Interesting Bits

XP Day DC 2005 was a success!

I would like to thank everyone who participated in, helped to organize and supported XP Day DC 2005 on Saturday. I enjoyed meeting people from the DC-area Agile community and our co-hosts Digital Focus were tremendous. It looks like I'll be able to co-write a paper for Agile 2006 and we're definitely going to do XP Day again... perhaps in a city near you! Stay tuned to xpday.info.

Some authors have all the luck...

Apparently I'm just unlucky lately. Yesterday, I lost a power supply and our Academy of Learning needed a motherboard and two hard disks. Now, I find out the reason you can't get copies of JUnit Recipes right now...

The book was reprinted on 9/2 but 6 of the boxes were damaged in shipping making the books unsellable. So, one of our distributors was unable to fulfill backorders. That said, a whole new shipment arrived at the distributors today so JUnit Recipes should be going out post haste.

So if you were trying to order the book, you will be able to do so soon.

XP Day DC 2005

If you haven't already booked your spot for XP Day DC 2005, book now! We'll be at the offices of Digital Focus on Saturday, September 24 with special guests Bill Wake and Sanjiv Augustine.

Also, be on the lookout for XP Day North America events in 2006!

Our flood

Well, it's nothing like what's happening in the Gulf states, but we had a flood here in mid-August resulting from a rare tornado touching down in Stratford, ON; not far from Toronto. The resulting downpour gave us four inches of water throughout our basement apartment, resulting in heavy losses in books and papers. Fortunately, all equipment appears to work, with the exception of one waterlogged USB drive power supply. Today I am getting my office back in condition. Why today? I have been on the road for three weeks at a client site, so my brave wife had to go through all this alone. I thank her deeply for handling the flood itself, getting help from neighbors, beginning to clean up, calling the insurance company... all those things I know she generally strongly dislikes doing.

So if I have been unresponsive to e-mail or phone calls in the last few weeks, that's why. I apologize for that. In the coming couple of days we should be back to nominal, if not normal.