It's upsetting when the rug is yanked from under your feet.

Situation:
I'm sitting in a conference room holding a technical discussion with my development team on the best manner to handle a systems interface. We've pretty much figured out the best solution to the problem and were working through some implementation details so that we could quickly beat the problem.

And then my boss comes into the room...

"Can you explain how the site is architected?" he asks. I begin to explain the general structure to the app, keeping it high level so as not to get bogged down.

"We have a problem. The TC's have reversed their decision about J2EE applications on the shared servers. They won't let it go into production on the shared environment."
Needless to say, I am floored.
"Any reason why?" I asked.
"Something to do with how the web connector won't work for the NAS 2.1 apps if you have J2EE apps in the same environment."
bullshit I'm thinking.

So now I'm sitting here, thinking of ways to mitigate this big, flashing, warning sign that I'm putting into my status report. It's not looking pretty folks. Any time management comes into the room and says "It's got to be stellar, so take all the time that you need: your schedule has been blown out of the water..." to a project team that is operating ahead of schedule it's not going to be pretty.

What a day.

At work I spent 4 hours fighting with the Java LDAP API. It's damn ugly, let me tell you. To top it all off, I came home and began to fight with Nautilus install. Its taken me three days to get to the bonobo part, I have to chase libraries all the time, since half the stuff in APT isn't what I needed. it's not one of the most pleasureable expierences in Linux.

Angie and I ate at Prarie Fire, one of the newer resturants in Lawrence, tonight excellent food and pleasant service. To top it all off we were the only patrons there! We shared a pleasant conversation about how I work, and why things get done the way they do when I code. It was a good conversation.

On the drive home I was listening to the show This American Life. This week's show was about the town of Cicero, IL. This town was one of the final holdouts against integration. It is still one of the dirtiest run cities in the country. The current politicians will use city services to silence dissenting voices. But that's not the point...

The point is that this town is still harassing minority residents. This got me thinking: Why does the distinction between races continue to exist? As a practical matter it will be impossible, or highly improbable, to eradicate racism. That kind of hatred is simply to easy to spread. But that's not the question. Why do seemingly rational people buy into the concept that someone is less than they are based soley on the color of someone's skin or the shape of their eyes?

I don't have an answer. Do you?

I added a new Haiku to my Poetry page, it's a pretty good one. Let me know what you think.

Today I acquired the Philip Glass orchestration for Tod Browning's 1931, Dracula. It's a marvelous scoring, I strongly encourage anyone who's seen the film with the original scoring to watch it with this score as well, and compare the difference. I also got a book called Old Path White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh. It's a retelling of Buddha's life through the eyes of a buffalo herder Svasti. It's very interesting and well written.

Today I integrated this weblog into my website at stronghold. I really like the uniform look and feel. Soon I hope to add some DHTML to the site, along with some actual content other than this log. :)