Head First Servlets & JSP by Basham, Sierra & Bates. (HeiFer'S Joe). Chapter Five Review.

Now I'm toward the middle of reviewing Chapter Five, "Attributes and Listeners", about to look at a list of the Eight Listener Types.

I gotta admit I'm rather enamored with Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, so I like to think about listeners from that perspective. I've even printed an MVC diagram as a kind of mental map for these, to decide, where would each kind of listener should go.

Because this is the deal with listeners within MVC: View listens to model changes, and Controller listens to the view's user gestures. But Model doesn't listen to anybody or have a handle on anything outside of itself; it's completely self-contained. Model is what the application would be if it didn't have any user interface.

My sense has been, according to the book, generally servlets are part of the controller and JSP's are part of the view. See Chapter 3, diagram on page 88. Attributes? Usually part of the model, I would think.. But if an attribute were a database connection, that makes it part of the controller's plumbing.

But from looking at these listeners, they don't seem to fit nicely into MVC. For example the servletContextAtributeListener. If context attribute were part of the model, the listener should be view. So, some JSP could be notified maybe. Context attributes wouldn't be part of the view would they? And who listens to the controller? Nobody. Well maybe this just goes to show, there are other places for listeners, outside of MVC. Or maybe I can say it's part of the controller, listening to other parts of the controller...

Reading: Writing Effective Use Cases, by Alistair Cockburn

Need to re-evaluate, re-estimate a project at work. So I'm hoping this book will help, and I've downloaded a notes application to support my plan, the free Requirements Management Database from OpenNTF.org; apparently the application was created by Dave Parillo of Rite Solutions, and now I intend to use the application as I go through the book. Hopefully I can use the application at work --Will it work in ND 6.5? Anyway here goes.

From Chapter 1: Introduction

"...are fundamentally a text form, although they can written using flow charts, sequence charts, Petri nets, or programming languages..." I was just curious about the whole Petri net concept.

I admire this work but.. this is going to put me to sleep. Of course, most tech books have the same effect.. Maybe I'm spoiled by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates. Oh and I don't think I'm going to have time or energy to do the exercises.

Jaye started teaching at College of Wooster

Beginning and Advanced French.
(retro-posted)

Dave started new job in central OH

I'm very happy; it's exactly my line - Lotus Notes/Domino/Web/Java software development. It's near Marysville which is commuting distance, about 45 minutes from our new residence: Columbus, OH.

(retro-posted in late 2007)

A toast to my father and his new bride.

This weekend Dave Alkire Senior and Judy Lares were wed. I was the best man, so I had to give a little speech. Here's what I came up with.

A very long time ago, in the active imaginations of some Mediterraneans, there were these three women: One very young -almost only a child, one grown up, and one, shall we say, very mature. Three women generations apart in age, and yet - sisters. If they were here, they would be in a cheerful good mood; you can imagine them sitting outside on a hill, on a bright warm sunny day, but they're busy. As always they continue with their tasks, each what they're best at: One of them spinning, as if with wool, one of them measuring, the other, clipping. All of them conspiring.

Hold that image in your mind for a moment, please.

When you're single and looking for a way to spend some time on a weekend, you need to find some clean fun, maybe get a little exercise, a little light chatter. Certainly it's possible to find a nice activity in this town. You could grab a friend and take a bicycle ride, go play handball someplace, or go bowling, or if the weather's bad, just stroll a few laps around the mall, or maybe go to a ballroom dance class.

The point is, it's just a little something to do - it'll boost your spirits a bit, but otherwise it will certainly be something of absolutely no consequence to the rest of your life.

So that's what Judy decided to do for that weekend; nothing terribly important.

And yet, somehow that small decision has set off a chain of events, leading inexorably to this very moment.

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos are those three women, the ancient Greeks would say: Spinning, measuring, clipping, and for us, engaging in a happy conspiracy, perhaps allowing us to take their product and weave our own events.

Look at Dave and Judy -- their characters -- they attractively match: Judy is astonishingly kind, hard-working, cheerful and open-minded. My father Dave shares all of those qualities. And there's a little something else too, some other unnamed attribute that they share, that draws these two inevitably together.

It's the three fates we can thank, or it's divine will, or it's a more earthy poetic, a combination of natural course and the choices made by Judy and Dave.

At any case, I think there could have been no other outcome; your presence is my evidence, and this is a good thing: A union for two, a reunion for many; for these I thank you, Judy and Dave. A toast!

Light Bulb Change Request System

Using ProcessIt^TM, my plan is to create a system that automates the organizational steps required to replace the evacuated glass globes containing metal filaments which are heated by electrical resistance to produce light.

Any associate: Define the business need for the new light bulb, notify manager with justification.

Manager: Set up exploratory team to investigate possible options.

Team: meet repeatedly to elaborate on the vision through a series of requirements workshops. Bulb size & shape, strength of illumination, wattage and other details should all be decided within these meetings..

Team facilitator: Send the draft requirements to the provisioning group for an estimate.

Provisioning group: send estimate back to team facilitator.

Facilitator: send estimate and justification to the budget control committee.

Budget control committee: approve, put off or reject the funding.

Put off? Project on hold until beginning of next budget cycle.

Rejection: declined, project closed.

Approve? Notification is sent to facilitator.

Facilitator: Send funding, plan, and deadline to provisioning group.

Provisioning group: Stamp the project "in production", but usually back-date the deployment date since they changed the light bulb several months ago when the need was first brought to their attention, before the original manager had even been notified.

I really thought that the job was mine.

After all, I had been told that I was hired. Guy tells me I'm in, so I think, "hey, I'm in!" Silly me. Turns out, they found someone local, with common references or something.

This feels horrible.

Plan A still not dead, but not looking so good, either.

No call yet today, yet. Left a message. At this point I'm concerned. If plan A comes through I'll probably take it, but now things are looking less certain. Now I'm on the lookout for plan B.
Working on the house today.

New Job Not Dead Yet

Seems that Friday was just a really chaotic day for people who were supposed to do the arrangements. Some kind of system problem, and the account manager involved in working it out, and the CIO not available to give his signature? I really wonder what exactly was going on. The guy tried to call me on my cell at around 7:30, but I don't get a good signal here at home; it never rang and I didn't notice the voice mail until two hours later.

The message was that in effect, they'll work it out on Monday. But I just wonder if they really will? And if this really does go through, is this the way things normally go for them? Which circle of hell are they dragging me into?

They don't probably often deal with families that operate like ours. Thanks to Jaye, as long as we can rely on the words of the people we deal with --and we almost always can-- we move like lightning. No futzing around waiting for anyone. Our intent was to sell the house, buy and move into a new one within the space of three weeks. One move, bam-bam. And I think we might be able to do it, as long as people can hold up their parts of our dealings.

But as things turned out, I count at least 15 people whose weekend plans were disrupted or at least altered a bit: At least 7 homeowners in Columbus, one buyers agent, a sellers agent, Jaye's parents, and the four of us would-be movers. If I had the offer letter in hand we would've done a Columbus road trip you see.

So it seems I'll have the new job.

Which is unbelievably great, really. Of course the paperwork isn't done yet, and I can't actually give my two-week notice until I see something in writing. This part may take all week, so I have to keep playing my part, attending these pointless salesLogix-related meetings. Yep even the meeting where the CEO attends, this Thursday or Friday, that one will be pointless too, for me.
Once I give notice maybe for the last couple weeks I can drop the slx stuff and do some things that actually need to be done. Maybe I can talk some sense into a couple of management types, get them to put our group where it belongs: the software development division..

Not happy with the colors here.

Would prefer the nice green I see in my shirt.
Also the "previous posts" URLs don't work right; they don't include the blog directory. Why?
Not enough time to play, though.
Yeah this is mainly just a test..

CSS guide boring

Yeah it's definitive, this book on my reading list, _Cascading Style Sheets, a Definitive Guide_ by Eric Meyers. .. I'm certainly learning a great deal about selectors, attributes, font faces and padding.. And yeah there are witty little bits, interesting text for the examples.. I'm not saying it's badly written, it's just that I'm not enjoying it. Maybe it's the inevitable result of the book's subject matter mixed with the promise of definitiveness, but, let's just say I'm looking forward to the end of it (sigh).

Webmaster wanna-be?

Answering general broadcasted plea from a PA-Godless leader, I'm working on the organization's web site. Lots of learning to do, lots of work, not much time for blogging.

To Mr Newdow and my atheist buddies:

Link posted on a nonbeliever's forum, to KAIT in Jonesboro, AR : Atheist to sue over 'In God We Trust' on money

My response.. so at last we come to this:

"..he'll ask a federal court to order removal of the national motto "In God We Trust" from U-S coins and currency."

What I'm thinking is, whether or not we like the "under God" or "In God We Trust" phrases, they're part of our history. They make us nonbelievers a little uncomfortable, but so what, it's nothing. Again Mr Newdow trying to use litigious means to forcibly take something away from American culture.

I'm beginning to have strong doubts about this strategy. It's very negative, it pisses people off; I don't think anything good is going to come of it. If the courts decide that the slogan must be removed from our currency, think of what it'll be like for us: We'll be absolutely hated.

If we're to be successful in the long term, somehow, we as a group need to be a positive force - we need to be some kind of asset to our communities; we need to contribute something, not take something away.

How much stress do you have..

..on a scale from 1 to 10? The health-risk assessor asked me that question as part of a very short interview, to be enrolled in the "get healthy" program. Basically for employees, it's a way to avoid additional health insurance fees. I haven't any way to measure my stress level, to put a number on it, but who isn't stressed? So I said 5.
Today (11/16) I worked with a Java developer a little, offering some advice and encouragement for using the Domino Java API. I hope he goes for it; maybe once these guys become more acquainted with Notes technology, they'll look at it with higher regard.

Good sea-faring fiction

Just now turned the last page in The Yellow Admiral, by Patrick O'Brian. Number 18 in the epic series, it is another prodigious satisfying read, where we follow the brave, cheerful, resourceful Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey and his ship's surgeon, physician, naturalist, spy, and particular friend Steven Maturin. Story-arch setting is early nineteenth century naval warfare between Britain and France, but in the case of this episode, once more a peace threatens to end our hero's career. Yeah war is horrible but if it's the only thing you know how to do, I suppose really you don't want it to end.

There Be Words!

Yesterday as he played on the stairs with Mommy and Grandma, Ian yelled "Dow! Dow!".. And a little later I heard him say "Ut!" once. I'm deeply afraid of him being on the stairs; I'm having nightmares about him falling - but the sound of him using words to get his way cheered me greatly. We had another happy moment later in the afternoon when we turned on the lamp next to his diaper-changing table and he looked at it, grinned and said "Light!" and then another this morning, when, as we were getting out of the car, he pointed at our neighbor's small poplar and declared "Tee!". Yipee!

Continuing with the get-a-job at home theme, yesterday I posted my resume to Dice and applied to Ajilon using not-very-good HTML, partly generated by openOffice, but then hand-fixed to get rid of the images --they're too awkward in that format-- and in order to apply to TEK Systems, also posted to thingamajob in a text format. Also generated a PDF version from openOffice. And I updated my "Edited for Content" with those, and a link to this blog, using a free ftp extension I found for Firefox, called FireFTP. Very cool tool.

And on to a completely different topic, here's a cozy nighttime scene.. Jaye's really into this knitting-and-spinning thing now --noble, practical crafts that come naturally to her intelligent hands-- She made a very nice hat for me!

Icky Surprise

Yesterday, after coming home from Subway we set Ian down for a few moments so we could unwrap our food and proceed with dinner. Of course he wasn't going to simply stay put- he went immediately to the next room to play with the cat. That other room was dark but visible, we could see him and Nik moving around vaguely.. We weren't too worried.

After a few minutes of this Ian came toddling back into the living room, right toward me with a rather determined scowl on his face, and as he came closer I could see he had a dark, unfamiliar form in his fist. Dark grey. Furry? Has a tail?!

Ian had a firm grip on a dead mouse! I grabbed the baby's wrist and shook his arm - I think he could see a sense of urgency in my face and body language - and he dropped it. I picked up Ian and rushed him to the bathroom, scrubbed his hands while Jaye took care of the carcass..

So Nik and Ian served as pest exterminators that day - cat the killer, toddler on disposal. I just hope the boy didn't do the usual thing he does with found objects: Chew.

Want a steady employee? Provide a steady job!

It turns out that the assignment at the global manufacturer would only be temporary - not as in probationary period, rather like they would want me to mentor their own present staff on how to do the work, then once they're trained, they'd want me to go away. There's no way I can go for that. (sigh)

Palm Ouickcheck spell test

Not working here.. hmm.. Not at all.. Okay that's better. Had to activate it in X-Master, which is some kind of VM. This is on a Visor Neo, Palm OS 3.5.2. The spellchecker does slow things down a bit, but for this context, short notes, it's okay. Better than the embarrassment of bad spelling. Re-sent my resume.. Ok now performance is beginning to lag..hmm..