A full JavaOne update will come soon, but I wanted to let all of you know that at the JavaOne After Hours "Bash" tonight I saw Dennis Miller do a full stand up routine and a long concert by Camp Freddy along with Gina Gershon, one of the girls from "The Donnas," one of the guys from "Third Eye Blind," and Mikey Einziger and Brandon Boyd of Incubus. I also got involved in some kind of argument between two Chinese ladies at a restaurant that we were trying to eat at in Chinatown. We couldn't figure out why they were hollering at each other and pointing at us, so we left to find another restaurant.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 30 June 2005 at 2:07 AM

Well, a lot has happened since I posted a couple of weeks ago about my goal of reading twenty-five books this summer. Since then I've read seven books and am already nearly halfway to my goal with more than two months left. I've been helped by working my way through some old favorites, but I've also been helped by burning up my living room, which left me without my usual location for watching hours of TV.

Yes, that's right. A burning candle somehow caught my couch on fire just a few hours after I wrote that post about my reading plans. I burned myself a bit (but not too seriously) in my failed effort to put the fire out, but the only real casualty was the couch. As you can see from the picture, not much of the couch was left. The carpet beneath the couch also needed to be replaced and the living room had to be painted. Both of those things just got done this week, mostly because my landlord was in Europe for the first week after the fire. While the rest of the apartment wasn't directly effected by the fire, soot was everywhere. My parents drove into town on Saturday and we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned for three days before we got everything except the living room sorted out.

It is especially fortuitous that fire related things have finally been sorted out and corrected, because I'm leaving for the JavaOne conference in San Francisco on Sunday and won't be back in Saint Louis until after the Fourth of July holiday. I don't really know what to expect with regard to this conference. They have activities from 8:00 am until nearly midnight every night of the conference. But I'm not sure that I want to drop 16 hours a day on Java, so we'll have to see how things go.

One of the guys from work who went to JavaOne last year has requested that I bring him back a whole slew of goodies including t-shirts, pens, and software. I'm not feeling very magnanimous though. He didn't get me a thing when he was at JavaOne last year, and now he's giving me a list of things to get him? To be honest, I don't really want to deal with collecting a bunch of free crap at all -- even for myself. But perhaps my mind will change in a few days.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 24 June 2005 at 10:54 PM

I'm a bit confused as to why the movie industry is in crisis. I think there are very few other industries that haven't seen a reduction in sales since 1962. At some point you just have to accept that your product might have come close to a saturation point. And there are slow years in every industry that don't get written up as a major crisis. I guess this is just a part of our culture of celebrity: we obsess over even the boring details of celebrities' careers.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 23 June 2005 at 9:58 PM

This thinking might be a vestige of my pre-George W. Bush conservative thinking, but in many ways I'd prefer that property rights should be inviolate and that the government's intrusion should be limited to making sure that what you do on your property doesn't significantly adversely effect your neighbors. Which means I really don't like the idea of the government taking over your property under eminent domain. Clearly, eminent domain has it uses, but I don't think economic development should be one of those. It is especially troubling when people in low income neighborhoods are evicted from their homes. These people often have to leave the community they lived in in order to find suitable, alternate housing. Which means that they sacrifice and get none of the benefits of the new development's tax revenues. I also don't like the government stepping in to essentially create profit for commercial ventures. The evicted tenants are paid the pre-development market rate for their homes, while the developers get to pocket huge profits because they didn't have to pay market rates for the property. [The development announcement logically makes property values go up, because there is a buyer who badly wants very specific properties. But the evicted landowners are paid a "fair market value" for their homes that doesn't factor in the desire of this developer to get their specific property, but just gives them a reasonable price based on the sale price of similar properties. Essentially this acts as a huge benefit to the company that is ultimately getting the properties.] I would be a lot happier if the original property owners were allowed to participate in the profits that the development generates.

The other issue I have with this is accountability. It's all well and good to say that if you're upset about something like this, you should show your disapproval on election day and vote out the people who put this forward. Unfortunately, those who are most effected by the eminent domain land seizures often no longer live in areas under the jurisdiction of those who put these proposals forward. The politicians are essentially doing something that their constituents are against, but in the process are moving preventing them from voting on the issue. That's undemocratic in the worst possible way.

In short, I think eminent domain property seizures should be limited to true government works like hospitals and highways, and not shopping malls and other corporate developments.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 23 June 2005 at 11:50 AM

Jeb Bush is a jackass.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 17 June 2005 at 11:34 AM

Recently I think I've spent too much time in front of the TV. So I set a goal for myself this summer. Starting at the beginning of June and running through the end of August, I'm going to read 25 books. This averages out to two books per week, which seems a bit aggressive, but I think I can pull this off as long as I'm very careful about my book selection. There's nothing worse than wasting a couple of days slogging through a book that you just aren't enjoying. I'm probably going to cheat a bit by throwing in some old favorites, especially later this month when I'm flying back and forth from San Francisco. (I don't want to be caught on a long flight with boring books.)

So far I think my progress has been pretty good. Today is the tenth so I need to be through three books at this point. I'm a bit ahead as I've made it through four books so far:

• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  
• Carnage on the Committee by Ruth Dudley Edwards
  
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
  
• I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
  

I also wasted more time than I should have giving The Portrait by Iain Pears a chance. The Portrait is interesting, but it is written entirely as one side of a dialogue between an artist and his subject. I'll probably come back to it at some point, but I tried to start this book twice this week and just couldn't get into, so it's going to have to wait.

You can see the book I'm currently working on over there on the right. It's The Closers by Michael Connelly. I'm joining this series a bit late as this is the tenth book featuring Detective Harry Bosch, but I'm really enjoying it so far which probably means a trip to the library is in order.

Books currently in the queue include Matricide at St. Martha's; Publish and Be Murdered; Beginning a Great Work, Washington University in St. Louis 1853-2003; The Travels of Jamie McPheeters; The Flanders Panel; and the new Harry Potter book.

If you've read a good book recently, please leave a comment and let me know about it. I'll keep you updated on how this little quest as the summer goes on.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 10 June 2005 at 8:53 PM

Here's something crazy I just noticed about Larry Walker. His Cardinal teammates don't five him a high five when he scores. They give him three. That is they only hold up three fingers when slapping hands with him instead of the usually five. Larry's obsessed with the number three, and apparently his teammates have bought into that.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 June 2005 at 8:07 PM

Mike Tyson is crazy. We all know that. But his particular form of crazy still makes for a highly amusing (if somewhat misleading) lede in a summary article of his recent fights.

You might be shocked, or at least surprised, to cross paths with Mike Tyson at a benefit for children's charities. Tyson's philanthropic reputation suffered a blow when he threatened to eat Lennox Lewis's kids.

The article goes on to juxtapose Tyson's children eating threats with the fact that he has spent time at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, ostensibly because he had "nothing else to do." If Michael Jackson truly loved children as much as he claims, wouldn't he want to keep a freak who had in the past threatened to eat children and committed a sex crime away from the kids at the Neverland Ranch? But perhaps Jackson found a kindred spirit in Tyson. Neither of them are exactly normal, so perhaps this is a case of birds of a feather flocking together.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 8 June 2005 at 9:46 AM

I was not immediately taken with The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and translated by Lucia Graves. In general, books about how great books are don't much appeal to me. It always feels a bit like the author is giving himself a pat on the back and telling himself how great he is. Initially, I was afraid that The Shadow of the Wind was one of those books, but I turned out to be very much mistaken. The story does revolve around a fictitious book -- also named "The Shadow of the Wind" -- but it focuses more on the author of that book, Julian Carax, and his strange life. Set in the middle part of the twentieth century with some flashbacks to earlier times, The Shadow of the Wind follows young Daniel Sempere as he discovers the books written by Julian Carax and tries to learn more about him and his books. There's plenty of action and romance in this book, and I highly recommend it.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 June 2005 at 9:00 AM