Caffeinated Coder

I’ve noticed that the style of my posts has been pretty eclectic over the last several months.

Partly, I just have an over-active sense curiosity that leads me all over the place. Mostly, however, I think it just has to do with the fact that I’ve been blogging for less than a year and probably haven’t quite found my writer’s voice for this genre yet.

Regardless of the reason, it led me to marvel at how different the styles are of some of my favorite bloggers.

As an homage to this diversity, I decided that instead of doling out awards this month based on specific posts, I would recognize certain qualities in the bloggers themselves that have been particularly influential for me and my search for my blogger’s voice.

1. For Best Researcher…Jeff Atwood - Some of the best blog posts come from personal experience, but after a while that can be a pretty limiting constraint to place on yourself. Some of the posts that I’ve found most rewarding lately have started from an idea that I was interested in but didn’t know very much about and then researched until I felt I had something interesting to say about it. Jeff’s posts are always consistently thoroughly researched and include plenty of quotes from primary sources to support his point.
2. For Best Writer…Reginald Braithwaite (raganwald) - Reg provides excellent technical content and quality feedburner/del.icio.us that I don’t find cross-listed anywhere else. However, the trait that I appreciate the most from him is his obvious talent as a writer. If you’re a popular blogger, then you are already able to express yourself in writing better than most, but I think he is one of the few that could probably get away with writing non-technical content as well and that is an inspiration on days where I just get carried away in the process of writing.
3. For Most Passionate Technologist…Scott Hanselman - It has been my experience that the best developers are prolific users of software themselves who are fearless about trying new tools and utilities and make a study of what makes one piece of software better than another. After all, how can someone create quality software if they are not experts at recognizing it? With his legendary ultimate tool list, Scott excels more than anyone else I can think of in this regard and exudes an excitement about good software that makes him very compelling to listen to and read.
4. For Best Essayist…Steve Yegge - I used to think that a strict rule of the blog genre was that posts had to be short and concise, otherwise nobody would read them. Then I read Steve’s Blogging Theory 201 - Size Does Matter, in which he shares his “splash size” observations that his longer posts had more long-term staying power than his shorter ones. Once I adjusted my expectations on the size of a blog post, I started reading posts that I had skipped before and suddenly discovered a gold mine of quality content, especially from Steve’s blog. If you see an occasional longish post from me, that’s why.
5. For Best Satirist…Fake Steve Jobs - Humor that is not thought provoking or that is just mean spirited may experience “flash-in-the-pan” success, but people eventually get tired of it. Like Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, Fake Steve Jobs achieves the perfect balance of biting wit and sarcasm with actual industry news. In the age of information overload where we routinely become numb to what otherwise should be shocking events, sometimes satire is the most effective way to convey truth.
6. The Most Professional Blogger…Max Pool - The more I learn about blogging, design, and SEO, the more I marvel at Max’s attention to detail when it comes to his blog, Codesqueeze. If you want to polish up your blog, then use this site as a model. I also like that he’s been creative and innovative when it comes to providing content, such as with his regular segments Developer Faceoffs and Whiteboard Wednesdays.
7. The Best Software Philosopher…Jeremy Miller - Jeremy excels at dissecting big picture issues in software development and constructing clear and intelligent arguments about the best way to design a system or tweak a development process. If you only have time for one codebetter blog, his is the one I would recommend. He’s a role model for me when it comes to critically thinking about processes and presenting a cogent critique of the status quo.
8. The Most Irreverent Blogger… Justice Gray - Unfortunately, one of the least endearing qualities of uber-geeks is their ginormous egos and their tendency to take themselves way too seriously. This is why I like reading Justice’s blog so much. He obviously has all of the requisite geek street creds, but he brings a great sense of fun to the blogosphere that you just don’t find in too many other places.

To all the winners this months, thanks for providing such excellent content on the web. I promise to buy the caffeinated or alcoholic beverage of your choice if we should ever meet. It looks like I’ll see Jeremy, Max, Scott, and Justice in Seattle at the Alt.NET conference next month. I just saw a place to buy Reg a PayPal coffee on his site, so I’m give him a virtual coffee. As for Jeff, Steve, and FSJ, I’ll have to give you a rain check.

To everyone who isn’t familiar with these bloggers already, I highly recommend that you subscribe now.

Until next month…

Congratulations to Peter Christensen for winning my first-ever Battle of the Technorati-Challenged contest with his excellent post Lisp: The Golden Age Isn’t Coming Back, Let’s Welcome a Bright Future.

Without the support of Rory’s minions, the voting turnout was about what you would expect for Municipal elections for the Assistant Sanitation Engineer (a.k.a Janitor in Training), but nevertheless I am glad to be able to pass along an excellent prize for a fine blogging effort.

I’ll be contacting Peter later today to hook him up with his prize.

I mentioned at the end of my last post that I decided to take a slightly different approach for my contest that JetBrains was gracious enough to sponsor. I had originally planned on having readers vote for their favorite Caffeinated Codey award and then giving the prize license to the author of the post with the most votes.

Although I will continue to churn out the monthly Caffeinated Codey series and present my favorite posts each month with the usual healthy dose of sarcasm and humor, I wanted to take a slightly more serious approach when it came to doling out prizes for this contest. So, I decided to focus on recognizing solid technical writing from lesser known bloggers (as opposed to just the ones that are easy to make fun of from the more popular bloggers).

In order to accomplish this goal, I set an upper limit for myself with regards to a blog’s technorati score (less than 40) and chose 4 posts from January based on the merits of the technical writing. The post with the most votes by Friday (see poll at the bottom) will be awarded the free license from Jetbrains, the makers of ReSharper, IntelliJ, TeamCity, and DotTrace Profiler.

Here are the four that I’ve chosen for the month of January.

1. Lisp: The Golden Age Isn’t Coming Back, Let’s Welcome a Bright Future by Peter Christensen - With all the hype of a new language but 50 years history behind it, LISP presents unique challenges to a language newbie. Peter provides great details on the history of the language and the current landscape of the community as well as some interesting insights into what you can expect if you decide to jump in and learn it.
2. Programming languages in CS education by Chuck Hoffman - The direction and value of computer science degrees was a popular meme this month. Chuck disagrees with the popular stance that Java doesn’t have value as a starter language and offers some valid counter points regarding the value of library reuse and scripting languages.
3. On Blub by Horatio Alger. Horatio discusses blub theory, the driving force behind any good language debate. He offers a dizzying critical tour of languages along with sound criteria for how to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a language for a particular task.
4. Software Development in the Mines of Moria by Marc from Kickin’ in the Darkness - Marc attempts to counter-balance the “shiny new toy” syndrome in technology by reminding us that all the current legacy projects that make us cringe started out by using the latest and greatest technology. He points out that it logically follows that our our current favorite, life-changing framework will also eventually run out of steam and be looked upon with the similar disdain.

Vote here on the post you think is the best (NOTE: if you don’t see the embedded poll below, then your RSS Reader is blocking it and you’ll have to go to the website to vote).

Voting will close on Thursday night at midnight. I’ll announce the winner on Friday.

Happy reading.

Due to the writer’s strike, the normal panel of Caffeinated Codey judges are out picketing on some Hollywood street corner. Luckily, I found a worthy Canadian scab who was willing to cross the picket lines. It is none other than the cultural icon, himself, Justice Gray.

1. For Greatest post in Caffeinated Coder history award…Russell Ball for “Rory Blyth routs Canucks“. Russell Ball made internet history when he wrote his most famous sentence: “Justice still dominated in the Best Post Title category”. Two key words I’d like to focus on here were:
   “Justice”
   “dominated”
   (note: order of the words here is also key) I don’t think I need to explain further.
2. For Worst post in Caffeinated Coder history award…Russell Ball for “Rory Blyth routs Canucks“. The best example of ballot stuffing since Nigeria. The combination of this Rory guy, his automated vote-spamming bot, and the pre-teen girl brigade of the Pacific Northwest pretty much rendered all fair polling moot. The Society of Hot Women from 18-38 organized a massive nude march in support of me, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t in the hallway outside of the apartment I share with my wife. To say she wasn’t pleased with this outcome was an understatement. Thankfully some signed photographs of yours truly sent everyone home happy, at least as happy as nubile women can be when they’re being gently rejected by the most handsome (and married) man on the planet.
   Some people have asked me if I thought I could’ve won if, prior to voting, I had perhaps posed for a picture like this:

   

   in which it looks like someone is about to sit on Santa’s lap to tell him what a bad boy he’s been, only “Santa” is wearing leather, a riding crop, and assless chaps. To the contrary, I think we can all agree that everybody loses when photos like this surface. Enjoy your tainted chalice, Mr. Blith!

3. “Meet me at the asylum” award… D’Arcy Lussier for “What Justice Gray means to me, by D’Arcy Lussier“. I almost wrote a “What Justice Gray means to me” post myself, given the tributes were so inspiring. That is, I almost did until D’Arcy left everyone with the odd taste of awkwardness in their mouth with his rambling soliloquy. The best part of this post was actually not D’Arcy’s post itself but the reactions that followed, including statements like:
   

   “I officially renounce my Manitoban status”
   “On behalf of all Winnipeggers, I officially apologize for D’Arcy Lussier’s Epic Story”
   “I think D’Arcy had been smoking Peyote for six straight days when he wrote that post. This is his personal Mount Vesuvius.” which gets special mention for dropping a Zoolander reference

   Was this a tribute post, a cry for help, or somewhere in between? Even after I had the frightening experience of the Britney Spears of software development explaining his “logic” in private, I still can’t be certain.

4. Most atrocities committed with PAINT.NET award… also D’Arcy Lussier for “What Justice Gray means to me, by D’Arcy Lussier“. See above. Although special mention has to go to D’Arcy nearly wrecking Bil Simser’s marriage by posting shots of Bil’s genitalia in said post.
5. Joanie loves Chachi award… Beth Massi and Donald Belcham. With their VB vs. C# bantering and their constantly making puppy eyes at each other, I think it’s safe to say that Beth and Donald are well on the fast track to having their own sitcom. Did you ever think you’d see the words “Donald rocks” written anywhere, much less by a *woman*? It appears that British Columbia’s Victoria Code Camp was full of surprises…and budding romance. What is next, duets at the karaoke bar? We’ll follow this one up later.
6. “Plagiarize *this*, mother*@&#&#@” award… Ayende Rahien for “Is Plagiarism the best compliment“. Ayende finds out that someone has written a book that essentially cut and pastes both his and Scott Hanselman’s blog posts without giving any credit. Ayende then posts about it at which point angry legions of developers are mobilized and within seconds the book is *no longer available* on Amazon. The poor sap who tried ripping this man off is likely sitting somewhere in a Turkish prison trying to scrub tattoos of a rhino off of his left buttock, a fitting punishment for those who participate in idea theft.
7. “Greatest recommendation ever” award… Mo Khan for “Justice Gray for MVP“. Short, simple, to the point and full of RIGHT. Blog posts are almost always laced with some form of opinionation, but Mo’s post carefully and lays out fact after absolute, irrefutable fact in making his point. As a completely unbiased observer I had no choice but to agree with his inevitable conclusions. If only all blog authors could write this convincingly!!

There you have it… I think we can all agree that I certainly got my money’s worth there. I am also confident that I made my point to the striking bastards that I can outsource their jobs to the new third world of the blogoshere (a.k.a Canada) faster than a bra being removed and hurled at the host of a Justice Gray rally.

I’d like to officially award Justice one of the JetBrains licenses with his guest contribution. He certainly has earned it, especially since I originally only envisioned people contributing individual awards towards this post.

As for the promised polldaddy voting action and the other R# license award, I’ve got a slight twist up my sleeve that I’ll explain in my next post on Monday. Until then, good luck recovering from the Paint.NET inspired nightmares that you will surely suffer from after reading D’Arcy’s post.

Just a reminder, I’ll be accepting guest Caffeinated Codey submissions until midnight on Wednesday. Just email it to me at rt_ball@yahoo.com. If I pick it for Friday’s Caffeinated Codey post, then you’ll win a free ReSharper 4.0 license. See here for full details.

I’m feeling generous, so I’ll even offer up a few inspirational freebies for those of you who can’t immediately think of any award-worthy material to recognize.

Here’s a screenshot from the header of Obie Fernandez’s new blog. It’s got that I’m-too-sexy-for-this-blog look about it that reeks of a professional photographer following him around for an hour shouting “Now… give me your best Antonio Banderas look…Jes…Perfecto!…”. It’s not technically a post, but surely this is deserving of some brutally creative award (sorry Obie, it’s just too easy…).

If you prefer focusing on something that was intentionally funny, you can always look to D’Arcy Lussier’s epic “What Justice Gray Means to me” guest post for inspiration. Any post that includes such paint.net atrocities as this one certainly deserves an award of some sort.

Of course, you can also pick a post from January with actual technical merit and slap on an award name and description as an afterthought. That’s usually my preferred method and probably the most deserving of your attention given this month’s prize.

Whichever way you choose, happy judging!

So there I was, wondering how I was going to reward the winners of the January 2008 Caffeinated Codeys. I was just about to give up hope and begin sobbing like a little girl when I suddenly remembered the obscure “contest sponsorship refactoring” (Alt + c + s + desperate email plea) in ReSharper.

Like every other function in R#, this refactoring magically made things better by offering me a couple of free licenses to give away. It even spit out the following FAQ section to answer all of your pressing questions.

FAQ

1. Why would the good people of JetBrains possibly trust you with something as valuable as the coveted 4.0 licenses? - I told them my name was Jeff Atwood.
2. What if I already have v3.0? - Continue to curse VS2008 for a few more months until R# 4.0 comes out and then brag to your friends about getting a free upgrade.
3. What if I don’t currently have a copy of R#? - Download version 3.1 and get a free upgrade when 4.0 comes out (last I heard at the end of 1Q).
4. What if I already have my R# needs satisfied? - Then you can get a free copy of DotTraceProfiler ($500 value). I haven’t tried this one yet, but it looks incredibly cool and useful and it was made by Jetbrains so I’m excited.
5. What if I have a technical sugar daddy who buys all my licenses for me, no questions asked? - First give me your email so I can send you my resume. Next, go for the “swag” option. There has been a hint of potential R# swag, which means that you might be able to make your friends jealous with an R# Jedi coffee mug or some other such marketing treasure.
6. Which body parts/organs do I need to sell in order to win? - Absolutely none. All you have to do is put on your Caffeinated Codey judge hat and pick a post in January that you liked. Then think of a creative award name, write 2-3 sentences of witty commentary about it, and send it to me (rt_ball@yahoo.com) by EOD on January 28th. If I choose to publish it as one of the 10 awards, then you will win.
7. What if there are so many good submissions that you publish more than one guest submission? - In that case, the submission which gets the most votes in the 5 day polldady vote that follows will win.
8. What can I do to make my submission more likely to be chosen? - Review prior award posts to get a feel for the general tone of my commentary. Make your commentary humorous (although this is not strictly required). It would also help to send a funny, semi-relevant photo to go with it. Of course you can also start sucking up to me as much as possible.
9. Is there any other way to win this great prize? - I will be including a poll at the end of the January 2008 Caffeinated Codey post and the author of the post with the most votes after 5 days will also win a free license.

What are you waiting for? Load those RSS readers and let the sarcastic commentary flow…

By the way, much thanks to Illya and Eugenia from Jetbrains for their help and sponsorship.

The 2007 Caffeinated Codey Showdown is officially over and the votes have been tallied.

Despite an early lead by the Canadian contingent (Justice Gray and D’Arcy Lussier), Rory Blyth rallied the troops and surged ahead to win both the Best Blog Humor and Most Fun with Multimedia categories in a landslide. Justice still dominated in the Best Post Title category and the anonymous ALT.NET Pursefight blogger edged out Fake Steve Jobs to claim the title for Best Technical Satire.

Congratulations to the winners! I will email Justice and Rory their Despair.com gift certifcates shortly. Unfortunately, I don’ know who the ALT.NET Pursefight blogger is, so I’m going to have to hold on to this award for now until the secret identity is finally revealed.

Lessons Learned from this Inaugural Contest

1. I like the idea of rewarding bloggers for their creativity with novelty gifts. I am going to try to do this on a monthly basis by including a poll at the end of each Caffeinated Codey award post and then giving an actual prize to the blogger with the most votes. I would also like to open up at least one slot each month for a submission from a guest Caffeinated Codey judge and award them a prize as well.
2. Rory, the “independent web-based community writer“, doesn’t like being called a blogger, having his last name spelled incorrectly, or being publicly associated with any of his former techie cohorts for fear of being made fun of by his new writer friends. I apologized to him for so carelessly misplacing that ‘e’ at the end of his last name, but I fear that I am now on the Rory’s poopie list and have given up hope of ever making a cameo appearance in his creation story. I just know I would have made a great Sandwich henchman…
3. Although my contest probably had a better voter turn-out than most local political elections, it was kind of sad to see the votes tallies struggling to make double digits for the first several days. Luckily, Rory’s minions swept in and nudged the vote tally up to a slightly more respectable number. The good news is that there is nowhere to go but up in terms of readership.
4. “Integrity gets in the way of selling out.” When you are busy rallying the minions, don’t distract them with choices. If all else fails, threaten them with death by pulmonary embolism via excessively long and boring posts. These are all sound pieces of advice dispensed by our resident “independent web-based community writer”. I know that I personally will take them all to heart if I ever decide to run for public office or engage in any other equally shady undertaking,

A Call To Action

1. Do you want to be a guest Caffeinated Codey judge? Just pick a post from this month that you like, come up with a silly award name, add a touch of sarcastic commentary, and send it to me. If I publish it in the January 2008 Caffeinated Codey post, then I’ll throw some swag your way.
2. I got no love from Despair.com in my quest to attain contest sponsorship. Although I’ve had some encouraging conversations with people from Jetbrains, I am still looking for sponsors to supply prizes for future contests. If you know anyone with swag bestowing powers, please send me an email with their contact info so I can start begging them for free stuff.

Thanks again to all the nominees for producing such amusing content.

The regular panel of judges used to select the monthly Caffeinated Codey winners are all far too hung over to competently decide the overall winners for the year, so I’ve decided to let the nominees fight it out pollDaddy style and then actually award the survivors real prizes for a change.

Rules

I have selected 4 categories with 5 nominees per category. All the nominees were either previous Caffeinated Codey winners or else featured in one of my review posts this year. For now, all of the categories revolve around humor, but perhaps if I can secure some proper sponsorship then I will do a second iteration that is slightly more technically focused.

In order to choose your favorites, click on the Vote link next to each category below. I apologize for not embedding the polls directly in this page, but the Jeff Julian and Subtext project team were wise enough to prevent me from entering script tags in the source page, so I had to settle for low tech polldaddy links instead.
The nominees with the most votes in each category as of 8 am on January 10th will be declared the official winners and receive full bragging rights for the entire year. But that’s not all…

Prizes

The four lucky winners will also each receive gift certificates to one of my favorite shopping destinations, Despair, Inc. I’m not sure about the exact amount of the certificates yet because I am trying to get some official sponsorship from this most excellent site, but if all else fails I’ll at least hook the winners up with the cheap-bastard $10 gift cards so they buy cool stuff like this.

Ok, enough with the chit-chat. Let the games begin.

…and the Nominees are…

Best Blog Post Title [VOTE]

1. Evan Hoff for Off-the-Shelf RAD is for Pimps, Hookers, and Johns–not Marriage [Sept CC]
2. Justice Gray for Javascript raped my dog, and other falsehoods. [Sept CC]
3. Roy Osherove for Do you like Boobs? [Sept CC]
4. Ben Sheirman for Don’t Make Squirrel Burgers [Oct CC]
5. Max Pool for Don’t Unit Test? Start Counting Your “Oh Shits!” [Nov CC]

Best Technical Satire [VOTE]

1. Philipp Lenssen for What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft? [Nov CC]
2. Sean Hederman for Review: Windows XP. [Dec CC]
3. Anonymous author for Alt.NET Pursefight round-up for 20 December [Dec CC]
4. Fake Steve Jobs for (Daniel Lyons) Breakfast with an Apple lawyer [Dec CC]
5. Justin Etheredge for The Programmer Dress Code [Dec CC]

Most Fun with Multi-Media [VOTE]

1. Justice Gray for Audio highlights of .NET Rocks with Jeffrey Palermo & the MS MVC [Audio: Dec CC]
2. D’Arcy Lussier’s for If Book Publishers Were Smart 2 [Photo (Book Cover): Aug CC]
3. Rory Blythe for Neopoleon Goes YouTube - The Neopoleon Thanksgiving Special [Video: Nov Post]
4. Anonymous Alt.NET pursefight authors for Weekend round-up for 22-23 December: Alt.Netcracker Edition [Photo (Oren & Laribee dancing nutcracker suite): Dec CC]
5. Russell Ball for Scott Guthrie Gets an Image Makeover [Video: Oct post] - Sorry, I just couldn’t resist slipping this one in.

Best Blog Humor [VOTE]

1. Scott Hanselman for Caught in the Act [July CC]
2. Justice Gray for What DevTeach 2007 is missing at DevTeach 2007 [Aug CC]
3. Eric Sink for What Microsoft Doesn’t Want You to Know about WPF [Aug CC]
4. Mark Miller for My Last VSLive Session Ever? [Oct CC]
5. Rory Blythe for A New Religion - A Neopoleon Religion [Nov post]

I hope everyone enjoys rereading these nominations as much as I did.

A special thanks to all the bloggers who were nominated for helping to lighten up a sometimes overly serious profession. Good luck to you.

It’s time for the next installment of the monthly Caffeinated Codey awards, where the link love flows for my favorite posts from the month.

1. For Most Obsessive Blog Comment Recovery Operation…Eric Sink for his post Be My Support Group. After losing a lengthy blog comment due to a random Firefox error, Eric describes his multi-hour effort to recover the data using a packet sniffer and some url-decoding. Eric has long since joined the dark side of the force (business and marketing), so can you imagine what he would have been like back in his hard core developer days?
2. For Best New Anonymous Blog Satire Site Devoted to a Single Mailing List … the collective monthly posts on the ALT.NET PurseFight site. Besides being a fine piece of satire, this site also serves as a decent Cliff Notes for those of us who can’t find the time to read all 56,000 emails a day that are generated by the hoards of geek prima donas lurking on this monstrous mailing list. Please God…let the anonymous author of the site be Scott Bellware. I promise I’ll stop playing kitten bowling if you mess with everyone’s reality in such a deliciously ironic way.
3. For Best Placenta Humor…Rory Blythe for his post Video: Burfday Sucks - A Expose of Birfday Suckage by Rory - Part One. Rory does another brilliant YouTube comedy schtick on the meaning of birthdays. This guy REALLY hates any acknowledgement of his birthday, which is why I am going to personally organize a nation wide letter-writing campaign to declare Rory’s Birthday a national holiday next year. I have also already completed the tech specs for a state-of-the-art birthday bot that will spam him with cheerful birthday clichés in every language over every known communication channel next year. There’s no need to thank me Rory.
4. For Best Virtuoso Display of Sarcasm… Sean Hederman for his post Review: Windows XP. I was left in awe of Sean’s superior sense of sarcasm after reading this biting parody on Microsoft’s latest operating system. By pretending that Vista preceded Windows XP, Sean artfully makes his point that Vista has some serious issues while simultaneously causing Maalox sales to soar in Redmond.
5. For Best Christmas Hoax…Fake Steve Jobs for his series of posts that culminated in Breakfast with an Apple lawyer. In order to highlight the recent ThinkGeek controversy, the fake Jobso pretended that he was being threatened and bribed into shutting down his blog by Apple legal goons. His Christmas Eve confession sparked much spirited debate between the embarrassed duped readers and the smug know-it-alls on whether or not he had pushed the boundaries of satire too far. I know I was personally devastated as I watched hoards of Venture Capitalists suddenly lose interest in my brilliant new business plan.
6. For Best Journalistic Researching Effort...Rob Enderle for his post Is Apple Rotting from the Inside Out? Rob was one of the people who took Fake Steve Job’s post a little too seriously and posted some harsh public accusations against Apple without first “checking his sources”, which is a nice way of saying that he posted his diatribe two days after FSJ publicly confessed to it being a hoax. I guess professional journalists aren’t held to the same researching standards as hobbyist bloggers. The comments on this site are brutal, but thoroughly entertaining. You know you’ve screwed up big when you’re last name is combined with tard to form a new popular word (i.e. only an Endertard would do something that irresponsible).
7. For Best Audio Cliff Notes…Justice Gray’s post Audio highlights of .NET Rocks with Jeffrey Palermo & the MS MVC. After several pleasant months of relative silence, the “Master of Metrosexual Mischief” has once again emerged on the blogging scene to accost us with his unique brand of humor. In this post, he distills a one hour dotnetrocks episode on the MVC framework into 7 second remix of truly inspirational narcissism. Well played sir.
8. The Personal Hygiene Exposé… Justin Etheredge for his post The Programmer Dress Code. It provides disturbing virtual photo album of some of the most influential computer scientists in our field. After reading this post, I’ve decided to stop bathing and doing laundry as part of a concerted effort to enhance my professional credentials.
9. For Most Frightening Glimpse into the Potential Future of GeeksWithBlogs… D’Arcy Lussier for his post An Open Letter to Jeff Julian: Please Review My Expectations. D’Arcy causes mass hysteria with this post when he threatens to ban me for life from GeeksWithBlogs. The state department is currently leaning on the Canadian government to deport D’Arcy to Turkey so he can languish in a prison as proper punishment for his heresy.
10. For Best Web 2.0 Holiday Cheer… James Dellow for his post Christmas 2.0: An interview with Barney Twinkletoes from Santa about Enterprise Web 2.0. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without elf social networking sites and mashups involving Elf! Maps and the CRM Naughty or Nice database. You’d better be good this year or your name will appear in Santa’s naughty RSS feed.

Once again, congratulations to all the winners. Hopefully we’ll meet someday so you can claim the alcoholic or caffeinated prize beverage of your choice.

In case you’ve missed the prior award ceremonies, you can find them here.

It’s time for the next installment of the monthly Caffeinated Codey awards, where the link love flows for my favorite posts from the month.

1. For Most Likely to Cause My Co-Workers Grief…Jeff Atwood’s post Don’t Forget to Lock Your Computer where he talks about the wonderful world of goating. Don’t get excited, you’ll have to go elsewhere for your daily dose of bestiality. However, this post does offer plenty of good ideas on how you can punish your co-workers the next time they leave their computer unlocked. I can’t wait to replace someone’s desktop with a screenshot of a desktop or replace their screensaver with the the bluescreen screensaver.
2. For Most Persuasive TDD argument…Max Pool for his post Don’t Unit Test? Start Counting Your “Oh Shits!”. I had to quit counting my own exclamations after a few hours because I ran out of fingers and toes, but otherwise it is a very solid suggestion. It effectively drives home the point that the time wasted on tracking down stupid “collateral damage” bugs usually far outweighs the time it takes to simply write the unit tests that would catch those bugs for you automatically.
   
3. For Best Thanksgiving Parable…Rory Blythe for his post Here’s how we’re doing this thing… As you can tell from some of my recent posts, I’ve become a big fan of Rory’s unique style of creative humor this last month so I had a hard time picking out my favorite. This winning post covers a wide gamut of deeply philosophical issues including Captain Bark-Bark’s defecation habits, the unfortunate cultural demise of tar and feathering, innovative reading systems based on hydrochloric acid being injected into eyeballs, turkeynog, and traditional thanksgiving parables involving backstabbing, duplicitous sandwiches. For his award, I have special ordered the new turkeynog flavored blend of coffee from starbucks.
4. For Most Compelling Reasons to Hire a Software Repo Man…Steve McConnell for his post on Technical Debt. The iconic author of the classic tech book, Code Complete, explains how to distinguish between good and bad technical debt and suggests ways to make debt more visible to stakeholders as well as how to gradually start paying them down. Finally, a voice of reason that suggests an intelligent way to balance both the goal of staying in business with the desire to avoid software maintenance hell.
   
5. For Best Rant Directed at Non-Developers…Karle Moore for his post I’m a Software Developer, but I don’t work with computers. If you’ve ever hesitated to admit that you’re a software developer for fear of being asked to solve all forms of computer and electronic problems, then you’ll appreciate this rant. My family and friends now all think that I am an adult video store clerk, but at least now I can blissfully focus on screwing up my own computer for a change.
   
6. For Best Mort Mugshot...Paul Vick for his post Is It Time to replace Mort?. Paul attempts to singe-handedly heal the collective VB.NET inferiority complex by attempting to replace the toothless, unkempt hillbilly version of Mort we all know and love with a Ben Franklin-like persona. Before any of you VB.NET programmers rush out to embrace this new Mort 2.0 image, let me ask you this. Who would you rather party with? Which Mort is more likely to have a spare bottle of Jack Daniels to help ease your pain after enduring another three hour HR meeting?
   
7. For Most Effort Spent to Make Fun of Microsoft…Philipp Lenssen for his post What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft? Philip pokes fun at Microsoft’s questionable design sense by showing screen shots of GMail that he gradually transforms into something truly hideous by progressively adding some classic Microsoft design and usability touches.
   
8. For Best School of Hard Knocks Lessons…Scott Watermasysk for his post 7 of the Hardest Things I Learned About Writing Software. Scott offers some excellent and concise advice that covers some of the bigger mistakes that developers tend to make in their quest to create software. Pay attention, because these are the “oh crap, I just wasted 10 months of my life on something that nobody cares about” types of mistakes that you’ll probably think are trivial until one of them swoops down and knocks you on your butt some day.
9. For Best Developer Origin Story…Oren Eini for his post Geek Scripture. Have you ever come back the next morning after a truly inspirational day of programming and you couldn’t figure out what the heck you were thinking? I’m still waiting on my first truly inspirational day of programming, but as soon as it happens I will no longer feel bad when I come in the next day and can’t figure out what I did. All you geeks who figure out how to procreate can now retell Ayende’s parable to generations of your socially maladjusted offspring.

Finally, I am breaking tradition and giving out an award to a non-blogger for his truly inspired idea.

1. For Best Captcha Implementation…Frozenbear (I guess only bloggers give out their true identity) for his website hotcaptcha.com. I am seriously going to lobby John Alexander and Jeff Julian to consider using this HotOrNot-based safeguard against spammers for geekswithblogs. Just think of how many more comments would be left on bloggers sites if they got to choose hot looking women each time instead of typing in those stupid abstract letters every time they wanted to read a comment! I know the number of comments that I personally leave on my own blog would skyrocket.
   

Once again, congratulations to all the winners. Hopefully we’ll meet someday so you can claim the alcoholic or caffeinated prize beverage of your choice.

In case you’ve missed the prior four award ceremonies, you can find them here.