In The Beginning

In the beginning, there was a television. To the television was attached a Tandy TRS-80 CoCo. Then he said, let there be code. And there was code, and it was in BASIC. He was a child and found the fact that he could make a computer do things to be really cool.

As a teenager, the internet was laid open to him. HTML was discovered and there were many horrible mistakes made, including the dreaded animated gifs of flaming skulls and spinning things. The land was known as GeoCities, and it was eventually cast into perdition for its sins.

Then was Java made known unto him, and, though he tried, he found it confusing. This was the first age of Java, so he was not alone in this.

Lo then did he graduate high school and make his way to college in an effort to learn to do this shit properly.

There did he learn of many things – Pascal and Prolog, C and C++, Scheme and Assembly, Socket programming, the creation of data packets, and stack traces among many other skills and pieces of arcane lore.

He paid the campus ferryman with his toils as a sysadmin where he applied logic to a place of chaos known as a non-profit. All the while, using his position as an excuse to do things programmatically so as not to have to run around the hilltop known as The Ridges as often.

Then did he return to Java, and he found it…okay. After all, with a background in object oriented programming, data structures, and the like, Java now made much more sense.

Upon his path, however, he decided that Java was not the right tool for him, so he endeavored to learn C#. Additionally, in order to wipe away, or at least atone for, his past sins of using Perl, he also learned Ruby to an extent that would allow himself to get into (and hopefully out of) trouble on occasion.

He walked the paths of desktop development and eventually began to work in order to master the arts of web development as well using the MVC framework. So, then, did his past of using HTML and CSS come back to him (though, thankfully, the flaming skulls and spinning things did not), and that is where he stands as of this day.

Current Mood - Tired

Current Music - Shades Apart - Stranger By The Day

Philosophy, Monks, and Rude People

One morning, several years ago, I was sitting on a bench, looking at a sand painting and waiting for the Tibetan monks that were making said painting to arrive.

As I was sitting there, an older woman walked up to where I was sitting and asked me “Are you Buddha?”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I assume that she meant to ask if I was with the monks, but it was, to be honest, a rather rude manner in which she addressed me (as though she thought I was some piece of scum there to serve her). I was being talked to as though I were some sideshow freak.

However, my other thought on the matter was that it was an interesting philosophical question.

Am I Buddha?

Well, I’m not Buddhist. In fact, I’m Taoist, if anyone really cares to know (I don't try to hide it, but I don't shove it in everyone's face either). However, if you think about it, the Buddhist concept of the Buddha nature is similar to the Taoist concept of P`u, or the uncarved block.

It could also be argued that some part of the matter which made up Siddhartha Gautama could have been a part of my bodily makeup at some point in my lifetime, so in that rather literal way, I suppose I could be considered to be Buddha.

Then you have the fact that Buddhists believe that we all have the potential to become a Buddha and that some believe Bodhisattvas walk among us, so it's possible that I am such a being (though I seriously doubt it as I am a little too snarky and sarcastic to be considered a being of pure good heh).

In the middle of my philosophical reverie, the woman who sparked it snapped at me rather rudely (even more so than previously), demanding to know if I was Buddha.

Having had enough of being treated like a piece of dirt, I informed her that I was not Buddhist, that the monks would not arrive for another hour or more and she should learn some manners.

She stormed off in a huff.

In the end, I was rather glad that I was the one who was there when she arrived. First, it provided an interesting piece of food for though. Second, if she was that snotty toward me, I can only imagine how she’d react to a bunch of “weird” guys in robes.

I saved them more than a headache or two, I’m sure. Hey, they may consider life to be suffering, but not all suffering has to be endured =]

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Def Leppard - Photograph

Digital Memories.

Events of the past few weeks in the technical arena have caused more than a little reminiscence on my part, because they touch on things that sort of helped shape my technical adolescence.

First, Oracle decided to buy Sun.

It seems odd that the company whose database I have both sworn by and sworn at (depending on the time in question) has bought the company whose hardware and OS I have also both sworn by and at (again, depending on the time in question and whether or not I had slept in the last 2 or 3 days).

When Jeff Blankenburg asked on twitter how Java developers felt about the move (I have also been a Java dev on top of it all, alternately swearing at and by *that* product as well – there’s a lot of swearing involved if you haven’t noticed. Heh), I said that it sort of felt like the end of an era.

I didn’t feel like it was the end of an era because I thought Java was doomed. Oracle really likes and leverages Java, so that wasn’t a big concern. In fact, I was more concerned when they started moving Java to open source because I know what fork hell can do to a project if you aren’t lucky.

The reason it struck me so deeply was because I cut my collegiate programming teeth on Sun hardware running Solaris. I have fond memories of being in the Sun labs at OU - cranking out code (generally in xemacs, if you really care to know), chatting with my friends and classmates, alternately teaching them and learning from them, and generally causing trouble.

What came to my mind were the late night coding sessions (the labs were one of the only academic areas that never really closed, and if we found the doors locked, we had the go ahead to call the prof who eventually became the dept chair to open them), leaving quotes on the blackboard that covered one wall, and the 2am call to Papa Johns one Saturday to order half a dozen pizzas.

For some reason, the guy who answered the phone at Papa J’s thought it was a prank. He argued with me even when I offered to pay in advance. I finally got in touch with the manager, who, it turns out, was covering for the normal night manager and recognized me from all of the orders I placed at the Center for lunches (we tipped *really* well. The drivers used to fight over us.)

The manager sent the guy who answered the phone on the delivery run and included several free two liters of soda as an apology for the treatment. (Don’t worry. We were nice to the guy. After all, it *is* weird being the only academic building open 24/7 on campus.)

As for the quotes on the blackboard, some of them ended up generating entire written conversations over the course of multiple days. My favorite to post during finals week was “If you wish to drown, why torture yourself with shallow water?”

These are the sorts of things that *I* associate with Sun – learning, camaraderie, occasional crazed nights bug hunting, and generally great times in the academic/professional sense. So, like I said, it seems like the end of an era and I feel kind of sad that Sun may not be Sun anymore after this.

I haven’t even touched a Solaris box in a few years, but I still feel nostalgic. In fact, as silly as it may sound, If I get stressed while working on code, I try to picture myself in my favorite lab and it tends to relax me and cheer me up a bit.

The second event of the last few weeks stirred up its own set of feelings as well.

What event, you ask? Today, I found out that Geocities is officially dead.

Now, before you all gag and wonder why I would miss Geocities of all things, keep in mind that I was on it when it was really about the only option for free web hosting out there. We’re talking probably 1996 or 1997.

A few of my friends and I had sites there. One was in CapeCanaveral, one in Soho/Flats, one in Hollywood, and I was off in Tokyo/Tower (yes, I was off in Asia even then heh). We’d had computers for several years, but this was one of our first trips out into the internet as participants instead of mere spectators (largely because none of us had modems at home at the time. Hey, it *was* the mid 90’s after all).

Geocities may not have had as large of a direct influence on my life as the Sun labs at my alma mater or, say, #dalnet (which, if that ever disappears, I may well cry), but it still means quite a lot to me.

It sounds trivial, I know, but it really helped to get me interested in a lot of other things, and for that, if for no other reason, I will miss it. After all, we think things on the internet will be around forever (and in some sense, they may), but all too often they are lost to time or at least lost in the noise.

It is for that reason that I want to take my hat off and pay my respects to the newly deceased Geocities and the changed Sun which will continue from this day forward. While I am at it, I would also like to pay my respect and give my thanks to all of those people who have helped me along the way, both in person and out across the ether as well as those who will help me in the future.

I promise that I will try to pay it forward.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Melissa Etheridge - If I Wanted To

I Was The Responsible One?

With some of the things that have been happening lately, I ended up talking to someone I used to be friends with in high school. We lost touch partway through college because of things that happened, but we occasionally get to talk now.

One of the things that came up was how bizarre it was that I was considered the responsible one by the parents of so many of my friends. Apparently any uneasiness was put aside if I was going to be involved. Don't ask me why, but it's true.

I find that especially weird considering some of the insane things *I* did even back then. However, I guess it was that I tried to keep everyone *else* from getting into too much trouble and that I could handle things if they got out of hand that made me the "safe" one to be with (I mean, who better to have your son/daughter out with than their friend that can smooth over problems and, if it comes down to it, help treat injuries or inflict them, right?)

Yeah, I was a regular snarky knight in shiny armor [/sarcasm].

The funny thing is that many activities were only approved *if* I'd be going (road trips, concerts, etc etc etc). If I wasn't going, my friends weren't allowed to go either. It was kind of surreal because I was considered a sort of surrogate adult.

Anyway, to get back on track, my friend and I were talking and that came up. He was as amazed at the whole thing as I was (in part, I think, because he knew some of the insanity that was my life). He ended up making fun of the whole situation himself during part of the conversation:

Friend's mom: Where are you going?
Friend: Um... to ritually sacrifice animals?
Friend's mom: Is James going??
Friend: Yes...
Friend's mom: Okay. Have fun.

(Please note that there was no animal sacrifice involved. I have too much respect for animals. Some people, on the other hand, are fair game in my book *smirk*)

Current mood: tired...
Current music: Sneaker Pimps - Kiss & Swallow