Last week, the »International Juggler's Association had their yearly conference an hour-and-a-half down the road at the Sovereign Center in Reading, Pennsylvania. I was able to meet a friend of mine, »Sarah Pride, for the first time. Boy was that exciting! She is in every way as nice as she is online, and even nicer yet in many ways. I certainly had more fun than a barrel of nulls (TM) the days I went to the convention. take that, Skippy! I can trademark a phrase.
note from 2003! Woah! I think this was the first usage of this term in the history of Nate. Freaky to go back over old postings.
No luck yet developing my stories; I was away for a week at Camp Swatara with my family and extended family, but it was one of the most horribly unproductive experiences of my life (the rest was all fun and games). I got very little useful or lasting done, which was rather crushing, since it's usually a time during which I crank out at three articles and read through several books. The uncanny drought is continuing still, but I'm pulling out of it. On the bright side, I was able to learn Java during that week; I ported a few of the Xscreensavers to my Palm using Sun's Midp for PalmOS.
I now work at HM Consulting, a company in Lancaster that does a large number of interesting stuff, but the two main-ish projects I'll be working on are (#1) a web catalog database system for »Tropar (and a new layout :P), and (#2) some JSP for a rewrite of HM's ScriptFast prescription system for Express Scripts IN JAVA (da da dum!). This will be my first real Java project (I'll be briefed tomorrow on the first bits of my part in it), and I'm looking forward to it. HM is the ultimate place to work; the people are nice, and they're clueful. For example, I was asked to read a really incredible book on programming anti-patterns called Bitter Java. Buy it. Now. It's the best book you'll ever read (unless someone writes a better one) on programming methodology for web applications. It is to web application programming what The Mythical Man-Month is to project management. We might also get a bit into MIDP programming (somebody please buy me a jornada or ipaq). It also helps one's job if one's boss is fairly well versed in Stage Magic.
A few days ago, I had my first substantial work in a while. This untitled poem was for my cousin in celebration of his marriage. I gave it to them as shown (framed, of course). I really like this one; it took me over two months to write, but only one day to write. I had thrown out tons of ideas and poems that worked very badly, until I finally had the perfect idea the morning of the day. I somehow managed to finish it up and I had the perfect poem for the perfect couple. I was happy, and so were they.