykit

michael — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:10:02 +0000

I was listening to a free hour with Robin Sharma on my iPhone Audible app today, and he had some good advice: just go for 1% per day. His point is all the great things happen slowly, but with persistence. So, here’s my 0.01 for the day. I made some mild improvements to the Complykit website, created a Nabble email list for Complykit, and added some skeleton code based on American wage and hour regulation.

As it turns out, there are some really interesting wage and hour regulations that I think will showcase the kind of features I want to demonstrate in Complykit very nicely. Even something as simple as complying with minimum wage can be kind of complicated sometimes. And it’s a problem that almost everyone in the business world understands, so it’s a good starting point. (Sheesh, it’s even a good ending point: PeopleSoft was practically built on stuff like this and even rebuffed a $7 billion offer from Oracle once).

I mocked up some code based on what I learned about the wage and hour compliance requirements tonight and pushed itto the Complykit repo on Github. Click around a little, Github will make you giddy.

Finally, I took some screenshots of the skeletal code to make a few improvements to the Complykit homepage. There’s still not much there, but I hope you’ll sign up for the mailing list. That way I can stop talking to myself, and I can start talking to you.

Complykit is now available on Github

michael — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 05:19:59 +0000

… not that there’s much there. More about complykit later.

https://github.com/mrice/complykit

First Drools rules written and run

michael — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:27:10 +0000

I’m pretty excited. I’ve been working on Drools off an on for the past week or so. I finally got down to writing some DRL code, and I got it to work. It’s really simple, but it works.

Trust

michael — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 03:39:29 +0000

I read a lot of books about consulting from guys like Maister. In a nutshell, they say the most important thing you can develop is trust. They have these kind of long, complex, drawn-out models for developing it. In an even smaller nutshell, their basic advice is to be honest, never over-promise, and always deliver.

But like money, it takes trust to build trust. How do you develop it in those first first weeks, days, hours, minutes, and even seconds?

A weekend with Ubuntu and Drools

michael — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 05:36:06 +0000

Since I can’t afford a Mac right now and I’m absolutely sick of my old Windows machines, I freaked out on Friday night and upgraded one of my old little Dell netbooks to Ubuntu 10.10. Overall, I’m thrilled with it. It’s pretty, and it’s pretty fast.

I also got my Java development environment all set up and finally got the Drools IDE extensions wired into Eclipse. It’s pretty slick, actually. However, the installation was really tough–an issue I’ll try to write up and explain to the community eventually. But I made it, and here’s the proof:

In case I didn’t mention it before, here’s what I’m trying to do: I want to experimentally take a variety of legal compliance issues and translate them into business rule syntax. Even though there are as many business rule syntaxes as there are business rule engines, I thought I should stick with Drools. After all, most of my background is Java enterprise development, especially on JBoss…

My example company is Airtrans, a fictional cross between Boeing and Airbus.