Sunday, July 24, 2005
I've been having somefun of late with BEA's WLST tools. I'm using 8.1 so the fun is that there are 2 versions, one online (while connected to a running admin server or instance), and one offline for doing configuration and creation of instances much as you would through the configuration wizard application.
So here's the fun - it's jython based, but the tools start their own interpreter by default, but if you want to, you can create an ini file so you can import WLST as a module into a regular jython script.
But, for whatever reason, the offline version does not work for this...you always have to run the wlst offline class as the interpreter. I am testing a workaround, which since it is not particularly well documented, I am not quite ready to release into the world, but I am hopeful :)
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
First off, faneuil hall has been a great for seeing big media, especially with MSNBC stationed there. They are not all my favorites - I watch CNN much more - but still amusing.
Of that crew, I got to see Joe Scarborough (not that exciting) and Tom Brokaw (very cool).
Tom was actually a couple of blocks away, talking on his cell, and on his own walking around down town and trying to keep a low profile. I almost didn't recognize him with his wind blown hair, but talking into his cell phone was a dead give away - that voice cannot be missed.
More fun than celebrities are the regular folks out to make a statement. One convertible promoting voter registration is rolling around with effigies of the candidates propped up in back. I don't think they'll be getting into the carpool lane, but clever none the less.
Also on the T I stood next to a woman in medical white carting around a massage chair - her plan being to support the conventioneers (Californian in particular) by offering free massage.
A less positive message was the site of 3 billboard sided trucks touring downtown and quincy market. The bill boards were blown up pictures of aborted late term fetuses - the kind of abortion where the fetus is broken up into pieces when removed. The pieces had been positioned to once again resemble a small baby (though not so small on the side of a truck) - which oddly enough is part of the procedure, so that the doctors can be sure the entire fetus was removed.
Look, I'm pro-choice, so take my views how you will, but those billboards are just gross. At the same time, there are very few medical operations I would want to see blown up and displayed on the side of a truck touring the food court where I am eating. I wouldn't want to see a gall bladder or appendix after it had been removed, but that doesn't make me want to ban appendectomies; it just means I'm too squeamish to be a surgeon. There are pictures you could take of the most vital and life saving procedures, including birth itself, that I just do not want to see 10 feet tall and moving down the road while I am eating.
Also amusing is the relatively common presence of supporters for LaRouche.
I have found his pamphlets all over the place.
And finally, my run in with a Nader-phile. Sitting in the Park T station, chatting with a friend, a Nader support tentatively asked if we were registered voters. We explained we were both registered democrats, and would both be voting for Kerry. She happily and helpfully explained we could still sign the petition to get Nader on the MA ballot. In a moment of great restraint, I managed to say only "I would prefer not to", rather than ripping the clipboard from her hands and shredding it and the republican-aiding signatures while she watched. But I would never subvert the democratic process that way - I'm just tempted.
Friday, July 16, 2004
BlueEar.com Message: Albert Einstein's last words (Isa Daudpota): "In essence, the conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semi-religious trap..."
Friday, July 02, 2004
Today’s the fourth of july
Another june has gone by
And when they light up our town I just think
What a waste of gunpowder and sky
I’m certain that I am alone
In harbouring thoughts of our home
It’s one of my faults that I can’t quell my past
I ought to have gotten it gone
-Aimee Mann
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
If you haven't spent some quality time at everything2.com, get your hide over there and soak up the url-light.
I'm not sure what is geekier, that I
The value of a human life (thing)@Everything2.com
* probably using CowboyNeal as an option is actual geekier than the other 4 reasons.
Saturday, June 26, 2004
I've gone a few times, and think I danced better at some of them, but this time was really fun, not leastwise because I ran into my friend Matt who I had neglected seeing in quite a while, and he knew many folks there around our age to whom I had not been introduced before.
So in other words, good tap, good time.
Orthogonality and the DRY Principle: "We've all worked on systems where you make one small change over here, and another problem pops out over there. So you go over there and fix it, but two more problems pop out somewhere else. You constantly push them back?4like that Whack-a-Mole game?4and you just never finish."
Friday, June 25, 2004
Gotta say it though, seems like google is keeping this beta/invite only thing alive as a marketing gimmick - surely it is stable enough to launch by now. That said, it is all too human to feel superior because I have some ice cream, and you don't got none, na na-na na naa-na
My current obsession - I'm working furiously to use it for project management and repository at work. Python makes me happy.
plone.org - Welcome to plone.org: "What is Plone?
Plone is easy to use. The Plone Team includes usability experts who have made Plone easy and attractive for content managers to add, update, and maintain content."
Saturday, March 08, 2003
there is some satisfaction to creating things, especially when you start seeing them work. So although work has taken a huge piece of my time, attention, and energy...well, I won't say it is worth it, but it is less a waste of time when the results crystallize.
Here's a gem for you, homestarrunner.
On another note, had my first math exam on 3/3 since about 1995. Don't have the results yet, but I finished it which is better than most of the class (only one other person was done before time). There was one problem I pretty much had to learn how to solve while in the exam, but hey, that's what's good about open book/note exams - no matter how obscure the question, your real enemy is time.
Anyway, another day of snowboarding today - quite likely the last this year looking at the weeks to come.
Saturday, February 15, 2003
I must say I need a bit of a break, though my intern wife wins in that catehgory, its been 2 weeks of 80+ hours a piece, and no end in sight. Well, actually April is the end in sight, but its awfully hazy at the moment. Haven't even read a page of a book, or turned on my PS2 in weeks, in spite of acquiiring new and interesting volumes and games. ho hum, even as I write this, my other computer beside me is chewing through some code gen and compilation for work, perhaps I should give it some more attention.
Got a b-day present of Mr.Show DVDs from my bro. As a non-HBO watcher, this is but one of the delights I apparently have missed. Perhaps when I retire it'll fill some time to catch up on the Sopranos, 6 feet under, and sex and the city.
On another note, very interesting article about Prof. Peter Singer and more importantly one of his critics is to be found in the NY Times magazine. I don't like Singer answers, I respect his approach, but mostly I am disturbed that I battle with liking the purity of his views, but also disliking that he cannot see the damage that their acceptance could cause in our obviously impure world. Similar to my stance on the death penalty - its a weaker argument against the death penalty when its proponants start with "Assume you know without a doubt the person is guilty..." - which is fine for logical debate, but a poor assumption when translating your conclusions to policy.
Anyway, judge for yourself.
Monday, February 03, 2003
I remember one rare Texas winter when it looked like we would have actual snow. This happened once every few winters, but only rarely enough to cause a "snow day". It only took a bit of snow to cause a panic, I wasn't asking for much. So I remember one fine pre-dawn in the first week of February, waiting by the radio praying to hear school was closed on my birthday. It was a natural - 1st week of Feb is always a misery. My parents even tell me my dad had to shovel the driveway so he could get the car out to drive my mom to the hospital the day I was born. Surely if anyone could get a TX style "white" birthday, it was me. Inevitabily though, in all my 13 years of public school in Texas, it never happened.
Why do I mention (at length) this small, selfish, and childish desire long left unsatisfied and half-forgotten? My b-day is this week, and the entire Tyler Independent School District is closed ... so they can search for toxic debris from the Columbia craft and crew. Damn. Be careful what you wish for: even years later I feel guilty, and I imagine this day off will be a guilty pleasure. A bitter holiday for the kids of East TX, and an impromptu memorial day for fallen heroes.
Anyway, I'm starting to wax all sentimental and crap. National distasters do that to me I guess. I'll stop.
My bro passed on the following apropos stanza:
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps a race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet ---
We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the friendly skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Sunday, February 02, 2003
Perhaps the best thing I ever did is leave my hometown.
Now, a few months ago if you were not familiar with this fine town in East Texas, I would not be shocked. Waco people know. Dallas people think they know. But Tyler?
Then a few weeks ago came the NYTimes front-page series on the iron and steel plant in Tyler, and how callous, greedy and dehumanizing are its practices. For the record, I worked in the Tyler Pipe factory a few days, and I could not believe people worked there any longer than that. And I only worked a few night shifts - and not at all the hardest of the work there. Probably its just another sign of how soft my life has been, but while I was somewhat aghast the people around me seemed pleased pink to be working there - probably because they had no other choice for beating a MickeyD's salary.
Now here comes the Columbia disaster. Look, the commentary has hit the points that first come to my mind as well as yours. It is terrible, and worse that we are desensitized to the dangers of space travel so only disasters transgress into our TV and radio habits. But the personal point I have to make here is that once again the NYTimes had footage from Tyler - this time the debris streaked skies above. And there in the news I see the names of towns and counties I last saw when I would travel by school bus between them for high school debate and academic decathalon competitions. Rusk is not a town that ever makes the news, even in Texas. I mean, they aren't even that good at football. Now there are some faux non-accented american english newscasters on CNN trying to pronounce Palestine as if they were natives. Kinda like the old jokes about the rampant overly 'correct' accents used for all non-english names by the same news readers - except now they are trying to talk like the 60-year-old retired patroleom workers from Green Acres Baptist Church.
It is shocking to see such disasters, but uncanny to see such things against the backdrop of my childhood and adolescence. It's as if they happened in neverland or epcot - don't these places only exist in the recesses of my memory? How did they end up on the front-page and Dan Rather's lips? Such is the power of disaster - space travel is interesting again, and Rusk is famous.
-A
So I made it to my first class (5 minutes late, but that is what work and a med emergency on the T will do for ya).
The professor (freedman) is fine; knows his stuff, seems to care, and teaches the same class during the day - so it is not some night school hack pressed into service. This is a real, wizened, tenured, full professor. How do you like that?
And not to be exceedingly arrogant, but compared with the folks sitting around me I felt like I will have no trouble with this class. Now, maybe not everyone has this pathology of wondering if they are in tyhe top of their class, but old habits die hard, and being back at a 1 piece chair/desk in a drop ceiling aquare tiled classroom has me reverting not back to college, but high school attitudes.
I came in late, having missed the first class, not having done the homework (as It didn't know what it was - I had called the prof to find out what I had missed, but he had not actually told me the homework assignment). Given these relative handicaps, I still ended up picking up on what we were doing enough that by the break my neighbors were asking me for help. Granted, the young lady to my left simply needed help reading what passes for writing that our prof does no the blackboard, but still, as someone who doesn't need to write backwards to keep my notes private, I find I have an edge here. It is worth mentioning that the prof's writing is great when he writes equations and numbers, no matter the complexity or rapidity, but when he tries to write an english sentance, make sure you listen to what he is saying while he writes so you will have some crib to work from in deciphering. The fellow to my left, who noticed me on the T coming in late together from our jobs downtown, did actually comment on needing help with inductive proofs, but I am not such an egg that I offered to help, especially as the prof was doing just that 4 feet away. It's probably not fair to say that this guy noticed me on the T, really what he noticed was my new fly sony clie nx70c pda. Probably similar to the staring I did when I first saw one in person in an intern's hand. First I lusted, then I resented him affording one, then I plotted to be casually nice to him to I could play with it. Finally, to make the seperation easier, I told myself it wasn't worth it, which was convincing just long enough to get me to pay attention to something else. But I digress.
I am seriously enjoying the work. It is light, and generally interesting - discreet math is nice because everything can be related to some real life situation. I can't count the number of times I have found myself putting books in order on a shelf, or how often I have pulled colored marbles out of a bag. Course if I could count those things, I wouldn't be taking this class. But seriously, I get the relevance to programming, I am not annoyed by having to take this pre req.
One of the guys that works next to me doing GUI programming is a Math Phd. I mentioned to him one of the problems classified under 'later' by my prof when he presented it without solution. The next morning, this guy could hardly say hello before telling me the problem had bothered him so much the night before he had sat down and solved it. I guess these things become compulsive if you feed the addiction all the way to a doctorate.
On another note, I need to go snowboarding. It was too much fun last year to let work and general life eclipse such a perfect escape from this dreary season.
Perhaps it is also that my birthday is next week, and as I spent this weekend cleaning, taking out trash, washing dishes, cooking, doing homework, and watching CNN (more on that), I am feeling a bit like an adult, and I don't like it.
Maybe a freezing cold bike ride will work that out of my system. And I could pick up a few groceries.
-A
Friday, January 10, 2003
I didn't realize you were back in school! Is this your first semester? And CS is the subject? I started and second MA program last fall, and am taking 2 classes this spring *crossing my fingers*. Just slightly less applicable than yours, it's in Critical and Creative Thinking (more on my blog soon). Was thinking of doing a CS program but there are just too many pre-req's, since I don't have any formal comp training...hoping to slip a programming course or two in soon...
Later :)