Caffeinated Codeys

Rory's Minions Rout Canucks in a Landslide

Russell Ball — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:05:06 GMT

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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

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.
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...
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.
"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

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.
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.

2007 Caffeinated Codey Final Showdown

Russell Ball — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:45:16 GMT

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]

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

Best Technical Satire [VOTE]

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

Most Fun with Multi-Media [VOTE]

Justice Gray for Audio highlights of .NET Rocks with Jeffrey Palermo & the MS MVC [Audio: Dec CC]
D’Arcy Lussier’s for If Book Publishers Were Smart 2 [Photo (Book Cover): Aug CC]
Rory Blyth for Neopoleon Goes YouTube - The Neopoleon Thanksgiving Special [Video: Nov Post]
Anonymous Alt.NET pursefight authors for Weekend round-up for 22-23 December: Alt.Netcracker Edition [Photo (Oren & Laribee dancing nutcracker suite): Dec CC]
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]

Scott Hanselman for Caught in the Act [July CC]
Justice Gray for What DevTeach 2007 is missing at DevTeach 2007 [Aug CC]
Eric Sink for What Microsoft Doesn't Want You to Know about WPF [Aug CC]
Mark Miller for My Last VSLive Session Ever? [Oct CC]
Rory Blyth 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.

The December 2007 Caffeinated Codey Winners Are...

Russell Ball — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:51:19 GMT

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.

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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.

The November 2007 Caffeinated Codey Winners Are...

Russell Ball — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:54:12 GMT

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.

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.

The October 2007 Caffeinated Codey Winners Are...

Russell Ball — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:19:54 GMT

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.

For Best Software As RoadKill Analalogy...Ben Scheirman on Don't Make Squirrel Burgers. The next time your boss tries to haggle you over the estimate, just pull out Ben's squirrel burger story. If that doesn't work, you may want to just feed your boss a squirrel burger when he's not looking, thereby earning you a several day deadline extension as he recovers from getting his stomach pumped.
For Best Hate Mail Magnet Post...Rob Conery for his post Imploding Rails, Jesus DHH, and the Uncle Ben Principle. Note to self: Calling DHH, the creator of the uber-trendy Rails framework for Ruby, a "foul-mouthed, prissy Dane" is apparently not the best way to win friends and influence people. Nevertheless, an excellent software debate on dynamic languages, the scalability of Ruby, and the role of DHH in the future of the language emerge through this provocative post and the hundred plus heated comments that it inspired.
For Most Productive Meeting Day Dream...Mark Miller for his post on Test Bot Kicking Ass. Everybody daydreams during meetings about being attacked by rocket launcher toting killer robots and then slicing their heads off with a crack shot from their steel blade shooting gun, but it takes a true genius like Mark Miller to turn it into the inspiration for an innovative testing solution. You have to admit, the idea of a software bot continually downloading the latest version of open source projects and running thousands of unit tests against them is pretty slick.
For Best Inspirational Speech...Fake Steve Jobs for his post My Message of hope for the Borg. Since reading this post, I've tried to fit the phrase "I'd rather make love to a bag of broken glass" into as many conversations as possible. The post provides excerpts of a speech that he gave on the Microsoft campus, where he tells it like is to the Microtards like only the Jobmeister can.
For Best Advice on How to Comment Code...Phil Haack for his post The Greatest Compliment A Developer Can Receive. Phil offers a perceptive rant about every developer's propensity to be overly critical of other people's code. I have to admit that I have never heard someone say that they just inherited a code base that was well written. Ok, perhaps the extra space between the if and parenthesis doesn't make the code totally worthless...
For Best New Start-Up... Rory Blythe for his post A New Religion - A Neopoleon Religion. Pass around the collection plate, because there is a new religion in town. Rory has gone on a divine hiring spree and with the help of some questionable recruiters has already amassed an impressive head count in his quest to create a "religion with more gods than any other religion in the history of religions". I'm personally putting in a request for a mighty espresso bean god that has a twitching stat of 99 and that smites Folgers drinkers with a terrible caffeinated vengeance.
For Most Long-Winded Title for a Post Advocating Minimalist Writing...Raymond Chen for his post The most important choice in writing is not what you say, it's what you dont' say. All kidding aside, it is solid advice with a helpful before and after writing sample. It reminds me of the saying, "I didn't have time to write a short article, so I wrote this long one instead".
For Most Valiant Mort Defender...Oren Eine (a.k.a. Ayende) for his post ALT.NET and the Enterprise. For a lazy 9-5'er, poor Mort has been busting his tail this last month being a favorite topic of conversation in the blogosphere. This post sparked one of the more lively debates on the true capabilities and value of average Joe developers in the software food chain. Whether you're a Fascist Mort Hater or a Commie Mort Sympathizer, you'll find food for thought here.
For Most Egregious Geek Blasphemy...Jeff Atwood for his post Why Does Software Spoil?. Jeff challenges the typical geek compulsion to automatically upgrade at the drop of a hat and makes an interesting argument that new versions of software are often worse than their predecessors because of decreased usability and performance due to feature bloat. It will make you think twice before agreeing to that next upgrade.

Finally, in the category of posts that I read in October but were technically written in September.

For Most Diplomatic PowerPoint Slide...Mark Miller for his post My Last VSLive Session Ever? I can't imagine why has been black-listed from conferences before. I also can't figure out how people who fail the first prerequisite are able to sit down in the first place...

Special Announcement about Awards- Once again, congratulations to all the CC recipients for winning this most prestigious award. Unfortunately, the squirrels drank all the prize beer that I had set aside for awards this month. Perhaps Rory can retrain one of the out-of-work Norse gods to replenish my home brew stash so I can give each of these talented bloggers their proper recognition.

Until then, happy blogging.

* No squirrels were harmed in the making of this blog post.

** In case you missed them, here are the prior CC winners for September, August, and July.

The September 2007 Caffeinated Codey Winners are...

Russell Ball — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 05:43:39 GMT

Finally, the moment has arrived that you've all been anxiously awaiting. Welcome to the 3rd monthly installment of the Caffeinated Codey awards where I recognize some of my favorite posts from the past month. As always, the lucky winners will receive a caffeinated or alcoholic beverage of their choice if we should ever meet.

This month's winners are...

For Most Likely to Incite a Violent PETA Riot...Justice Gray for his post Javascript raped my dog, and other falsehoods. It seems barely a day goes by without reading about some accusation of bestiality involving a scripting language and a common household pet. Justice goes out on a limb to valiantly defend javascript from its decidedly un-metrosexual detractors.
For Best Open Source Marketing Strategy...Roy Osherove for his post Do you like Boobs?. Despite never having used it, I have inexplicably positive sentiments towards Boobs, the new Boo Build System that was inspired by Rake.
For Taking Passion for his Work to the Next Level...Ayende Rahien for his post NHibernate is female. It's easy enough to justify referring to your development tools as feminine when you cite linguistic and cultural explanations, but what about when you fantasize about your ORM tool in a french maid outfit, fish-net stockings, and 5 inch stiletto heels? Come on, I know I'm not the only one who has done this...
For Best Illustration of Iterative Development...Martin Fowler for his post on RollerSkateImplementation. It is so true that the key to successful iterative development is a good imagination. I don't know how many times I've thought or heard someone say that it was impossible to break up a certain piece of functionality only to later discover a creative way that involves some combination of temporary manual interventions. If Agile had a logo, it should be roller skates.
For Best TMI (Too Much Information) Moment...Phil Haack for his post Last Night A Doctor Saved My Nut. In case you don't wince enough at Phil's medical explanation of testicular torsion or his account of the doctor violently untwisting his testicle, he provides an illustrative photo of a very large cracked nut to drive home the point. Ouch...
For Most Likely to Stick to the Roof of your Mouth... Jeff Atwood for his post Peanut Butter Theory of User Interface Design. Jeff's post will convince you that you shouldn't spread the interface over a system like peanut butter in the final stages of development if you want to your application to be truly usable. It might also inspire you to make a good old fashioned PB&J sandwich with the edges cut off the bread.
For Best Way to Explain Software Maintainability to your Mom...Chris Holmes for his post Selling Maintainability. Chris makes a compelling argument that it is more helpful to think of software as a garden than a finished project in order to convey the reality and importance of maintainability to users. Finally, you can explain what the hell you do to your mom.
For Best Way to Explain Software Maintainability to your Drinking Buddy...Evan Hoff for his post Off-the-Shelf RAD is for Pimps, Hookers, and Johns--not Marriage. Evan talks about the evils of RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools, wizards, and drag-and-drop components that make for great demos and are perfect for Little League applications, but lead to maintenance nightmares that will leave your Enterprise applications with the software equivalent of flesh eating STD's (sexually transmitted diseases). Try this as a conversation starter with your friends after a round of Jack Daniels shots.
For Best Literary Reference...Jeremy Miller for his post Having a Captain Ahab Moment. Jeremy provides the perfect literary reference to describe how easy it is for developers to fall into a thrashing mode and spend inordinate amounts of time on relatively unimportant tasks as a result of taking it too personally when something doesn't work the way it should. Too bad that not many developers have actually read Moby Dick.
For Best Language Evangelism... Scott Bellware for his post on Ruby Makes You a Better Person. I knew that you could speed up development time, produce elegant code, cure cancer, and achieve world peace with Ruby, but I had no idea that it could also improve my spiritual well-being. I bet it took forever to implement that feature.

Once again, congratulations to all the winners. Hopefully we'll meet someday so you can claim your prize. In case you've missed the prior award ceremonies, here are the winners from July and August.

The August 2007 Caffeinated Codey Winners are...

Russell Ball — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 05:03:09 GMT

Welcome to the 2nd installment of the monthly Caffeinated Codey awards. As I mentioned in the first installment, the lucky winners will receive a caffeinated or alcoholic beverage of their choice if we should ever meet. Of course, when when I first made the offer I assumed this was mostly an empty threat, however it looks like this opportunity could present itself next month for at least five of the winners since Ayende Rahien, Justice Gray, Scott Bellware, David Laribee, and Jeremy Miller are all on the Alt.NET conference attendee list. I guess I better start saving my money.

Without further ado this month's winners are...

1. For Best Tough Love Code Review ... Ayende Rahien for his post on How to test for SQL Injections. I personally prefer the more immediate feedback of electric shock over dropping the project database, but I'm old school like that.

2. For Best Explanation of Why My Blog Sucks... Jeff Atwood for his post Thirteen Blog Clichés. Notice that I've carefully refactored this month's list into groupings of nine and one instead of ten, thus finding what I believe to be a loophole in cliché number twelve. I've also restrained myself from arbitrarily inserting any random pictures in this post to avoid cliché number two.

3. For Most Obsequious Post...Scott Bellware for his post on One Less Stupid, Piece of Microsoft Usability Negligence Crap in My Life. I wish Scott would quit trying to suck up to Bill and just tell us what he really thinks for once.

4. For Fastest Way to Give Your Computer A Stomach Ache...Scott Hanselman's for his post on the 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows. You just can't be an alpha-geek without a massive repertoire of slick utilities and you will feel like a kid in a candy store when you go through this list. Unfortunately, your computer will start to act like a kid in a candy store who ate several aisles worth of candy if you are foolish enough to install all 546,543 utilities at once.

5. For Best Explanation of Why You Will Regret Installing 546,543 Utilities at Once...Jeff Atwood's post on Was The Windows Registry A Good Idea?. I'm sure you can guess the answer, but I won't spoil it for you in case you haven't spent much time wallowing in "dll hell" during the heady days of COM or haven't had the joy of trying to manually remove an NT service after a failed uninstall.

6. For Most Sales Generated for a Non-Existent Book... D'Arcy Lussier for his post on If Book Publishers Were Smart 2... Hoards of male programmers picketed Amazon in protest when they discovered the devastating news that The Gentle Art of Pair Programming by Wendy Friedlander did not really exist.

7. For Best Technical Investigative Reporting...Eric Sink for his post on What Microsoft Doesn't Want You to Know about WPF. Apparently Eric has managed to create a horrible looking WPF application that makes little children wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Being one of the countless artistically challenged developers myself, I whole-heartedly thank Mr. Sink for warning me and preventing me from traumatizing users with a design of my own.

8. For Best Pop Culture Reference that Reminds Me I'm Getting Old... David Laribee for his post How Many Licks?. I vividly remember watching Saturday morning cartoons and arguing with my friends about whether or not the owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial was a true empiricist and how the lollipop chocolaty center really resembled the Domain Driven Design notion of an aggregate root. It was a relief to realize that I was not the only one who had this experience.

9. For Best Career Spoiling Idea...Jeremy Miller for his post on Call me Utopian, but I want my teams flat and my team members broad. I was solidly on my way to becoming a "For Loop specialist" and the sole person in our department who would be authorized to put the closing brace on a For Loop. Then my boss read this post and my career aspirations were crushed. Damn you Jeremy!

This last one wasn't technically written in August, but since I didn't get around to reading it until this month I am still counting it.

1. For Best Conference Abstracts...Justice Gray for his post on What DevTeach 2007 is missing at DevTeach 2007. I personally can't decide between "Pimp Your UI with Ajax" and "Drunken Design Patterns". Rumor has it that he will throw in a free back wax and nose hair tweezing to the first 50 attendees, so it is best to go early.

Congratulations to all the Caffeinated Codey recipients! As always, the selection process was extremely rigorous with mutliple fist fights breaking out among the judges during the deliberation process so you should definitely brag to all your friends. Keep up the good work and don't forget to claim your prize if we should ever meet (just make sure to do it during happy hour, eh?).

The July 2007 Caffeinated Codey Winners are...

Russell Ball — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 05:52:00 GMT

It occurred to me today that the techie blogosphere will never truly be mainstream until it has it's own version of Oscars and Emmies that recognizes the truly memorable blog posts. In the spirit of blogo-democracy, I thought I would just kick-start things myself by creating my own award which I will call the 'Caffeinated Codey" (it's my award so I get to pick...).

The lucky recipients of these awards will not only be rocketed into certain geek stardom by the increased exposure that I provide through my vast readership (surely in the 2 digits by now), but they will also receive the alcoholic beverage of their choice on me if we should ever meet in person.

Recipients should be warned, however, that I reserve the right to make fun of you if you choose a watered-down domestic beer. I also reserve the right to confiscate any unclaimed beer for myself. Enough said. Drum roll please...and the July 2007 winners are...

For Most Interesting Post on an Intrinsically Dull Topic...Jeff Atwood for his post on The Coming Software Patent Apocolypse. You generally can't go wrong when you compare recipes and fasion to code, but the image of a nuclear detonation is what really synched it.
For Best Microsoft Expose/Personal Mugshot...Scott Hanselman for his Blue Badge post announcing his assimilation into the evil empire. The Borg accessories shown in his new employee photo are way too flashy, which proves that the new Scott is still only in beta. I'm sure his apparel will be appropriately dulled down by the Microsoft Marketing Collective before he makes it to RTM.
For Best PDGA (Public Display of Geek Affection)...Scott Bellaware for his An Open Letter to Scott Guthrie and John Lam, re IronRuby. I was definitely verklempt as he openly revealed his man-crush on the creators of the DLR thereby single-handedly closing the door on IronRuby for homophobes everywhere.
For Best Blog Post Title/Pop-Culture Reference...Phil Haack for his Bank Error in My Favor. I'm Microsoft MVP post. Monopoly reference...sheer genius!
For Best Blogger Pundit Faux-Pas...Ayende Rahien for his Rhino ETL: First Code Drop post. Didn't anyone tell him that you're not supposed to actually do anything after publicaly criticizing a major tool like SSIS (actually if SSIS were a man he would be crying like a little girl after his diatribe). To make matters worse, it only took him a few days to go from brainstorm to the first code drop, which just makes all of us look bad. If I were him, I would watch my back because both the Pundit and 9-5 Programmer unions have both probably hired some serious goons to put a stop to his nonsense.
For Best Self-Deprecating Moment...Scott Hanselman for his Xbox360 XNA Game Development - Hanselman Conversation Simulator. He promotes a most excellent Xbox360 game created by George Clingerman even though it pokes a little good-natured fun at Mr. Hanselman and the inherent difficulties in chatting with someone with so much geek fame.
For Best Proof that Google is really a Sentient Being with a Serious Sense of Irony...Ayende Rahien with his Random Trivia post where he points out how he is the first google result for "How to make a complete fool of yourself".
For Best Viral Post...Justice Gray with How I am becoming a Better Developer, part 1 of Infinity. Even I succumbed to this one. I really need to update the definition files on my AV software.
For Best Amen Rant...Ayende Rahien for his Theoretical Architects post where he rags on non-coding architects that can't be bothered with the technical details that often make their pretty pictures untenable. I may have actually said Alleluia out loud.
Finally...for Best Dramatic Depiction of a Geek Married to a Normal Person...Scott Hanselman in Caught in the Act. Seriously funny stuff. The bruises on the poor SOB in the mug shot were obviously inflicted by one pissed-off spouse that has been technologically victimized one too many times.

Congratulations to all the Caffeinated Codey recipients! The selection process was very rigorous so you should feel proud. Keep up the good work and don't forget to claim your alcoholic prize if we should ever meet.