Well, the internet definitely works in case anyone was wondering. A few months ago I wrote a post about snorg tees girls, the idea was to let the internet and social media find some snorg tees models for me so I could interview them. The post didn’t go popular on any social media (although it seems to be doing well on Google now :)), so I pretty much gave up on my idea and moved on. But, the web works in mysterious ways and a few months after the post went live I was able to get in touch with Tara (I won’t bore you with the details) who was one of the 5 girls in my original post (#4 to be precise). She was nice enough to agree to do an interview with me.

Of course being a bit burnt out on blogging (and really slack) I didn’t post the interview for ages, but eventually I decided to write it up and so here it is, my interview with the ‘I Drink Your Milkshake’ snorg tees girl.

1. Are you a vegetarian, vegan or predator?

I’m a predator.  I grew up on a livestock farm, so not eating meat would be cause for a catastrophic meltdown in my family.

2. What is your favorite

Color?

I’ve always been partial to blues and greens…but I wear a lot of black.

Food?

I think I could eat Thai and Japanese food every day.  And chocolate.  I’m a chick…duh.  OH!  And bacon.

Movie?

The Exorcist is my favorite.  I have lots of others in my top 10, but that wins hands down.

Song?

There’s no way I could choose a favorite song.  I love so many different types of music.

Band?

Haha, again…see above.  I adore Bjork, Radiohead, Ani Difranco, Tori Amos, At the Drive-In, and many more.

Sport?

I played volleyball for four years in high school, so I suppose I’ll go with that.

Celebrity?

I’m going to break the rules and name a few.  John Malkovich and Kevin Spacey.

Desert?

The Sahara?  ;o)  Just kidding.  My favorite dessert is anything involving chocolate and caramel.

3. What is 2+2*2?

It’s 6, right?  Because you multiply first and then add.  Ah…the things one learns in middle school and forgets by adulthood.

4. What do you do for a living (besides being a snorg tees girl :))?

Well I was a full-time model/actress for almost six years.  It was really fun and I was lucky to support myself with it.  I recently decided to get a full-time job in the events industry, so I work for a furniture company that rents pieces to huge corporate events, weddings, fashion shows, and more.  I also write for the music section of a local alternative magazine.  I still take some print, runway, and voiceover jobs here and there.  Like Snorg!

5. Do you enjoy it?

Yes, I love everything I do!

6. Are you a good dancer? If yes, are you clubbing good, or good-good?

I’m a terrible, terrible dancer.  I even took belly dancing classes, and I still fail.

7. What your ideal Christmas present?

Something that the person obviously put a lot of thought into, big or small.

8. What country would you most like to visit? Why?

I really would love to go to Australia (nudge nudge) or Ireland.  Mostly for the beautiful scenery and culture.

9. Did Greedo shoot first?

I actually just went on Wikipedia to figure out what the hell you were talking about haha.  So…I’ll have to bow out of this one.

10. Are you a “whats on the inside counts” or an “image is everything” girl?

What’s on the inside counts.  Always.  Because if you’re lucky enough to live to be 80 years old, you’re not going to be much of a looker.  So you might as well be a rad person.

11. What would you consider a perfect night out?

I like to do lots of different things.  Go out to dinner, hang out at the bookstore, go to see bands play….but lately my favorite thing to do is come home, make dinner for my boyfriend, and watch a movie.  I’m getting old.

12. Dogs or cats? If dogs, big ones or small ones?

I’m more of a cat person (I have two).  But I like dogs, too.  My friend (who’s a total country girl) said something really witty one day that I always held very true.  She said, “If a dog can’t jump up into the back of a pickup truck…it’s not a dog.”  So yeah, small dogs usually suck.

13. A week at the snow or a week at the beach?

I hate being cold…so the beach.

14. Do you believe in karma?

Indeed I do.

15. Who is better Kirk or Picard?

Picard is better for the series.  Kirk is a fun character to make fun of.

16. What is your favorite city? Why?

I love Chicago and Portland.  They’re both so alive with culture.

17. Were you popular in school and which subculture (if any) would you have put yourself into (jock, goth, muso etc.)?

I went to a very small school…so being “popular” was out of the question.  I mean, everyone knew each other anyway.  I definitely wasn’t considered the “hot chick or anything.”  I had spiky blue hair, played in a rock band, and was really active in clubs like Drama, NHS, Academic Team, etc.  So I was kind of like a nerdy…punk?  Hahaha.

18. In your opinion were/are you a tomboy, girly-girl or something in between?

I was always a tomboy.  I played a lot of sports and never really wore makeup. Though I definitely embraced my girly side as I got more involved with modeling.  I love funky fashion and think it’s fun to dress up….even if everyone else is in jeans hahaha.

19. Do you have any siblings? Do you get along with them?

I do and I do.  I have a brother who lives a couple hours from me.  We definitely have different interests, but we get along really well (another part of getting older).  I was very close to my sister, but sadly she was killed in an auto accident a couple of years ago.

20. Do you like to read? If so what kind of books? What is your favorite book?

I do like to read.  Though, reading for pleasure hasn’t really been in the cards since college (English majors are forced to read…a lot).  I’m just now getting it back.  My boyfriend updates his comic collection pretty frequently, so I poke through those often.  I’d have to say my favorite book isn’t really a novel, but I can read it again and again.  It’s called “The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction”….it’s basically all sorts of wacky short stories from the ‘70s-now.

21. Where do you see yourself in ten years time?

I would hope and assume to be happy and healthy. It would be great to freelance full-time again, or possibly own my own business. I intend to stay in the entertainment industry in at least a small capacity ‘til the day I die. And I’m sappy and full of estrogen…so hopefully I’ll be married and have my own little screwed up family haha.

22. What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome in your life so far?

I tend to overflow my schedule with a variety of jobs and hobbies. That’s tough enough without adding additional stress. So when my sister died almost three years ago, I felt this horrible strain between maintaining my normalcy and taking the time to heal. It was hard juggling school, work, band, modeling, acting, relationships, and everything in between…and doing it all with a smile on my face despite being in the worst state of my life. On top of that, I felt a responsibility to take care of my family and help keep us all tight during such a devastating time. I did try my best, and I made it through, but it was beyond difficult.

23. Is there something about you that no-one would ever be able to guess just by looking at you?

I would assume there are MANY things. I don’t like to be predictable. J Here are a few:

• I can make myself burp.
• I’ve castrated two pigs in my life.
• I’ve spoken in front of about 1,000 people on multiple occasions.
• One thing that makes me really happy is driving with my music cranked up eating fast food without wiping my face after every bite. (I know, it’s terrible).
• I have a hard time saying the phrase “butt cheeks” without laughing.
• The thought of going to a chiropractor makes me feel faint and nauseous.

24. What are you really passionate about? Why?

I’m passionate about expression. I think that’s a big part of why I became a model, actress, and musician. Those arts allow me to put a little bit of myself into every project, photo shoot, etc. And nothing burns me up more in life than feeling like I cannot express myself, say my piece, or show how I feel. I am a big advocate for affirming people’s emotions and opinions, whether it’s directly or through art.

25. Being American, how do you feel about Obama as the president, good, bad, don’t care? Why?

I care. I care a lot. I almost cried happy tears when he was elected…I think I didn’t stop smiling for days. I know that he’s no messiah, and there will be lots of changes he’ll HAVE to make in order to get us out of this mess. And unfortunately, I think people will blame him for it all…but I feel that ultimately, all of his decisions will be made in order to help his country. I don’t know the guy, but my gut says he has good intentions. I don’t think Americans have had that piece of mind in a very long time.

26. And now for my patented Lazarus Long human being test (well i guess Lazarus patented it, but since he is fictional I figure I got dibs):

**“_A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,

butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance

accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,

give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new

problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight

efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects._”   –  Lazarus Long**

Hehe, the funny thing is, when I read that quote it made me think of my Dad. I think he could do all of those things if he hasn’t already. (Besides the dying one…thankfully he’s still alive, and he’s not allowed to die for a long time haha).

So hmm…

• I have never changed a diaper, but I’ve seen it done, so I wouldn’t be too worried about it.
• I could totally plan an invasion if it was something I was passionate about and took the time to really plan it. Otherwise I might get hasty…because I tend to just jump in and do things, then figure out the rest later. UNLESS I really care about it, then I’ll take the time. OK, now I’m getting redundant.
• I haven’t butchered a hog, but I’ve seen it done (I was on the meat judging team in school for a while)
• I would leave the building designs to the experts. Haha.
• Con a ship? Heck yes. Let me at it.
• I was an English major in college, so I had to write many-a-sonnet.
• Balancing accounts isn’t fun, but I can do it.
• I could build a wall. But I’m not really into manual labor, so I wouldn’t do it by choice.
• Set a bone? You mean like…first aid-style? Eeeeeeh…I would do it if I was stuck out in the woods. By no means would I enjoy it. I’m pretty good about “sucking it up” and just doing something if it must be done.
• I think I’m pretty good about making people comfortable…so I hope I could make someone feel at ease in their last moments.
• I don’t like taking orders, but as I get older I’m learning how to. I think it’s all in how the orders are given. I don’t like being barked at…but if I’m told or asked to do something in a respectable way, I don’t have a problem with it.
• I think I’m good at giving orders because I don’t like to do it…so I’m extra polite about it. Honestly, I’d rather just do everything myself.
• My cooperation skills are above average (not perfect….above average).
• I tend to want to work alone, even if it means losing sleep and sanity.
• I used to be pretty darn good at math, so I can solve an equation or twelve. But I had a really good math teacher in high school (Hi, Artigas!)
• I over-analyze every problem…ever.
• I’ve pitched some manure in my day (grew up raising livestock)
• I’m no computer genius, but I can program some things.
• Of the meals I cook, some are tasty, some are not…but all are edible.
• I’m pretty good at fighting with words. Until my current boyfriend, many people I dated hated fighting with me because I’d back them into corners with their own quotes. That was fun. But now I’m dating someone super smart, so I can’t do that haha. I haven’t really had to be physical with people…but I think if I was fighting, I’d be really pissed, and thus I’d just see red and start swinging. Efficient? Perhaps not. Effective? You bet your ass.
• I haven’t died yet (surprise!). Dying gallantly would be fine….but I’m not going to go out of my way to do it. As long as I don’t die a coward or a numskull, I’ll be content with my demise.

And that, as they say, is that, hope everyone enjoyed it.

A few days ago I was asked where I thought Agile adoption was at right now. After giving a long and no-doubt confusing answer I thought I would write it up as well. After all if I had to confuse one person I might as well confuse and bore a whole lot of others while I am at it. Therefore, here is where I think the agile world is right now (oh and by the way, the adoption rates below are my own opinion and are based purely on keeping a ‘finger on the pulse’ not any statistical evidence):

The SCRUM People

Scrum is by far the most well known and widely adopted process right now.  Scrum is becoming almost synonymous with agile with some of the biggest names (Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland etc.) in the agile world pushing scrum as their process of choice. Scrum is one of the few agile process that has a certification path (as offered by the Scrum Alliance) and this is probably one of the main reasons why Scrum has become the most widely accepted agile process. Of course the fact that Scrum bundles the majority of XP practices into itself probably doesn’t hurt it much either, infact Scrum couldn’t exist without XP practices.

Adoption Rate: ~ 10%

The XP People

XP is probably the original Agile process if anything is. It is pretty much a set of common sense practices to make software development better. Many of the practices support each other but there is no common framework that ties them all together. This is probably why many management-type people don’t really like it much it makes them feel useless and unnecessary. But since we still have to work with all sorts of people including management-types, just about every single other agile process tries to wrap XP in just such a framework (see Scrum above).

Adoption Rate: ~ 7%

The Other SCRUM People

Of course when something starts to enjoy a bit of success and someone starts making a good living from it, other people get envious of that tasty pie and want to get themselves a piece. These people are disillusioned or simply want to make some cash without being bound by someone elses rules. This is what is happening to Scrum right now. With Scrum becoming more and more successful a lot of people come out all critical about how regular Scrum is not quite right and how they have a much better Scrum (Is Scrum Failing Us?). The Scrum certifications are all bad and how they have bigger and better certifications (Scrum Master Certification By Net Objectives).

Adoption Rate: ~ 2%

The Lean People

Then of course there are people who really want to be different so they come up with a whole different process and even give it a different name and since these people might even have a name within the community their ideas gain instant recognition (http://www.poppendieck.com/). No matter that the ideas they espouse were always part of the Agile spirit, just the execution may have been faulty (agile doesn’t kill agile, people kill agile). But hell, why not, let’s re-brand – it worked for SOA.  The point is to create a niche, so that more consulting can be offered and more books can be written and if we happen to help people write better software at the same time, well that’s just an extra benefit.

Adoption Rate: ~ 3%

The People Who Are Over It

Inevitably there are people who are sick of it. After all Agile has been around for a decade or more now, there are bound to be people who just can’t be bothered any more. I wrote about it before it’s called post-agilism. Sometimes you just get sick of arguing about process. You just want to write good software and deliver value. You know that you can’t please everyone, you know the good practices and the bad ones. You try to maximize the good ones and minimize the bad ones and do as good a job as you can under the circumstances.

Adoption Rate: ~ 8%

The Clueless People

For those of us who are into the whole Agile thing it might sometimes seem like the whole world is jumping on the Agile bandwagon. After all most of the job ads these days list Agile as a mandatory skills and everyone seems to be talking about it. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of people have absolutely no idea, they’ve heard of this Agile thing but they don’t know what the hell it’s all about and they don’t really care. They might be happy to bandy words but can’t really be bothered changing the way the work. This applies to both individuals and companies. Even if they are trying to pay lip service to the Agile way, they do it in such a half-arsed way as to make it completely meaningless (quarter-arsed).  Into here we can also bundle the people who think they are doing agile but they aren’t, people whose upper management says they are doing agile and a whole host of other types of dudes who make this bucket by far the biggest out of the ones I listed.

Adoption Rate: ~ 70%

Conclusion – Things Could Be Better

There you go this is the state of the agile process adoption world as I see it right now. That’s right, I didn’t include all the other agile and quasi-agile processes such as DSDM, FDD etc. ; that’s because I think we can either easily lump them with one of my categories (e.g. lump DSDM with the clueless people), or their adoption rates are small enough to neglect, or maybe I just don’t care to mention them.

The Agile world seems to be splintering into smaller and smaller bits as more and more people, disillusioned for various reasons, try to peddle their own brand of process.  While this is going on everyone seems to forget the fact that just about any brand of Agile is better than waterfall or ad hoc. Rather than presenting a united front and forcing crappiness, like waterfall, completely out of the software development profession we are like the Greek city states with the giant Persia sitting dismissively on our borders. Except there is no Alexander in sight to unite us all and show them what’s what.  I hope you enjoy that little bit of allegory.

On the first day of Christmas,
a Klingon sent to me
An 8 Gig USB key.

On the second day of Christmas,
a Goa'uld sent to me
2 ipods playing,
And a brand new Nintendo Wii.

On the third day of Christmas,
a Vulcan sent to me
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a copy of Windows XP.

On the fourth day of Christmas,
a Jaffa sent to me
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And "The Matrix" trilogy on DVD.

On the fifth day of Christmas,
an Ewok sent to me
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a Computer Science PHD.

On the sixth day of Christmas,
an Ocampa sent to me
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a keyboard with a missing Tab key.

On the seventh day of Christmas,
a Twi'lek sent to me
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a router outside of a DMZ.

On the eighth day of Christmas,
a Vorlon sent to me
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And Stargate Atlantis Season 3.

On the ninth day of Christmas,
a Gungan sent to me
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a biography of Pierre & Marie Curie.

On the tenth day of Christmas,
a Ferengi sent to me
10 WoW guilds raiding,
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a hosting plan with a low setup fee.

On the eleventh day of Christmas,
a Wookie sent to me
11 hackers scripting,
10 WoW guilds raiding,
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a Tetris theme song MP3.

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
a Jawa sent to me
12 networks lagging,
11 hackers scripting,
10 WoW guilds raiding,
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a 40 inch LCD TV!