Tell me, who are you this time?

Doc has an insightful (as usual) thoughstream on identity. Layers of abstraction and specificity define who we are in each context. I think that identity is really much more complex and the interleaves much more esoteric, but this is a great 10,000 foot view of the subject.

The wife and I are feeling much better today, so NYE plans are a go once again. We'll be tripping the light fantastic tonight with the Marginator. Enjoy your observation of the passing of the year in whatever fashion you choose, and be safe.

How do your pistol and your Bible and your Sleeping pills go?
Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?

read more

You Be Illin'

Whatever you dream about in your downtime, be it writing code, playing baseball, that awesome new car you want, a Carribean vacation, it all goes away when you are sick. Suddenly, all you want is to not feel the way you do. Particularly when it involves vomiting. Yesterday Mae wasn't feeling great so we cancelled our bowling outing. Within an hour Marge and I were feeling it as well. What a miserable night. I still feel like hell. We may end up cancelling our NYE plans as well. This sucks.

read more

Nothing lasts forever

Nothing, that is the state of null, is eternal.

When I was last at work (I think it was somewhere about a week ago, it's all a blur) I was deploying our app to the cluster for the first time and making changes to the LDAP willy nilly in an effort to get out before the weekend. It all blew up, and I assumed I'd screwed something on deploy and dropped mail to the lead developer and sysadmin as well as my backup to let them know Bad Things(tm) happened. They wrestled with the problem Monday and Tuesday and inevitably hosed the server. Mike3 reinstalled everything Thursday and got it back to the broken point at which I had it the previous Friday. We did some troubleshooting this am and I finally checked my mail only to realize the lead developer had checked the environment variable and it looked like a db problem. We redeployed the enterprise app and triple checked all db connection info. Same problem. We all got together and agreed to try a few things, and shortly thereafter the lead dev called to tell me he was an idiot. I rarely argue with people when they make such a statement ;). The JSP couldn't handle null. There was no data in the table for the initial page of the site on the test server. A week lost (granted, not a week in which people do much work traditionally) and everyone (myself included) thought I'd screwed something up. Handle your nulls. If WebSphere errors didn't suck so much we might've figured out the problem sooner.

It was nice to have a few days to relax, and having the MIL here is fun. I've always felt that the best way to alleviate tension is humor, but I rarely resort to pratfalls.

Quote for the day: "the universe is presided over by a being that is 100 percent malevolent but only 80 percent effective (which explains pretty much everything)." - Jim Holt on Salon.com

read more

There's no presents, Not this christmas

For some unknown reason, we've been discussing Christmas traditions recently. One of the most entertaining memories I have of Christmas past is about Advent. Each night, a different child [got to|had to] read an Advent selection from the Bible. Light the candle, read the selection, open the door on the Advent Calendar. The reading from the first week was always tough on us. It begins "Let us pray that we may take Christ's coming seriously". This inevitably resulted in one or more of us laughing, sometimes uncontrollably. I don't know why we laughed, we just did. Maybe I'm the only one that laughed. I suppose it has something to do with planting the seed that there is a possibility that one wouldn't take this [reading|holiday|event|meal|etc] seriously. Give me an opportunity to not take something seriously, and I'll run with it pretty much every time.

I just got in from shoveling snow from the sidewalk and walkway. I'm much better at it than I was at our last house. I think going to the gym helps. I'm cold, but not exhausted.

Please note that any 80's metalhead should be able to identify the song referenced in the title...

read more

Now its smoke

I am beginning to think I need a special wardrobe just for going to clubs. Nothing particularly fancy, a pair of jeans, a pair of slacks, some nice shirts, a jacket, shoes, socks, underwear. Pretty much everything. That way when I get home from a night out clubbing, I could leave them all in the garage so my house didn't reek of cigarettes. Ah well. The price one must pay to go out and have fun is smelling like stale smoke.

read more

He's Dead Jim

Not Lott.

This was inevitable. When the press, and members of your own party leadership question whether or not you can be an effective leader, the question is already moot.

read more

It's tricky

Quote of the day, and it's not even 10am. "You have a hierarchy of shit, and you're not sure what shit WebSphere expects."

In our fozzle meeting yesterday, I proposed an approach to determining if a particular widget should display or not. I'm not a JSP coder, I've done minimal work with it and don't know a whole lot about the technology. The developer looked at me aghast, and informed me that it would be a huge ugly hack to get it to work. This is a developer whose technical skills I respect, so I am quite sure she is correct. Oddly, I did a proof of concept of it in Zope in about 2 minutes. I hadn't supposed JSP lacked the power and clarity of an open source application server from a small company.

In other random tech related thoughts:
If the rumours are true (and that's an awfully speculative if), and MSFT is planning on countering for Rational or, failing that, purchasing Borland, things could be looking better for IBM than they have in years (and they've been doing alright for years). Assuming IBM/Rarional deal goes through and MSFT takes Borland, not only is IBM's biggest competitor in Java development tools gone, but MSFT earns the undying enmity of pretty much all Java developers as well as large contingents of other areas of the IT world. Does anyone seriously believe MSFT won't destroy JBuilder et al if they acquire Borland? Sure, it may still exist, but it will be J#Builder and won't conform to the J2EE standards so no one will use it to develop Java apps anymore.

If you use Windows XP or WinAmp, you might want to read this. Both MS and NullSoft have issued patches. How does software with buffer overflows still get released? This is the most well known of possible security vulnerabilities and it is the EASIEST TO CHECK FOR.

read more

Strange Weather

Note to self: check weather before heading to work.

Thunderstorm in December? Wild. The walk to the Post Office (a block) left me completely drenched. I did not wear my raincoat today, obviously. Oh well. A little water never hurt anyone other than the Wicked Witch of the East.

Mike1 informed me that he has told our tech writer that I'm at her beck and call (insert beck and call girl joke of your choice)for the prototype of Workorder 5. Of course, I'll be calling it a fozzle instead of a prototype. I see much entertainment in my future. I also suspect I'll be the only one entertained, which is frankly fine with me.

read more

No more words, that's my game

I shouldn't be surprised. I really shouldn't. Our customer, and if you are a US citizen our customer is funded by your tax dollars, is not the most technologically adept of entities. Our latest problem is yet another terminology issue. We are trying to validate requirements. Part of this process involves walking through sample screens and workflow diagrams with the customer. This is causing a problem on several levels, but the one I'm most entertained by is the terminology level. We can't use the word *storyboard* because they don't understand it. Yes, I know it's a fairly standard term. Yes, I know that most junior high school students have at least a vague idea of what a storyboard is (or can deduce from context). Storyboard is confusing. OK. We also can't call it a prototype. To them, a prototype is a fully functional 1.0 release. OK, not really what I would normally consider to be a prototype, but you're paying the bills (well, actually, I am indirectly but whatever). I suggested workflow, since that's the major portion of it, but it hasn't taken hold. Ultimately, I think we should make up a new word for "a demonstration of the proposed user interface and workflow of a website, presented in a non-interactive non-functional format in order to validate the requirements for the project". Might I suggest "Fozzle"?

read more

Collapsing in the fields where it feels free

We took a nice drive this weekend, just for a change of pace. Headed west and talked and talked and talked. We made a pass at Historic St. Charles, which looked to me like every other "historic" section of town I've ever been to full of faux-antique shops and cheesy gift shops selling low grade junk. I was unimpressed with St. Charles. I don't know if we'll go back again, but I'm no longer eager to visit. It was very crowded, so we drove about two blocks then headed off back to the highway. We ended up at Big Boy's in Wright City, which is a pretty decent casual restaurant. Very casual. Very country. Good food and lots of it. I'd go again, and it was worth the drive for some damn good fried chicken. After that we took the long way home, through Warrenton and the backroads through Washington (which was quite nice) and then onto farty-far. The countryside is really quite nice out there. Very relaxing, which I definitely needed.

Each morning, I take a bus to the MetroLink station and then the MetroLink downtown, where I walk a block to work. As I headed onto the platform this morning I thought about how idyllic the morning commute has become for me. The evening one as well, but the morning one is quieter for some reason. I have no stress in my commute. Someone else drives. I read. I am lost to the world around me, and I get 40 minutes of reading before and after work. Wonderful.

read more

Hate to say I told you so

Saw an ad last night for a new "reality" show (they aren't reality shows, they are game shows. I wish people would stop calling them reality shows) from Fox. It's funny, Fox is the home of hardcore conservative commentary which normally focuses on variations of two themes: "moderates and leftists are anti-American" and " we need stronger morals in this country". So what station do you turn to for the lowest forms of entertainment (Jackass aside)? Fox. Melrose Place. Cops. Temptation Island. Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? When fill-in-the-blank Attack(s). American Idol. It is the home of White Trash TV. I had a point. Oh yes, Joe Millionaire. A bunch of upscale women are competing to win the heart of a young bachelor worth $50,000,000. Yes, this is just like "Who wants to marry a millionaire" and "The Bachelor", but with a twist! He's not worth anything. He makes $19,000/year and has nothing. This is staunch moral conservativism at it's finest? Don't get me wrong, I think it's a hilarious concept. I just find it ironic that the network that froths at the mouth over the garbage on television is also the network putting out the worst of the garbage.

Lean left is the latest to hit the poor don't pay enough taxes meme that was started by the WSJ. I've always liked the WSJ, because it has a tendency to be very honest about what they really want, no matter how offensive or abhorrent it may be to anyone who doesn't see personal profit in every single action of every single minute of every single day.

On the tech tip
Gordon Mohr asks why artists don't adopt a new business model for music. One of the catches to his proposition (which Prince has been battling with) is that artists generally don't own the rights to their catalog and the only way (if at all) that they could do it would be be re-recording their entire back catalog.

Marc Hedlund has a good piece on Why JSP's suck so hard. I'm not sold on his solution, but he certainly has the problem nailed to the wall.

read more

Why'd you miss the bus? Gee, I don't know

Welcome to my life. Scarily accurate.

read more

Ain't talkin bout Monday

I think I need a new strategy. Fridays are useless after noon. No one is even pretending to work, so if I can't get ANYTHING AT ALL done. Be it cleaning up LDAP, surfing /., looking for reference books, whatever. No matter what there will be someone standing behind me talking at me about something I could not possibly care less about no matter how hard I tried. I am going to make a valiant effort at getting in by 6.30am on Fridays so by the time it gets really pointless here I will be gone already (insert your own joke about how it's been pointless from day one...).

read more

Ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more

Got feedback on the screen design for the new portal. It's all great, except the image of a farmer on a tractor, there will be a violently negative reaction if we submit that to the users. Apparently there was a fairly acrimonious seperation of responsibility a few years back within the USDA, with farm services and rural utilities being cleaved one from the other. To dare to include the (aesthetically pleasing, contemplative, and dare I say patriotic) image of a farmer at work in the early morning would offend the sensibilities of the staff. No problem, I'm not married to any of my design ideas. You don't like it? I'll replace it with a shot of a power plant or something else. What a strange thing to get upset about. I didn't realize the totally non-functional portion would be the Persian flaw ;)

read more

.Net Overview

On Monday, the 2nd of December 2002, I attended a session on .Net held at the office in Chesterfield. David Brown was the technical presenter (I didn't get the name of the marketing presenter). Following are some of the things I took away from the session, from the perspective of a system administrator and front end developer. I would like to state for the record that I hate the term Web Services and firmly believe that the only reason people are so hot and bothered about using WS is because it gets coverage in in-flight magazines and clueless CEO's think it's the Next Big Thing. That's not to say that Web Service aren't useful, just that the people most excited about them have no idea WHY they are excited about them or what they do.

What is .Net?

.Net is distributed computing in a heterogeneous environment. Most MS marketing dumbs this down so much no one has any idea what .Net is. Web Services is key to .Net, though you can certainly develop .Net applications that do not use Web Services. What it comes down to is that .Net uses XML to talk to whatever web services enabled applications it needs to talk to. This is fundamentally no different than any other implementation of Web Services architecture, this is just the one that Microsoft uses.


Whenever you see a stupid corny name, it's Microsoft. That's why we don't have a lot of credibility with the technical peoples. Well, that's not the only reason. The butterfly guys didn't help. Neither did Windows 95.

He said many other unpleasant about Microsoft's marketing, some of which sounded like it was canned ?let's criticize marketing so people will like us? spiel but most of which sounded like genuine frustration and embarrassment. There was a good deal of lip service about "we just want to be an option" which sounded like it was right out of the Initiative for Software Choice (an organization that lobbies government agencies against using Open Source software, on behalf of Microsoft). The emphasis in .Net is in it's ability to connect applicationss on any platform. He did mentioned CICS interfaces, and stated that it would be easy to have .Net code play nicely with existing WebSphere applications running on Linux as well as with mainframes, which is relevant to our reality.

Coding

.Net generates a lot of code for you if you use Visual Studio .Net. If you like code generation, this is a Good Thing. If you don't, it probably isn't. The code is generated at compile time to translate the code you wrote in your language of choice into the Common Runtime Language of .Net. While you can extend the core libraries, he wasn't clear on whether or not you could see the code of the existing classes and remove things that added bloat you don't want. I suspect you cannot. You can edit the generated code in the IDE or any text ...

read more

How'd that asshole ever manage to get in

After several days of quiet, with vague rustlings of disapproval, Bush has come out clearly in opposition to Lott's comments at the 100th Birthday Party for Thurmond. Liberals, moderates, and even ultra conservatives such as William Bennett have been calling for Lott to explain himself in more detail, even after his initial and follow-up apologies (which have been criticised as much as the original statement). Quite clearly, Bush's handlers realize that this is something that will not be easily swept under the rug, and they'd rather put Lott out to pasture than risk being seen as openly approving of racism. Wise move. Lott has said he will not step down as Senate Majority Leader, but he may not have a choice. With a significant number of the Republicans in the Senate openly criticizing his comments and apologies, he may not be able to manage effectively and it might be better for the Senate and for the GOP if he were to step aside.

read more

Security personnel, security personne

I was reading the "Roles and Responsibilities" document, as requested in our meeting yesterday. I ignored the fact that there are at least two roles missing, there are four people listed who are no longer with the company (each having been gone for more than 6 months at this point), there are five people not listed, and there are two development teams (they were consolidated into one, again about 6 months ago). I was interested to see my entry:

Primary – User Interface design, Deployment, and Security Secondary – Alternate Systems Administrator

I'm actually working primarily on just those. Assuming that the processes outlined in the document (for requirements gathering, development, qa, etc) are what we are actually supposed to be following, I'd say we're way off...

On the recommendation of one of our developers, I checked out Websphere World, which runs not on Websphere (or even java of any sort) but on php. That entertains me.

Microsoft appears to be planning on counter-offering for Rational, which would be a smart move but unlikely to succeed as there would be significant legal consequences for Rational if it backed out of the agreement with IBM (then again, if MSFT doubled IBM's offer, they could bear any penalties quite easily). It will be interesting to watch this one. Rumours also indicate Borland is in MSFTs sights.

read more

We are living in a material world

I wasn't particularly interested in the Celebrity iPods until I started seeing rumours that this is the tip of the iceberg in more ways than one. Not only are there hints that we'll be seeing limited edition content from these (and probably other) artists from Apple (with purchase of an iPod), but this particular promo is to highlight their new service: custom laser engraving when you order online. $20. All else aside, it's a cheap insurance policy to ensure the no one at school/the office/the gym is too tempted to walk off with it, since it would be awfully hard to explain why they got the exact same custom engraving you did. There is talk of custom laser engraving when you order other things, such as laptops with your company logo, or an artistic rendering of your favorite picture of your kids. This sort of option was only a matter of time, and I've heard it mentioned as "someday" as far back as the early 90's. Given the popularity of case mods and the extreme Macheads in Japan, I figured Apple was a natural for this one. Don't be surprised if Dell or Gateway tries to beat them to the punch, however.

best quotes:

Since when does Madonna carry around a laser-engraver with her? Maybe Beck has one. I wouldn't put it past him.

As an added bonus, the Metallica iPod play mostly static interspersed with Lars Ulrich screaming "YOU FUCKING MUSIC PIRATES".

read more

Our behavior is dumb

Weekly status meeting, in which it was determined that we all need to review the "Roles and Responsibilities" document, that it cannot be called canonical because that's religious, and it is not a web service. We shouldn't have given the source code or ear file to the enterprise team, but it's OK because they'll need to come back for more and only the first time is free. Best line goes to Chris

Hussein almost told me where to get the EFT file from [system x] that we need.

Delivery date for workorder 4 is February again. Except that it might still be March. Unless it's not. We'll have a definitive potential date tomorrow. This is all normal. Welcome to my life.

xscreensaver isn't pleased with dual monitors, pixie doesn't compile, and there's a kick ass looking linux audio production toolkit. Time to throw Mandrake on one of the spare boxes. I see a trip to CompUSA for a power supply in my near future (the one on the firewall kicked the bucket yesterday so I took the one from my testing box).

When did life become so dull.

read more

I woke up this morning in a cloud of despair

Odd, slightly ragged Mundane. Haven't slept well for about a week, and it's taking a toll. Talked with mom last night about what assorted relatives want for Xmas, Eric's mom (see previous post), Brian's mom (another complex situation), et al. My brother and sister-in-law have newborn twins, so they spend a lot of time in front of the TV. DVD is probably the way to go there. What do I want? Nothing that anyone will be getting me. A new bass, a Les Paul, a TiBook, a new kitchen, 2 double pane double hung windows (installed, preferably), Alaskan cruise, blah blah blah. Gift certificates (Amazon, Guitar Center, Home Depot) work just as well ;)

Coupling is yet another brilliant show from the UK that will be killed prematurely.

I'm in a fairly desultory state of mind today. Prepping for requirements meetings, UI review, blah blah blah. And stapling a new layer onto our wildly unwieldly security model. Sigh. Performance tweaking WAS 4 is up for this week. I may be motivated to do some recording this week. Or maybe not.

I'm geeking out big time right now, I decided to set up a KDE session and vnc into it on my second monitor. The black space on the right side is because the cards are at different resolutions. I primarily use monitor 2 for xmms/gaim/acrobat or whatever other documentation I'm reading while I work on the main monitor. Yes, I'm a big freakin geek.

read more

If I could I surely would kick the ass of Father Time

I have a few friends whom I've known forever. Friends whom I became so close with that they are family to me. And I became so close with their families that I consider them family as well. I got an email from one of them this evening. His mom is engaged in a tough battle with cancer. This has been going on for some time, but she has recently had some difficulties and is now at the point of undergoing experimental treatments. He is dispassionate in his email, but it is clear that he is devastated. I am deeply worried, I know how wonderful a family that is and how close they are and this is terrible blow to them all, particularly at a time when the world around is busy "celebrating" while they hold vigil and hope that she will survive. Think about this as you spend time with your loved ones this holiday season, and value that time. It is my fervent hope that she pulls through, she is a wonderful woman.

This reminds me of my own family, and those that I've lost, and how I do feel that emptiness even now years later. It's no longer a constant pain, but it is there, and it is there every day. I'm now in an unsociably morose mood, and must go out to the Neighborhood Homeowners' Association holiday dinner.

read more

Knocked down, made small, treated like a rubber ball

We need to update the application to include new functional areas. We already have three levels of navigation in the existing module, and are now adding a new module totally unrelated to the areas of the existing module. We are recommending a portal approach. Everyone is on board, we just need to settle on language to present to the client explaining why. This part is easy and dispensed with painlessly, then we move onto the hairy part: managing cross-module security. Given our current half assed security hack, this could be ugly. More research must be done before we come up with a definitive approach to security, but we did have some fun.

Me: QA Bitch would like to use actual user ids for testing purposes (to verify validity of role level permissions)
Mike1: No. The government people will flip out "You're a contractor and you know an actual government employee's user ID! That's not allowed!"
Me: (not mentioning that not only does everyone on the team have full access to the userids for the system, but if they took the trouble to learn to use LDAP they could access all the passwords because the developers don't crypt them) I'm not advocating, I'm just saying that's what she wants.
Architect: She wants it? Call her in here!
Mike1: You just want to tell her she finally lost one.
Architect: Hell yes! She got everything she wanted in this mornings meeting.
[qa bitch enters]
QA Bitch: Yea?
Architect: You want to use real userids for testing?
QA Bitch: You're going to tell me no? You just wanted to tell me I lost because I called you a loser. In that case, I don't care if I use real ids or not.
Architect: At least I'm on the scoreboard now.
QA Bitch: Only because I let you have it.
[qa bitch leaves, tearing the paper fish hanging in the window in half]
Architect: Dammit, she didn't care so now I feel like an idiot.
Mike2: Well, at least you got a point. Or maybe only half a point.

read more

Big Time

IBM is buying Rational. This is big. Very big. This makes IBM the leader in software development tools. This also means that the leading SCM and process modeling tools that people use with Microsoft will now have incentive to use more IBM tools. Should be interesting to see how this plays. IBM's stock took a hit (probably on short term cash outlay, long term this is a win).

I work for a technology company. I don't expect everyone to know everything about technology. I am, however, astounded at the number of people who come around saying "My bookmark for X doesn't work anymore, do I need to reinstall something? Can you come fix my computer?" It's a freaking URL. Try just entering the main URL for the site? What's truly frightening is when a WEB DEVELOPER comes to me and can't figure out why they can't use their bookmark to the development server. Argh!

read more

I'm losing status at the high school

After a brief vacation, the weekly status meeting has returned. This one was not as wildly entertaining as they often are, I attribute it to the weather. We did learn the following:

• Phase three of the application needs to be finished before phase two is started. We knew that already, however we now also know that we won't even have requirements for phase two until after phase three is done. Let's build a system without knowing anything about the data it will be using, that sounds like fun!
• Microsoft, with an assist from our VP of Development, screwed us quite well on Monday. We got MSFT in the door to talk to the gov't people about MS Project 2002 (which the gov't wants to use) and the MS salesscumbag quickly turned it into a "java is crap and you should use .Net for everything" sales pitch. Made us look like chumps and liars as well (we sold the gov't on Java when we started this project, and now we're coming in with people who say Java is a mistake we should be using .Net. Screws our credibility nicely). And people wonder why I don't trust Microsoft. This salesscumbag has been trying to meet with the gov't people for over 4 months and they kept saying no. We get him in the door SPECIFICALLY to promote Project and specifically NOT to promote .Net, and he screws us. Thanks, asshole. The gov't bigwig made quite clear in the weekly meeting that he was pissed at us for that and no longer trusted us.
• Only two of us submitted our weekly status update. I was one of them. Why do I do it? It's a chance for me to bitch about what I'm working on, why wouldn't I?
• If the client wants you to make the code do something highly illogical, it's more difficult to code using logic.

There is a conference room down the hall called the fishbowl. It has large glass double doors on one wall, facing the hallway. It's a "secure" conference room (you have to have a special keycard to get in). This week they've been storing lots of boxes in there, and dropped some hardware on the table. The hardware is VOIP stuff from Cisco, and they have been leaving the monitors facing the glass doors with config screens up. Someone obviously isn't pleased with that, as today they blocked the view of the monitors by taping butcher paper over both doors. Sort of. There's a one inch-ish gap on both sides of the butcher paper, so it really doesn't take any effort to casually glance in and still have a perfect view. Of course, they could've turned the monitors to face the wall, but that would've been a bit too much effort (or thinking).

read more

It's here! Best day of my life!

New reviews posted:

• The Roots
• MC Paul Barman

Brag rhymes have no lag times: Acrostics, narratives, Fibbonacci challenge poems,
declarative palindromes, manifestos. My five fans can attest, yo.

read more

It's too cold here

I love the first snow of the year. I hate the fact that most people seem to get even more stupid when the first snow hits. My commute is normally about 40 minutes. Today, it was 2 and a half hours. I saw 11 accidents and at least two dozen near misses, so I'm still glad I took the bus. I did get a lot of reading done, however, and now I'm finally at work. I'll have a compressed day but I can get it all done. Ugh.

It's not even two inches of snow, people.

read more

You Came Close, Close But No Cigar

The .Net "Come To Jesus" meeting was interesting and fairly informative. As per usual, there was a marketroid who was as slimy as you'd expect (this is not a critique of MSFT, it's how I feel about ALL marketing people). There was a technical guy who was really good and fairly forthright about MSFT's shortcomings. One of the more memorable quotes was "Whenever you see a stupid corny name, it's Microsoft. That's why we don't have a lot of credibility with the technical peoples. Well, that's not the only reason. The butterfly guys didn't help. Neither did Windows 95."

Overall, I didn't see any compelling reason to use .Net, but I didn't see any compelling technical reason not to.  Ultimately he was asked what arguments he'd use to convice a client to use .Net instead of J2EE, and he replied "performance and time to market".  Given that he used the Middleware Petstore Benchmark as his basis for the performance claim, I'd be inclined to be skeptical of any other claims he made about .Net if I hadn't heard them from friends who are actually using .Net.

I didn't wear my linux shirt (I'd forgotten I was even going out there today until I was already leaving for work), but one of our other developers did.  We all gave him a fairly hard time, asking tough questions and putting on the spot and he held up well.    The focus on XML is a plus, the single platform is a minus.  Overall I don't think it's any better than J2EE but I don't think it's particularly worse either.  If it ran on an OS other than Windows I might consider recommending it.  

I've already handed off the t-shirt, anyone who wants a Visual Studio.Net dev kit or SQL Server Web Services Toolkit or trial copies of XP or Office XP is welcome to them.  I'm keeping the pen.

UPDATE: added a more detailed overview to essays.

read more

Anyone Can Play Guitar

I've been playing a lot more recently. Nothing serious, just noodling around, getting the chops back, and so on. I've taken to learning a new song every day(ish) as a means of expanding my skills. I don't try to master every nuance of each song, I just pick up the rhythm and perhaps the lead hook, and if it's a particularly cool solo I'll do that as well. Play along to the MP3 a half dozen times or so and then move on to just jamming on whatever I feel like. I'm fairly pleased with the results, and in order to make it a little more challenging I just pick something at random from our MP3 server (I limit myself to stuff in the Rock subtree, as classical and hip-hop don't lend themselves as well to this). This week has been a week of Wallflowers, REM, Default, The Hives, and Semisonic. Tonight? Dandy Warhols.

read more