Doug Tidwell works for IBM's Software Group Strategy organization, where he's responsible for evangelizing technologies such as XForms, Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO). A living testament to the power of inertia, he has been with IBM since 1989. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his wife, cooking teacher Sheri Castle, and their twelve-year old daughter Lily. He is the author of O'Reilly's XSLT and a co-author of Programming Web Services with SOAP, both of which make great gifts for your friends and loved ones.

Peeps and picks before the tournaments start

Before I begin, a big thanks to dW reader Eddie Welker's kind words for the book. Thank you, your comment made my day.

PeepsFest 2008

This past weekend was PeepsFest 2008 at Market Street Books. I didn't participate in the poetry contest this year, although I'll post a pointer to the poems once they're online. Sheri was a judge of the food and I made the award buttons. We did have a couple entries each in the Peeps Album Cover Art contest:

Sheri's entries:
Abbey Road with Paul as a Peep:		Rumours with Mick Fleetwood (or is it John McVie?) holding a Peep instead of a crystal ball:
My entries:
Nevermind with a Peep instead of a dollar bill:		And my personal favorite, They Might Be Peeps:

Tournament Picks

Mostly I'm posting at the end of a long day just to get my NCAA picks online before the tournaments start. Here they are:

Men's Tournament

Round of 32
East: UNC, Indiana, James Mason, Washington St., St. Joe's, Louisville, Butler, Tennessee
Midwest: Kansas, UNLV, Clemson, Vanderbilt, USC, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Georgetown
South: Memphis, Miss. St., Michigan St., Pitt, Kentucky, Stanford, The U, Texas
West: UCLA, Aggies, Drake, UConn, Baylor, Georgia (woof!), Arizona and Dook

Sweet Sixteen
East: UNC, Washington St., Louisville, Tennessee
Midwest: Kansas, Clemson, Wisconsin, Georgetown
South: Memphis, Pitt, Stanford, Texas
West: UCLA, Drake, Baylor, Dook

Elite Eight
East: UNC, Louisville
Midwest: Kansas, Wisconsin
South: Pitt, Texas
West: UCLA, Dook

Final Four
UNC, Kansas, Texas, UCLA

Championship
UNC 92, Texas 85

Women's Tournament

Round of 32
Greensboro: UConn, Texas, ODU, Virginia, Auburn, Cal, Georgia Tech, Rutgers
Spokane: Maryland, Xavier, New Mexico, Vanderbilt, Pitt, Baylor, Western Kentucky, Stanford
New Orleans: UNC, Georgia, Kansas St., Louisville, Ohio St., Oklahoma St., Marist, LSU
Oklahoma City: Tennessee, Purdue, Notre Dame, Illinois St., Arizona St., Dook, Syracuse, Aggies

Sweet Sixteen
Greensboro: UConn, UVA, Auburn, Rutgers
Spokane: The Turtle, Vanderbilt, Baylor, Stanford
New Orleans: UNC, K State, Ohio St., LSU
Oklahoma City: Tennessee, Notre Dame, Dook, Aggies

Elite Eight
Greensboro: UConn, Rutgers
Spokane: The Turtle, Stanford
New Orleans: UNC, LSU
Oklahoma City: Tennessee, Dook

Final Four
UConn, The Turtle, UNC, Tennessee

Championship
UNC 97, UConn 88

OK, so I'm a homer. UNC wins it all in both tournaments, joining UConn as the only schools to win both championships in the same year. Be sure to thank me if you use these picks and win your office pool. This is the best three weeks in sports, especially if the Heels do well. Enjoy....

The book is done.

I have a number of things I've been meaning to blog about, but for now, let me just say that:

(BTW, I'm putting myself on Large Screaming Headline Probation for a while.)

A proper post tomorrow, I promise.

Invisible Magnetic Missive Sent to Me From Home

I spent several days this week at SHARE in Orlando. I did sessions on XForms, SCA and BPEL, spreading the good word about these technologies. I'm still working with the examples in the WebSphere Bidniss Integration Primer, it's a fantastic book. I used several of the WebSphere tools in my demos this week. I need to put together a set of slides that shows the whole suite working together....From modeling to simulation to integration to deployment to monitoring, we've got an impressive suite of products.

Today is my first leap day since 2000. In 2004, I got on a Qantas flight in LA before midnight on February 28th and landed in Sydney on March 1st. Even better, when I came back from New Zealand, I got two St. Patrick's Days, both of which I enjoyed. (Especially the one in Auckland. Or so I'm told.) My wife told me there's a special word for people born on Leap Day, but I can't remember it. Lepidopterist will have to do for now.

Today's blog title is the title of a chapter in Amos Tutuola's novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. I read it on the plane back from Orlando along with his other major novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Both of these books are surreal stories of humans and ghosts and their customs and conflicts; they're unlike anything I've ever read. The invisible magnetic missive comes toward the end of the book, as the narrator's mother sends a message to him after he's been lost 20+ years in the bush. Shortly thereafter the protagonist meets my favorite phantasm, the Television-handed Ghostess. The television hands of this ghostess let the narrator see his mother and brother outside the bush.

I first heard of the book 20+ years ago, it was the title of a David Byrne and Brian Eno album. The album is very cool, it features music accompanied by found voices from various sources. The cut "The Jezebel Spirit," for example, features a recording of a fundamentalist faith healer casting a Jezebel spirit out of a woman, with urban funk in the background.

I'll say it again: This book is unlike anything I've ever read. It's built around a set of deities and anxieties and values completely different from ours. If anybody out there has read this, I'd love to know what you thought.

Speaking of African novels, I also read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart recently. I came to this book through the Yeats poem "The Second Coming." ("Things fall apart" and "Slouching towards Bethlehem" are both from the poem.) Unlike the Tutuola novels, Things Fall Apart deals with the conflict between indigenous culture and the imperialist attitudes of the West. A very good book as well. It's certainly more Western in the sense of the book's structure, but it still contains a great deal of native culture. Things Fall Apart deals with Ibo culture, while the Tutuola novels are based on Yoruba traditions. Make me wish I knew more about African history.

One final thing before I call it a month: I've been working with Knoppix remastering, looking to see how much of an SCA stack I can run from a CD or DVD. Has anybody out there used software like Derby, Geronimo, Tomcat etc. booted from DVD? Is it easy to persist data from the Knoppix system to a USB drive? My goal is to have a Knoppix CD that contains a complete software stack for Tuscany SCA/SDO development, with the option of saving everything you've done onto a thumb drive. Any advice would be appreciated.

One even more finaler thing: Am I the only who noticed that the price of 8GB thumb drives dropped by 40% or more in December? I had been looking to replace my old 1GB Cruzer Micro drive with something bigger, but the 8GB drives were all around $120-130. Then one week in December, all the drives were suddenly $70. So now I have a keychain with 8GB of storage. Who knows what we'll have five years from now.

A man of means, by no means

Starting Sunday I'll be King of the Road again, speaking at SHARE in Orlando three times next week. I have sessions on BPEL, XForms and SCA/SDO. It's in Orlando, so join us if you can.

Other shows at which I'll be speaking include IBM Impact in Las Vegas April 6-11, the OASIS Open Symposium in Santa Clara April 28 - May 1 and the Rational Software Development Conference in Orlando June 1-5. There are a couple of other shows I might be presenting at in the first half of the year, I'll post those here so you can make your travel plans....

And the SCA/SDO briefings are coming soon to a continent near you. More on those as the itinerary comes together.

Doug's Geek-a-Licious Library Cart: There are now two (count 'em, two) books with "SCA" in the title:

SOA for the Business Developer: Concepts, BPEL, and SCA The first book on SCA, this is fairly high-level. It has some good material on both SCA and BPEL, and it was reviewed by Mike Edwards and other IBM luminaries in the SCA space.

WebSphere Business Integration Primer: Process Server, BPEL, SCA, and SOA I just got this book, but it looks fantastic. (It's from developerWorks, so it has that going for it, which is nice.) This takes a very deep dive into the WebSphere V6.1 products, including a step-by-step scenario that goes through the products to build, design and deploy a working application. Very highly recommended. Click on the links below to learn more about the excellent WebSphere lineup: WebSphere Process Server WebSphere Business Modeler Advanced V6.1.1 (trial version available) WebSphere Integration Developer WebSphere Business Monitor WebSphere ESB WebSphere Business Services Fabric WebSphere Service Registry and Repository

From the "Nice Work If You Can Get It" Dept.: I'm intrigued by the phenomenon of lottery hosts and hostesses. For those of you who don't watch these things, this arduous job involves putting on a tuxedo or evening gown (the men wear the tuxedos, the women wear the gowns, although mixing that up would make things more interesting) and saying the numbers as they pop out of the lottery machines.

That's it. Some sample dialog:

Twenty-two.
Three.
Seventeen.
Six.
Twelve.
And the red ball, the Power Ball number... (dramatic pause) Eleven.

From some of the hosts I've seen around the country, being sober enough to stand up straight doesn't seem to be a requirement, although you must shave before the show. (Actually, the hostesses might be able to skip that part, depending on the style of their evening gown.) How do these people get their jobs? Who actually said, "Call Central Casting - I've gotta have somebody who can pronounce numbers when they see 'em"? Did the casting call include the words, "Must have own tuxedo"? Does the salary and benefits package include a dry-cleaning allowance? Did someone's high school guidance counselor say, "You seem to have a real knack for recognizing numbers. Consider a career as a lottery announcer"?

I simply must know more about this fascinating profession.

Confidential to state lottery boards nationwide: If you're hiring, give me a call. BTW, does anyone know where can I get my own lottery machine? They look like a lot of fun, and I can practice at home while waiting for my big break.

Finally, send your thoughts to our good friend Brian Murray. (Brian's wife is dW's Jeanne Murray.) Brian's mother Anne died yesterday at the age of 85.

Winners, losers and light bulbs

First, a work-related note:

(Note to self: Need to find a less subtle way of announcing that.) I'll be working with the new feature pack this week...Even if you don't have WAS 6.1 installed, you can download a trial version. The feature pack is based on the open-source Apache Tuscany project.

Momentum around SCA continues to build. I'll post some customer success stories here as the customers go public with them. Suffice it to say that SCA solutions are in production now. (While they're also evidence of the growing impact of the technology, SCA/SDO product announcements from our competitors won't be mentioned here.)

And, uh, speaking of men's college basketball, as I went to bed last night, I thought the Clemson Tigers had finally beaten The Heels in Chapel Hill. Since the dawn of time, since before the invention of Dr. James Naismith, the peach basket and the peach, the Clemson men's team had never left Chapel Hill with a victory. I didn't watch the game, so I thought the Tigers had finally won. The Heels won in overtime in Clemson earlier this year when Wayne Ellington hit a 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds left, so I was afraid this might be the year Clemson won on the road.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I picked up the paper this morning to find that the Heels came back from 11 points down with three minutes left in the game, winning 103-93 in double OT. (The missus read a late score as the final.) If these two teams meet in the ACC Tournament, I refuse to watch that game.

The Heels lost to the Forces of Evil earlier this week, congratulations to the eight or ten Dook fans we really, really like. (dW's Jeanne Murray and family, that's four, our neighbors John and Cam Cline and their kids, that's eight, dW's Barb Wetmore makes nine...and I think we're done.) This is the other side of the joy I felt at the end of the Super Bowl.

From the Dim-Watted Humor Dept.: When I thought the Heels had lost, I was going to share some of my favorite ACC lightbulb jokes as a consolation. But now I'm going to do that anyway:

How many Georgia Tech students does it take to change a light bulb?

12,001. One to hold the light bulb and 12,000 to lift the campus and rotate it around the axis of the bulb.

How many Dook students does it take to change a light bulb?

11. One to change the light bulb and ten to stand around and say, "We change light bulbs just as well as they do at Ivy League schools."

How many UNC students does it take to change a light bulb?

76. One to change the light bulb, 50 to protest the changing of the light bulb, and 25 to stage a counter-protest upholding the light bulb's right to be changed.

(My personal favorite) How many Clemson students does it take to change a light bulb?

None, Clemson doesn't have electricity.

Thanks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your server, it's been a pleasure opening for Ace of Base.

From the "How to Not Delight Your Customers" Dept.: One of my household responsibilities is to maintain the computers we have around the house. A couple of weeks ago the anti-virus software on my wife's desktop machine encouraged us to perform an update. Imagine my surprise when the updated Symantec/Norton software told us we had 15 days to use the software before we would have to pay for it. This was particularly amusing because the un-updated software didn't expire until the end of May. After several hours, I was finally able to get the product key we paid for from the Symantec site. Entering it into the authorization dialog of the now-expired trial software reactivated everything, so our machine is once again protected from the evils of the Internet.

Some thoughts here:

• If you tell me to update my software, I don't expect to be told after the fact that I'm on a trial basis and that I'll have to pay for the update if I can't find my activation code.
• If you have a piece of software that uses an activation code, your updated piece of software should be able to find and use the activation code from the original product.
• If your piece of software is unable to find and use the activation code from the original product, tell me to write it down before I start the update.

Absolutely unacceptable. If the good folks at Symantec and McAfee want to make sales projections for the second quarter, I'm guessing the number of Symantec customers will decrease by 1 around June 1st, with McAfee benefiting from the loss.

Today's Playlist so far includes Schmack! by Steriogram (mostly just "Walkie Talkie Man" from the iPod commercial, repeat repeat repeat), In Utero and Cheer Me Up Thank You from Echolocations.

Today's fun fact: Dr. James Naismith was born in Almonte, Ontario, Canada, less than an hour from the glorious city of Ottawa. My awareness of the number of "American" inventions that aren't continues to grow.

I'm off to the land of WebSphere, have a great day.

superb owl ads

First of all, let me direct your attention to my blog post from Groundhog Day, in which I picked the Gints by 3 points. I didn't have the details right, but I picked the winner. (My other two predictions involving scotch and junk food were absolutely correct, btw.) In hindsight, look at all the injuries the Giants had through the year; their players got healthy and the team peaked at the right time. I won't rant about my feelings for the P-Men and their quest for perfection, but I will say the 1972 Dolphins need to let it go. Part of greatness is letting your work speak for itself...

From the "Let the Music Do the Talking" Dept.: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played well and sounded good. Great, even. I'd be happy to have the audio from that performance on my iPod. "Here Comes My Girl" is one of the great us-against-the-world songs ever, and "Free Fallin'" enabled Mr. English Major to bore and annoy his daughter with a discussion of the literary term "irony." That being said, my 85-year-old grandmother and me sitting onstage working a jigsaw puzzle would have been a more dynamic show than TP. This performance was the polar opposite of a wardrobe malfunction.
Music: A- Excitement: F--

The game itself was one of the best ever. IMHO, the best Super Bowl was 49ers-Bengals, but this was close. Not everyone likes a defensive battle, but I was interested in every play.

From the "Maybe Not So Many Weapons After All" Dept.: Our family had a bet on how many times the announcers would use some form of the word "weapons." As in, "The Patriots can beat you so many ways because they have so many weapons." My bet was 14, and Sheri and Lily were both over that. To our count, there were only two mentions of the word. Some of that had to do with how much time Tom Brady spent flat on his back, I suppose.

In all seriousness, I feel bad for our friends who love the Patriots. (Bandwagon jockeys who've never heard of Raymond Berry get no sympathy.) It was an amazing season for you guys, and coming up short must be crushing.

On to the part of Super Bowl Sunday that Sheri and Lily love the most: The Commercials. My three favorites:

1. The Doritos "Guy in a giant mouse suit" ad from the second quarter. I loved it partly because of my love of mascot-related violence¹ and partly because it was so unexpected. Very, very funny.
2. The Bud Light "Wheel Suck!" ad from the third. The agency that does the Bud Light ads is genius.
3. The Tide "Talking Stain" ad from the second. Been there, been mortified by that.

And the worst, in no particular order:

• Amp Energy in the fourth. I really didn't need to see that.
• The two Sales Genie ads. Were those borderline racist, or was that just me? Regardless, can you imagine Sales Genie getting any business out of those commercials?
• Anything involving Go Daddy. For this Super Bowl and for all time. Just go away.
• It wasn't nearly as bad as the others I'm mentioning here, but the dancing lizards ad in the second quarter. Can you tell me what product that was for? Didn't think so. And what exactly was the deal with the flatulent lizard towards the end of the spot?

Today's blog title comes from the missus. What if the NFL issued a mandate that all Super Bowl XLIII ads must feature owls? Put some constraints on the ad agencies and see who comes up with the most creative concepts. (Note: Any company attempting to use the word "hooter" in any way would receive a lifetime advertising ban.)

Hope you had a great weekend, I'll post some actual work-related items in the next day or two.

¹ See Duck and Cougar Mascot Beatdown, Mascots Duke it Out (good to see young people learning about sportsmanship), and the rumble by which all mascot donnybrooks shall forever be measured, Bear vs. Tree. Enjoy!

Happy Groundhog Day!

I hope all of you have made the most of this special day. In case you missed it, Punxsutawney Phil has officially predicted six more weeks of winter. Considering that it was in the mid 60's and sunny today, we could use some winter. Everybody in the neighborhood was out walking today, which was nice, but it should be wintry. Summer will be oppressing us soon enough, let's get some cold weather.

In conjunction with Groundhog Day, we'd like to wish a happy 32nd birthday to our friend Amy Wentley. Many happy returns on the day.

We also want to wish a speedy recovery to Bentley the Wonder Dog. His mom is dW's blogroller Jennette Banks, and he's having extensive surgery on one of his legs. To my knowledge and experience Bentley is a perfect soul, and we hope he's feeling better soon.

The Microsoft bid of the GDP of Tanzania for Yahoo! strikes me as a really bad move. Remember AOL-Time Warner? Consider these three brands:

• Google
• Yahoo! Search
• MSN LiveSearch

Which of the three is a verb? Which of the three has your mom ever heard of? Do you ever say, "I Yahooed you and found your cat's Web site," or "MSN's LiveSearch makes my Internet research go so much more quickly"? Me neither. Google is way out in front, at least for now.

Google is doing more innovation than anybody in the Web space, IMHO. They have some major usability problems to address with Google Docs, but their ability to provide a collaboration platform that works on every platform and costs nothing should scare Redmond. Unlike Google, MS has to grow its business while protecting the Microsoft Office cash cow. That's not going to be easy. And MS can't leverage their OS monopoly to relegate Google to second-class desktop citizen. (The DOJ has expressed an interest in the case.)

Two more huge obstacles: Google isn't exactly a complacent company that's stopped innovating, and Yahoo! is built on an open-source stack. So MS will have the double challenge of chasing a front-runner who isn't slowing down (see Sham vs. Secretariat, Belmont Stakes, 1973) while retaining the talent from a company that has had very little to do with Microsoft and its products in the past.

I can't wait for the demo that shows how you can publish your Word 2007 documents to Yahoo and view them on your Zune, then beam your documents to another Zune, the owner of which will have to buy Office 2007 before they can read more than the first 300 words of the document.

This will be interesting to watch.

Today's playlist: Costello Music by The Fratellis, Echolocations 5.4: Wolves and Doc and Merle Watson's Guitar Album.

A couple of posts ago I got a comment from Alice at Echolocations. I've decided to put them on the playlist indefinitely...I've got maybe 15 or 20 of their CDs, if you like interesting music, you should subscribe. Every two months a shiny disc of musical joy shows up in the post. Plus, you get to hear cool artists and songs before they become famous.

And I got a comment from a record company executive. How cool is that?

Your comments please: American Airlines is in the process of offering in-flight Internet access. Do you care? One thing I like about flying is that I'm unreachable. I can work or sleep or watch a movie or read a book or listen to music or whatever, and nobody can ping me. The same people who want this are the same people who can't spend more than 5 minutes away from their Blackberries. I'm plenty connected, thank you. I can maybe see using a connection to do research if I'm working on a writing project, but even that's a stretch. I'm much happier with a couple of good books and a comfortable seat.

Finally, my Super Bowl predictions:

• I will enjoy some Laphroaig.
• I will eat food that, while delicious, has no health benefits whatsoever.
• The Gints will win with a late field goal followed by an end-zone interception of a Tom Brady pass that seals the game.

What really matters...

There were several things I was going to blog about, but none of them seem important right now.

I'm sure many of you have enjoyed Uche Ogbuji's excellent articles here on developerWorks and elsewhere around the Web. Yesterday I stumbled across an entry on Jeni Tennison's blog that mentioned Uchi's brother and his wife lost their three children in a house fire in December. I can't imagine anything more horrifying than that. A fund has been set up for the family, if you're so inclined.

Blessings to everybody touched by this tragedy.

On the Internet, everybody knows you're a Doug.

First, responses to some of your comments:

• I heard from my friend Chris Alexander, whom I haven't seen in more than two decades. He's the head of the Dean Rusk International Studies Program at Davidson College. Chris, my "escape" was complete and successful, we'll catch up offline.
• Several people who knew me way back when have found me through this blog. If I had known me at that time and found Doug Tidwell on the Web 20+ years later, I would have started the discussion with, "Wow, Doug, I can't believe you're still alive!" Apparently those who knew me then had higher hopes than I did.
• dW's Sera Lewis posted her opinion that perhaps my love of donuts and my obscenely high cholesterol could be related. It's a long shot, but I'll look in to it.
• Sera also asked that I post a link to a free trial version of WebSphere Business Modeler. With Valentine's Day about 3 weeks away, it's the perfect gift for that special someone. I gave a copy to my wife for Valentine's Day last year, and I can honestly say our relationship hasn't been the same since.
• Finally, Blog Doyenne Jennette Banks suggested that I think of my cholesterol number as "going to eleven." Sounds better than 354.

Today's blog title is based on one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons ever.

IBM's own Mike Edwards has published an article on using asynchronous services with SCA. Entitled "Can I call you back about that?", it's the most complete discussion I've seen anywhere of how callback interfaces work inside SCA. You should definitely check it out.

My daughter Lily and I were in Tennessee for a few days after Christmas. We had heard reports that the coolest video game ever is Guitar Hero III; after playing it on her cousin's PlayStation 3, we can confirm this is true. Our most pleasant surprise was that the game includes the Strong Bad classic Trogdor. If you can find a copy, it's a lot of fun. (Note: You might want to turn the volume down before you click on the Guitar Hero link.)

From the Who Put the 'Goober' in 'Gubernatorial'" Dept.: Last week former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory attempted to kick off his candidacy for this year's North Carolina gubernatorial race. Unfortunately, he and his staff spent most of the day explaining the text of the catchy masthead graphic:

Pat McCrory
Governer [sic]

In the time-honored tradition of political figures making things worse by avoiding the simple honest answer ("next time we'll use the spell checker" would have been nice), the campaign said one a them "hackers" had broken in to the site. At one point the campaign claimed Candidate McCrory's mayoral Web site had been hacked for six months. (Why they hadn't bothered to fix their security problems or contact the authorities wasn't discussed.) After several conspiracy theories were given out, the candidate himself stepped forward and said there was no hacker, they had simply made a mistake. To review, if the campaign staffers had simply said, "Oops, we'll fix that," there's no story. You can read the complete story on the Raleigh News & Observer site.

I can't imagine why anyone with decency and talent would run for office in this country. (Your comments please: How much evidence have you seen that decent, talented people are running for office?)

Today's playlist featured Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace by The Foos and InRadio 5.2: Elephants on Parade, a collection of indie rock I got from dW's own Steve Luyendyk. Really good stuff, especially the cut from Bloody Black Eyes (link withheld—surf safely, kids!).

And speaking of, congratulations to Steve Luyendyk and other Gints fans everywhere. I've got several friends in Boston, but I just can't root for the P-Men. I'll be pulling for Eli and Company in the Super Bowl, several thousand hours of hype from now.

Have a great weekend, I'll be back in a few days.

The Gift of Donuts

My daughter got yesterday off from school for Dr. King's Day, and today is a teacher workday, so we've had four straight days of no school. I'm not sure my sleep or work patterns were any different, but a day off from school lowers the stress level in the house.

Saturday we got maybe an inch of snow, it was beautiful while it lasted. Lily was able to sled in the front yard for an hour or so. We were hoping for a big snowstorm tonight so she could extend her break, but no such luck. We haven't had any snow here for about four years, so we should be due in another decade.

A special shout-out to our friend Fayyaz Syed of Toronto. He and I have been chatting online for a while on XSLT and other things. When we finally got together at the SCA/SDO briefing in Toronto late last year, he gave me a Tim Horton's gift card. (Fayyaz, I got the CD today, thanks a lot.)

And speaking of donuts, have I ranted lately about how I live in a college town that doesn't have a donut shop? I still can't believe that. For you young people in college out there, do you eat donuts? When I went to school at UGA, there was a 24-hour Dunkin about 10 blocks from my apartment. Milledge Avenue at Prince. It's still there, I checked the Web site. I can't imagine going to school without being able to get good donuts 24-7. If I were a rich man, I would buy a Tim Horton's franchise and go into the donut bidniss. (Note to all twelve of my readers: If any of you buy the franchise rights to Chapel Hill, I get free donuts for life. I thought of it first, you owe me.)

The Heels have had a difficult stretch lately, the mens' team lost a close game to Maryland Saturday and the womens' team lost to UConn last night. Both teams are very good, we're hoping for a joyous March and early April. The weekend's NFL games were good, especially the Gints game in Green Bay. The temperature was -1° F (-18° C, 130 Euros or 53 pounds), the third-coldest game ever. I remember reading about the Ice Bowl as a kid, the temperature/wind chill for that game was -13° F/-46° F. Growing up in the South it was exciting any time the temperature reached zero, so I remember these things. Useful information I don't always remember.

Today's fun fact: The Fahrenheit and Celsius scales intersect at -40°.

I've been working on a fairly complicated BPEL demo using the WebSphere products (WebSphere Business Modeler, WebSphere Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server). You'll see most of that code here on dW at some point. The Business Modeler is an amazingly powerful and complex tool.

Lily and I spent some enjoyable time at chucknorrisfacts.com yesterday. You should definitely waste some time there, it'll be more fun than whatever you're supposed to be doing. Here are my three favorites:

• Chuck Norris knows the last digit of pi.
• Chuck Norris doesn't own a stove, oven or microwave, because revenge is a dish best served cold.
• Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

Good stuff.

Today's Playlist consists of all the things my daughter could stand for me to listen to while she was at home. In other words, nothing. The iPod has been in sleep mode all day.

Tomorrow's Playlist will be whatever I darn well please. I've been listening to a lot of World and Roots music these days, fwiw.

Three. Hundred. Fifty. Four.

With my New Year's Resolutions in mind, I've been visiting area healthcare professionals for the last week or so. Got my teeth cleaned (no cavities, compliments on my flossing), got my eyes checked (need new glasses, driving with my naked eyes not recommended), and had a physical. My blood pressure is too high, so I'll be adding to the handful of pills I take twice a day. All in all the doctor tells me I'm in pretty good shape, and she'll call me when she gets my cholesterol numbers. Which leads us to...

Today's blog title: My cholesterol number. Yikes. I didn't know you could have a cholesterol number that high. Find out who makes Lipitor and buy some stock now. I would have bet a guy with an IV of Crisco couldn't get a cholesterol score above 300. Needless to say, I'll be adding another medication to my daily mix, and I'll be visiting the doctor's office to recheck these numbers soon. (And no, I didn't eat or drink anything for 12-14 hours beforehand.) Sheesh.

Like just about everything in life, this does remind me of a joke, a Henny Youngman classic:

I went to my doctor for a physical. I said, "So Doc, how do I stand?" and he said, "That's what puzzles me."

Henny was the best.

Your comments please: What technologies are you looking at for 2008? I have a list entitled "Stuff I Really Wish I Knew More About." It's usually several hundred items long, but two things in particular are near the top:

• Android, a Google project that's part of the Open Handset Alliance
• WebKit, an open-source project that builds on the internals of Apple's Safari browser.

I'm not completely confident that my summarizations of these projects are correct, so I've got a lot of learning to do here. The mobile platform redefines what a platform really is, so these technologies will be very important from now on. I'll post soon with more details of how these technologies relate to XForms. The good news is that everybody seems to be paying attention to standards. Wouldn't it be nice if CSS were implemented both everywhere and correctly? As the browser market becomes more fragmented, everybody will have to play nice, even those companies whose browsers used to have more than 90% of the market.

I'm also planning on using these technologies in my annual attempt to justify getting the company to buy me an iPhone and (especially) a MacBook Air. If anyone out there has some creative ideas for legitimizing these rationalizations, post 'em here.

Today's playlist: Chanchullo by Rubén González, Emjindini by the Mthembu Queens (fantastic South African music, and no, I don't know how to pronounce the band's name either) and Spike Jones' Greatest Hits. Some days the playlist is more obscure than others.

One last thing: SCA/SDO guru Mike Edwards is publishing an article on Asynchronous Services with SCA. I'll put a pointer to the article here when it's on the Web....

My enemies should never enjoy such a post!

The new year is here, and finally so am I. As I get older, the ratio of "How relaxed I am during the holidays" to "How little I want to resume any productive activity" gets worse and worse. Hope your holidays were relaxing, whatever you did (or didn't do).

My work time is centered around getting the 2008 SCA and SDO Roadshow plans together. More on that as it develops, of course, but the technology is moving ahead quickly. XForms is coming into its own as well. Our friend and colleague Keith Wells gave a presentation at XForms night at the XML 2007 conference in Boston last month. Unfortunately I couldn't attend, but the sessions were the hit of the show. (That's the report I got, anyway.) If these three technologies aren't on your radar, they should be....

Today's blog title comes from Michael Wex's excellent book Born to Kvetch. It's an extremely entertaining book that's also a scholarly discussion of Yiddish culture and language. The Yiddish curse is the subject of one chapter; here's my favorite:

You should own a thousand houses
  with a thousand rooms in each house
    and a thousand beds in every room.

And you should sleep each night in a different bed
  in a different room
    in a different house
      and get up every morning
          and go down a different staircase
            and get into a different car
              driven by a different chauffeur
                who should drive you to a different doctor —

and he shouldn't know what's wrong with you, either.

Check out Mr. Wex's Web site, michaelwex.com, you'll be glad you did.

My Christmas present was a trip to San Francisco. I was 4,018 miles from qualifying for elite airline status, so I spent several hundred dollars on a ticket to get enough miles to put me over the top. I flew to San Francisco on the 27th, and I flew back to RDU on the 28th. I stayed at a Hilton property near the airport and spent maybe 10 hours in San Francisco. That sounds pathetic, but I got free upgrades all the way ("why yes, another single malt scotch would be nice") and read six books in two days.

I'll mention reading because that was probably the only resolution I came close to keeping last year. My Backpack has the list of the books I read last year. I didn't average a book a week, but I did much better than I have in the past.

• Best fiction books I read in 2007: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy and Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky.
• Best non-fiction book I read in 2007: I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon. Somehow I had forgotten what a genius he was and how much his music meant to me. The King is Dead, Long Live the King.
• Best line I read in 2007: From the writer's journals published at the back of Suite Française: Salvation, in general, is when the time allocated to us is longer than the time allocated to a crisis.

Today's playlist included an album entitled "The Pennywhistle: Magical Instrument of South Africa." I would put a link here, but I can't find this anywhere on the Web. I've checked all the music stores I know, including the wonderful Stern's Music, but it didn't turn up. Interestingly enough, when I imported the CD into iTunes, it recognized the album. Somebody out there knows about it, at least. I think I bought this in Soweto last year (yes, I love saying that), but I can't find it anywhere. If somebody out there knows where you could buy a copy, post a comment here.

More on the roadshow, soon....

Home again, home again, jiggity jet lag

I just got back from the last SCA/SDO briefing of the year. Patrick Leonard of Rogue Wave and I did events in Toronto and Boston this week. We're planning many more events for 2008, sponsored by Adobe, IBM, Rogue Wave and (we hope) some other partners in the OSOA group.

I'm headed to San Francisco on Monday, then I'm off to Michigan Tech for the last three days of next week. Michigan Tech is doing some very interesting things with Business Process Modeling and SOA, I'll have more to say about that later. Next Friday is my last business trip of 2007.

I don't fully comprehend the coolness of this fact yet, but my daughter found out today that she's going to be an O Ambassador, a philanthropic effort sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. I met Jeff Bezos at a meeting few years ago; because he's been on Oprah's show, that means my Oprah Number is 2. If Lily were to achieve an Oprah number of 1, I believe that guarantees admission and a full scholarship to the college of her choice. (Except the University of New Jersey at Durham.)

This is pretty much a guilt post...there are a bunch of things I want to blog about, but I'm too tired to pull myself or my thoughts together here.

While I was in India a few weeks ago, I had terrible bouts of insomnia, during which I couldn't get certain inane songs out of my head. My wife and I were discussing that phenomenon earlier today. For her, about 75-80% of the CDs I own would qualify. I won't mention here what musical mental maladies tormented me for fear of getting anything stuck in your head. (Hint: Leo Sayer.)

For a while I thought what I wanted for Christmas was an OLPC machine. They look very cool, but I'm not entirely sure how much use one would be. Between now and December 31st, people in the U.S. and Canada can spend $400 to donate a laptop to a child somewhere and get a second laptop for themselves. (If the offer were available in Europe, that would be 130 Euros or 53 Pounds.) Could I do enough chatting, emailing and text editing to enjoy one? I don't know. FWIW, you can get a VMWare image of a Linux machine with the Sugar user interface to see how it looks. I haven't been able to do anything particularly useful with it, but it looks like fun.

Does anybody out there have a Kindle yet? I had been thinking about asking for the new Sony Reader, but the Kindle is more powerful and has several times more books available. (Anybody out there buying bestsellers off the Sony Connect e-bookstore?) The problem is the Kindle, at $400, is more than I want to shell out for a digital gadget. (Note: See the appropriate Web sites for European prices. My guess is around 130 Euros or 53 Pounds.) If you've got one, post a comment here and tell us what you think about it. A high percentage of the reviews so far are from people who haven't even seen the product, so it's hard to say what the actual user experience has been.

News from China

About a month ago I did a series of SCA/SDO briefings in China. I did events in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. I also did some work with the local IBM team in Zhuhai. I was really pleased by the interest in SCA; we had over 400 people at the events. Two of them were held on Saturday, and we still had more than 100 people at each. I can't imagine what you would have to do in the States to get 100 people to show up on a Saturday morning.

In the sessions I used the Bracketology demo, with contestants chosen by the local IBM team. The winner in every city was Yao Ming. Yao crushed Shaquille O'Neal, Chinese tea and baidu.com. Lots of fun. The bracketology demo is a great way to get the audience involved. We had lots of good discussions during and after the sessions. I'm working on an XForms article that takes the demo further, using XForms to build a custom editor for the Bracketology XML file format. Watch this space.

But wait, there's more...

More SCA/SDO Briefings Scheduled! We've finalized the schedule for several more SCA/SDO briefings. The dates are:

• Chennai, November 6th
• Kolkata, November 7th
• Bangalore, November 13th
• Delhi, November 14th
• Toronto, November 27th
• Boston, November 29th
• San Francisco, December 4th

You can register for the sessions here at developerWorks.

The gap between the Kolkata and Bangalore briefings is for Diwali, the festival of lights. I've just missed Diwali on previous trips to India, I'm looking forward to the celebration.

Congratulations to our friend Arthur Ryman on the publication of his book on the Eclipse Web Tools Platform. He coauthored it with Naci Dai and Lawrence Mandel. [I don't know the other authors, apologies to them if I sound like I'm slighting their contributions.] I have a copy on the way (thanks, Arthur!), if it's half as good as Arthur's other work, it's well worth your time to get a copy.

Thanks as always to John Hind's mailing list for pointing me to an article on Engadget about a company named Splashtop. Their product embeds a scaled-down Linux into the BIOS. You hit the power switch, and the system is up in about 5 seconds. You then have two applications available: Skype and a version of Firefox. There's currently only one motherboard that supports it, but I can imagine this taking off. What percentage of people could get by with a system that's instantly on and gives them full Internet access and VOIP service? Office workers are an exception, but if they could use Google Apps (or the Splashtop folks embedded an OpenOffice derivative), this could be a huge market. And I'm guessing that Splashtop's licensing costs per box are lower than Microsoft's. If Redmond isn't worried about this, they should be.

(BTW, that's five seconds from power on to running, not five seconds from sleep or hibernate mode.)

Today's playlist: B.B. King's Live at the Regal. Every home should have a copy. Also the Stones' Exile on Main Street. Just hit replay on those two all day long.

Finally, send your prayers and karma to our friend Kelvin Lawrence, who's facing surgery and some very serious health issues. If you'd like to send him your thoughts directly, he's created a guest book on his Web site. I was looking forward to seeing Kelvin again at the Colorado Software Summit later this month, but he's got much more important things on his mind. Kelvin, we're thinking about you and wish you and your family all the best.

Stealth post

Okay, I'm back after an unconscionably long gap between posts, I'm just gonna pretend that never happened...

I'm thrilled to say I turned in the complete manuscript for the second edition of my XSLT book. The final draft weighed in at an auspicious 888 pages. (That's a very lucky number in China, I'm led to understand.) It's undergoing a final tech review, then it's off to the presses. I'm sad that it's not going to be in stores in time for Christmas, Chanukah or Eid al-Fitr, but it should be available for Valentine's Day. I got a number of notes and testimonials when the first edition came out, developers telling me how much their partners appreciated getting the book as a gift. (A common refrain: "I'll never forget the look on her face....Our relationship hasn't been the same since!")

I recently read Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, based on a recommendation from my literary advisor Willy Farrell. It's extremely funny, although it's definitely for mature audiences only. To my delight, it also turns out to be far more profound than I expected. If you're not easily offended, you should check it out.

I spent a couple of weeks in China recently, the kickoff of the SCA/SDO briefing tour. I did events in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, plus a smaller event in Zhuhai. We've got events scheduled for Toronto, Boston and San Francisco later this year, plus four events in India that will be on the dW site soon. Watch this space. I don't know how soon I can announce this, but we're working with some of our partners in the OSOA group to get more companies involved in the briefings. The net is that we should have several dozen events over the next few months. For the countless millions of you dying to know more about SCA and SDO, help is on the way. (In the meantime, of course, you can get learn more at developerWorks.)

Another note about SCA: There are insidious rumors that SCA is simply a ploy to lock you in to a particular vendor's implementation. That is, in fact, untrue. I'll have more to say about that in the next couple of days, I just want to get my thoughts together.

The Playlist: I've been listening to Bruce's new album, some of the cuts I like a lot. Haven't had a chance to listen to it closely, so I can't say where it fits in the pantheon. Also Show Your Bones by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The more I listen to that one, the more I like it. As an added bonus, my daughter likes it too. Finally, Calvin Harris's I Created Disco is dangerously cheesy and a lot of fun.

There are some other things I need to blog about here, but I'll fill in with short posts over the next few days. Putting together marathon posts overwhelms me (hence the gap), so I'll keep 'em short and simple.

p.s. Thanks so much to those of you who posted dozens of comments offering the dW community chances to buy v1agra and other sources of artificial inspiration. As soon as I get my share of $36 million (U.S.) dolars [sic] from that Nigerian oil minister, I'll be in touch. Send me your bank account number now and I'll transfer the money as soon as I can....