return;

Personally I think that leaving a return statement at the end of a method whether you need one or not lets everyone know you really did mean to end the method there.

 /**
  * assign an interview to a person
  * 
  * @param personId
  * @param interviewName
  */
 @Oneway
 @WebMethod(operationName="assign")
 public void assign(
   @WebParam(name = "personId") String personId, 
   @WebParam(name = "interviewName") String interviewName
 ){
  InterviewEngine.assign(em, personId, interviewName);
  return;
 }

In other words, "Yes kids, I did mean to return there, no I didn't nod off and forget to finish the method."

A big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff

Doctor Who is just great. I wish I got BBC over here.

The Technology Lifestyle

Being an Information Technology worker of any kind is just as much about lifestyle as it is about technology. Any other discipline gets to go home at night and just relax. If doctors and lawyers go golfing but what do they carry with them on the golf course? Blackberries.

If you are an IT worker on the golf course with a Blackberry you haven't escaped your technology at all have you? There it is, in your car, on your hip, on the TV and in your PC. The modern world is so dependent on IT technology we don't even notice it anymore.

But, the IT worker does see the technology embedded in every part of our lives. It is always there. Even camping doesn't afford a break from it. So is it no surprise that the most successful IT people are a little obsessive?

That obsessive tendency is a necessary component of the successful IT person because technology is always changing and it is everywhere. It it almost never works right.

We're at the end of the Universe...

... at the edge of knowledge itself and your busy... blogging!

Velocity Engine

I've been working with Velocity in Portlets and DWR (version 2) and found that I had to write my own Velocity utils to allow the DWR and generic Portlets to share context. I know there are velocity portlet classes our there but they are usually for a specific system of portals. Personally, I'm trying to write velocity portlets that can load on Liferay, JBoss, or any other Portal system.

As I was searching around at the start of the project I found that there were no portlet classes for velocity based portlets that were written generically to plug into any portal system. I ended up writing a short Velocity utility class to glue the two contexts together.

The new MVC is DSP

In many of my current projects MVC can be broken into Database, Web Service, and Web Page. I call this a DSP application. The Service can be turned to work with a cell phone applet later. I suspect this is the logic behind no API for the iPhone.

Star Wars Fans

In a room full of Star Wars fans there is always one Jar-Jar. If you can't see the Jar-Jar then you're it.