Kent Beck in Oslo

Today Kent Beck came over to give a presentation to a classroom of us.  For everyone who doesn't know, Kent Beck is the inventor of the eXtreme Programming methodology and one of the original signatories of the Agile manifesto.  Basically everyone who has done or is planning to do (which is a lot of people) agile development has to thank him for it.  I guess you could say he is a programming rockstar.  If that doesn't make sense to you, well imagine you're an artist and you get to see Leonardo Da Vinci, that's how big he is.  I studied what he preached back in the university days and it's what I did at a former workplace, pair programming, scrums and all that, all of that comes from Agile methodology.  So it's really really cool to see him present in person where I work.

Learn - Measure - Build, he talks about it here.

Later this afternoon, Kent did some peer programming with some of the other engineers on a different team.  I'm not part of the team but sure would've liked him to suggest on some code that I'm currently working on, or rather wish I wasn't working on because it's bad code and not maintainable.  Writing code is like writing a book with multiple endings (remember those?) that live on for a long time, so you want to make sure your words and sentences are understandable and changeable.  Unfortunately that is often not the case.  The code I'm working on is written by someone very experienced so I was a bit surprised that it is what it is.

How to get a job in Norway

This morning I woke up and felt like doing something non productive, so I have created the following simple easy to understand image for anyone seeking a job in Norway.  This guide is for 2011, effectively immediately and into the foreseeable future.  If anyone asks you the common question "How do I get a job in Norway?", please refer them to this image.  This image will save time for people who need to reply, explain how to get a job, clicking buttons, wasted saliva, energy and hair pulling frustration.  It could also save your life if you did not know the answer and you were held at gun point.  All of that can be solved by referring them to this image.

If you cannot view the image clearly, just click on it for a larger version that can be printed and displayed on the job seeker's wall to keep said job seeker motivated.

Big hint!  You may want to consider learning Norwegian if you are serious about moving here.  If you do not speak Norwegian you will not be able to get a job here, no matter what your qualifications are.

So I can't say it enough.  Learn Norwegian!

Jerry Seinfeld in Telenor Arena

This evening I went to watch Jerry Seinfeld with Sunil at the Telenor Arena.  The Telenor Arena is close to work so I just walked to the stadium, took me about 50 minutes.  It's also home to Stabekk football club.

Cashed up Norwegians waiting to get into the stadium.  This was about 6pm.   Tickets start at 730 nok each (128 Australian) and go up to over 1000 nok (175 Australian).  We got tickets for 385 nok each, bought them from a guy who couldn't go.

The ticket said the show was supposed to start at 6:30pm.  Turns out that was the entrance time.  They didn't stop letting people in until 8:30pm that was the actual start time.  The act started off with George Wallace which probably took an hour and Jerry's act was an hour.  So it finished at 10:30pm.  In between 6:30pm and 8:30pm was a lot of people watching, counting the number of pølse, and trivial small talk like how much a person holding the row signs make (If you really want to know, it's 220 nok per hour for light labour and 350 nok for hard labour).  Another trivial fact, norwegians consume 100 kilos of pølse per person each year and in fact, Norway is the biggest sausage eating country per capita in the world.

7pm.. waiting

8:18pm.. more waiting

9:23pm.  There's Mr Seinfeld on stage.  Taken with the extremely non high quality phone camera.

When I was younger with black hair and no face fuzz I used to watch Seinfeld on TV quite often to free myself from the tedious burden of studying.  I would've never imagined myself seeing him live on stage at any point in my life.  I suppose that's a good thing.  He's still quite funny and George Wallace was funny too.

First world problem complaint.  I didn't have dinner until close to midnight.  And since I had no frozen pizza I had to make dinner from scratch which wasn't too bad but it would've been nice to come back and not cook after another 50 minute walk.