Author: jason

Losing Face(s)?

Losing Face(s)?

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I’m a bit torn at work.  I’ve long described our shop as a JSF, Spring, and Hibernate shop, a designation with which I am perfectly happy.  Last week, however, after pointing my boss to a blog entry by a someone I “know”  (I quote that, because he’s someone I talk to on IRC ;), I have been asked to investigate a framework called Wicket that could supplant JSF in our stack.  While I’m not opposed to learning Wicket (so far, it’s been pretty cool), I’m just a little leary/weary of the technology treadmill, where we constantly reevaluate our technology choices.  While a certain amount of that is healthy, too much of it paralyzes your organization, and, personally, I’m a little burned out on research and ready to get some actual work done.

Having said all of that, as cool as Wicket is, my inclination is to stay with JSF.  For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth I’ve seen about how “hard” JSF is, and that you can’t do it without good tool support, I’ve not had much problem with it.  It’s certainly not easy, but it’s a far cry from the impossible mountain to scale that some make it out to be.  It does have its warts, to be sure, but I like it, and it works well for us.  Add to that the momentum JSF seems to be building (especially when compared to other frameworks) makes me more hesitant to drop.  It is a truism that popularity doesn’t make something better, but, in this case, JSF works for us, and I don’t want to adopt something that 1% of the rest of the world is using.  Technical superiority (assuming Wicket has it) is meaningless if no one knows how to use the tool.

Now, to be fair to Wicket, I’ve been playing with it for just a few days.  I like it well enough (despite the problems I’m having with Spring and Hibernate with it, which are my problems and not Wicket’s), but I’m not sure I have the energy or desire to dig much deeper into it.  I’d really like to get some real work done, so Wicket may lose out to practicality.  Time will tell.

South Dakota’s swinging for the fence

South Dakota’s swinging for the fence

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Anybody that follows abortion laws even loosely will know by now that South Dakota has passed into a law a bill that will outlaw all abortions except those done to save the life of the mother.  Christianity Today has a pretty good article describing many groups’ disappointment with the bill.  Even President Bush differs with the bill.  The differences seem to coalesce around two things:  strategy and scope.

Those that take issue with the strategy of the bill (which is explicitly and openly aimed at generating a court challenge to Roe) prefer an incremental approach.  They feel that it would be better to continue slowly chipping away at abortion “rights.”  They have a point:  if the legal challenge to this bill prevails, at best we’ll have another pro-abortion precedent but no clear victory (i.e., the Supreme Court refuses to hear the case), or, worst case, a punch-in-the-face loss (i.e., the SCOTUS firmly strikes down the law and upholds Roe).  That certainly is a legitimate fear, and I do hope that we’re not disappointed in this regard.  However, i think State Rep. Roger Hunt is correct in saying, “After a while you can only chip away so much.”  At some point we have to stop passing laws that say, in the words of my friend Brian, “if you do this, this, and this, then you can kill your baby.”  So, while I am a bit nervous, I think this is the way to go.

The second source of unease for some is the scope of the bill:  abortions will only be allowed to save the life of the mother.  There are many in the pro-life camp, including President Bush, who feel that there should be exceptions made for rape and incest.  I could not disagree more.  While I think rape is a horrible, horrible thing, I think it is just as monstrous to kill any child resulting from abortion just because it was conceived in such an ugly manner.  What that boils down to, basically, is capital punishment for the other victim of rape.  (As an aside, I think I’d be pretty comfortable with capital punishment for the rapist.)  Of course, those that oppose any restrictions in this particular scenario will point out issues with adoption, etc., and, while those are valid concerns that need to be addressed, I fail to see how that justifies killing an innocent human being.

Overall, I’m pretty happy that South Dakota passed this bill and that several other states are considering similar measures.  In the end, black-robed tyrants may disappoint us and uphold murder, but that’s the risk we have to run.  The time for bunting is past.  It’s time we step up to plate, boldy call our shot and swing for the fence, and South Dakota is leading the way.

Best Friends

Best Friends

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Tonight, we were getting Andrew ready for bed.  Angela was working with Andrew who was more interested in doing something other than getting ready for bed.  Knowing that it is effective to give a young child a choice between two or three options, she asked him, “Do you want Mother to help you, or do you want Daddy to help you?”  Pushing past her, he said, “Daddy.  He’s my best friend!”  That sure will make you melt to hear your son say that. 🙂

Brace Yourself!

Brace Yourself!

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Today, I went to the orthodontist to have more stuff put in my mouth.  He bonded my “upper 3 to 3” which means he put brackets on my upper teeth from canine to canine.  He then took a “zip strip” and wound it in a figure eight pattern around/between the brackets on my front teeth.  This string will pull my teeth back together and fill in the gap that this past month of palatal expansion has created.  It’s pretty amazing stuff.

When I got home, Angela wanted to see what they did, meaning, of course, Andrew wanted to see to, so I picked him up so that he could get a good look.  After a little bit of looking and pointing, Andrew proclaims, “That wooks weawwy odd!”  Floored us. 😛

Whoa, man!

Whoa, man!

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Here is a pretty sick story about a man who “became” a woman.  He paid some doctor to remove certain items and …um… rewire some things (I’m guessing here.  I really don’t care to know the nitty gritty details).  He then filed some paperwork with the government to legally change his gender from male to female.  So he’s a woman now, right? I don’t think so.  If you were to take a look at his DNA, you would still find that pesky Y chromosome, which makes him a male.  If I were to have a trunk surgically attached to my face and make my ears large and flappy, I’d be no closer to being an elephant than this man is to being a woman.  Physical appearance and legal documents don’t make us anything at all in this regard.  All this surgery has done is make him one unattractive woman.

Curious George

Curious George

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Tonight, Angela and I took Andrew to his first movie in a theater.  Unless I’m mistaken, it was also the first movie we’ve let him sit and watch start to finish uninterrupted (though Finding Nemo may have taken that honor).  At any rate, it was a pretty big deal.  We were a bit hesitant, as “children’s movies” tend to frighten us.  From the “not really for children but that didn’t stop half of America” movies like Shrek, to the the “tamer” children’s films like The Incredibles, the content is often, we feel, inappropriate for children, certainly for our 2 1/2 year old.  We just don’t understand why we have to have bodily noises and not so veiled “OK” profanities (Shrek’s “talking ass”) in a kid’s movie. 

It is with that trepidation that we began to think about Curious George, a character that he loves.  We usually read at least one book a day, and George is often the bed time story of choice for Andrew.  We read a number of reviews of the movie, however, that gave us pause:  the audience is led to accept the theory of evolution ; the characters intentionally tell a lie; and a smattering of other concerns.  We also read a review, though, that said Hollywood somehow managed to make a kid’s show devoid of toilet humor (which is all too often with movies not just a slang term) and that every parent should run to let their children see this great family film.  We decided we’d take him and see if he would love the film as much as we thought he would.  We were not disappointed.

This movie was awesome.  Possibly one of the best cartoons I’ve seen in years.  Andrew, of course, loved seeing George on the big screen, and the dialog was funny without being crass.  The only exception is when Ted (the name they gave The Man with the Yellow Hat, most likely, to make the dialog easier) is driving down the highway in very crazy traffic and yells back at an apparently angry driver something to the tune “it’s not even physically possible to do that to myself.”  While I wish they had left that out, it’s certainly better than a cartoon using the word “ass” “legitimately.”  The story was good, and the antics had me at times, almost literally falling out of my seat.  I’m not sure why I found it so funny when Ted stared directly into the sun (the sure absurdity of it, I’m sure), but it sure did kill me.

We walked away from this movie 100% glad we took Andrew to see it.  The “lie” was, in our estimation, a gross over-exaggeration (they thought about deceiving people to save their museum but did not actually do it), and, aside from Ted’s discussion of prehistoric “man,” the evolution concern seemed a bit over-blown as well.  If asked, I think would unequivocally suggest this movie to parents of young children.  I even hope they make another. 🙂

On a side note, anyone reading this who does not have his or own child may not understand this, but the feeling I got seeing the absolute excitement and joy and Andrew’s face when he first saw George on the screen is one of the greatest feelings ever.  Completely indescribable, but extremely cool.  I’m extremely grateful God has blessed in such a way as to allow little indulgences like that.  My family and I have much to be thankful for.

Holy Drastic Diastema, Batman!

Holy Drastic Diastema, Batman!

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There’s a good chance that anyone who happens to read this knows that I’m getting braces.  If not, let me get you caught up. My teeth have always been really crowded and crooked, and, over time, I’d gotten used to it.  I just accepted it and moved on happily with life. Last fall, my dentist suggested I get braces to fix the crowding, as that crowding was likely to cause problems later in life.  “Pay for it now, or pay for it later.”  We opted to pay for it now.  With such severe crowding, however, my orthodontist felt it best to create more room by palatal expansion (tooth removal was deemed unacceptable).

So, to faciliate this palatal expansion, I had a “minor” surgery called a LeForte I Osteotomy, in which they make an incision in my gums along my upper jaw (almost ear to ear), cut the bone connecting my upper jaw to my skull (though it’s still attached along the nasal septum and at two points in the back), then, using an osteotome, or a “fancy word for a chisel”, and a mallet, hammer away at the osteotomy (?) along the roof of my mouth. The expansion is then accomplished by an expansion appliance cemented to my teeth, spanning the roof of my mouth, one crank per night, resulting in the aforementioned diastema. Which brings me back to my point.

After a week and a half of expansion, I have a HUGE diastema.  The oral surgeon told me that I’d have no problem winning a watermelon seed spitting contest once the expansion was complete. Right now, it looks like I’ll have no problem winning a watermelon spitting contest. 😛 Once the braces go on, that space will be filled by moving my teeth around toward the front, but, right now, I don’t know if I look more like Madonna or Mike Tyson. 😛

Some have suggested another alternative.

How I spent the better part of an hour

How I spent the better part of an hour

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At work, I’m trying to learn how to use Acegi Security, a security framework for Java web applications.  I was using this tutorial, which was written for version 0.8.3, whereas I had installed 1.0.0RC2.  Here’s the process I went through to update the code to use the newest version of Acegi Security:

  1. start container
  2. watch it crash
  3. kill container
  4. fix config
  5. start container
  6. watch it crash
  7. dig through docs to see what I missed
  8. make fix
  9. restart container
  10. watch it crash
  11. repeat ad nauseum

But it’s working now, and that makes me happy. 🙂

Potty Training

Potty Training

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Right now, we’re trying to potty train Andrew.  I had him on the toilet and Angela went off to get his jammies.  While she was gone, I cupped my hand at the side of my mouth, got all excited and whispered, “Can you go to the bathroom before Mother gets back?” 

Andrew cups his at the side of his mouth, leans toward me, and whispers “No.”

I think it’s all here

I think it’s all here

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Well, I think I have everything copied over from my old new blog to my new new blog, and hopefully I won’t have to do all of that again. I didn’t copy everything, as, honestly, some of that stuff is either no longer really relevant, or just doesn’t interest me much anymore (blogs concering the ’04 presidential election, for example, didn’t fare well in the entry transfer).

I hope there’s something of interest up already, and I hope to be better about updating this thing. We’ll see.