Category: Non F# Stuff

The Wine We’re Drinking

I live three miles away from Woodinville, Washington, a town with over two hundred wineries in it, including two major labels and a smattering of medium sized ones. Living here and not enjoying wine is like living in Colorado and not skiing. The grapes are typically grown in eastern Washington, but the wines are produced here, or are simply sold here in a tasting room. As it is a very short drive away, a frequent weekend activity is to stop into a local tasting room. With the COVID19 pandemic, however, the tasting rooms have been closed since mid March until this weekend, when we have FINALLY been able to come back. These are the wines we were able to try this past weekend.

1. Lord Lion

We started at Lord Lion, as we had a club release pickup waiting for us, and we didn’t know precisely how tasting would really work in phase one point five, but the tasting was as wonderful as always.

We went in, sanitized our hands, and were directed to a table a good distance from the other patrons. We were handed small glasses, and proceeded a flight of six newly released wines. Aside from the distance the poor folks had to wander about to pour wine, there really was not much different between pre-COVID times and post-COVID tasting.

One thing we especially love about Lord Lion is that Graham releases wines later than other winemakers in the area. This recent release included a 2014 Petit Sirah, a 2015 Malbec, a 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, and a 2016 oaked Chardonnay. Other wineries we visited were in the middle of their 2017s and 2018s releases. If you’re noticing that ‘everyone has the same stuff’, Lord Lion has an wonderfully atypical selection.

There are many things things to sample there. Graham always does a fantastic Viognier, and the 2019 was lovely, if a bit sweeter than the year before. His 2019 rosé of Sangiovese has been lovely for the past two years. The star in this release was the 2014 Petit Sirah. Full, inky dark, and lovely paired with a ribeye, or even something like a beef short-rib.

2. Adrice

Adrice was our second stop. Frankly, we stop there fairly often. With phase one point five, they were able to really open up the tasting room with large tables, a bar. and food served! Heather and I stopped in after calling ahead to make sure they could fit us in.

Heather waiting on pour number three at Adrice.

I do not have enough data to say for absolute certain (still working on collecting that), but Pam from Adrice may be one of the top 3 winemakers in the state. She simply does NOT make a bad bottle of wine. Her cheap stuff is great, and her expensive stuff is absolutely worth it! She is one of the few local producers that I will happily spend $75 on a good bottle for, although as I am budget conscious, I do enjoy my club discount for that particular bottle.

The tasting included a flight of six wines, and Heather and I also grabbed two charcuterie plates to keep up our strength. The takeaway favorites were: a damn near perfect 2019 Sauvignon Blanc from Yakima Valley; an award winning 2017 Red Blend called ‘Lift Off’ (which is a crazy steal at $25 a bottle); and a beautiful 2017 Malbec. Pam also poured us a pre-sneak-quel of a Cab / Barbera blend she’s got coming out in July, that will be some lovely stuff.

3. Long Cellars

Our final stop of the day was to an old favorite, Long Cellars. Jason is a mad scientist back there, but when he makes contact, he hits nothing but home-runs. Never one to stick with the same-ole ideas, the trick to tasting Long Cellars is to taste not only what the wine is now, but what it will be in 5-8 years.

Tasting room welcomed us warmly again, with a giant Frankenstein statue right up front. The room is small, but we were able to sneak into a table in the back, where we had been to two Long Cellars-hosted burlesque shows. Barrels everywhere, Heather was tempted to hunt around for a barrel thief, and eventually found one hidden away.

Be careful about putting Heather near the bottles, Jason!

We tasted two whites, and two reds before our daughter called and requested a pickup from a ‘social distance pickup’, so unfortunately our tasting was cut short. The steal of the show was a 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon, which tasted like fresh strawberry jam, which was unique and intriguing for a Long Cellars Cab. You could pair it with a light salad, and it wouldn’t be out of place. It was inexpensive, fresh and fruity with that classic peppery pull at the end that let you know it was a Cab. His 2018 Reserve Malbec proved absolutely wonderful and deep to finish the tasting, but as I said at the beginning, the best part will be waiting on it.

Resolution

Clearly, this hasn’t been the most updated of blogs, and being that it is the 31st of December, I think we need to resolve to change that, among other elements of my life.

So, here goes: My resolution this year is to be a little more rigorous and diligent in my life and goals. Simply put, I resolve to decide what kind of person that I want to be, and then achieve it.

I resolve to publish more, blocking off at least an hour a week to write. To help with that, this blog will change a bit. I’ll include a bit more about my life / family / coaching / CrossFit and all those other things that will help me be a whole person. F# is still a passion language for me, so most posts will have SOMETHING to do about my favorite language. But I might need help making that hour-a-week goal, so I might include stuff like “My son really wanted a Switch this Christmas…” If that ain’t for you, well fine. There should be enough content generated to let you skip a post.

I am resolving to to get down to 205lbs by December 2020, at 17% body fat. That means sticking with my 5x a week CrossFit schedule, and adding some regular distance running to the mix so I can hang out once a week with an old buddy of mine. I want to be in the kind of shape that I could hear about a 5K run going on somewhere, enter that week, and be in good enough shape to run well. I have an Excel sheet for tracking against my target, and I will post details, if only to ensure myself a little accountability.

I resolve to be more diligent about my health. Specifically, my teeth. No more of this poor-kid thing of ‘not bothering’ to go to a dentist until something hurts. Just simple checkups. 2 of ’em a year. I pay for great dental insurance. Better use it.

I’ll talk about the other resolutions I have in the next post.

I’m still alive

December came and went. January came and went. February came and went…

Yes, I’m alive. I’ve been going through a whirlwind this past few months. Here’s a few things that have gone on.

A promotion!

Yep, the wonderful folks I work for at {redacted} have given me the grand title of “Principal Software Developer.”

Having worked here for 5 years now, I am officially to blame for most all the code here. I’ve been here long enough to own it. It’s my bad, folks, but it’ll get better, I promise.

Softball Season

I help run a local girls’ slowpitch league, and have been coaching and umpiring for 5 years now. Softball season starts around the beginning of March, but the work up to the season starting is substantial.

Coaching and helping out my league is meaningful for me. I don’t have better words for it. It’s just an amazing thing that I love to do.

Conferences

I was at Agile Open Northwest and a local programmer introduced a concept he was excited about called “tiny objects”, wherein he used C# to make objects that had:

  1. No state.
  2. Content that was immutable.
  3. Just methods.

Finally, he had constructed a few rules as well, to make mocking and testing easier.  Specifically, there was to be no static methods on an object.

var example = "some string";
var stringUpper = new StringUppercaser(example).Result;
Assert.That(stringUpper, Is.EqualTo("SOME STRING"));

It. Was. Surreal.

This developer was exactly where I had been. Frustrated by state logic. Completely tired of dealing with new ways to worry about async and threading issues. He just had not heard of or even considered that the language itself was part of the problem.

That is simply why this blog exists.

Immediately, I setup a quick session in the conference to go over how functional programming works, and where to learn about it. Hopefully, I helped some folks see the light, but I doubt it, as I didn’t have a great talk already ‘set up.’ My note to self after that session was that putting together a half-hour talk on What and Why F# is just something I should have in my back pocket.

So there it is.  With a new promotion and getting my team ready to go, we are knee deep in a hundred different maintenance projects. Too many projects, not enough F#!

Thanks to the folks at F# Weekly finding my Fishful of Dollars post!

Managing Expectations

Non-F# content warning: Skip to the next one if you’re not interested in general stuff.

Generally, a working programmer doesn’t have too many difficult “non-programming” tasks. Difficulty is the name of our game, and we like it that way. That said, one of the most critical skills a developer has is to manage folks’ expectations of you. Thought-work, in general requires a level of communication that seems nonstandard and maybe a little unnatural to your work.

The reality of being a working programmer is this: Your boss probably doesn’t exactly understand what you’re doing. Your boss may be relying on you to do a good job, regardless of his/her detailed understanding of your work. Making sure those expectations are set properly is key to keeping this relationship copacetic.

An Example: A customer asks you to sneak in a quick feature. You’ve taken a swag at it, and it looks like it won’t take more than a few hours and doesn’t impact anything, so you agree. Your customer leaves you happy, and everything seems fine. Fast forward to a week from now. The feature you were supposed to be working is late, and blocking everything going out. Your customer, who felt like his request was tiny, and shouldn’t impact anything, complains to your boss that the feature is late. Your boss, who has no idea that you agreed to anything, has now the unpleasant task of defending why the feature is late, even though she/he didn’t know it was part of the release. That makes her/him look disorganized and incompetent, and that’s not how you want to make your boss feel or look, even if you hate her/him.

Take a look at your day to day interactions and communications. Do folks know what you are doing? Do they know when you releasing your work?

Here’s a tip. Don’t assume that folks are reading every email, or “making the connection.” Make yourself very clear about what you are doing, when you expect to be complete, and if there are any items blocking you. If you are not sure yourself what to be doing, there is a very good chance you have not managed expectations well.