Last year, I quit playing the same Leonard Cohen double album over and over again, sometimes two and three times a day.

I had always known that "I could quit any time" but Paula had moved in, and besides I was almost getting sick of it anyway. After all, how many hundreds of times can one listen to the same guy sing about anything, much less obscure poetry ?

America was founded on the separation of church and state, perhaps it should have been "religion" and state instead, and then we could avoid things like this meltdown that we are currently suffering from.

In my view, the cause of the meltdown was a simple confusion between the religion of free markets and the underlying fundamentals of free markets.

 So far, I have run in at least these following Turkey Trots:

• 1999
• 2000
• 2002
• 2003
• 2004
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008

I missed 2001 and 2005 going to Austin to have dinner with the family, but it's not such a shabby record all things considered, what being geriatric and all.

Here was my result for this year's run, this time I ran in the 8 mile version.

When the John Wayne School Of Management Isn't Enough

I'm sure I'm not the only one that acts like they know it all when it comes to managing. "What would John Wayne do ?" It's a cute approach, and I know it really does work for a lot of people, just doubt that I am one of them. I really need to study a reasonable amount to be barely passable, my "natural" skills are in other areas.

My son Jeff is 20, which means he

won't take a normal vacation with me, or at least that's all I can figure. But he'll go cycling, so no complaints there. This is our second year to cruise the roads of the Texas hill country.

That's our annual vacation :)  Oh well, you do what you can.

Look no further than last night's Spring Dallas User's group meeting for indication of how deeply Spring has cut into the mindspace of java enterprise programmers.

Spring Rivals Java Enterprise In Developer Interest ?

This is a "special interest group" for the java community in Dallas, and last night was almost as large an attendance as some of our JavaMUG meetings.

JavaMUG is a hugely successful, well attended, and long lived user group, so this should not be ignored by anyone who is planning projects over the next decade, Spring really does rival enterprise java at this point

Neal Ford came to JavaMUG this week to a packed crowd of 65 developers. The big story for me was his un-expected comments about IBM's product line.

I got a lot of helpful coding tips, for example something we don't always hear in talks at our user's group - a caution against "Ancticipatory Design" where you don't try to design around any anticipated needs until they actually show up. Being a more seasoned veteran than 28 years ago when I started, I'm willing to admit how true that actually is, even if I never thought about it much before.

Top Ten Tips Includes Dark Humor About WSAD ?

Neal's comments are always colorful, but number one on his Top 10 Corporate Code Smells is "There is a reason WSAD isn't called WHAPPY".

Click On Thumbnails to view Slideshow on Google's Picasa

Could there really be a "Fountain of Youth" ?

When Ponce de Leon went to the "New World" to discover the fountain of youth over 500 years ago, there was apparently this goofy belief that there could be such a thing as a place you could go that would make you younger.

What a silly idea - and welcome to White Rock Lake, in my home town of Dallas, Texas, where it really comes true.

We didn't know that Dad would be singing, we were just going for the concert ( er uh service ). Instead of the usual soloist emerging from Dad's choir, this time he just turned around and sang the two solos himself.