dev.jayray.net

the Strasburger!

2010-06-10T07:21:00.000-05:00

If the $15M signing bonus, or the sold out crowd, or the 14 K's didn't show that DC is excited about this kid, how about getting his own burger. Cause that is when you know you have made it in life - when you have food named after you!

goal: get my kid to watch more Star Wars

2010-06-07T06:20:00.002-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVyNnyLbcXM&feature=youtube_gdata

never fear, james cameron is on the case!

2010-06-02T16:29:00.005-05:00

Never fear! Director to solve the gulf oil spill

whoo-hoo, i am Mirth certified

2010-06-02T16:29:00.002-05:00

I have passed my Mirth certification exam!

I was very impressed with the organization of the training session. Very planned, good examples to work through, reasonable test. Highly recommended for any users of Mirth Connect.

remaining lost questions

2010-05-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

A few questions on Lost

Google does pacman

2010-05-21T22:08:00.001-05:00

Google's icon for the day was a playable pacman game shaped in the word google. Kudos on the tribute to a great pioneering game!

WWII propaganda posters

2010-05-21T21:59:00.001-05:00

WWII propaganda rules

http://www.zazzle.com/if_i_were_a_man_id_join_the_navy_poster-228129172201063856

fireworks

2010-05-03T14:45:00.000-05:00

Before buying your 4th of July explosives, consider checking the list of legal fireworks for Loudoun County. But where is the fun in that?!?

I summon the power of bhut jolokia!

2010-05-02T03:51:00.000-05:00

http://www.disinfo.com/2010/03/indian-military-to-weaponize-worlds-hottest-chili/

iPad is here

2010-04-03T06:58:00.000-05:00

The iPad is here.

Big Brother Bear

2010-04-01T07:20:00.002-05:00

Aweseome, a way for me to REALLY spy on my kid

Line2 to offer voip for iPhone

2010-03-25T12:17:00.002-05:00

This looks almost too good to be true - a fully functional VOIP solution for the iPhone. For $15, the application allows for user to make/receive calls on an iPhone app that looks much like the existing iPhone dialing features.

I like the idea of using this for the iPad to offer dialing capabilities!

Now why is this allowed and not for skype or google voice?

NHIN Direct on the fast track?

2010-03-25T11:58:00.000-05:00

NHIN Direct aims to have implementations of its standards by this fall.

whoo-hoo, I am a certified CSP

2010-03-17T08:02:00.000-05:00

My CSP application has been approved, and I am now a certified Certified Scrum Practitioner!

The process was pretty straightforward. The certifications is to show that you know, well, how to practice Scrum. The requirements are that you are a certified Scrum Master or Product Owner and have can demonstrate one year of Scrum experience through a series of essay questions. Since I have been serving as Scrum Master for the last few years, the essay questions were not difficult, but were good thought provokers - took me about 4 hours to complete. And oh, yeah, pay your $250 application fee.

I have no delusions that certifications truly assert that you know what you are talking about, but still nice to have it.

NHIN Direct complements NHIN

2010-03-16T10:42:00.002-05:00

Good snippet on why NHIN Direct complements the goals of NHIN

commenting code - good practice, or sign that code is not self documenting

2010-03-16T10:17:00.000-05:00

Good article and discussion on commenting code

whoo-hoo, speaking at JBoss World!

2010-03-15T12:39:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my Red Hat buddy Keith on helping pull this together, but we will be speaking at JBoss World to talk about making portable applications, and the expirences that we have had on CONNECT.

Cut the Cord – How to Create Portable Applications
Providing secure and interoperable access to patient health information is one of the most significant challenges in the healthcare industry today. To address this issue, over 20 federal agencies have joined forces to develop the CONNECT platform, an open source, standards-based gateway to the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). The ultimate goal of CONNECT is to provide a drop-in connectivity and collaboration framework for all types of organizations, including insurers, hospitals, health information exchanges, labs, and local/state/federal government agencies. To effectively scale as a drop-in solution, CONNECT must be able to run in a wide variety of deployment environments, including operating systems, application servers, and all varieties of IT infrastructures.

This presentation leverages the experience of the CONNECT team to provide insight into how portability can become an integral part of the complete application development life cycle. Over the course of two major releases, multiple micro releases, and numerous sprint deliverables, the CONNECT team has addressed portability at the following levels:
-Operating system (Windows, Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
-Application server / Application host platform (GlassFish, JBoss, WAS)
-Development environment (NetBeans, Eclipse)
-Build environment (Ant, Ivy, Maven)

In this session, Keith Babo and Jason Ray, lead developer of CONNECT at Agilex, will share advice on how to maximize portability in many areas, including:
-Implementation best practices and gotchas
-Testing strategies
-Creating a process that values portability in the design, development, and test phases
-Selecting the right standards and specifications for both interoperability and portability
-Learning what you can and cannot control

Keith and Jason will also share real world experience with application portability, along with some pragmatic advice on how to get it done.

HP slate - ipad alternative w/flash

2010-03-10T13:50:00.000-05:00

HP Slate is a mid-size device, like the ipad, but supports flash! Now the wait-n-see if flash will exist in 2 years.

Nice fine print:

this device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.

My favorite comment:

Yuppy scum drinking coffee, MTV (reality TV no less), Sponge Bob, awful Techno, and crossword puzzles... someone in the Advertising department lost their job. Right? Points for it still being better than any advertising put out by Sony in the last 10 years.

chef serves breast milk cheese

2010-03-10T08:20:00.001-05:00

just plain weird

Jefferson was a wise man

2010-03-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

Too lazy to check the context or validity of these quotes, but they are good.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered..

so long ABC! ABC goes dark in NY over contract dispute

2010-03-07T04:12:00.000-05:00

Viewers in NY lost their ABC cable feed because of a contract dispute between ABC and cable operator Cablevision.

Maybe, just maybe, a crazy thing could happen here and people realize that TV is a silly overrated expense. Between using modern rabbit ears, some version of a DVR, hulu, network websites - you can watch most shows without any reocccuring costs. Or someone may just realize that the majority of television is, well, crap, and life goes on just fine without it. Movies can be watched without any help from cable companies, either through DVD rental or various on-demand services. Or just read a book.

But don't listen to me, i spend $70/month on directv.

spring break in mexico is dangerous?

2010-03-04T15:45:00.000-05:00

Maybe, just maybe, spring break in mexico is dangerous. Promiscuous behavior, drinking until your liver falls out, punching the snot out of each other after so-in-so looks at so-in-so's girlfriend, not knowing how to drive in a foreign country.

And, oh yeah, there is a war going on.

12 biggest rip-offs

2010-03-04T12:07:00.001-05:00

Good (fun) article on some rip-offs. My favorites is in the comments on floss - charging several bucks for string.

desktops will be irrelevant in three years? hmmm, that's a little aggressive there google!

2010-03-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

At the Digital Landscape event in Google's European lead John Herlihy said In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant, referring to the world moving to smart phones and not PCs. I've read some great comments on this, and as a geek should, I of course have my own thoughts on it.

The world is shifting from applications running on my pc to services/data in the cloud, where they can be accessed from numerous types of devices such as my work computer, my home computer, smart phones, televisions, spy watches, and fridges (okay, eventually). Today, I love using these other devices for viewing data and making small "publishes" (email, tweets, etc), but I am certainly not in a place where I can work without a desktop/laptop. The computer is still entrenched in my responsibilities. I don't see a hardware solution yet that is going to allow me to rapidly type documents, analyze complex "stuff", write code, etc without a traditional computer.

And as long as people are still accessing their traditional computers, google cannot consider the desktop (as a computer) as irrelevant. The desktop as a traditional OS, well, now we are getting a little closer! With ChromeOS, there is a shift to using the traditional computer with a browser-only OS experience - this I can see the majority of the world ready for in the next 3-5 years.

Bottom line, I love the concept, but to me that seems a little aggressive that the desktop is irrelevant in 3 years.

Chile earthquake shortens Earth days

2010-03-02T07:24:00.000-05:00

Wow, didn't realize that an earthquake could move enough mass to change the length of a day