The Porter Method

My friend Big Joe Duke showed off a bit of good old fashioned southern hospitality to the New Jersey Power guys yesterday. If you ever get the chance to check out Joe’s ribs, you must. They are unbelievable (plus he has the coolest man shed/gameroom/gazebo/brickpit/grill/etc, etc around). Check out BJD’s Pictures

Things are getting back to normal here in Mobile. My house has power and internet so I feel whole again. Gas is hard to get (not because there is a shortage, but because everyone is trying to fill up everything that will hold gas since they are in panic mode). I have 100 miles left on my car before I need gas so it should get me through the long weekend and then gas should be easier to get next week.

Casey and I went down to Biloxi, MS to visit her parents and take them MRE’s and cases of water. The destruction down there is unbelievable. Casey’s parent’s house and her grandmother’s house were completely destroyed (meaning nothing but a concrete slab left) but everyone made it through the storm safely (which is the most important thing, the rest is just stuff).

Here is a link to pictures we took while down there showing her former house, the destruction on the beach, the casinos no longer in the water, and the house her parents rode out the storm in. Hard to imagine a storm having that much power. Sad situation for all those involved. Be nice to your neighbor and tell your parents you love them. You never know what tomorrow may bring.

But lucky for us and unlucky for New Orleans, it looks like we will be spared some of the brunt of the hurricane. Once it hits shore it is forecasted to turn to the North East and head our way, so tomorrow morning we are forecasted to have 60-100mph winds. So we’ll see how it goes. Shouldn’t be any issues at work. We have natural gas generators and lots of built in redundancy, so hopefully won’t be required to head down there in the storm and take care of anything.

Saw today that one of the local stations has weather blogs. WPMI NBC 15 has blogs for two of their forecasters, David Glenn and Scott Walker. Nice to see some of the local stations embracing blogging. Scoble would be proud.

Keep your thoughts and prayers with the people of New Orleans, unfortunately I have a feeling the Super Dome will be the only thing left intact there.

Bruce Armstrong of TeamSybase has created an excellent write up of the events of Sybase’s big conference of the year TechWave 2005. TechWave 2005 was held in sunny (and steaming hot) Las Vegas, NV. You may recall that a coworker and myself spoke at TechWave 2004. It was a great experience and I would have liked to have attended this year, but it didn’t work out. But at least I was able to get the recap from Bruce. Thanks Bruce.

As I read and learn various techniques to aid me in completing my assignment for the Sun Certified Java Developer exam, I am left wondering why Sun is the only company that I know of that has this type of exam for certification in their development language. Especially after the dot-bomb years where even my postman had an MCSE or MCSD you would think Microsoft would have implemented a test that actually requires one to create and submit a working program.

I’m not saying that written tests serve no purpose, but I think in addition to the written tests the requirement to complete a program using good development and design techniques is a very good way to rate an individual’s ability. As I read somewhere on the JavaRanch forums, the written test certification tells an employer that they won’t have to teach you the language, a certification involving writing a program tells the employer that you are fully capable of developing actual applications using the language. Now which candidate do you want in your shop for intermediate to high level positions?

If anyone knows of any other tests like Sun’s Certified Developer exam, please post a comment and let me know.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up a Linux box at home and have been looking at various distros. The one I’ve been playing with today is the LiveCD version of Ubuntu. Really neat so far, I have a feeling this one might be the one to use. I’ll let you know how it goes.