One score

Tuesday, August 29. 2006
20 years.

Today marks Eileen and my 20th wedding anniversary. It seems like only yesterday that we were married.

Cheers!

(Note: I've never looked better than in the above picture; but Eileen is more beautiful today than ever)

Making it this far is certainly an accomplishment, but the credit doesn't rest just with us. After all, let's be honest, sometimes through no one's fault at all, and despite the best intentions and efforts, sometimes a marriage just doesn't work out. Yeah, we've worked hard on keeping it healthy and loving and alive, but we also know that we've very lucky and blessed as well. There has been good times, and not-so-good ones, but through it it, we've hung onto each other. It's a union that has resulted in a lot of joy, and 3 very fantastic sons.

Life is full of choices, and this one was the best one I ever made.
Posted by Jim Jagielski in Personal at 10:51

Robert Hoffman

Friday, August 25. 2006
It seems that Robert Hoffman, one of the 3 founders of the National Lampoon passed away. For those who only know of the National Lampoon via movies, mainly Animal House, the real genius was in the magazine. I still have several dozens of old, vintage NL mags tucked away in storage, but I keep the National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody on my office bookshelf. Do yourself a favor and try to grab a few off eBay.

What's even sadder is that the official National Lampoon website has not even a single word about it. Unforgivable.

PS: Yes, co-founder Doug Kenney was "Stork" in Animal House.
Posted by Jim Jagielski in Personal at 14:54

And then there were just 8

Friday, August 25. 2006
Poor Pluto. Well, I guess dwarf planet isn't so bad.
Posted by Jim Jagielski in Junk Drawer at 10:41

Gotta Love Apache

Thursday, August 24. 2006
Often times I am pleased and proud on how well Apache HTTP Server (OK, OK, "Apache") works and in how many different types of environments it is being used. As much as web servers are commodities and ubiquitous, people forget how they are core parts of the infrastructure.

Consider the two extremes: LAMP type environments where Apache is the web infrastructure, and others where Apache is the conductor. For example, I'm working with a client now (Covalent hat on) that uses Apache pretty much as an intelligent HTTP router. The web server itself does very little web serving, instead directing traffic to either image store servers or backend Weblogic servers. Yet as "simple" as this appears, the actual implementation is complex, with lots of interactions and places where you can get caught up, or mess up performance. But even so, Apache itself provides the fine control and capability that makes it all possible.

What is so cool is how Apache masterfully handles both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, there might be other web servers that are designed for a specific use-cases, but they simply blow chunks when used in other applications. Apache is able to reach 95-98% of what those "special purpose" web servers are supposed to do, yet it fills all the nooks and crannies as well. Having something as general purpose as Apache yet able to also do the jobs of more focused servers is really neat. And it makes life easier for architects and admins.

Gotta love it.

PS: Happy Birthday to my Dad! He's 75 today.
Posted by Jim Jagielski in ASF at 11:11

Serendipity Upgrade

Monday, August 21. 2006
While I was updating PHP to 4.4.4, I went ahead and upgraded Serendipity to 1.0.1 as well...
Posted by Jim Jagielski in Personal at 15:39

Time flies

Friday, August 18. 2006
Today is my youngest son's birthday. Andrew turns 8 years old today.

8.

It's hard because both Eileen and I know that before too long, he's going to be "too old" to want to kiss us goodnight, won't want to sit next to us when we're all watching TV together, won't think it's "neat" to be able to help us cook, things like that. All the stuff you take for granted when they're young. And all the stuff that they want to do, not the stuff you have to ask them to do. My 2 other sons are 14 and 17, so they've long ago past that point. They're (young) men, not "kids" or "boys". I'm proud of how they are turning out, but I also know that they are closer and closer to branching out on their own.

All of which makes this phase with your youngest harder than it is with your other children. You see the change, you feel it, but it's not over yet... Your role as parent for that particular child has changed, but not your role in general. Once your youngest reaches that point, however, that whole "kid" phase of being a parent is over. And you know it.

It feels kind of good, but in a sad way. That's more common in life than I would have expected.
Posted by Jim Jagielski in Personal at 10:41

Slow down and speed up

Tuesday, August 15. 2006
Last week we went away for a week's vacation at our usual spot: the Outer Banks, NC. This year we stayed a bit more northern than we usually do, renting a place in Corolla instead of Ocean Sands. It's amazing to see how much it's been built up over the last 16+ years since we first starting vacationing there. It used to be a nice little open secret; now you can't drive I-95 without seeing tons of OBX stickers on cars. Still, it's no where near as crowded as Ocean City, MD, so it's still worth the drive.

The weather held out nicely for us, so we had good beach time. The waves were simply OK, but I did manage to get some good body surfing in as well. The rest of the time was spent relaxing and reading, and making a serious effort to avoid opening up the laptop, an effort which I failed at a few times. As usual, there was a nice selection of residential open wireless setups to choose from, so I "borrowed" the one with the best signal and did some minor Email checks. But I stayed on no longer than 15 minutes, closed my iBook and went back to vacation-mode.

Speaking of iBooks, I've now determined that instead of getting an upgrade to my existing dual G4 desktop system, I'm going to go ahead and get a Quad G5, as soon as I can find some good pricing. I had hoped that Apple's announcement of the MacPro would result in some price reductions on the G5s. No luck so far...
Posted by Jim Jagielski in Personal at 13:30

Python or Ruby, my 2c

Wednesday, August 2. 2006
Sam Ruby's post on Python-vs-Ruby was interesting because it pretty much matches my experience as well. The reason I stuck with Perl was that, well, there were some Perl idioms that Python lacked that I just liked too darn much to do away with (eg: v. simple regex usage). When I really started learning and using Ruby, it allowed me to "give up" Perl, and yet enjoy a lot of the cool stuff that Python allowed as well. I also agree that, in general, Python has a wider and deeper wealth of libraries that Ruby does, currently, making it easier to use for more involved applications. When the application is more self-contained (a super script as it were), then Ruby is my 1st choice.
Posted by Jim Jagielski in Programming at 13:19
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