Expecting Rain

I received an invite to upgrade my Blogger account today. I like the new features. I particularly like the labels that have been added. The only problem seems to be something with the layout doesn't look correct. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems to change fonts part way through my posts. I'll continue to look into it and report anything useful I find.

Selecting a programming language is quite a process with lasting effects. Here where I work, we currently use Java. I enjoy it despite some of the bad press it is getting lately. It has great tools, great support, and great documentation. I do however, wish I was programming in something different -- Ruby. Unfortunately, we are so invested in our infrastructure and training that it becomes quite a task to change.

We have a few Ruby evangelists here including myself and we are making a bit of noise. We are about to do a rewrite of a highly used but simple web app here in the next couple months, our trouble ticket program. We will be doing it as a proof of concept as well as the needed upgrade it will be. Hopefully, everything will go very smoothly and we'll be well on our way to adopting a new standard language for a our department.

Go Prototype! As quoted by Ajaxian.com:

The results of our second annual Ajaxian.com survey, prepared by Richard Monson-Hafael from the Burton Group, are in. And the winner is… Prototype, the most popular Ajax framework, by a considerable margin: 43% of you use it.

The company I work for is one of those that use Prototype. Our Ajax platform came in second - Java. While I'm very passionate and dedicated to our framework, I would change our platform to Ruby if we could, but at this time switching costs are much too high.

Note: I agree with the first comment listed on this article, I do not believe Prototype to be a framework but rather some utility classes/functions, but that is beside the point right now.

Source: Ajaxian - Ajaxian.com 2006 Survey Results

What can you say? Happy Birthday Google! It is amazing the presence you have gain in 8 short years!

Official Google Blog: How long is 8 years in Internet time?

The servers were saved. While we did have a water leak, no major damage occurred, the water was diverted and no hardware will need to be replaced. However, I do hope that they redesign the routing of pipes above that room.

I kid you not, I am currently expecting rain. My moniker Expecting.Rain has nothing to do with rain, but rather a Bob Dylan song I'm quite fond of... Desolation Row. I think it is a very funny song. However, right now I'm literally expecting rain. We currently have an air conditioning problem above our server room causing a water leak immediately over a rack of servers. Talk about horrible design! Our Network Admin seems to think it is funny. Anyway, I need to go take my shift with the umbrella.

As one may have concluded from my blog, I use Firefox and make use of the extensions that are available. Of all my extensions, my favorite is FireBug by Joe Hewitt which can be found here.

According to Joe Hewitt's site:

FireBug lets you explore the far corners of the DOM by keyboard or mouse. All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience, including a debugger, error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors.

According to me, FireBug is a Firefox extension to allow you to debug your own web applications by way of inspecting your DOM, your JavaScript, etc. It also allows you to understand and learn from others by inspecting their websites.

Some of my favorite features are DOM inspection, the JavaScript command prompt, and the ability it give you to monitor XMLHttpRequests a page may be calling. It's pretty useful, check it out!

Yahoo! has just release a Developer Center for Ruby development. While I mainly do my development in Java, I prefer Ruby. I really enjoy it as a language, not just the benefits the Rails framework provides.

This is pretty exciting to me.

Anyway, the Yahoo! Developer Network - Ruby Developer Center can be found here.

FoxyMeter :: Mozilla Add-ons :: Add Features to Mozilla Software

It is quite scary how many pages I "surf" each day. While not particularly useful, it is a very amusing extension.

I'm a Software Engineer. It is what I do, it is what I enjoy. I particularly like the initial phases of projects when you aren't developing software as much as determining how to implement the task at hand and creating prototypes.

Naturally, I'm fascinated with new ideas and technologies. Having this inclination, I've spent a significant amount of time gaining from what others have written and learned. Unfortunately I've not reciprocated by passing on what I've learned to others. I hope to use this blog to fix that. In this blog I'll link to various articles/posts I find interesting, occasionally expressing my opinion on the matter, but not always. As well, as I put ideas together, I'll post about them to get feedback from others and to log the process I'm going through.