Tales from the jar side: It's my birthday, New Gradle video, New Mockito post, Boys behaving badly, and Tweets and Toots

My wife: Do you want dinner? Me: Sure, what are my choices? Her: Yes and no. (rimshot)

Mar 12, 2023

Welcome, fellow jarheads, to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of March 5 - 12, 2023. This week I taught my JUnit 5 course and my Mockito course as No Fluff, Just Stuff virtual workshops.

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Happy Birthday

(Takes a big breath)

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to meeeee,
Happy birthday to me!
(And many more)

Birthday Cake Too Many Candles Blank Template - Imgflip

Yes, today is my actual birthday, which is the first time since this newsletter started four years ago that the delivery day is the day of my birth. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

(Also, at my age, I needed a big breath for that song, because I need a big breath for most everything. But I digress.)

A few observations:

I have the normal assortment of physical issues for someone my age, but at the moment I’m doing fine, especially given my sedentary lifestyle which mostly consists of staring at computer screens all day.
Yes, Daylight Saving Time started this morning, which means my birthday got short changed this year and is only 23 hours long. So on the day we turn back the clocks in the Fall I plan to celebrate that lost hour. Most likely I’ll do so by sleeping, since the extra hour occurs at 2am, but I’m fine with that.
It may, at long last, be time to admit that the Red Sox probably won’t ever be calling. That’s okay, though, because I’m still mad at them for trading away Mookie Betts for nothing. Grr.

I actually have a rather busy day today planned, between this newsletter and a performance in a church service at First Church in Marlborough, but my wife and I are definitely going out to dinner to celebrate tonight.

For the record, I’m 61 now, though I like to believe I’m a much younger 61 than most of my contemporaries. :)

Let me be at least somewhat serious for a moment. I worked very hard in my life, and I’ve been very lucky. I grew up with both significant assets and significant obstacles, but eventually found my way through. Therapy helped. I found my ideal friend, partner, and love of my life at age 27 (Hi babe!), changed careers at age 38, started my own one-person company at age 43, joined the No Fluff, Just Stuff tour at age 47, and wrote my first book at age 50. I’m now more successful, productive, and happy than I’ve ever been in my life. I even enjoy writing this newsletter for all of you, and foolishly started a YouTube channel this year, which is proving interesting. As the poet said, it’s been a long and winding road, but, on balance, a good one. (Of course, that same poet also told us to listen to what the man said without saying what the man actually said, so it’s possible to read too much into that.)

I’ll finish with this: one unexpected downside to doing well is that I see more clearly the struggles of so many others around me. I try to help where I can. If you’re thinking of a gift, then the next time you’re in a position to help someone who needs it, please do so and I’ll be happy. No need to tell me about it — I prefer my charitable activities to be quiet and behind the scenes anyway.

If you have no other ideas, however, I’m a fan of RIP Medical Debt.

New Video and Medium Post

This week I paused my Mockito series of videos in favor of something a bit more generic. In response to an earlier video on Setting up a Mockito Project, someone asked a question about issues with the Eclipse development environment rather than IntelliJ IDEA, which I used in the video. While these days I only use Eclipse when clients insist on it, I used it nearly every day from roughly 2001 until about 2010, so I’m still familiar with its issues.

In response, I made a new video called Importing a Gradle Project Into Eclipse, which shows both the Gradle plugin for Eclipse, known as BuildShip, and the Eclipse plugin for Gradle, which turns regular projects into Eclipse projects.

I’m glad I have that video available to share with people, because when that question comes up, I can just refer them to it. So far (Sunday afternoon) it only has 21 views, but if I’ve learned anything from YouTube it’s that releasing a video at 5:30pm on a Friday is probably not ideal. In fact, it’s probably the opposite of ideal, whatever that is. I’ll see how it does this week. I’m glad I released a video at all, however, both for the content and as part of my learning experience making them. Hopefully the next one will be better.

Meanwhile, I had another blog post come out on Medium, as part of the Pragmatic Programmers publication. It’s called I Spy With My Little Mockito…, and it’s about, well, using spies in the Mockito testing framework. I plan to turn that into a video as well, but I haven’t yet. For the record, here’s the link to my Medium page, showing all my posts and all six of my books.

So far I’ve managed to have Mockito posts come out every other week and produced four videos for my Mockito playlist on YouTube. During that time, I’ve been keeping an eye on where Mockito Made Clear has been on the Best Sellers list at the publisher. My book appeared at #5 when it came out (yay!), then dropped to #27 (the list goes 30 deep) the next week, then fell off the list entirely, then reappeared at #28, and this week it’s at #26. I have no idea what to do with that information, but I believe it’s better for the book to appear on the list than not appear on the list, so I’m counting it as a win.

Ah, the stories we tell ourselves to keep moving forward. :)

Unpleasant Subjects

Two scandals broke this week, one in the world of chess, and other by (who else?) Darth Elon himself.

A Serial Harasser Is Ended

Back in February, two-time U.S. women’s champion WGM Jennifer Shahade tweeted about sexual harassment she experienced years ago by GM Alejandro Ramirez.

Ramirez was the first Grandmaster from Central America (he was born in Costa Rica) and was once the second youngest GM in the world. He has played for the US since 2011. He’s charming and personable on camera, where he has been a fixture of the chess broadcast world for several years. Shahade felt obligated to come forward about incidents she experienced years ago when she heard about other women who experiencing the same thing. An excellent summary can be found here.

Her announcement encouraged several other women to come forward as well, which finally jarred the US Chess Federation into taking action.

Like every other member of the USCF, I received an email this week from them that announced their “position” on the issue, which I summarized as:

Ken Kousen @kenkousen

Summary: "We never heard of the guy. Plus, we never got any complaints until three years ago, and since then we changed exactly nothing, and even let him coach a women's team. It's not our fault. Please don't sue us."

US Chess @USChess

US Chess Statement on Misconduct Allegations https://t.co/rvslgWREyq

Here’s the actual statement if you want to read it.

Like many predators, Ramirez was very good at hiding his behavior from people who weren’t directly involved. Many (male) Grandmasters expressed shock that their friend and colleague would behave that way, while several female players claimed his reputation was an open secret among them.

The Wall Street Journal released an article this week (which I’m not going to link to because I couldn’t read it since I’m not a subscriber) that documented accusations by at least 10 more women, some as young as age 15.

That finally got things moving. He’s been fired from his position with US Chess, he will no longer be hired for any commentary gigs, he no longer will be coaching his university team, and more. Regardless of how any legal issues play out, his career in the chess world is over, and and presumably this scandal will follow him anywhere he goes.

My reaction? I believed Jennifer right away, but I always believe women when they talk about harassment, especially given that she’s never been involved in any other controversy of any kind. Besides, I learned long ago that every woman I’ve ever met has a story to tell that qualifies as harassment by any reasonable standard. Sometimes all you have to do is ask and be willing to listen without judgement.

Add in at least 10 more women? Yeah, he’s done. At least I hope so. I suppose it’s possible he’ll attempt some apology/comeback tour in the future, but signs are pretty bad right now.

There’s even a new report that several women reported being contacted about him by a private investigator, including women who never filed any complaints:

Not a promising start.

As we see with athletes all the time, if you’re good enough, teams will overlook all sorts of deplorable behavior. The truth is that Ramirez is good, but he’s not that good. He’s done, and gone riddance.

Halli 1000, Elon 0

Meanwhile, in the cruel, idiotic world of Elon Musk, the tweet below started an exchange that should wind up costing Elon literally millions.

The whole fiasco is summarized in this article by John Gruber: Phony Stark Picks on the Wrong Guy, Attempting (and of Course Botching) an HR Exit Interview Live on Twitter.

Here’s the tweet, by an employee at Twitter named Halli Thorleifsson:

Halli @iamharaldur

Dear @elonmusk 👋 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees. However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails. Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?

Naturally, Elon responded, but with massive skepticism. He challenged Halli to list what he’d done recently, and when Halli said that would violate confidentiality, Elon told him to go ahead. Halli then responded, in detail, but Elon dismissed it all. He then stated, publicly, that Halli claimed a fake disability just to keep from coding, yet here he was tweeting. Somehow Halli kept his temper over what is, at minimum, a massive HIPAA violation, and explained the progress of the muscular dystrophy he’s been fighting for years.

Again, all this happened as part of a public thread on Twitter, during which I expect Elon’s lawyers were frantically trying to reach him. The best part is that Halli became a Twitter employee when his company was purchased by Twitter before Elon got there, and he was placed on a “do not fire” list because breaking his contract would be so expensive for the company. Heck, Halli has even been named Iceland’s Person of the Year for his charitable work there on behalf of the disabled community.

That finally led to this “apology” by Elon:

Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein

Before vs. after the lawyer calls

If you can’t read it, it says:

Of course it’s not Elon’s fault, because nothing is ever Elon’s fault. He was “misinformed”. But this one is going to cost him. I hope Halli makes him pay and pay and pay. No matter what happens, though, Elon demonstrated yet again that he is a virulent narcissist who shouldn’t be allowed to manage a hot dog stand.

Another good article about the fiasco is Elon Musk’s Compelling Case for Worst Human of 2023.

Finally, I thought this was as good a reaction as any: