by Michael Badger on September 24, 2009
I recently took a few moments to reflect on the writing process and answer some questions from my publisher.
Here are some excerpts:
Packt: How did you find the overall experience of writing your book for Packt?
Michael:Writing is a somewhat lonely proposition, but I enjoyed the time alone with my thoughts, the Scratch cat, and stack of blocks. This loneliness doesn’t last forever and when I opened my box of newly printed books; it was almost akin to watching the birth of my son Cameron.
Packt: Our authors usually have full-time jobs whilst writing for us. Was this the case for you and how did you approach managing your time?
Michael: I estimate that I spent between 10 and 20 hours a week writing this book, which includes all the non-writing time, such as research, project planning, and editing. I feel smarter for not having spent that time drowning in reality television.
Read the rest of the interview at the Packt Authors web site.

by Michael Badger on December 3, 2009
It’s hard to convince people that things like monitoring and testing are important business processes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much effort to find real world business cases for monitoring. Here’s one, now.
I tried to request more information from a website about two hours ago and was greeted with a goofy “system error encountered” error. The same error persists after two hours. How many leads do you lose per hour or day when your web forms break?
Downtime is unavoidable; knowing your down is critical. When your website has multiple moving parts, those parts may break independent of the whole site – And usually as a result of human’s carelessness. Monitoring and automated testing provide assurance that you’ll find the problem before you lose the lead that doubles your company.
Your customers are only a click away from finding the information from someone who cares to keep their systems running.
