I am reading. Reading a lot. Some of this reading is fun, some of it is not. Some is hard to read and a bit boring. Some of this stuff gives dry and boring a bad name, but it makes me stronger. I will be spending the next few months reading a lot of JSRs and specs that define and document the various Java stacks that drive a lot of enterprises.
For the morbidly curious, here are the ones that I will be reading (listed in no particular order).
JMS 1.1
JCA 1.5
JAAS
JSR52 JSTL 1.2
JSR67 SAAJ 1.3
JSR93 JAXR 1.0
JSR101 JAX-RPC 1.1
JSR109 Web Services 1.2
JSR154 Servlet 2.5
JSR220 EJB3
JSR222 JAXB 2.0
JSR224 JAX-WS 2.0
JSR244 Java EE 5
JSR245 JSP 2.1
JSR252 JSF 1.2
That is close to 5,000 pages. This blog will function as a diary as well as a place to document the things that surprise me or things that I find memorable.
Wish me luck, I will need it. I should do a fund raiser. Who want's to sponsor me per page? If I could get 10,000 to sponsor me for 1 cent a page, that would be a nice little fund... :)
To me, the world spends way too much time dancing, singing and frittering away a lot of energy on things that profit (and not in monetary terms) very little. Redeem the time. Of course I am a cold hearted conservative, but what does that matter? Someone sent a link for a video to me and I must say that the first 5 seconds consisted of me groaning, but then something happened... An almost Grinch-like transformation occurred and I got kind of, well, emotional.
This video made me feel good and gave me a respite, however brief, that the world in general is not as hell bent as I usually am prone to believe.
I clicked, I watched, I almost cried. (For a real tear treat, watch it in HD and full screen mode)
And then things returned to normal. What the hell was I thinking? Dancing in the streets? Leapin' Lizards!
My family has given me the joy of going along with my gaming habit. My wife and three of my kids are the adventurers (or rather, were) and I am the cold hearted DM. We have been playing from the 3.5 basic set. It is okay for the price (it was a good deal from someone on Amazon) but I am still kind of getting used to some the of the 3.x things. I have not DM'd a lot but as this was the first time for my family, I decided to really help them along with advice and tips, you know, to get the game down and get a rhythm going.
It was going along rather nicely, a litte co-operative play had kept them alive despite a botched encounter with a glyph of warding trap and a very close saving throw against some poisonous blue spores. This was the third session. Their characters were picking up loot and some XP. All was going well, until the dragon.
I had warned them that an encounter with a dragon, even a small, young dragon would be deadly, especially so for first level characters. They ignored me. The mountain of gold coins he was sleeping on was just too intoxicating. They made the rolls and got the drop on the sleeping worm. My daughter (after rolling the best initiative) decides to do what seems best to her in this incredibly deadly situation, where she has a free shot on the serpent, NOTHING! The beast is asleep! Do something! Aw well, she lived through the first round. Baby steps. I was suppose to have the dragon do an acid attack but I decided to opt for a few biting attacks at first, after all, he was still waking up! Finally after seeing their numerous (all 11 of them) hit points vanish, they do the smart thing and run. I was relieved! Running is smart, especially with a dragon on the other side of the equation. That stroke of brilliance lasted all of two rounds and they went back for some strange reason...right after I applauded their smart move in being conservative with their lives. I guess they just needed some change (it is going around you know). I decided that the dragon was a little miffed by now. They had failed to land a single blow but the dragon at this point, well, he was probably trying to get back to that recurring dream he has about Oprah and the rusted out 57 Chevy and so I launched his full attack. Total party wipeout after one shot. Who saw that one coming?
There is hope. My son cried when his beloved cleric bit the dust. He has true gaming blood in him after all. He has recovered and we are rolling up a barbarian half-orc for our next adventure, a little trip into the realm of the Rat King. Maybe next time he'll run from the dragon, even if it is just a little one.
I just tried out my new shaving cream, Taylor of Old Bond Street Rose Shaving Cream and I gotta say that it was s a truly wonderful experience. This was my first time using a shaving cream and not a soap and it certainly delivered. Great fragrance, rich rich lather. The only problem I had is that I used a little too much and I got a lot more lather than I needed and my hands and shirt were covered in this great rose smelling cream lather. I was thinking that my brush was to blame for the lack of lather I thought I should be getting from my soap but this cream worked up so easily, I might have to revisit my soap lather strategy.
I just found Red's Classic Barber Shop in Indianapolis. It looks very cool. I will have to check it out. They also sell shaving accessories and supplies! They are a bit pricey but oh the cool factor is about an 11 on a 1-10 scale.
Since I started shaving as a young man, I have always looked for convenient reasons to not shave. I grew beards (4 times) , I shaved at strategic times during the week to minimize my rendezvous with the razor. I have them whiskers that are not the TV kind so they do not all just fly off at the sight of an electric razor. Shaving with a non electric razor has pretty much been it for most of my life. Occasionally I would get an electric razor as a gift (perhaps due to my lack of wet shaving?) and try it yet once again with the same results: the first 3 shaves would be alright and then my whiskers that initially fled the whirling blades would now be long enough to get caught in the electric beast and shortly thereafter I would be in a fetal position on the floor whimpering and reaching for bandages.
So I said all that to say that don't really like shaving. That is, until now. You see, I just returned from a vacation where I was hanging out in a drugstore and I noticed some shaving soap. Hmm, I didn't even realize that they still made that! Well, if they did, then I would need a brush because that is what is used in the westerns. But they also use them wicked (and extremely cool) looking straight razors too with that strap that they go to town on with the razor. Those razors look dangerous, at least that is what my neck said, so I opted to wimp out and take a look at the double edged safety razor. After a few minutes on Amazon, I realized that they were a little more expensive than their plastic cousins. At least the initial price is. If you pay $30 for a razor that will last you years, that is cheaper than the Gillette Sensor's that I usually use. The problem with them is that I hate buying them so I want to make those razor heads last as long as possible which fits in nicely with my aversion to shaving in the first place. This of course is a vicious circle as making those little rascals live a loooooong life meant pain, but not the kind I felt in my wallet.
Assuming that I will live till I am 70 (which is a pretty BIG assumption), I figure that I am not even close to half of my shaving career. I might as well get a grip on this situation and accept and embrace my fate. So suggesting that my wife let me do my own birthday shopping, I bought a Merkur razor with some blades, a shaving mug, and some Clubman Bay Rum aftershave. Cool! Now I just needed a brush. Those were also a little more expensive than I was hoping for. Luckily, Wal-Mart had a brush (boar hair supposedly) that was less than 5 bucks! Armed with my new toys, it was time to do some cutting.
The root problem I ran into is that I had no idea what I was doing! Not so easily put off, I remembered all those old TV programs I had watched and I was doing things that was pretty close to what I remembered. While my actions seemed almost spot on, the results were not. I wasn't sure how to do the whole cup+brush+soap=lather thing. I tried my best and got a lather but it was not really up to Paul Drake standards. It must be my soap! A reviewer on Amazon said that my soap didn't lather. This must be it, so time to jump ship and side with Colonel Conk. Armed with the Almond soap that came with my mug, I attacked that as well. Same problem. What I did notice is that I could get a lather (from both soaps) but it wasn't what I was hoping for (or what was happening in the videos below). Oh well, when life gives you lemons... I applied the lather I could produce with my bargain brush and set to shaving. Not too bad! I was apprehensive about the razor but in the end, I had only a few little cuts that I was happy to have and my shave was okay. Not the baby's butt kind of shave, but that will come.
A few days later, I noticed that I was really looking forward to shaving! In fact, I even shaved twice in one day. That is progress. Unfortunately, my thirst for doing things the correct way led to my discovery of some great shaving videos on youtube. After watching some of these, I realized that I wasn't too far off the mark, but I was correct about my poor lather. I intuitively shaved with the razor correctly, but the lather was still an issue. After seeing the correct way, it was apparent that my technique (don't forget it) was to blame. Returning to my new favorite place in the house (my little half bathroom) it was time to lather up. After a few times of not really getting it right, I reviewed the new sacred videos on lathering and realized that my bargain brush really stinks! Not only does it not lather very well, or hold water very well, it really tears up my face. When I get my newly ordered badger brush, I will the cheap brush to clean my BBQ grill or remove wallpaper from the upstairs.
My spirits are still high and I am not too bummed out about the cheap brush. I am madly in love with the aftershave. It smells too good. I might have to add it to our yearly fruitcake come November! Who knew that aftershave could smell that good?
I want to give some props to mantic59 for his terrific videos. I wish I had seen them earlier, although, I do use an aftershave with Alcohol in it which he advises against.
In order, these are the ones that you should watch if interested in learning more about this adventure. He nails it with the intro to the first installment.
WetShaving #1
WetShaving #2
WetShaving #3
Techniques #1
Techniques #2
Preparing For A Shave
Shaving Brush Basics (A MUST WATCH!)
Friday, June 20, 2008
Well, this is my first entry in my first Blog. I have kind of resisted this as I felt I had very little reason to share my opinions... Well guess what? I still feel that way. Instead, I plan to use this Blog as more of a personal forum for various things that I am interested in, bothered by, puzzled by, or anything else that I feel like submitting to the world. Please feel free to respond as this is the main reason that I am doing this.
