Portland Pomodoro Poker

On Tuesday nights, we meet up at the Beehive and play Pomodoro Poker until midnight. We wrote a whole blog post about this a while back, but for a quick review, here are the rules.

PomoPoker rules

  1. Everyone antes a dollar
  2. We each write down a task on the whiteboard
  3. Start a 45-minute timer
  4. Cross off your task as soon as it’s done
  5. The last person done (without going over, price-is-right style) wins the pot
  6. Repeat every hour

We just use the honor system not to sandbag or generally prioritize winning over being super awesomely productive. However, we’ve actually had the opposite problem a couple times lately, where someone legit wins and then feels bad taking the money – especially when it comes right down to the wire, or they’ve won a couple in a row.

Danny thought that if we do a more public job of declaring pomodoro tasks and the end criterion for them, it might help people feel more justified in claiming their winnings – and would also simultaneously help with the (albeit non-existent) problem of sandbagging by picking tasks with mushy end criteria.

So here is my list of potential tasks to work on tonight.

  1. Mixpanel deploy. Add some stuff to Mixpanel server-side tracking. Need these events: signup, premium add/remove, add data. Finished when deployed.
  2. RescueTime OAuth. Get Omniauth strategy working and update lib to use OAuth authentication when available. Finished when refresh works for Token & OAuth users.
  3. Skritter post. Publish Skritter blog post. Finished when live at blog.beeminder.com.
  4. RescueTime Categories. Add category tracking to goal wizard. Finished when deployed and can create a new goal.
  5. Bare Min Togglable. Ideally we’d show both with a little tiny sprite to click which toggles which is big. Backed by a user setting or cookies or something so we remember. (Partially tricky because displaying large numbers.)
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Thanks @bee! Here’s my list. Idea is to give the whiteboard version (a couple words or a tag) and a tweet-sized version that spells out the end criterion.

  1. stripe api. Finished when I reproduce our revenue graph in Mathematica using data gotten directly from Stripe’s API instead of via CSV file.
  2. retrat misfit. Finished when I successfully retroratchet my d/misfit graph using Wolfminder (my Mathematica implementation of the Beeminder API).
  3. qs talk. Finished when I write out a rough script for my talk that’s 163*2.5 words (part of tock is setting up real-time wordcount monitor).
  4. onboard blurbs. Send blurbs to Samuel of useronboard.com for testing his onboarding tool.
  5. gruntwork mix. Scan and send tax thing to inDinero AND nix beemail mailgun routes AND reply or archive starred email.

I’ll add to or edit this throughout the day as I think of things. It’s also fine to edit this in between tocks during Pomopoker.

Okay, here’s what I’ve got for now!

  1. accrual accounting part I: passing tests for sales tax service credit upgrades, and purchasing credit with credit.
  2. accrual accounting part II: passing tests for returns (including weird cases, returning credit for cash, etc.)
  3. comment combining bug: Finished when squashed.
  4. R-D3 spec sheet: Outline of all the features we want, plus where to steal all the stuff that can be easily stolen (plot.ly, rcharts). Finished when I share it with Sasha.
  5. mystery sale 52878: Figure out what went so horribly, horribly wrong, then fix.
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  1. active users from Mixpanel: given a time period, query Mixpanel and return the number of active users over that time period. Finished when the function works and code would pass review.

  2. graph of active users: given data from 1, hook it up to a graph. Finished when there’s a graph of the data.

  3. intro doc: finished when there’s a PR for an a/b test of a pre-built doc for new users.

  4. icon sets: finished when you can add an icon from a text element.

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Here’s my list for tonight!

  1. retrat misfit. Debug/robustify it. Done when I successfully retroratchet my d/misfit graph using Wolfminder (my Mathematica implementation of the Beeminder API).
  2. qs talk. Done when script hits 163*10 words.
  3. linkify blurbs. Add links to all the blurbs for Samuel. Done when email Samuel.
  4. gruntwork mix. Pay people + TBD.
  5. safeblurb. Done when deployed AND dueby table monotonized.
  1. qs talk. Done when script hits 163*10 words (apparently that’s a metric…)
  2. howling masses 1. todos 4,5,8 from uvi pad
  3. howling masses 2. change name from Bare Min? respond to the forum thread.
  4. non-work work. Finish must do.
  5. Sci + gmz-setup. Respond to Edwina. Figure out gmailzero problem from yesterday.
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I will be there tonight! My tasks:

  1. OAuth server client registration, broken into subtasks:
    1a. create new application
    1b. list all applications
    1c. re-authorize when viewing the secret

I have no idea how long these will take so I will probably lose. However it will still be good to have them done.

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Wish I could join you guys! Have fun.

  1. discount code applications. Done when updating a line item in an open sale auto-reapplies the discount code correctly based on the new price.
  2. accrual accounting. Done when all accrual fields are correctly set for returns of all types of line item.
  3. test import. Run everything up to an including sales import (takes > 3 hours)
  4. KISSmetrics bugfix. Done when aliases are persistently tracked across interactions.
  5. demo bugfix. Figure out why the ‘question’ button isn’t working. Done when you’ve emailed Colin to tell him it works.
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  1. Issues search and split view into completed/not completed
  2. Redo shortcut
  3. Toggle between sets of keyboard shortcuts
  4. Show expired trials in the app - done when an alert comes up in the app telling you that the trial is over and gives you a choice between paying and clicking the “extend trial” button.
  5. Fix performance problem with Firefox

They’re all done when the code is in a state that I think it would pass review.

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