My first Fan

I got an interesting email (Subject Fan) today as follows:

Dear Mr. Hightower,

I am truly impressed by your technical achievements. I have been looking for (advice on) my career ...
My ambition is to be close to what you have done in your career....

I already have a head start with an Engineering degree in Electronics, and a Master's Degree in CS. Also, I have about 10 certifications including J2SE 1.4 and SCWCD (with 93%).

I am eagrly waiting for your response.

NAME_WITHHELD_TO_PROTECT_THE_INNOCENT
Indiana, USA.

I doubt I will get email like tihs very often so I suppose I should enjoy it or something.

I admire Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Orfalli, James Gosling, Drew Davidson, Erik Hatcher, Dan Harkey, Nick Lesiecki, Grady Booch, Peter Coad and many more. I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to a lot of folks on my list in person, though I doubt any of them remember me. I worked with Erik, Nick and Drew at eBlox so they have to remember me. Everyone I met was extremely nice.

My first Fan

I got an interesting email (Subject Fan) today as follows:

Dear Mr. Hightower,

I am truly impressed by your technical achievements. I have been looking for (advice on) my career ...
My ambition is to be close to what you have done in your career....

I already have a head start with an Engineering degree in Electronics, and a Master's Degree in CS. Also, I have about 10 certifications including J2SE 1.4 and SCWCD (with 93%).

I am eagrly waiting for your response.

NAME_WITHHELD_TO_PROTECT_THE_INNOCENT
Indiana, USA.

I doubt I will get email like tihs very often so I suppose I should enjoy it or something.

I admire Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Orfalli, James Gosling, Drew Davidson, Erik Hatcher, Dan Harkey, Nick Lesiecki, Grady Booch, Peter Coad and many more. I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to a lot of folks on my list in person, though I doubt any of them remember me. I worked with Erik, Nick and Drew at eBlox so they have to remember me. Everyone I met was extremely nice.

My first Fan

I got an interesting email (Subject Fan) today as follows:

Dear Mr. Hightower,

I am truly impressed by your technical achievements. I have been looking for (advice on) my career ...
My ambition is to be close to what you have done in your career....

I already have a head start with an Engineering degree in Electronics, and a Master's Degree in CS. Also, I have about 10 certifications including J2SE 1.4 and SCWCD (with 93%).

I am eagrly waiting for your response.

NAME_WITHHELD_TO_PROTECT_THE_INNOCENT
Indiana, USA.

I doubt I will get email like tihs very often so I suppose I should enjoy it or something.

I admire Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Orfalli, James Gosling, Drew Davidson, Erik Hatcher, Dan Harkey, Nick Lesiecki, Grady Booch, Peter Coad and many more. I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to a lot on folks on my list in person, though I doubt any of them remember me. I worked with Erik, Nick and Drew at eBlox. Everyone I met was extremely nice.

Mock Object Testing: A new respect for it

I have a new found respect for Mock object testing. I was just on this project that had a fairly laborius deploy process. I found mock object testing helped me write tests that I could run more often. I found myself more productive as I did not have to wait for the server to start up before I started writing tests and code.

Cool project, a lot of fun, Tiles, lots of tiles (Struts chicken richness)

I worked on this project, recently, that was quite a treat. The application was a web application that was quite rich with functionality. I was charged with writing a menuing system that would only display certain menus depending how the user was logged in. The system integrated and extended the J2EE security model. I wrote a Struts extention (plugin) for the menuing system. The menus were stored in an XML file. I used the Jakarta commons digester to read the XML file. I dig commons. I used the tiles framework to render the menus. I wrote a tile controller to manage the state of the menu. I wrote a Struts plugin that used the digester to read the menuing system.

Later I worked on a pagination piece and a embeded Search piece. I used Tiles for both. I dig Tiles and Tile controllers.

Note to self.... write down the user name and password

I installed this new server software. I am doing a course port to a new platform. I spent some time installing and configuring this server. I returned to it in a few days, and I cannot remember the blessed username and password. It is okay. I set it to something I would not forget, but I did forget. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr................

So now I uninstall and reinstall.... This time I will write it down.

1/2 hour later. Now that I have uninstalled an reinstalled. I realize that the install never asked me for a username and password. Great.

New Company...... Arc-Mind.... Know the Next!

It is official. I started a new company last week. People (mostly relatives) ask me if it is scarry. Mostly... it has been exciting. I feel a bit giddy. eBlox is designing the look and feel of the site. I decided early on that I wanted a professionals designing the look and feel and logo for the site. Part of growing up is knowing your weaknesses. I know that I have no artistic ability. I did not want the site to look like.... Well, you get the idea. eBlox creates the best looking sites. They have one more awards than most design companies I know. And, they are friends.

I'd like to announce to anyone who cares that I am available for work. I am pretty well booked for the next few months, but I am sure I can fit some more work in. :o)

Fr33D0M

As usual Erik beat me to it.

Erik wrote...

Yup, I resigned my full-time day job position.
But rather than taking a new job, I'm going to continue contracting with them on a half-time basis. And just so you readers don't get the wrong impression, don't go write a book thinking you can quit your day job and rest easy on royalties. I'm taking a huge financial hit as well as a fairly sizeable risk. But risks make it all worthwhile.

My last day was last Monday. I gave a one month notice too, and Monday was the last day. I don't have a new job. I did start my own company. I do have a *lot* of contract work. I am working on another book too. And, I am working as a consultant to my last company on a part time basis. How is that for being in sync. with the Hatch!

I worried for a long time. I have had a lot of success at all the companies I have worked for. And... this has been a slow progression going from smaller company to smaller company.... And then finally on my own! It feels good! Really GOOD!

Wired, then Tired: A good coding session ends the week on a positive note.

I worked late Thursday night, and I am tired. I started refactoring this one piece that I have been working on. I kept refactoring it until I could reuse the pieces I needed on a set of similar pieces. It was fun. The more I refactored, the more oppurtunties there were for refactoring. It was nice to have a set of automated tests to make sure I did not break anything as I was making fairly large changes to the system. I came out with a lot of good abstractions. I ended up using a template method base class that dicated the overall flow. Then a set of higher level abstractions for the template method base class to use. The subclasses had factory method to create specific instantiations of the higher level abstraction. I made a lot of progress and the more progress I made the less I felt like going home. By the end of the session, I had got a lot further than I had imagined. It was a blast. I live for coding sessions like that. When I started I had one working piece that implemented a user story, when I was done I had implemented five user stories that had similar work flows.

I love speaking, writing and teaching, but I must admit I enjoy coding the best. Especially when I get in the zone! I wish all days could be like last Thursday.

Read-Rite Corporation goes away... a sad day!

Goodbye old friend! I'll miss you. I got my start at Read-Rite. I did not
learn to program there, but I sure honed my software development skills there. I will always
remember: Dave, Balaji S., Vince R., Rick K., and Peter B.

On or about June 17, 2003, Read-Rite Corporation ceased operations and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division, Case No. 03-43576 RN-7. 



Please send inquiries concerning Read-Rite Corporation to: 

Tevis T. Thompson, Jr. 

Trustee for the Bankruptcy Estate of Read-Rite Corporation 

c/o Jeremy W. Katz, Esq. 

Pinnacle Law Group 

425 California Street, Suite 1800 

San Francisco, CA 94104  

Struts and IBM developerWorks

DeveloperWorks has been covering Struts for a long time and has quite an array of timely material on Struts.

1. Struts, an open-source MVC implementation


2. Struts and Tiles aid component-based development


3. Struttin' your stuff with WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Part 2: Tiles


4. Integrating Struts, Tiles, and JavaServer Faces


5. Architect Struts applications for Web services


6. Go-ForIt Chronicles, Part 19: Struttin' your stuff with WebSphere Studio

I particularly liked the Go-ForIt Chronicle series and the Integrating Struts, Tiles, and JavaServer Faces.
If you are jonesing for some Struts information, IBM developerWorks is the place to get your Struts fix.

Oh yeah... don't forget to get a copy of James and I's new Struts book: Professional Struts.
It is the most up to date Struts book, and it covers the Validator Framework and the Tiles Framework in detail.