tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69793742011-11-27T21:05:11.594-05:00A collection of my daily musings on life, family, friends and career.Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.comBlogger431100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-81661281710273977282007-11-08T10:49:00.000-05:002007-11-08T11:28:03.942-05:00

Finally have time to setup my laptop (MacBook Pro) for development after upgrading to Leopard (OS X 10.5) this week.Fink or Macports?In setting up Postgresql, I found several helpful links on the web for installing it but I found some used fink and some used 'port' (macports). I'm pretty sure these two packaging systems provide the same functionality but is there a preference for one? Is one more

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-79538205083329151252007-08-29T17:47:00.000-04:002007-08-29T17:49:12.390-04:00

Finally got my MacBook Pro 15" last night (more about that later).I'm looking for a Bluetooth keyboard+track pad that will work with all of my PC, MBP and PS3. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-86613955065329829082007-07-30T09:43:00.000-04:002007-07-30T10:03:10.773-04:00

I've been waiting to buy my new laptop for a couple of months now as lately I've been wondering if I wanted the 17" or the 15".The decision was hard as I wanted the 17" for the high resolution (1920x1200) but the backlit LED display of the 15" was also very tempting. My wait was mostly due to waiting, "ok, I'll just wait for the 17" to get updated with LED display".So I found myself at the mall

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-86865111004100858652007-05-18T13:38:00.000-04:002007-05-18T13:47:42.311-04:00

Ran across this in a client's todaytry {...}catch (Exception ex) { LOGGER.error("updateDropShipPriceOnImport()", ex); throw ex;}Now, why would you log the error only to rethrow it? I'd assume that if you're rethrowing it, something else is/should catch this and handle/log it. So then isn't this just unnecessary logging?

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-31468124333890583612007-05-08T17:13:00.000-04:002007-05-08T17:29:51.489-04:00

I'm sure you've received the chain letters complaining about the high cost of gasoline, asking us to all band together and not buy gas on a certain day. This is supposed to put a dent in the gas companies pockets. Kind of a "show 'em we're pissed and aren't going to take this lying down" type of action.*LOL* It's not going to work.If I were the gas company, you know what I'd do? I'd jack the

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-32347124091213759712007-04-09T10:14:00.000-04:002007-04-09T10:19:11.130-04:00

Played a bit of poker this weekend and had some excellent results. What's funny is I basically took a week hiatus from the tournaments to work on something, so when I played these 2 tournaments it was basically a "what the hell I haven't played in such a long time, let's treat myself to a tournament with higher entry fee (fewer ppl and bigger prizes)"Full Tilt Poker $12.5k guarantee, placed

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-59662048505338495792007-03-24T16:48:00.000-04:002007-03-24T17:09:12.193-04:00

Looks like Redhat is putting down it's foot and trying to impose trademark laws to stop people/companies from using it's licenced trademarks such as Hibernate, etc. in advertising their services.Read Ted Neward's post on it for more details hereMost interesting is this quote:Although you may offer object oriented relational database mapping training, you may not use the Hibernate name to promote

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-80144641343623259182007-03-13T10:12:00.000-04:002007-03-13T10:26:17.069-04:00

Kurt Williams has done a very good writeup of things a startup company should considering when choosing development environments. You can read his blog hereI agree with most of what Kurt says but there is one thing that I would mention."Sure it's great for rapid Web development. But what about next year when you need to build a GUI?"I find that a lot of overly complex solutions are designed/built

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-56401741684342890602007-03-08T15:46:00.000-05:002007-03-08T15:51:17.430-05:00

Yesterday at the GDC, Sony announced their PS3 killer-app called "PlayStation Home".You can see the demo here Anyone have any developer details about this project? I have some ideas for content within the Home universe and would like to get details on how open this environment is to 3rd party content providers.Can someone point me to an appropriate place to look/ask?

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1171267338516896302007-02-12T02:58:00.000-05:002007-02-12T03:02:18.526-05:00

I had pocket aces in this Texas No Limit Hold'em game. The other guy also had pocket aces. How often do you see that huh? Well I lost and almost tossed my cookies when the river card fell.Here's how it played out (I'm the "Hero").http://www.handposter.com/hand/2249Put that in your book of bad beats will you.

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1167775223731281242007-01-02T16:49:00.000-05:002007-01-02T17:39:13.050-05:00

Let's say your organization has multiple web-apps running and they all currently share the same layout/style. Being the good little developer that you are, you are using CSS to separate the content from style and something like Sitemesh to aid in your layout.But what if you decide you want to change the layout of all the company's applications? This would entail modifying each application's

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1166512652971044042006-12-19T02:16:00.000-05:002006-12-20T11:35:05.363-05:00

I can't figure out why a flush is ranked higher than a straightin poker.From personal experience, it's alot easier to get a flushthan it is a straight.Using Texas Hold'em to illustrate. Assume your two holecards are suited and the flop comes with two more of the samesuit. The odds of a 3rd card of the same suit hitting to makeyour flush is 1/4. Right?Now let's say you have connected hole cards (

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1166512606903637012006-12-19T02:14:00.000-05:002006-12-19T02:16:46.913-05:00

Today North Korea proclaimed itself a nuclear power andmade demands that U.N. sanctions against it be lifted andalso that they be provided with a light water nuclear powerreactor.If you're the U.N. or Washington, how can you give in to thesedemands? You give them the reactor and they dismantletheir warheads. Next year, they'll restart the nuclear programagain and demand HBO and all the stray dogs

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1166144838995256762006-12-14T20:04:00.000-05:002006-12-14T20:07:19.006-05:00

Am I the only person who can't stand the fact that the cup/coversused by Tim Horton's are horribly designed and have this dripfeature built in for the sole purpose of driving me insane?Go buy a cup of Tim Horton's coffee. While carrying your cupof coffee, if you've moved ever so slightly, the coffee will startto drip somewhere beneath the lid. I wipe it off hoping it's justan aberration but a few

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1163095723060349762006-11-09T12:49:00.000-05:002006-11-09T13:08:43.076-05:00

My 1.25Ghz w/ 1Gb ram, G4 Powerbook is getting a bit long in the tooth.More infuriating is how often the spinning beachballhalts my work. Quie often, I have nothing other thanSafari open with like 7 tabs and I'll get the beachball.So I'm looking at upgrading to either a Macbook or Macbook Pro.I have a few questions that maybe some of you developers canhelp with.1. What's the battery life

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1162970993967989922006-11-08T02:21:00.000-05:002006-11-08T07:50:08.466-05:00

So I started a new contract recently and as I spent the first week reading documentation and going over the existing application's code, I saw something that wasn't wrong but it did catch my attention.Do you see the difference between these two conditions?String country = form.getCountry();if (country.equals(Constants.USA)) {...}and...String country = form.getCountry();if (Constants.USA.equals(

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1162970203787401472006-11-08T01:52:00.000-05:002006-11-08T02:16:43.800-05:00

We read about it all the time in the media. We read about software piracy rings getting busted and then the claims from the BSA or software companies of how many hundreds of millions of dollars were lost.I'm not going to get into the whole "well they would never have purchased it anyway" argument.I simply want to ask a question that begs to be asked. We hear the companies scream and cry murder

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1146170928189033712006-04-27T16:41:00.000-04:002006-05-14T01:06:43.280-04:00

Ever come across a website that think's the United States of America is the only country in the world? You know the ones where they present a form with a zipcode field. I don't mind it the label "Zip Code", but it's the validation that bugs me. Some sites are kind enough to not validate the field and allow me to input my Canadian postal code, but then there those dweebs who write validation logic

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1145736066217144302006-04-22T15:53:00.000-04:002006-04-22T16:01:06.226-04:00

Out of boredom I decided to use some frequent player points on Pokerstars to play a WSOP qualifier tourney last night. This is the first time I've played in a tournament (usually just play single table games) and I can see what all the excitement is, wow!I did quite well, actually very well. I came in 1st place and gained entry (top 14 out of 149 won entries into the 2nd round) into the second

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1143616831129446712006-03-29T02:18:00.000-05:002006-03-30T08:04:22.973-05:00

Spent a bit of time tonight looking at Java based CMS portals for an upcoming project. The ones I looked at briefly were JetnukeAtleapOpenCMSWe're basically looking for a CMS that we can customize and enhance through development. Our initial evaluations don't include any PHP based ones because PHP isn't our forte (yes you don't have to tell me that the CMS/Portal market is dominated by PHP

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1142439488621195952006-03-15T11:06:00.000-05:002006-03-15T13:22:57.780-05:00

Redeploying my application on Tomcat 5.5.15 on my 1.25Ghz G4 Powerbook 1GB ram was getting painstakingly slow so I decided to take a look at Jetty to see if it would help the cause.Here are two things I came across in getting started and which I couldn't find much help on Mortbay's site/wiki/docs1. If you use Log4J in your application and get this error:Caused by:

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1142021030287919932006-03-10T14:41:00.000-05:002006-03-10T15:03:50.340-05:00

While I've always known about SETI, it simply never really caught my interest.But this blog entry by Onno brought to my attention some other projects that might interest you.By downloading and installing a small program on our computers, we can make use of our computer's idle processing power. Those of us who leave our computers turned on day and night are wasting alot of computer power that

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1140538598142745442006-02-21T10:08:00.000-05:002006-02-23T23:00:47.823-05:00

I've been trying to restart work on an application that I've shelved for a year. Doing so inevitably meant updating the stack to the latest/greatest versions of each framework; in this case it was Tapestry/Hibernate/Spring. Lucky me as all 3 have come out with major version releases since :(It never ceases to amaze me that framework developers simply refuse to ease the learning curve of their

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1126642933410877772005-09-13T16:04:00.000-04:002006-02-21T22:21:58.783-05:00

Coincidental but the last time we moved, my contract wasn't renewed and I had to look for a new job. Well, we're moving again (more on that later) and again my employer informs me that they're not renewing my contract after 2yrs. So here we go again, I'm looking for a job again.Daphne and I are moving into a house. The townhouse was nice but with the kid, we decided it was time to get back into a

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1118242421064670662005-06-08T10:51:00.000-04:002005-06-08T10:53:41.083-04:00

Another entry in my journal of "Things to remember if I ever run a company"This article talks about Bea Systems broadening their business plan in reaction to Wall street skeptics who feel their core business of application server is suffering from slow-growth.As I read this article it I couldn't help but think that Bea is doing this in reaction to analysts expectations for them to grow as a

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1115924553670247222005-05-12T14:16:00.000-04:002006-02-13T14:10:45.966-05:00

Poor Greg is feeling the effect that overtime has on an employee over the long run.This is the perfect example of why I chose to make my living as a contractor as opposed to being a fulltime employee.Nowadays, it's too common to see management abuse their slaves^H^H^H^H^H^Hemployees by expecting absurd overtime in order to meet unrealistic deadlines or to make up for obvious resource shortages.

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1113337161123993612005-04-12T15:55:00.000-04:002005-04-12T16:19:21.126-04:00

It's about time I faced this problem and admit that I have an addiction. I'm afraid to say it but I have an addiction to electronic toys/gadgets/devices. My wife hasn't figured this out yet so let's pray for my sake that she doesn't read this.Just last week I upgraded my cell phone to PalmOne's Treo 650. My ambition is to get WIFI working on this so I can install some VOIP soft-client and see if

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1109198069211498892005-02-23T17:22:00.000-05:002005-02-23T17:34:29.213-05:00

We had a heated debate about some implementation decisions for this new project here at work. The final application will be clustered, so with that you essentially have no choice but to go stateless in all your session beans, or else you're locked into one node in the cluster (and that's not good).**NEWS FLASH** it's been decided that we'll be using Tangosol's Coherence as a distributed caching

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1107971376118106692005-02-09T11:21:00.000-05:002005-02-09T12:49:36.116-05:00

Work pressures have left me with little time to blog as much as I'd like so here's a summary of what's happened recently. Life My birthday just passed, as did my son's first year birthday. Can't believe how fast this year has gone. Just yesterday we were in the hospital with my wife giving birth to our first child. Happy Birthday Ethan! I want to thank my wife Daphne, and congratulate her for

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1098308288884612372004-10-20T17:23:00.000-04:002006-02-22T15:15:59.430-05:00

My jaw dropped on receiving this email. I mean literally, dropped. It's almost as if the government were to call me and tell me I had to use an asbestos filled mattress for my baby's crib. My current employer has decreed that IE6 is the only supported browser in the organization and that they will be removing any Netscape/Mozilla installations. I'm not going to say much for fear of backlash

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1097178046797937982004-10-07T15:35:00.000-04:002004-10-07T15:40:46.796-04:00

I really wanted to attend this presentation by Colin Sampaleanu but couldn't attend because of family obligations. Does anyone have any links to a roundup of the presentation. I'd really appreciate it if you could leave a link in my comments so I can catch what I missed. Toronto JUG Spring presentation

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1096566079744260002004-09-30T13:37:00.000-04:002004-09-30T13:41:19.746-04:00

Are there any Senior Swing developers looking for work in Toronto? The position is at a large financial institution. Canadian Securities Course and Fixed Income knowledge a definite asset but probably not essential if you're very good. Send me an email at "myfirstname.mylastname@gmail.com" with contact info and resume.

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1096556313617503592004-09-30T10:41:00.000-04:002004-09-30T10:58:33.616-04:00

I sure as hell don't. It amazes me the number of people who make a big stink of this. I really envy those people as they must get to work on projects with the latest versions of all the coolest tools. Must be sweet to change midstride and upgrade to the latest greatest JDK available or simply download the latest jakarta libraries and install the newest version of XYZ appserver. I recall being

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1096465076570283792004-09-29T09:32:00.000-04:002006-02-12T18:45:21.026-05:00

I've been subscribed to the JMX-FORUM@JAVA.SUN.COM mailing list for 6 weeks now and it's simply not active enough. In 6 weeks there have been a measly 59 postings. We're talking about JMX here...hell even a niche technology like Jini has more activity on it's mailing list. Anyways, I'm having problems and looking for help. Can anyone suggest a better forum or list for support? Thanks

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1096404302961711922004-09-28T16:06:00.000-04:002004-09-28T16:45:02.960-04:00

I've read the hype, read the user docs and I've even purchased Rod Johnson's latest book. I've even spent an evening or two trying it out myself. While I can't (or haven't yet) convince myself that the Spring Framework is the second coming of Java development, I can't help wonder if I'm missing the point entirely and can't see what the masses are raving about. The most common argument goes like

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1094847984511408492004-09-10T16:13:00.000-04:002004-09-10T16:26:24.510-04:00

Yes, that's Genocide of Mass Destruction happening in Darfur. It is sickening to read about the happenings over there. Especially in light of the fact that the most powerful nation on this planet isn't doing anything about it because they are busy filling their pockets with black gold over in Iraq. Here's a quote from the Globe and Mail newspaper, "The United States has proposed a draft UN

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1094829328160234102004-09-10T10:52:00.000-04:002004-09-10T11:15:28.160-04:00

Here are my comments in regard to Bob Smith's blog today at: http://jroller.com/page/bsmith/20040910#people_still_pay_for_software Bob claims that if you are an open source fanatic like Richard Stallman then you might as well switch careers because writing all that free software gets you nothing in return. Bob, take a look at the landscape of open source projects and you should notice that they

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1088439069705438952004-06-28T11:45:00.000-04:002004-06-28T12:11:09.706-04:00

I've been working as a freelance contractor doing J2EE work for the past 5 years. I'm not going to get into the whole discussion about pros and cons of contracting versus fulltime employment as that's been done and I probably have nothing to add. The start of the Java One conference does make me reminisce of the good ole times of working fulltime. My last fulltime engagement was at a large

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1086816498802585672004-06-09T15:58:00.000-04:002004-06-09T17:28:18.803-04:00

How many of you have designed systems and explicitly made decisions based on predicted future needs? Here's a good example. How many projects have you worked on where a Java Application Server was deemed necessary because "we might need to scale up and cluster for performance and robustness"? How many of those projects took on EJB's for the same reasons? Ok. Now how many of you have actually

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1086811104052246752004-06-09T15:54:00.000-04:002004-06-09T15:58:24.053-04:00

Well, I visited Toronto Website to read up on the smoking bylaws and to my dismay it seems that my master plan to permit smoking in my establishment may have it's problems. Apparently one of the stipulations of being a "private club" is that you have to be a non-profit org. Well, I'm stumped as to how we can make the bar a non-profit organization. Still awaiting a response from lawyers but

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1085600892360774032004-05-26T15:23:00.000-04:002004-05-26T15:48:12.360-04:00

A very good friend of mine has propositioned me to go into a business venture with him. We're contemplating opening a bar/lounge targeting the upscale clientele and featuring a distinctive wine list. The more thought I give it, the more issues I come up with. One for example is the issue of smoking. As most of you know, smoking is commonplace at bars and clubs. So with impending (June 1, 2004)

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1084470388246445142004-05-13T11:42:00.000-04:002004-05-13T15:39:07.643-04:00

I work as an independent consultant in the I.T industry. I specialize in Java Enterprise development and have been working in this industry for a decade now. I am compensated very well for doing what I do. I earn more than most of my friends and peers, I can afford most luxuries (within reason of course..no Carrera GT for me) in life. So why am I so despondent about my career? Simply because I

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6979374.post-1084462203749392522004-05-13T11:01:00.000-04:002004-05-13T11:30:03.750-04:00

My wife, Daphne, and I had a first child recently. A baby boy, Ethan, born on Jan 28, 2004. Every morning, I get up for work. My son gets up about the same time and I've noticed that he is most cheerful at this time of day. Watching him for those few minutes before I leave for work...as he playfully looks back at me with those deep eyes and starts smiling, is such a delight that I really can't

Wayland Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02746374187586611338noreply@blogger.com0