I just hate it when people say “I’m working on unit tests for feature X” on daily scrum meetings.

When you get assigned to implement feature X, unit tests are just another part of that assignment. Just like planning, compiling, banging your head on the keyboard or writing documentation.

Sure, I get it, you want to show that you are very trendy and professional, especially since the project manager has asked everyone to unit test. But if you want to be a real professional, just silently work on unit tests and say “I’m working on feature X”.

And write those unit tests before code. And don’t drink water from a puddle.

It’s been a rough day for us tweeters, May 20th had a longer Twitter downtime period. The bright side is that it helped me understand how pathetic we are. See for yourself.

Note: yes, this post should have been a tweet, but I’m Twitterless.

I’m an unemployed bastard. I’m actually quite happy that I left my workplace since I have a lot of free time to do things I actually like in software such as concentrating on learning new things and participating in open-source projects.

One of the hardest things I had to do when I left was to return my leased car. Really, I actually patted its trunk and wished it farewell.

Anyway, we have a different car now and I have a great ride on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but on Sundays I take a path few developers remember - public transportation.

Don’t know about your country, but public transportation here in Israel can be inefficient. I have to go a 30km distance by 4 means of transportation.

I get up ’round 5:30am, grab a quick shower and prepare the morning Macciato using my Bialetti Brikka.

Before leaving the house, I open up Google Reader just to make sure no new technologies have been released overnight. I quickly scan my favorite feeds and head on out.

First thing is a good 20 minute walk to the train station. Its still early in the morning so its not too hot outside and the walk feels refreshing and awakening. I hook up to my iPod Shuffle and take full advantage of these 20 minutes by listening to the latest Hanselminutes show.

After that I have a ~45 minute train ride. Trains here are quite comfy and spacious and working on a laptop is really convenient, so I pull out my hp nx7400 and work on some open-source projects (currently Regionerate) over the entire ride.

Following the train ride I have a ~30 minute bus ride, in which it is impossible to pull out old lappy so it’s the perfect time to give the posts in my Google Reader reading list a more thorough read. Good thing I have it synced to my iPAQ.

I get off the bus at a 10 minute walk from campus, I try to empty my head during this walk.

Then I get to college and learn things that are absolutely unrelated to my career, but still have to learn them because that’s the only way to get the degree.

On the way back I listen to the latest .NET Rocks! (a.k.a “The Cure for the Common Commute”) show while fixing all the unit tests I’ve failed on the way to Campus

Hey, I could have made it in 30 minutes by car, but this happens only once a week and is a really great opportunity to do stuff I really love. Better than being a traffic zombie.

How about you? Do you take full advantage of your ride to work?

I’ve upgraded this blog from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress. Blogger wasn’t that bad but I found it to be a bit unprofessional when it came to real-life blogging behaviors (pings, categories, themes).

Anyway, upgrading was pretty easy and the blog is now available on http://www.rauchy.net/blog. In order to keep the validity of any permalinks that might be out there, the old subdomain (http://blog.rauchy.net) will remain available and will point to the new blog.

Please let me know if you find any missing links or if you see any kind of problem with the new blog. Thanks!

Also, I got the Meebo widget back on, so you can contact me freely using it.

#develop (short for SharpDevelop) is a free IDE for C#, VB.NET and Boo projects on Microsoft’s .NET platform.

I’ve heard about it on show #245 by .NET Rocks! on my way to work and it really set up high expectations for me. I was positive that when I’ll get back home and install it, I’ll find myself disappointed.

Well, I just finished installing it (took me about 2 minutes, seriously) and I must say that I’m amazed! It looks amazing, comes with built-in Subversion support, NUnit integration, FxCop and more. Seems like the guys at ic#code really understand the Alt.Net way.

Hey, I loaded Regionerate’s solution on #develop, it loaded in a couple of seconds, flawlessly compiled and ran! Heck, I’m switching to #develop, starting today!