Blue-Dotted Again

I've been blue-dotted once again. That'll teach me to write a DDDS application. As I've said before, the Apps area of the IETF is working on a lot of interesting things these days.

The Tightening of the Chinese Labor Market

I can only assume that the era of cheap Chinese labor is over if the Chinese government has to resort to putting Marcos to work keeping the Great Wall clean.

Seriously, I barely had time to talk to Marcos this time around. But in the brief talk I did have with him, we managed a Software Development Managers Support Group Therapy Session. "Oh My God! None of the projects are finishing on time and we keep discovering some legacy software inappropriately using a part of the database we thought had died two years ago!" Yup! Been there. Done that. Who am I kidding... Still doing that! Its usually not the poor software architecture of legacy systems that get you but rather the lack of software discipline and consistency in the legacy systems.

A Night Visit to the Great Wall

A group of us managed to sneak away one night and get a tour of the Great Wall. We were told by the tour guide that this wasn't something done very often, and that the Chinese government seldom offers night tours. In fact, she said she'd been giving tours of the Great Wall for eight years, and this was only her second time doing it at night.

One of the few good shots I managed to get.

Of course, my photos don't do it justice. It is actually quite spectacular, but the spot lights gave the iPhone camera bit of a hard time.

Me, one of the few people who thought this through enough to bring a hat and gloves.

Given the fact that ours was the only tour bus there and no cars were in the parking lot, I'd say they kept this section of the Great Wall open late just for us. Again, pretty cool.

The Great Wall is not officially one of the seven wonders of the world.
And I couldn't care less about that fact.

There was also a gift shop and restaurant that was left open for our shopping and dining pleasure. Again, we were the only ones in there. Again, very cool. Actually, it was pretty cold in a literal sence out on the wall. The food was good, btw.

The Passing of A Great Man, My Father

Though many people who know me probably already know this, I've decided to put up a blog post about the recent passing of my father for those who may not have heard. Until now, this is not something I particularly cared to discuss, especially publicly. But since I seem to be passing the denial stage of grieving, I can now write this. And to the many people who sent me email, you will get a response... I just haven't been in a real talkative mood lately.

Last Friday, as I was on my way to the Beijing airport and headed back to the States, I got the phone call. My father had been in an automobile accident and died. Later I would find out that he was on his way to another county to pay a visit to a person in the hospital, something he regularly did as a Methodist minister.

Officially, he was retired and had been for years. But his Methodist district kept calling him out of retirement to take parttime postings at churches all over southeast Georgia. He would take the job for about a year and then go back into "retirement" when the Methodist church was able to fill the spot with a full time minister. I lost track of the number of "retirements" he had, but I'm pretty sure it was a good gig for him. He got to be pastor at one small country church after another which is how he liked it when he did the job as a full time minister, except he didn't have to move with each appointment. The small country churches allowed him to really get to know people, and that's what he liked about the job.

As his son, I never ever doubted he loved me... he always let me know it. And trust me, I pushed the envelope on the aggravation a son can cause a father. Shortly after the birth of my son, he wrote me a letter... the old fashion kind handwritten on stationary. In it he expressed his love for me and my brothers and the joy he had being a father, and he asked that I keep that letter to pass down to my children so that they will know what fatherhood meant to him. The letter was very touching and now sits in my safe for the day I pass it on.

My father wasn't just a good man, he was a great man. He personally touched the lives of an untold number of people, praying with them, preaching to them, visiting with them in hospitals and nursing homes, officiating weddings and consoling survivors at funerals and memorials. He was a missionary both abroad and at home, and I will miss him dearly as does the rest of his family and many, many others.

The Reverend Dr. Joseph A. Newton, Jr
1935 - 2010

A Fat American in China

So I've been on the ground here in Beijing for less than 24 hours.... and here are my thoughts so far. Since none of the IETF sessions being held today were of importance to us, we decided to see the Forbidden City with some colleagues from Australia.

One of the many court yards of the Forbidden City.

Smog. I'm told it is bad. But both yesterday and today were a bit windy and so the smog has been blown elsewhere. On my ride in from the airport during rush hour traffic, I did notice the polution though. My eyes were already read from lack of sleep, etc., but I noticed that about 20 minutes into the car ride that my throat was burning and my sinuses were clogging up. Once at the hotel, everything became fine.

A building leading into a court yard in the Forbidden City.

Traffic. There is apparently no shortage of traffic here. It is also striking that there are not nearly as many bicyclists as you would think. While there are quite a few bicycles and pedal-powered transportation vehicles, the predominate mode of transportation is via automobile... by a good bit.

The south entrance to the Forbidden City.

Language. If you ask me, there are far more Chinese who can speak passing English than there are Japanese who know any English. At least that's how I compare Beijing to last year's IETF in Hiroshima. And a good many of the people trying to sell you souvenirs know enough English to conduct simple commerce.

Apparently there are several scams running with tourists. In both a young lady approaches you and asks you if you would either like to see an art exhibit or come have tea with them in a tea house to help them with their English. Once suckered in, the mark is required to pay an exorbitantly high price to leave. Walking around the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square we must have had somebody either try to sell us something or ask us about seeing their art exhibit about once every 10 or 20 feet. At some point it got so frequent that I quit trying to be polite and started just saying "No" instead of the more polite "Maybe later", etc... After awhile I realized that if I spoke something other than English the attempts were broken off very fast. So I started just throwing out Spanish phrases like "Donde esta la biblioteca" and "Como esta." Of course those are not proper responses to turn down offers, but they didn't know that.

Another court yard in the Forbidden City.

Food. Our Australian colleagues took us to a Szechuan restaurant in a city shopping mall. It was superb. We all ordered a soda beverage, which were delivered with curly straws in them. I found this rather odd.

I guess they figure we were child-like an needed the bendy straws.

In general, Beijing is a very modern city and not unlike a major city you would find anywhere else. Their airport is new and very nice. They have many large highways. Most every car is something you would find on the streets of any American city. So far so good.

Confessions of Mac Java Developer

I have been a Mac Java software developer for many years now. By that I do not mean I develop programs for Macs that are written in Java, but rather that I write Java programs on a Mac that are destined for deployment on Linux servers. That's not to say that I have not written programs for the Mac in Java, I've just never done it specifically for the Mac.

With the recent announcement that Apple will be deprecating Java for the Mac, I have been thinking about the future of my development platforms. And since I have to write Java programs, it looks like the Mac must go. Did I mention I oversee a number of other developers with this same development style? Apple's announcement does come at a pretty good time for us, as we are budgeting for next year. And we have decided to refresh our development workstations not with Macs but with PCs running Linux.

I know, I know... so what? If all the Java developers using Macs in the world were to switch over to Linux or Windows, the profits lost by Apple wouldn't add up to the cost of one of Steve Jobs unlicensed Mercedes or the fines he would receive for parking illegally if he were one of the hoi polloi. So big deal!

Except, without a Mac around all these developers won't be cracking open Xcode and dabbling with iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) application development.... applications destined for the platform from which Apple now derives the greatest chunk of its change. However, these developers will have ready access in their free time for the one place that client-side Java has been a success, Android. And what platform does Android compete against...?

Now I am not saying that Steve Jobs is making a huge foreseen strategic blunder. This is, after all, just me yammering. But developers making merry with Apple's biggest mobile competitor is certainly an unforeseen consequence of Apple dropping support for Java.