The third and final day of the Rich Web Experience has come and gone. (more…)

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Day two of RWE turned out to be as good as the first. (more…)

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Today, I’m attending No Fluff Just Stuff’s “The Rich Web Experience” conference in San Jose. Having had a great experience with NFJS’s Greater Oklahoma Software Symposium, I have high expectations for this conference, and, so far, I’ve not been disappointed. (more…)

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As regular readers likely know, I am currently serving as the president of the Oklahoma City Java Users Group. One of the things we’ve really been focusing on is getting the word out about our JUG, hoping to increase not only attendance, but the size of our speaker pool as well. Since we’ve really started pushing this effort, I’ve done a fair amount of thinking about JUGs in general and have come to reinforce an idea I’ve long held: good JUGs are more than just a once-a-month meeting. They offer several very practical benefits to both employees and employers. (more…)

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I recently made a change that I should probably note here: In mid-May, I left my employer of the past 2+ years, IEC, to join Objectstream as a Software Architect, and for whom I will be working at the FAA’s Mike Monroney Aernoautical Center here in Oklahoma City. While I’m very excited about this opportunity (and have enjoyed the past few weeks), it was not an easy decision to leave IEC, as it’s a really great place to work. IEC (and my boss, Mitch, in particular) gave me a degree of freedom in terms of technology that I’ve not had anywhere else. I was able to try a lot of bleeding edge technologies and do some really neat stuff with some really sharp people. Much of what you may have read here came from my experiences at IEC. (more…)

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Some of you may have noticed an extended outage of this site for most of last week. It appears that my provider was having NFS issues which, to my knowledge, are ongoing. They told me they were watching my server hoping it would stabilize, all the while all I wanted was a functional site. I finally got them to move me to another server, and things appear to be back to normal. So, dear reader, I apologize for any inconvenience that might have caused either of you. Believe me, no one was more irritated than I.

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My general rule is that I avoid too much personal stuff here. I have other venues for those interested in that kind of thing, but it would be remiss of me if I did not take the time to wish a merry Christmas to those that read this blog. I truly hope your Christmas season was (and continues to be) a happy one, spent with family and friends. More importantly than that, though, I sincerely hope each of you will take a good, honest look at the historical reason for Christmas. Beyond the gifts and meals and parties, Christmas celebrates the birth of a Child, Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior of the world. My hope and prayer is that you will find, if you have not already, the Light of Christ, as I did so many years ago.

Thanks for indulging me this personal note, and here’s hoping for a great and exciting 2007!

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Everyone knows that one of the most important things a software project is a good name, but coming up with a good name is not easy. To help with the process, we apply what my boss, Mitch, refers to as the front porch test, which is actually a rule of thumb from the pet world. It goes like this:

When picking a name for a dog, imagine yourself standing on the front porch yelling the dog’s name out into the neighborhood. If you think you’d feel like an idiot yelling that name, then choose something else.

Replace “dog” with “program” and you should get the idea.

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