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May 30, 2003

News

Lil Seb got to meet some of our climbing friends last night at the shop. It good to see a bunch of our friends again.....

Saw something really, really silly yesterday on a little lunchtime walk around Squirrel Hill. Some kid had an Audi A4 tricked out to look like an S4, including all the S4 badges and ground effects. It was nice and all, but if you're going to do that, you should really remove the A4 badges so you can at least fool people who don't know what an S4 really looks like. Duh....

In work news....I've successfully built a test application (a POS of some functionality we want) with Maven, and I'm getting ready to attempt a test with Cactus. If all goes well, that means I can move on to looking into better client side testing techniques (like HttpUnit.

May 29, 2003

Apache

The Apache Project is probably the biggest open source technology project besides the GNU/Linux kernel (and distributions). Best known for its web server, the Apache group also has a very lively and productive Java group known as Jakarta. The Jakarta group is best known for the Tomcat application server and the Struts framework, but there are many, many, many other projects under the Jakarta group.

Enter me....

Here at the new job, we use the Turbine and Torque frameworks for our web application. Turbine is basically Struts on steroids--on top of providing a high level interface for handling web requests, it also includes a number of services (not "web services", just "services") such as security (things like access control lists for the site, user management), XML/XSLT transformation, form validation, yadda yadda yadda. The Turbine project is fairly young, and that means one thing--the documentation sucks. What little documentation there exists is written by the guys the wrote the framework, so they understand how everything works, which leads them to leave out important bits and pieces that they often assume is common knowledge. Often the best source for information is the Turbine user mailing list, but unfortunately, the archives are often unaccessible.....fortunately, most other users are in the same boat, so simply posting to the list generally gets you a quick answer, regardless of how ignorant the question is.

So after a month or so of hacking, I've got a decent handle on Turbine. Great. Now, we're in the middle of a redesign of the entire app, and I've been chosen to head up the testing/QA department, so I've been looking at various testing frameworks. The tried and true framework is JUnit, a Java-based unit testing framework. While JUnit is very powerful, it is better suited to standalone applications, as you don't have to worry about instantiating the application server container objects (like HttpRequest, HttpSession, etc) to run your tests. So, being the clever folks they are, the Jakarta group has written a framework on top of JUnit called Cactus. Cactus allows you to instantiate all your container objects within your tests, allowing to write the tests on a client machine, move the tests to the server, and test either via the command, a tool like Ant, or via web interface. Fantastic, I say....sign me up....

But....

Cactus is build for straightforward web applications--that is, an app that doesn't use a framework like Struts or Turbine. These framework generally hide things like HttpRequest from the framework, wrapping them in other objects for easier state management. So is Cactus is unusable? Not according to the Turbine users list. Several Turbine developers were nice enough to post code fragments for using Cactus to test Turbine classes. Great! But then, no one was nice enough to post information about how to configure Cactus to properly use Turbine (which is where I am right now). But Brian, why don't you just read the documentation on the Cactus site? you ask? Well, follow the Cactus link above and you'll find the site is about the 1.5 dev release, which means it isn't technically a release. To download Cactus 1.5, you'll have to find the latest nightly build, and hope it works. Nice eh? Again, it's like the developers are doing this project for themselves, and if you can catch on, you can use it too.

So I've running around in circles today. I've come dangerously close to getting a real, live unit test for Turbine working with EasyMock, but Ant is being kinda dumb about a classpath issue at the moment. Currently, I'm printing the manual for Maven, yet another poorly documented build tool from Apache....this one, however includes automagic Cactus testing, so it's at least worth a try.

May 28, 2003

Interesting

I don't know if anyone has been following the SCO/IBM lawsuit, but it took a very interesting twist today. First, a little update if you haven't been following it.....SCO has claimed that they own the copyrights and patents for Unix System V, and that IBM (who has licensed that code base) has donated parts of the Unix code to the Linux community, and this has violated the patents and copyrights held by SCO. Basically, according to SCO, if you're running some flavor of GNU/Linux, you're violating their copyrights. Now, many folks in the Linux community have asked SCO to show the community what parts of their code are currently included in the GNU/Linux kernel, but SCO has not complied.

Today, in an interesting twist, Novell has claimed that they own the copyrights to Unix System V, and SCO is just a license holder. But, the twist gets even twistier--Novell also says they are happy to be a contributing member of the Open Source community, and that if code from System V has found it's way into the GNU/Linux kernel via IBM, that's just fine with them.

SCO has issued a response, but it really makes no sense whatsoever.

Currently, SCO looks like a idiot at best, since Novell has backed up its claims with information from the US Patent Office. Time will tell how this all plays out.

May 27, 2003

Too Cool

Seb has now decided that sleep is optional. He's been eating more often (more and likely a *growth spurt*), and sleeping less at night. This equates to less sleep for me, and even less sleep for Jen. We've decided to no longer try and *put him to bed* and just let him fall asleep in our bed. We were one big happy family last night on the bed....seb, jen, betty, wolfgang, and me.....

In other news....

The Gentoo install continues. By the time we got home last night, the basic compilation of the various packages and applications was finished, and this morning before I left for work, I configured the kernel and started that compilation. That might be done before I get home, and I might be able to actually boot the system tonight. That is, if I don't pass out between then and now.

May 26, 2003

Longest.........Install.........Ever

I finally got around to installing Gentoo on the second hard drive in my PC today. Note the verb tense -- installing -- rather than installed -- because two and half hours later it is still installing. There are two selling points for Gentoo. One, the initial download is small. Even if you download the whole LiveCD installer, it's still only 400MB. Two, the newly installed system will be completely customized for your machine.

It is this second feature that makes the install so lengthy. Once you've put the basic system on your machine, you tweak a make.conf file to indicate things like your CPU architecture, speed, RAM, etc. Gentoo uses a system ("portage") that is similiar to the BSD Ports system, which allows you to download the latest and greatest versions of various applications. The difference is that the Gentoo package management, unlike RedHat or Debian doesn't just download a package and install it. The Portage system will check out your make.conf file, and compile every package with tweaks for you system. So...unlike when you install Redhat and it just dumps a bunch of precompiled binaries on your machine, Gentoo compiles each and every package (including your basic GNU tools--things like 'ls' and whatnot) to be customized for your system. Crazy.

In Seb news, he had a big yesterday....first church, then a trip to the WooHoo

Leave it to the Japanese.....costumes for your cat. As an added bonus, the company translated the site into Engrish.

May 22, 2003

Hacking

There's an interesting thread on /. about the geek's desire to learn. Everything. Homebrewing beer, gardening, metalsmithing, you name it, and there are geeks into it or learning it. And I've got to put myself into that category. I really like the process of learning, and the process of teaching myself. I remember in high school, some friends of mine in another school had to read The Day I Became an Autodidact. The whole concept was pretty foreign to me then, but now I've really embraced it. I appreciated the fact I went to college, and that I had the opportunity to hone my thinking process (because heaven knows my philosophy degree didn't get me much else ;-) ), but I appreciate even more the journey I've had since college--learning how to run a business, learning how to be a programmer, learning how to be father.

So, here's a short list of things I'd like to learn how to do sooner rather than later:

1. Build a bicycle wheel from scratch
2. Change the clutch plates on my car
3. Carpentry/home repair
4. Learn one or two more programming languages (Ruby and Python) and learn more about *nix system administration

Look at the Golfs

Not that most people care, but Annika Sorenstam is currently one under par at the Colonial Invitational. In case you haven't heard, Sorenstam, the best female golfer on the planet, is playing in a PGA tour event. Many people have cried that she doesn't deserve to be there, but here she is, 3/4 of the way through the first round and she's 3 shots off the lead. If she continues to play like she is, she will easily make the cut and get to play this weekend (which was her main goal). Looks like she does deserve to play with the big boys after all.....

Can You Hear Me?

I still don't have a fully functioning sound system on my machine at work. I can listen to my MP3s, but I have to restart the sound server every 20 minutes because the driver for my Soundblaster Live 5.1 card is only an evaluation copy. "What gives?" you ask...."Don't you work on a linux box? Isn't everything free as in beer?" Well, no. Since CreativeLabs hasn't completely released the code for the driver, and the new chipsets on the Soundblaster cards aren't compatible with the old ALSA drivers. 4Front Technologies has a driver for linux boxen, but it's not free. Now, if anyone might happen to *find* a license key floating around the internet, please let me know, but for the moment I have a script to restart the sound server (and XMMS) every 20 minutes.....

May 21, 2003

Photographic Slight-of-Hand

Did anyone else notice my mother-in-law's translucent hand in this picture of Seb? Wacky....

In case you didn't look at the home page, there some new photos of Seb.

In other news....here's the beginnings of an interesting discussion on Slashdot about a potential flaw in the .NET framework. Simply, hijack private fields within classes via tools within the .NET framework. Now, with this being on Slashdot and all, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a bit hyberbolic, but time will time as smart people concerned about the facts contribute to the discussion. Many people are crying "security leak", but that's really not the issue. If you're hiding sensitive data in class fields (private or otherwise), you've got bigger problems. A lot of folks are also pointing out that Java allows this as well via Reflection, but alas, you cannot access private fields, classes, or methods via Reflection.


May 20, 2003

Interesting Stuff...

Here's an interesting idea. The RIAA Radar bookmarklet will allow you to see if the RIAA will take some of your precious money when you buy a CD from Amazon. The bookmarklet will query a database and let you know if the artist is a member of RIAA. I love this idea, but how many people won't buy albums because of RIAA membership? Most of the stuff I listen to is on indie labels, so the RIAA membership thing isn't even an issue (heck, I'm lucky to even find some of the stuff I listen to on Amazon).

Of course, it'd be nice if this service worked with something other than the patent-spewing hydra we call Amazon....but at least it's a start....

I was saddened to find that Matador is a member of the RIAA :-(

Daddy

It struck me on the ride into work this morning that I now have another day each year I can receive gifts (father's day).....sweeet!

Seb is doing well. He's eating normally most of the time, and he's sleeping for 4 hours at a stretch at night, which means we're getting at least 6 hours of sleep. No complaints there...there should be more pictures up in the next day or so...we've been staying at the in-laws, so I haven't had a chance to get the images off the camera.

In other news....

Good news for Subaru. Petter Solberg has inked a three year contract with the team. Solberg is due to win a few rallies this year, and he will compete for the driver's championship in the coming years. Interesting to note that Solberg would like Tommi Makinen to return for another year. Tommi has had bad luck with Subaru, retiring from many rallies he could have won, but his experience is invaluable to the team and to Petter. Remember last season when Petter won the Rally GB and gave a lot of credit to Makinen for his support of Petter on the final day.

The rule changes for next season (a team's third points scoring driver in a rally must not have a rally win to his credit) should make for an interesting offseason. This rule obviously hurts Peugeot and Citroen, whose rosters are stacked with rally winners. I expect to see both Harri Rovanpera and Gilles Panizzi leave Peugeot for the opportunity for full season drives for other teams. Imagine if Gilles went to Skoda or Hyundia....suddenly they would be a contender. I wouldn't be surprised if Subaru just promoted Toshiro Arai (as they did in 2001), as he's had some strong results in a full factory car (4th in Greece in 2001).

May 19, 2003

Long Weekend

I'm attempting to get back into the swing of work life this morning. Lil Seb is doing well, and he's eating better, which makes life easier for everyone involved. Hopefully within the next week he'll establish a little schedule for himself, and we'll be sleeping even more every night. Also, sorry to anyone we haven't been in touch with this week....it's amazing how the time just flies...

I read an interesting article this weekend about the XP tactic of test-driven deisgn (sorry, no link to the actual article...it was on a dead tree). Interesting stuff, and something that we'll probably implement here at the new job, since we're redesigning the system. It should be difficult to think about programming this way, but in the end, it should pay off. There comes a time when you have to take off the hacker hat and pretend to be a software developer....

May 16, 2003

Interesting

There's an interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about the "buy local" movement. Lots of good ideas there. Consumers in the United States need to realize that they are a critical piece of the market. Personally, I think most consumers don't realize the power they actually have. Sure, monopolies will still exist, and companies will still find ways to abuse the system (and consumers), but the average person can make a difference.

But unfortunately, this also requires a bit more effort on the part of the consumer, and we can't have that, now can we?

Transcending Sleep

I seem to no longer need much sleep. This sudden change is quite convenient, since my son doesn't need more than a few hours of sleep at stretch, especially at night. Actually, last night was a bit of turning point in Seb's little life, as some gastro-intestinal issues sorta cleared themselves up, so he's a much happier boy right now. We also stayed with Jen's parents last night. It is usually her mom's habit of spending a week or so with her daughters when they have a kid, but since she's allergic to cats, and we have two of them, that just isn't happening. We tried to go it alone on Wednesday night, but Seb's little stomach issues hit him them, and that was a bit scary for a couple of first time parents.

May 14, 2003

New Life

Well, there is officially a baby in the house. The gang came back from the hospital this afternoon. Seb is being fed right now, then we'll hunker down for one of our many catnights for the night.

I believe I mentioned something about turning up the volume on life as a reason/effect of having Seb. Well, we went to 11 on Monday. The delivery was everything we didn't want--Jen was induced since she was 10 days late, she had an epidural since the contractions from the Pitocin were so intense, and poor Seb was, *ahem*, helped into the world with a pair of forcips. Labor lasted maybe 11 hours or so, but the delivery happened very quickly. Jen's labor had been stalling (a by-product of the Pitocin), and she wasn't making much progress. There was some concern about Seb's health, as the intense contractions (again, a by-product of the Pitocin) were causing his heartrate to dip a bit lower than it should after each contraction. Then Jen's doctor came in, checked her progress, and said "She's complete, let's deliver this baby." At this point, I was lying on a couch reading when about 10 doctors and nurses came into the room. Next thing I knew, I was telling Jen to push and Seb was popped/pulled into the world....

Crazy. It was THE most intense thing I have ever experienced. I think we're both still sorting through things, as exhaustion and elation are the most common things we're feeling right now. The thing that is most strange to me is how comfortable and happy I am at the thought of being a dad. Ask my friends and family--I was not (and probably still aren't) a kid-person. I'm not a huge fan of other people's kids (though the disdain of my younger years has softened quite a bit), but I'm a huge fan of my kid.

Well, off to burp Seb then drift off to sleep with my family.

May 11, 2003

Baby Time

Well, after a week or so of waiting, we will going to the hospital this evening (at midnight) and Jen will be induced. This isn't exactly how we planned it, and Jen wants a natural childbirth, but her doctors don't want to wait around too long for the little guy to show himself. There still are four hours for labour to start though, and we have our fingers crossed....

In other news....

Marcus Gronholm won the Argentina Rally this afternoon. Again, an amazing rally for the Finn. He was two minutes down on Friday. Two minutes! That's a lifetime these days, and generally a lead that big is safe as long as your car holds up and you don't stuff it in the trees. Carlos Sainz regained second place after the turbo on Richard Burns' Peugeot gave up during the final stage. It's a close race at the top of the driver's championship standings between Gronholm, Sainz, and Burns. Expect more competitive rallies in the months to come as the WRC moves to Europe for Cyprus and Greece.

May 10, 2003

Argentina Day 2

Another interesting day on in the World Rally Championship. First, multiple stages were concerned due to overzealous crowds. This didn't make many of the drivers in the top 5 happy, since the move limited the number of competitive kilometers left in the event. Once the action the got started though, Carlos Sainz was out to prove the rally was his to win. Or lose. Thanks to a misinterpreted gesture from his co-driver, Sainz reached a time checkpoint too early (yes, in rallying it is possible to go too fast) and was given a one minute penalty, dropping him from first to fourth.

Again, Marcus Gronholm has proven why he's the top driver in the sport. After losing two minutes after finishing a stage yesterday on three wheels, Gronholm is in second place, fifteen seconds behind new leader Markko Martin. Richard Burns rounds out the top three, and he's got to want to pass Gronholm again to further cement his lead in the driver's championship. Harri Rovanpera and Petter Solberg round out the top 6.

Peugeot should retake the leader in the manufacturer's series, with all three cars looking to finish in the top 5. Citroen was still looking good even after Colin McRae retired, but Sebastien Loeb stuffed his Xsara into the trees, leaving Sainz the sole Citroen driver. Subaru can only imagine what might have been had Solberg not rolled and had Tommi's transmission not given up.

Rally Argentina

Day one of the Rally Argentina was rough and tumble and full of surprises. Marcus Gronholm was leading the charge early, but the Subaru's of Tommi Makinen and Petter Solberg, and Citroen's Carlos Saniz were keeping the margin close. Makinen began to charge on SS5, and pulled within 2 seconds of his fellow Finn. Solberg saw his chances disappear with a roll on SS4, though he only lost 2 minutes and should be in the points by the end of the rally. Makinen's campaign was cut short on SS7 with a gearbox problem that left him to drive the day's longest stage stuck in second gear. Suddenly Gronholm had a nice cushion until he hit a rock and destroyed a wheel. In case you're weren't sure if Gronholm was the best driver on the circuit, here's more proof. He finished the stage, lost only about a minute to the new leaders, and should be fighting for a place on the podium by the end of the weekend.

So, heading into day two, Carlos Sainz is on top followed by Markko Martin and a brace of Peugeots (Burns, Rovanpera, and Gronholm). Seb Loeb is right behind them, so it should be an exciting day.

It will be interesting to see how this effects Makinen's decision to return next year. He's said he's happy with Subaru, and happy driving with Solberg, but he's had so many disappointments with Subaru....he was fighting for a win here last year when a shunt on the last day put him out of commission. If Tommi leaves Subaru (and retires) expect them to pursue Richard Burns or Colin McRae (who, by the way, also bowed out on day one with engine problems).

Yahoo Update

Managed to get my Yahoo mail account back. Seems the person who hijacked it was selling NBA tickets on eBay. Oddly, they didn't delete any of my emails, and in fact, none of the new messages I had were even opened.

May 09, 2003

Various Items

First...no baby yet....

Here's an interesting article on Reason about Rick Santorum's stoopid remarks about homosexuality. I had tried to write several entries about his ramblings, but I just could never get my feelings down. Anyway...Cathy Young does a good job pointing out the inherent problems of Santorum's opinion from the side of privacy.

I must admit, I used to like George Will, but I've lost interest in him over the years because he's become an intellectual knee-jerk conservative. I must admit though, his latest Newsweek column is spot on about labor unions and the logical somersaults most do to abuse their power and extort money from their members.

I guess I'm learning how to be a software engineer at work. We've just started a month long redesign of the core product, and we're starting from scratch. My days are spent writing use cases and process diagrams, as well as learning about several other application frameworks.

Hopefully the next time you check this site, there will be real live pictures of the anklebiter ;-)

May 06, 2003

Baby? No Baby....

Yup, that's right. Still waiting.....

Work has slowed down a bit after a solid week of coding. We've been given the ok to redesign the system (it's a mess of spaghetti code right now), so I spent the day thinking about data structures and the object that love them.

Saw this article on how parents without kids are happier on Salon today. I didn't bother to click through and suffer through the ad to read the whole article, since I thought it basically stated the obvious. You don't choose to have kids to have a happier marriage, and have more fun. Having a kid is probably one of the most selfless acts that a couple can do (short of becoming aid workers to a third world country). Think about it....you're giving up a certain amount of freedom to focus your life wholly on a human being who is completely dependent on you (at least for a few years). That's why there's so many broken marriages and child abuse in this country. People don't think through what it means to procreate. It's not about you....it's about the kid. The kid is not there for your entertainment or your convenience--in fact, it's the reverse. Americans think they have to give birth and a have a family...they don't think through it, they just do it, and they're much worse off.

I know that fatherhood is going to be tough, and it'll put a strain on my relationship with Jen sometimes. But that's part of the game....it's about turning up the volume on life to live it a bit more fully. It's not about me...it's about my kid.....

May 04, 2003

Where to begin....

The anklebiter has yet to show his face.....

A few entertainment reviews today...I picked up two new albums, Pedro the Lion's It's Hard to Find a Friend and Ester Drang's Inifinite Keys. It's Hard... is David Bazan's first album, and his best. A little less of a "book" than his later albums, but still great songwriting. Infinite Keys is a bit more interesting. I'd heard a few older Ester Drang songs, and they were, for the most part, instrumentals. This album is not the same. Good music, but the lead singer sounds a bit too much like the guy from Radiohead, and for some reason, I'm having a hard time getting past that. I'm not giving up on the album yet, though....

We also watched Death to Smoochy. I had heard good and bad about the movie, but I thought with Edward Norton, Robin Williams, and Danny Devito, it had to be worth watching. It was. Ed Norton does a fine job as an earnest, granola-crunching kid's show host, and Robin Williams is bearable, since he plays a deranged, paranoid ex-kid's show host. There were lots of good lines, and I'm quite sure that Williams didn't have a written script (most of his lines are strings of expletives, but they work for his character).

In linux news, Slackware rocks. After a few additional downloads (the installation fits on a single CD, so there isn't much _extra_ software installed) the system is running as good, if not better than, my old Mandrake distro. It's definitely a very hand-on distro, but the extra work gives you a better, more customized system. The installation was very bare bones (no pretty screens like Mandrake or RedHat), but it did everything flawlessly. I was fortunate enough to already have my disks partitioned, so I just needed to format them, but I did toy around with cfdisk, the slightly friendlier version of fdisk, and it was easy to use. I've still got a 20GB drive sitting in the machine with nothing on it, so I'm considering downloading FreeBSB.....

May 03, 2003

Baaad RAM

Well, Slackware to the rescue. Thanks to some slightly more useful error messages during the install, I discovered that some of the machine's RAM had gone bad. I removed the suspect RAM, and *poof*, Slackware 9 is installing. I've decided to give ReiserFS a whirl for the filesystems. Not like I'm running a 1TB drive or anything....

May 02, 2003

The Longest Day

Well, in about two hours, the anklebiter's due date will have passed. No news on that front at all....maybe tomorrow....

Quite a frustrating day. First, we lost internet connectivity at work. Not a big deal, since most of my work revolved around servers inside the network. But I soon found I really needed the Jakarta Group's lame, half-completed documentation to complete my task. I tried in vain to carry on, but eventually I got frustrated and just left. Of course, to make matters worse, in a fit of frustration, I seemed to have managed to compromise my Yahoo mail with a lame piece of spam. Don't ask. Fortunately, there's little _important_ stuff in there, so it's just a major inconvenience. Bleh.

Then let's not forget the linux adventure. I'm working on^H^H^H^H^H^H^H just finished attempt number, oh, six or so on installing Gentoo. Something goes wrong at some phase of the process each time. Amazing. Plus I've managed to destroy my Windoze 2000 installation. Nice. I'm currently downloading Slackware (at this rate, I should have a library of most major distros). "Just install Mandrake 9 and get it over with!" you say. "HAH" I say. Neither 9 or 9.1 will even start the install process. Meh. Normally, at this point, I'd give up, but we're installing a VPN at work next week, and I don't want to miss an opportunity to work from home....

May 01, 2003

Tick Tock

Well, we're still waiting for the anklebiter. No sign of him yet, though.....

The new job has been good, and very interesting. I've been handed a ton of interesting responsibilities, included setting up a server for hosting one of the applications. Good stuff. Tomorrow will be spent migrating Turbine applications from version 2.1 to 2.2, then next week we'll migrate to 2.3. Hot stuff....

I've decided to get a little crazy with my linux machine since Mandrake died. I've downloaded the latest version of Gentoo, and I still have to find the time to do the install. There isn't a graphical installer, meaning you have to declare the disk partitions yourself, then mount the various filesystems from the CDs. Geeky. There's nothing really important on that machine any more (the Mac holds most of the "important" stuff these days, and since I'm not working at home, I don't _need_ a functioning linux environment at the moment). With me luck....this is should be quite a ride....