Javamancy

How I Became an Irish-American Citizen

Steve — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:30:25 +0000

Yes, today is St. Patrick’s Day. It is also the day that, in a humorous bent, many people refer to each other as Irish-Americans in the U.S., as an inclusive way to harmonize with other festivity-goers for the holiday.

For me, however, it holds a deeper significance, since it reminds me of why I participate as a voter in the election process and why I try to stay current on a lot of local, state, and federal politics as it pertains to the people. Today in particular is the twentieth year anniversary of the day when I was sworn in as an American citizen. During the swearing ceremony, the judge went on record, in a jovial manner, to say that everybody being sworn in was decreed to be Irish-Americans and, like all Americans, would be expected to uphold the laws of the nation and are granted the privileges to participate in its governance. Since then, I have certainly kept myself as informed as possible about the current events and spent my time at the polling stations like all of my other comrade voters.

However, I’ve also overheard plenty of people who have grumbled about how “lousy” things are going for them because of politicians and their various hijinks and misadventures– quite reminiscent of the same chatter that reality TV shows frequently garner around the water cooler. But then these same complainers proudly proclaim that they do not vote because they do not want to waste their time voting for things that “do not matter” to them.

Unlike many of these individuals, I was not born into American citizenship; instead, I had earn it through the lengthy naturalization process and, through that process, I learned how precious and valuable that citizenship is. So, while today is one of festivity and to commemorate Saint Patrick (who was also not a native of the country that he is well-known for proselytizing in)… it is also a solemn day for me to reflect upon the American political process and how citizenship can impact how the nation functions.

St. Patrick’s Day

Steve — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:22:57 +0000

Happy St. Patrick’s Day (Lá Fhéile Pádraig)!

March 17 is the observance of this Irish holiday, which has transformed to a worldwide secular marketing and merchandising day but which originally began as a Catholic holiday commemorating the life and death of Saint Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland.

Although Saint Patrick was not Irish (he was a Roman-Briton), he devoted the majority of his adult ordained life to converting to– and popularizing– Christianity in Ireland. March 17 is generally accepted at the day of his death, but the exact year remains in question, varying from 420 to 460 to 493 AD. The shamrock, according to legend, is the device by which he explained the Christian Holy Trinity and, thus, plays a major role in the holiday. And, while “blue” was the color traditionally associated with Saint Patrick, green has gradually supplanted it such that, in the modern era, green is seen as the official color for the holiday.

So, while you are enjoying your time at one of many St. Patrick’s Day parades or celebrations around the world, take a bit o’ time to reflect on the man and the legend of Saint Patrick.

It’s Official: More 99¢ Filet-o-Fish

Steve — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:00:21 +0000

As many of you have probably seen, McDonald’s [MCD] has run a new series of commercials detailing the extension of their wildly successful 99¢ Filet-o-Fish promotion until March 28, 2010.

This is in the midst of several other recent McDonald’s initiatives touting their refreshed Morning Dollar Menu. Kudos to McDonald’s for catering to their audience.

Now the question is whether the Filet-o-Fish is so popular that it should be placed on the Lunch Dollar Menu…

N.B.

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Yet Another Reversal in the Fish Story: 99¢ Filet-o-Fish

Steve — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:36:12 +0000

Wow! Several McDonald’s [MCD] outlets have extended the fantabulous 99¢ Filet-o-Fish promotion, at least until the franchise management has had enough of it, or until supplies run out.

Quite a surprise, but perhaps a minor one: McDonald’s recently announced decent profits, based upon their feedback and sales on their new $1 Breakfast Menu, which builds upon their successes with the $1 Lunch Menu. There was even a rumor that their sponsorship of, and advertising during, the 2010 Winter Olympics also gave an additional boost to sales.

Whatever the case may be, confirmation that the 99¢ Filet-o-Fish promotion has been continued came earlier today.

N.B.

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Update: Today is the Last Day for 99¢ Filet-o-Fish

Steve — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:00:45 +0000

There was a recent update provided for the 99¢ Filet-o-Fish promotion at McDonald’s [MCD]. The last day for the promotion has been moved earlier to March 7, 2010.

99¢ Filet-o-Fish in 2010

Steve — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:29:52 +0000

Just when you thought it would never come again, since the last promotion of its type was at the much higher $1.19 price point…

McDonald’s [MCD] has finally decided to run its famous, limited-time 99¢ Filet-o-Fish promotional offer once again!

Update:

This offer will end March 14, 2010 March 7, 2010.

N.B.

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The Secret Armory of General Knoxx

Steve — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:45:27 +0000

Earlier today, the long-awaited third DLC for the popular Borderlands game made its way to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for download. For many people, this is quite a surprise, given that there had been no formal drop date previously divulged. Nevertheless, this is a welcome release, and it evidently builds upon the successes from the main game and its two previous DLC’s.

The new expansion’s plot builds upon the notion of the increasing presence of the Crimson Lance and the presumable reassertion by the Atlas Corporation over their claim to Pandora, thereby opposing the Dahl Corporation’s current occupation and management of the planet. The main game had the players running afoul of several Atlas-backed Crimson Lancer squads, and now there is a major invasion force coming to Pandora. An ex-Lancer Siren character (NPC), Athena, is trying to escape the clutches of her former Lancer assassins and figured that by joining the other characters on-world, her odds of survival would be better. So, now the players will have to crush-kill-destroy the seemingly overwhelming forces of the Crimson Lance and Atlas… and who is this “General Knoxx” and his secret armory, anyway?

In many ways, this looks like it forms the third part of a trilogy representing the post-Vault era: there are a lot of references to characters and events from the main game and the previous two DLC’s. However, the first two DLC’s seem to act more as standalone expansions, with virtually no references toward each other. So, does this symbolize the completion of the Borderlands story, once and for all? Or is Borderlands II getting vetted through the approval process? Only time, and the fanbase, will tell…

N.B.

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… And Akismet Survived!

Steve — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:46:16 +0000

Yesterday, while Javamancy and Javamancy mini were chugging happily away, servicing you, our kind readers, WordPress.com had apparently suffered a multi-hour system outage.

One of the fine services that we use is Akismet, and according to the Akismet blog, it was unaffected by the recent WordPress.com system outage. This is obviously a Good Thing, since many sites rely upon the functionality that Akismet provides in protecting sites.

Ouchie! WordPress.com Outage

Steve — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:45:39 +0000

Yesterday, while Javamancy and Javamancy mini were chugging happily away, servicing you, our kind readers, WordPress.com had apparently suffered a multi-hour system outage. According to Matt M., this unexpected downtime impacted about 10.2M (that’s millions!) blogs that are serviced by his WordPress.com service, including their VIP subscribers.

Fortunately, it seems that WordPress.com is up and running once again, and Matt promises to figure out what happened. Kudos to Matt and WordPress.com for bouncing back and getting back online!

Apache Subversion

Steve — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:00:02 +0000

A scant couple of days ago, Subversion (the project) formally graduated from its incubation phase, becoming a full-fledged Apache project at subversion.apache.org. It seemed like almost yesterday that it had been accepted as a candidate by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF)… In fact, it was in late 2009 that the proposal to join the ASF had been filed, and just a few months later, it made its way toward acceptance.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what Subversion is, it is an open source file-associated content versioning system. Many developers who are familiar with RCS, SCCS, and CVS have probably heard about Subversion (SVN) as the “next step” toward versioning “modernity” or “modernness”, especially for those who are transitioning from traditional code branching and merging toward changeset management techniques. For people participating in agile configuration management (CM) and coding initiatives, Subversion may have even been selected as the primary (or even, sole) versioning system.

For those of you approaching CM for the first time during this latest iteration of Web development (circa 2006 and onward), while you may be more familiar (and even using) distributed/disconnected/decentralized versioning systems like Mercurial (hg) or Git or even monotone, you also may have heard of Subversion as one of the last vestiges of centralized versioning systems that organizations that have moved onto the current system have used in the past.

For others, the folks who have been using commercial versioning products like StarTeam or ClearCase, you may be scratching your head and wondering what all the fuss is about.

And for those you who’ve been deep in the CM trenches for awhile, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, it’s about time.”

There are benefits and disadvantages to the features that Subversion provides, and depending on your development requirements, it may be 100% the tool to use, or it may cover enough of the features that you need that it’ll do the trick, or it may be insufficient to match your needs. But it always seems to be on everybody’s short list for consideration, replacing the position that the venerable CVS once held.

For public repository access, Subversion is very popular because a couple of its access methods involve leveraging HTTP rather than a proprietary protocol. For that matter, you may find site hosting services offering Subversion as a way to manage versioned content for Web sites due to its support for WebDAV (however incomplete) as well as to support development codebases, big and small.

So, we’re tickled pink that Subversion has made its way to ASF as a full-fledged graduated project at this time. Kudos!