Thanksgiving

I think it was my friend David that pointed me to a blog called slacktivist, but I don’t remember when or how. Fred Clark, the author of that blog, recently attended the memorial service for his friend, Dwight Ozard, who passed away on November 14 and posted an excerpt from the program. I thought the last paragraph might read better as a directive and would be an apt post for this Thanksgiving weekend:

Suck the marrow out of the bones of life, live deeply and without reservation, hesitation or fear. Breathe deep the air of spring and the breath of God, savor the depths of flavors and the best of God’s good earth; “taste and see” the goodness of God, hold the things that matter close to the heart, treasure the hard parts of loving and frolic like a 4-year-old in a mud puddle in the good, easy parts. Don’t waste this thing. It’s too good.

Ruby on Rails in the Java community

Couple of months ago I attended the No Fluff Just Stuff conference up in Framingham, I took a bunch of notes which I intented to post to this blog, but never got around to it. The conference tag line is “The best value in the Java / Open Source conferencing space hands down” and I’d have to agree, although the emphasis on Ruby on Rails was surprising. Turns out that a number of the speakers who make their living consulting and writing books about Java have taken up Ruby on Rails and so maybe 25% of the sessions were about Ruby on Rails (the session by Dave Thomas was maybe one of the best conference sessions I’ve ever been too). I guess all this is to say that it’s not a surprise that the next ACM WebTech group meeting in Waltham is going to be about Ruby on Rails.