Another day, another blog entry

Heh. Talk about a misleading title, eh? It’s not like I’m a regular poster—sometimes I don’t post anything for days at a time, and other times I post a half dozen entries in a day.

But I figured I should post something, because otherwise there are people out there who won’t know what’s going on in my life. (The obvious temptation, of course, is to simply post “everything’s the same as always”, and leave it at that, but you know I’m too long-winded to do that.)

I don’t know if he reads this blog regularly, but I’d like to wish my friend Greg a happy birthday. I would have sent an e-card, to commemorate the event—which was more than a week ago—but there aren’t any good e-card sites anymore, that don’t require registration. I get enough spam as it is, without signing up for things and inviting more… And, while I’m at it, if there are others who read this blog who normally get e-cards from me on birthdays, you won’t be getting them going forward. Sorry.

I’ll be working again this weekend. Another late-night deployment, Saturday night/Sunday morning. I just hope it goes as smoothly as past ones; lately we’ve been tearing these things off in 30 minutes or less. Badda boom, badda bing. I also have a party Saturday afternoon, which will be hosted at our place, so I’m hoping it will fizzle out before I have to leave for work, so that I don’t have to leave early.

Nerd stuff: On a related note, I’ve been scouring the web, lately, looking for a good tutorial on Entity Beans. It started out as curiosity, and then turned into a mission: is there not one good site out there, that can clearly and articulately explain to beginners what an Entity Bean is, and how to create it? Or a book? Or a Wikipedia article? I find it odd; I’ve been working with J2EE for years now, and have never seen a good explanation of Entity Beans, aimed at people who don’t already know what Entity Beans are. I’ve seen lots of discussions about whether Entity Beans should be used at all, or how performant they may theoretically be, but nothing for the newbies. I’d do it myself—maybe put it in Wikipedia or something—but I don’t really care enough to put the effort into it. (I’m mostly in the camp that Entity Beans aren’t that useful, although I don’t have strong opinions on it.) As it is, if you’re just getting started with J2EE, and trying to figure out what these “Entity Beans” are, I guess you’ll just have to read a lot of articles. Eventually, you’ll probably start to get an idea what they’re used for, and how to build them.

As today is Friday, I have Youth Group tonight. And, as I’m an incompetent moron, I don’t have anything planned. It used to be that we could all just show up at the church on a Friday night, and entertain ourselves for the night, but those days are gone; these days, when we don’t have anything planned, it’s a long, boring, painful experience for all involved. So I’m mentally preparing myself for a few hours of “So you don’t have anything planned?” and “Why don’t you have anything planned?” and “What are we supposed to do tonight if you don’t have anything planned?!?” But, as the old song goes, nobody’s fault but mine. I’ll go to the church and take my medicine, and hopefully I’ll be more on the ball for next week.

James came over on… um… Wednesday? Anyway, he came over some day this week, and fixed our lawn. Actually, not just the lawn; he did a bunch of stuff:

• cut the grass in the front yard
• cut the grass in the back yard—which doesn’t always get done, when I do the lawn
• trimmed the plants that are planted along the fence
• weeded the various gardens around the yard
• removed the grape vine, which I had only partially removed the year before
• removed a bunch of other junk that had been in the back yard, unused; places where gardens should go, but didn’t have any gardens, etc.

Frankly, I don’t know how he managed to do all of this work in one day. (Along with any other work he did, that I may have forgotten to mention.)

Speaking of James, he also gave me a bottle of Coke BlaK, which I haven’t tried yet. (“Coke effervescence with coffee essence”? That has the potential to be really, really bad…) Maybe on Saturday; I’m sure I’ll need an extra boost, to keep myself awake that day, so it’ll probably be the perfect opportunity.

I’ve been feeling incredibly listless and disinterested at work, lately. (And, as mentioned, MSN has been making me angry, although it seems better today.) I think I’m just tired. Or I have mono. One of the two. Probably just tired, though, so I’m not worried about being contagious. We’ll see how this weekend goes; if the release goes smoothly, and everything is fine on Monday, maybe I’ll get back into the swing of things.

And maybe I’ll start posting more regularly, too.