Judge Owen E. Woodruff, Jr. passed away from Pulmonary Fibrosis on September 1^st at the age of 91. Originally from Buffalo, New York where he grew up, Owen left for Ann Arbor, Michigan, in September 1934. He attended the University of Michigan from 1934-1939, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology. With the outbreak of World War II Owen enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 4^th Armored Division at Pine Camp, New York (now Fort Drum). His military career took him to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the Armor Officer Candidate School where he graduated in June 1942 as a second lieutenant with a cavalry commission. He married the late Elizabeth Jane Kelly on June 20, 1942 in Watertown, New York and took his bride to Camp Polk, Louisiana where he joined the 7^th Armored Division.

Owen served the next two years in Europe. For his service during the Battle of the Bulge he was awarded a Bronze Star with an Oak Leaf Cluster. He returned to the United States in early 1945 and was commissioned in the Regular Army. This new status resulted in his reassignment to Berlin, Germany with the 16^th Constabulary Squadron from 1946-1949. His unit played a key role during the Berlin Blockade.

In 1949 Owen applied for specialist training and was accepted at the University of San Francisco School of Law in September 1949. In June 1952 he graduated with a degree of Juris Doctor Cum Laude and was admitted to practice in California in September of that year. As an attorney, Owen was reassigned from Armor to the Judge Advocate Generals Corp. He served a 16-month tour in Pusan, Korea and following a series of stateside assignments as an Army lawyer, Owen retired from the Army as a full colonel on October 19, 1963, after 23 years, to take up permanent residence in San Francisco, California. From 1963-1965 he taught at his alma mater as an Assistant Professor. In 1965 he left the faculty to enter private practice. Although the emphasis was on criminal defense work, Owen had a general civil and criminal practice. In 1968 he was invited to join the staff of John Jay Ferdon who was the District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco at that time. For the next three years as an Assistant District Attorney he prosecuted major felony offenses.

On March 1, 1971 Owen was appointed to the Federal District Court in San Francisco as a Magistrate Judge. This was a newly created office and Owen was one of the three original appointees. He served a total of 16 years as a judge, with the last portion of that service as the Chief. In 1975 Owen presided over the arraignment of Patty Hearst, Bill and Emily Harris and two weeks later Sarah Jane Moore when she tried to shoot President Ford at the St. Francis Hotel.

Following his retirement from the bench in 1997, he moved to San Francisco Towers, where he resided until his death. Owen served as Editor of The Towerscope, an in-house publication, for six years.

Elizabeth died in 1978. He is survived by his three children: Penny Yorton of Houston, TX, Bruce Woodruff of Exton, PA, and Laurie Goodwin of Walnut Creek, CA, as well as four grandsons: Christopher Woodruff, Brian Woodruff, (their mother, Shireen Giguere Woodruff), Owen Goodwin and Sam Goodwin, six great grandchildren and his close friend, Grace Eaves Prien.

A private memorial reception will be held later this month. The family requests any donations in his memory be made to a charity of the donor’s choice.

Keith and I had a great time at devLink last week and we talked to many great development minds and technology folks.  The first person was Joe Stagner who works inside the Developer Tools division at Microsoft.  Joe is an expert on security for software development and from his IT Law Enforcement background has many great best practices and guidance ideas for all developers.  Joe was a professional fighter and still trains fighters in his spare time in his gym. Joe is a real Renaissance Man!!

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Keith and I wrap up the talk with Shawn Wildermuth about his involvement in the Silverlight 2 community, his honest views of how it stands against Flash/Flex/AIR from Adobe and what the future will bring for this platform changing technology.  We had a great talk and it went long enough to cover us for 2 episodes.  Please go over to the episode page or subscribe to our podcast feed. We also discuss how Silverlight 2 needs to be perfect at the Olympics to get marketshare.

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Keith and i talked to Shawn Wildermuth about his involvement in the Silverlight 2 community, his honest views of how it stands against Flash/Flex/AIR from Adobe and what the future will bring for this platform changing technology.  We had a great talk and it went long enough to cover us for 2 episodes.  Please go over to the episode page or subscribe to our podcast feed. We also discuss how Silverlight 2 needs to be perfect at the Olympics to get marketshare.

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OK I am trying to get back into ready heavy and bought some new books yesterday.  I bought the following books:

I thought that maybe a great way to get new book ideas is to leverage the Twitter tribe and get their book reviews they post as Twitter posts.  So next Wednesday, I hope people will post to Twitter reviews of the books they are reading or read recently.

Apollo 13 was the third manned lunar-landing mission, part of Project Apollo under NASA in the United States. The crew members were Commander James A. Lovell, Command Module pilot John L. "Jack" Swigert, and Lunar Module pilot Fred W. Haise. It launched on April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST. Two days after the launch, the Apollo spacecraft was crippled by an explosion, caused by a fault in an oxygen tank. The explosion damaged the Service Module, resulting in a loss of oxygen and electrical power. The crew used the Lunar Module as a “lifeboat” in space. The command module remained fully functional on its internal batteries, but they were needed for re-entry and landing so it was shut down shortly after the accident. Despite great hardship caused by severe constraints on power, cabin heat, and potable water, the crew successfully returned to Earth. The mission was thus called a "Successful Failure".^[1]

What does this even that have to do with software planning and development?  If you watched the movie or read about the mission after the incident that caused the oxygen to be vented, you will see that the mission engineers went into action to get the crew members of Apollo 13 back home. We will not go into the causes or the solution that helped the crew members get back home but the process the NASA engineers used to find the solution. There were many smart people working to get the men home but sometimes you need to think backwards to solve the problem.

The mission with the original “design” had the crew module running out of resources like oxygen, power and water well short of the Earth (as shown in the picture on the left).  What was need was a plan that started on Earth and worked its way back to the current point of the mission.  We often get hard deadlines in projects we are given to develop.  Now almost all of ours do not have 3 men 200,000 miles away from home in the vacuum of space about to die if the project fails.  But we can still learn and gain insight into backwards project planning for those times where we cannot miss a tight deadline.

The concept and idea is simple but the process to reach the end is much more difficult that planning a project plan from the start with an open end.  Is this the ideal way to plan a project?  I do not suggest this method of planning unless all other avenues have been exhausted.  It will cause much strife within teams and with the shareholders waiting for the end results.  You as the planners will have to make many hard decisions in cooperation with your team and shareholders to reach that successful ending.  There were many unscripted and unrehearsed procedures that happened to get the Apollo 13 crew home.  They burned the engines of the Lunar Module without computer assistance.  They had to use a square CO2 scrubber in place of a round scrubber.  Many things were improvised that helped the mission be the Successful Failure.  The end goal of the “mission” was to get 3 men home safely with limited resources and a small window of opportunity.  Does sound like projects we have been assigned to frequently in our careers?  If you have worked on a project with these constraints, you will find some items in my process that you may not agree with and much that you do.  I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

I have done this once in my career where the outcome was a success.  We endured 6 months of work that we first projected to take 7 to 9 months.  We lost a team member and technical lead to cancer during the project.  In the end the project was delivered to a trade show with enough working features to make a huge splash to the public and get us needed sales and excitement.  How did we do it?

First we took our team offsite to discuss to discuss the scope of the project and the reason behind the due date given by the shareholder (our owner).  Most of the team needed to be away to have comfort to be open to the discussions.  We discuss the ramifications of not making the due date on our shareholder, team and company.  There were a lot of pessimistic views at the beginning before we started discussing the new method of planning we wanted to use.

We discussed the reason why we thought that planning from the end to the start was a more effective way to allocate resources and time for the project due to the tight deadline.  Most people understood the need but most did not get the method until after the first plan described below.

We missed the current start day (day after the offsite meeting by almost 3 weeks).  After we all understood that features had to be cut, the shareholders agreed to “pay” for more hours and also reduce some features that the team thought would not merit being in the first release.  The idea of starting at the end gave us perspective that we did not have if we started from the beginning and did not have a goal.  Plus it was a great learning tool for newer developers to know how to interact with the shareholders of the projects and negotiate the details of a project plan to allow everyone to be successful.

Would I do this over again identical as before?  No!!  I would incorporate more Agile practices and allow for frequent interations that allow more direct targeting of features by the team and the shareholders.  After this project and the events and lead up to it and during the project timeframe, I attempted to bring a many Agile practices to the development team.  Some stuck and some were rejected.  At the end of my employment I believe that the team and company were wise to the reasons this type of project was not the ideal.  If in certain cases you need to develop a project with a drop dead date that cannot be missed

References

1. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

After a 2 week hiatus, Keith and I have a new episode up covering developing .NET software on the Mac. James Avery and Leon Gersing were great guests to discuss all the details and there experiences.  I have very little experience using Macs and OSX so I really enjoyed listening to James and Leon talk about their use of virtualization on the Mac.  Overall a great listen even if I was not a host.

Go here for the show.

Jeff Blankenburg asked people in the community to honor Contribupendence Day and I have answered the call and have the following LinkedIn recommendations

Joel Ross

I have impressed with Joel's work since the day I started working at NuSoft Solutions (now RCM Technologies).  After spending 2 years working with him I find that he is very insightful in developing software as designing the solutions that make the clients happy and productive.  If I was to start a new development group, I would begin by adding Joel to lead it.  In addition to his work he is an avid community helper and speaks on topics that bring intelligence needed to other developers.

Matt Blodgett

Matt has a wide array of skills that lead him to be a valuable member of all software development teams he works with.  I had the pleasure of working with him and he is very inquisitive thinker and problem solver.  I enjoyed his ideas and contributions to the project we worked on.

Jeff Blankenburg

Jeff has an infectious personality that brings people around him.  He using this and his keen technology knowledge and experience to share new ideas and help developers in his community to grow and make better solutions for everyone.

I also enjoy spending time with Jeff discussing new ideas and asking for advice on my projects.  He is always around to lend a hand where he is needed.

Jim Holmes

If I could describe Jim in one word it would be ENERGY!!  Jim has so much of it it spreads throughout the community he is so involved with.  He is a modest and humble leader that allows people to succeed while working tirelessly to make the people he is leading prosper.

Matt Matlosz

Matt is the type of Account Exec that all technical consultants want to work with.  He is very hard working but is not pushy or demanding.  he is allows around to offer and give help when needed.  He has a great vision of the needs of his clients and can help deliver solutions that exceed their expectations.

I never started helping the community years ago to get this award.  I am very proud and humble to have been nominated by friends and peers in the .NET community for the MVP award in SQL development and thankful that Microsoft thought I was worthy enough to sit at the same table as all of the other MVP’s.  I am a little taken aback to be in the same company as the people I have been reading and following since moving over to .NET development back in 2003.  This honor will only intensify my work in the community and to give back to .NET developers and friends.

Thanks to all of my friends that supported me and helped me get to this point in my career.  I will not forget it!!!

Have you heard of devLink and the great time you will have there learning from such .NET greats as Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell, Paul Nielsen, Ted Neward, Wally McClure and Charlie Calvert? If that was not enough I will also be speaking there!!  If that is not excitement to get you there and you live in Michigan or Ohio there is also the devLink Bus that will be leaving first from my town of Grand Rapids and travel through Michigan and Ohio to bring the cool kids to the MTSU campus for the devLink conference.  Sign up now to get your seat due to demand and sponsorship the cost will be low and highly prized.

I am taking up the Mike Eaton Challenge and documenting my programming history.

How old were you when you started programming?

I was 12 years old developing on an Apple II and TRS-80.

How did you get started in programming?

I bought a used Apple II and received a TRS-80 for Christmas roughly the same time.  I was fascinated by the games I could play and wanted to learn how they programmed them and to see if I could make a game or two just for fun.  My first game was a helicopter game styled similar to Defender (old arcade game).  Was fun but did nothing more than move around and shoot.  I was 12 and I thought it was very cool though.

What was your first language?

My first language was BASIC on the Apple II.

What was the first real program you wrote?

The first really real program I wrote was a program that determined the electrons in each shell inside an atom.  I wrote it for projects in both high school computer science and advanced chemistry.  My teacher actually took and let others use it and I think passed it around after that school year.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

I have used quite a languages through the years from jr. high school until now: BASIC, Pascal, Prolog, C, C++, Smalltalk, Lisp, Powerbuilder/Powerbasic, TSQL, PLSQL, Python, Object Pascal/Delphi, C# and probably a few I have forgotten.

What was your first professional programming gig?

My first real gig was working for ANATEC out of college.  I worked as a consultant in Detroit doing Powerbuilder and then Delphi programming.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Yes for sure.  Great hobby and career.  May have gone into different directions in my career but never regretted working in software development.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

I would tell all developers to learn soft skills and get up to speed on the business side of software development.  Too many younger developers do not know how to communicate effectively with co-workers, bosses and the end users.  They also need to learn the costs and factors for estimating, planning and managing software development projects.

What's the most fun you've ever had programming?

The most fun may have been working on software for the start up I joined early on and working my ass off with a bunch of great people.  Working in a start up is the most fun any developer can have in my opinion.  Working for a new start up is like a new baby that you can watch grow up.

"And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make." – The Beatles

So with a lot of new energy around the Community there is a need to clarify some of my thoughts around why we as Community Leaders give and for what reasons.  I would be lying of I said that I did all the speaking, helping to lead a .NET User Group and volunteer to work on community events totally out of the goodness of my heart.  I can tell you that I try to give more than I take from these endeavors in the community.  My wife can agree with that statement when she sees the spending I do for the travel, lodging and food for the events and also the time away from my family.  She knows and understand the reasons why I work so hard for the Community.  So why do I do what I do?

1. I received a lot of support starting out and view my involvement as a way to Pay it Forward.  I also wish I would have had more support in my career during the rough times and had a group to listen and be heard.  This is probably the #1 reason why I work in the community.  I want to share what I know and make my industry stronger and improve the quality of software and technology.  I hope I do that within my company as well as the Community.
2. Exchanging ideas with other like minded technologists and developers.  We cannot work in vacuums and/or just inside the walls of our companies if we want to grow and become better at our professions.  We need to seek that outside influence and make ourselves uncomfortable by learning beyond sometimes our current capacities.  We also need to share what we have learned with others so that others can share in that discomfort that we all need to be better and grow.
3. To speak on a subject to people makes you learn more about your profession.  When I speak I have to not only learn the subject thoroughly but I have to be able to speak about it.  That second part is difficult and will make most people learn not only about the specific technologies but the adjoining technologies also.  if I speak on ADO.NET Data Services I also have to know quite a bit about Entity Framework so that I can speak on a complimentary/foundation technology for ADO.NET Data Services.
4. The message in #3 also rings true for mentoring.  Everyone should have a Mentor and be a Mentor.  That is part of the Community I strive for.  Interact with a single person instead of a room of people is just an impactful for you and the person you are mentoring.  I started mentoring 6 months after college and have gotten10X more from it than anyone I mentored through the years.
5. You can make some very string friendships by working in the Community.  I have friends I have made at all the events and Community groups I participate in and I am a better person from them.  I hope those people feel the same way.  No matter if those friendships are entirely online or are people in your area you see routinely, they help you as a person and professional be better and also allow you to have that support we all need in our lives. Always answer the call for help from your friends and ask for help when needed.
6. Finally I work in the Community for selfish reasons like reputation, networking and career building.  I want to have the best career I can have and so does the next guy.  What I have learned through the years is that if you help people get to better places they tend to help you also.  We can think of it as karma also.  No one can expect to just be handed everything just by demanding or expecting it.  I work hard keeping my contacts, friends and business acquaintances relationships strong so that if I ever need help I can reach out and get the help.  I cannot however expect that help if I never give when others are asking for help.  We should never expect anything in return though when asked for help. That is my highest rule in regards to faith, family and work.  if I ever expect anything in return, I am not really giving but making that person or people obligated to help me when the time comes.  They should want to help for the the same reason i do.

I am glad I got this off my chest.  I also hope the reader of this post already knows these views and lives by them.  So go out and help the Community and make others better.  I bet you will realize that you are much better for it.

Keith Elder and I have been planning, working and now freeing to the public the newest and soon to be world dominating podcast Deep Fried Bytes.

About The Show

Deep Fried Bytes is an audio talk show with a Southern flavor hosted by technologists and developers Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. The show discusses a wide range of topics including application development, operating systems and technology in general. Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery.

Episode 1

In this episode Keith and I sit down to discuss the show and explain how we came up with the name, what the show will be covering in terms of content and how to contact us with comments and questions.

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About Our Designer

A big thanks goes out to Ingrid Henkel who worked with us on the design and creative side of the site.  Ingrid is a great person who is very creative and helped Keith and I to take what was in our heads and move that to the web.  She also has a blog and several things listed on her portfolio.

Date -- June 2, 2008

Time -- 12:00 to 1:30 PM

Place -- Bull's Head Tavern in downtown Grand Rapids

We will meet the first Monday of the month (if holiday second Monday) at a different local restaurant in or near downtown Grand Rapids.

The purpose of the Grand Rapids TechLunch is to get like minded business and technology influencers from Grand Rapids and Western Michigan together to meet, exchange ideas and maybe even create some new ventures that will help the region.  There are 3 team members for the group: Joel Ross, Matt Davis and myself.  We need more motivated and passionate people to help us Build GRTechLunch.

If you wish to come share a meal and be a part of the group please RSVP in the comments of the most recent announced lunch event at the GRTechLunch website.