Practice Pad
Technology, Programming, Music, Percussion, Drums and Stuff

.. and I haven’t exercised since my last entry. The week of the last Monday in April I spent in a suburb of Seattle, WA at a 5-day Java development training class. Excellent content, though the instructor was a little weird. Dude looked like a cross between Penn Jillette and Fred Thompson. His politics were just touch to the right of Rush Limbaugh, too, and he insisted on being right about everything, whether it was related to the course material or not. Still, I learned a lot, and from having read half-a-dozen java BOOKS, I have to say, wack-job instructor or not, there’s value in instructor-led learning.

Anyway, here’s how this happened: The project manager for my team came to me (the only real “programmer” in the group) and said, “Willy, it seems like we need to hire a Java dev. Is that right?” and I said, “Well, this is the VA. You could spend 6 months making a hire, or you could send me away for a week.” My logic won the day, and when we tried to book the training locally, the company told us it was canceled, but that they would pay travel and lodging for me to go to Seattle. Done deal.

So, now I’m a Java developer. I spent all of last week working on a java project (an annotation tool for comparing original text to machine-processed text) so that I could make sure I “had it”. Now I’m sure I “have it”, and I’m demo-ing last week’s work to some collaborators in Indiana tomorrow.

Next week I’ll be in Washinton D.C. at the Web Maniacs conference learning about the latest and greatest ColdFusion stuff, as well as Adobe Flex and AIR. Exciting stuff that frankly rivals Java and .NET and all the others for integrated Desktop and Internet experiences. We’ll see if it’s useful for the job right away or not.

An interesting note: The best deal on a hotel within walking distance of the conference was the Hotel Helix. Check it out. It’s like a 60’s-hipster themed hotel. I just needed a place to lay my head at night, and instead I’ll be staying here. Crazy. More later.

/w

40 minutes on the stationary bike. This time it was Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention. Worked pretty well to keep my mind off it. After that, I did arms and core.

One of my colleagues at the VA was in my office the other day. She said, “You know who my favorite drummer is?”

I said, “Are you sure you really want to tell me? Because I’m liable to judge you fairly harshly.”

She said, “Oooh. Um, now I’m not sure. I’ll tell you anyway. Terry Bozzio.”

At first, I wondered if I was being set up. Like, I was going to say, “OMFG, really? Terry’s the BOMB!” and then she was going to say, “you geek.” and punch me in the arm or something.

So, instead I said, “What? Are you a Zappa fan?”

She says, “Oh yeah. I love the Baby Snakes album.”

“Ok then,” I said, “You know, you’re alright.”

So, now I’m on a Zappa kick. I’m going to start at the beginning with the Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention album, “Freak Out!”, and refresh my memory of the whole catalog. My current sense of my favorite Zappa albums: Joe’s Garage and Thing-fish. I’ll be posting a bit as I go along about my experience of all these albums.

/w

30 minutes of cardio, worked on upper body. I find the best thing to have on my iPod for the stationary bike is This American Life. Too bad it’s only new once a week!

/w

Seems to happen about once a year. Came home at lunch not feeling very well. Slept from noon to about 4:30. Got up to go get my son from school. Next thing I know, I’m on keeled over into my laundry pile. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I just have to remember to stand up more slowly.

We weren’t playing up to our standards, but it was ok because we were very nearly the only people in the room. I made a recording, so I’ll post some clips if I have anything good on it.

/w

The Blue Wailers will be appearing tonight from 10pm-1am at Club Orange. 533 South 500 West, Salt Lake City. Should be fun. We’ll be playing our funk/fusion/blues sets instead of our jazz sets. You know, give the kids what the want.

Tomorrow is the first annual RIADevShed event. It’s being put on by Matt Reinbold, the Salt Lake ColdFusion User Group manager. Good guy, and super sharp. I think he’s got the right idea with this one. I’m not sure which track I’m most interested in, the Flex track or the AJAX/AIR track. Probably flex. I may do a little live blogging from the site, but I’ll definitely post about the event laster tomorrow or on the weekend.

After killing it every other day this week I decided to skip today. I’ve been shaky and feeling funky since Tuesday, so I figure it’s a good day to take a break. I won’t be able to hit it tomorrow morning, either, unfortunately, as I’ll be in a training in West Valley.

The Blue Wailers (web|myspace) were featured in last week’s Flipside magazine, a Park City local music scene publication. Clickety-pop for full size, and check here for upcoming shows.