Test Driven Development — How to start with a test

Test driven development is mystical to anyone that hasn’t done it from the ground-up. It’s almost like riding a bike; you really don’t know how easy it is and how much fun you can have with it until you get up and going. When the training wheels are off, it then becomes a brand new world full of possibilities.

I have been writing unit tests for years. Having come to the Java game later than most of my colleagues, I really like to make sure that everything I commit to my various development communities are well-tested and as clean as I can make them. Unit testing has allowed me to verify this in two different ways. First, it guarantees that what I’ve writting works, and more importantly, it makes me keep my code simple. Frankly, if I start writing a test and it becomes a dependency-driven, closely-coupled to the implementation monster, I can pretty much guarantee that the code is going to be the same. I’ll try to refactor this and use my tests in this manner as a guage for it’s quality.

Petrana Gurovich’s Meatless Pinto Bean Recipe (with Copper Hills variant).

Petrana’s Meatless Pinto Beans

(The Copper Hills variant is this recipe plus the stuff at the bottom!)

Petrana was my Dad’s mother.  She came to the U.S. in 1901 — through Ellis Island. When she and her husband, Elia, landed, they were met by a man that spoke Montenegrin and he gave them tickets to go to Montana where a job was waiting for them.  For the entire time on the train, they only ate ham and eggs, because that was the only thing that Elia could speak in English.

Elia worked in the mines around Helena for a few years until 1908, when he heard about a large masonry dam being built in Arizona.  Elia was a trained stone mason, and he moved to Miami, Arizona to work on Roosevelt Dam.  When the dam was finished, he settled in Miami and began working at the Miamii Copper Company as a Blacksmith.  He built up enough money to purchase a boarding house where Petrana fed her family of four children plus boarders, and Elia worked in the mines and distilled Loza Rokeya, which is basically grappa, a family recipe that is still made on our family farm back in Spuz, Montenegro, to this day.

Slimy COLD! Run — Fall 2009

The Fall 2009 Slimy Crud Run.

This is just a beautiful motor

It was 46 degrees when I fired up my V7 Classic to ride up to Slimy Crud with a new friend of mine from the Chicago Vintage Motorcyclist Group.  Mark met me at the Starbucks on Logan Square, mounted on his BMW tourer.  Mark’s a fire fighter and owns a few properties in Wisconsin, so I was more than happy to ride with him up there.  I had my long underwear on, a pair of Olympia Thinsulate Gloves, Jeans, Turtleneck and fleecy vest under my “First” leather jacket.  The weatherman predicted warm afternoon.  I’m going to find that guy…

Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10 Beta) Buggy Touchpad Behavior

I recently upgraded my Dell Precision M90 Laptop to Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I’m running it standalone, no Windows anywhere. When I upgraded using “apt-get upgrade” my touchpad didn’t work. Nothing. The touchpad was completely disabled. I assume that this is a problem on M70’s, ect.

Found a fix after searching for two days — in case you’re having the same problem, here it is.

Open a terminal (if you don’t have a mouse hooked up, use Alt+F2). then “su” and give the root password (I tried doing this with sudo and still didn’t have enough permission. I “think” you need to be root). At the prompt, type:

echo options psmouse proto=exps > /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.modprobe

At the next prompt, type”

reboot

Your touchpad will come back up after rebooting.

Moto Guzzi V7 Classic — 2500 mi Review

I purchased my V7Classic from Rose Farm Classics on August 8 of this year.  About 8th I passed through my first 2500 miles as the weather in Chicago begins to close out the 2009 Riding Season.  I think I could have cranked another 1000 miles out of the bike this year, but family and work prevented my riding on the Labor Day weekend and all day last week.  We can probably blame precipitation for a few more lost days.  That’s the way it is, balancing good riding days with happily accepted family responsibilities and work.

It's colder than it looks. Motionless at 44°.

Michigan Moto Guzzi Rally Live with the V7 Classic

3:31– packing up, getting ready to leave soon. Too many delays trying to get out of town. I haven’t chosen a route yet. Guess I’ll just wing it, take 94 to the 31, head north and see if I meet up with some other folks.

4:19. On the road. Goodbye pic

6:30- Sawyer, Michigan, for water at a T/A truckstop

8:30-Holland. Got gas-42mpg. Pretty steady 80 mph cruise. Saw a little faster. Decided to take the “easy” way up through Grand Rapids. Checked the mileage to Interlochen, looks like I was about 100 off of my estimate for distance. Don’t know if I’ll make the rally tonight, the Sun’s down.

9:50-Checked into the Holiday Inn in Big Rapids. Temperature had dropped into the 50’s. Saw a couple of ex-deer on the roadside as well. Time change makes it actually an hour later. Beer and burger. I’ll hit the sack and get an early start for tomorrow morning.

The “Danko Special”

If you’re looking for Danko’s Salad Dressing, it’s here.

When I was a young man, I worked at my Father’s Restaurant on the line at nights.  One of the most often-ordered dishes on the menu was the “Danko Special”.  It was a dish that my dad developed — we ate it out our house for as long as I can remember — it consisted of a dish that had some Yugoslavian accents, some 1950’s-60’s-style dining accents, and just a little bit “magic dust “sprinkled on it by our Cordon Bleu-trained chef, Michel Gehin.

The Copper Hills Restaurant Burned down in 2001, and the Danko Special hasn’t been served in any commercial form since 1991. I want to release this recipe to those that remember ordering it, others that wonder just what the heck all the fuss about the Copper Hills might have been about, and finally as a recipe that you’d enjoy. This recipe is for all of you that have ordered it in a some “past life”. This special time for me seems so long ago; I never thought that there would be a Globe Miami without a Copper Hills. You know who you are, and you’re all part of my extended family.

Moto Guzzi V7 Classic — Second Week and 800 Miles on the Clock

This is the second review of my ongoing ownership of a 2009 Moto Guzzi V7 Classic. For the first part of the review, click here.

My second week of ownership of my V7 started with a rain day on a Saturday.  It rained so hard that I decided that I wasn’t going to ride until Sunday, where I would make a nice loop going to the Full Moon Cafe on Highway 41, then riding up to the Sly Fox Inn in Wheaton, Wisconsin before taking a bunch of back roads to my home in Oak Park.

It’s a nice loop to make.   The route involved a ride up the 294 towards Milwaukee and then dropping off at Deerfield road for the rest of the ride North on Highway 41.  After hanging out with the other 50-60 riders that show up there on Sundays, I planned a trip up to the Sly Fox where Vintage riders meet for Brunch and tire kicking.  Then the ride home involves skirting the lakes along the Wisconsin/Illinois border and then dropping down into Arlington for a jaunt down the 355/290 and home.  I think it’s about 200 miles or so.

I’ve ridden the bike just close to 800 miles now.   

Moto Guzzi V7 Classic Owner’s Review — The First Week and Before

And so it was, upon the demise of my 1200 Sport and State Farm Insurance completely taking care of me, I took a hard look at what and how I would be riding over the next couple of years.  The 1200 was a great bike and I fully expected to replace it.  I purchased it because I wanted it for the long distance tours I had planned to get to this year and the next few.

I realized that my new job and just-outside-the-city lifestyle really meant that for the next couple of years, 99+ percent of my riding would be within a 150mi radius, with many, many days of riding through the streets of Chicago at 30-ish miles per hour.  This is not the venue, mission or best possible circumstances with which to operate a 1200 Sport.  This mustang needs road.  I need a bike that is a better choice for these distances, light on its feet and able to make me grin while I tackle the third-world roads of Chicago and surrounding cities.

You already figured that I’m getting a Guzzi?  Well I looked hard at the Ducati 1000GT, the Triumph Bonneville and even considered a maxi-scoot.  I hit the forums and asked more and more about the V7C.  The more I heard from the people that actually owned it, the more I started warming up to the idea.  Finally, I read a Wall Street Journal Comparison of the Bonneville, Sportster and V7 Classic.

Me and my new V7 Classic 8.11.09

So I now own one 

My Moto Guzzi 1200 Sport is no More…

July 19, 2009

It was a typical Wednesday as I left work just after 6 at WMS. My Birthday was coming up and I was wondering what Sheila had arranged for it, as we make a big deal out of birthdays in our house.  I was traveling one of my usual routes home.  I have about 6 routes that I take on a random basis.  I think  it’s safer to ride this way because you don’t get complacent at intersections and other traffic hazards.

I was about a mile away from my office in heavy traffic; I had just turned southbound on Kedzie, just above the Belmont intersection.  Traffic in the northbound lane was bumper-to-bumper.  A silver car was peeking its nose out, trying to turn out from School Street and into my lane. I chopped the throttle and covered my brake.  Just like that it darted out in front of me.  I hit the brakes but it was too late.  There was no place to go, so I added more rear brake and went sideways, laying the bike down and separating from it cleanly.