Paco Posts

With all the attention on Elvis’ 30th anniversary of his death, to my mind a much more important memorial is forgotten. Today is the 30th anniversary of Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx. I was in boot camp when I saw the newspaper headline that Groucho had died and though he had a long life and died at 86 I certainly felt his passing.
As a life long Marx Brothers fan it was always Groucho I loved most (after that of course it is Zeppo or Gummo). In the days of three or four channel TV is was always an event for me when a Marx Brother film was being played or when a local theater was doing a Marx Brothers’ film festival. In high school I read every book on the Marx Brothers I could get my hands on and even once wrote an essay on them. Besides once dressing up as Groucho though I did once pull the Harpo handshake-to-leg-holding trick on my principal.
There are just so many stories about Groucho outside of his films that I truly love. One of my favorite being is that after the Marx Brothers’ had made the film “A Night in Casablanca”, Warner Brothers sent a letter to them saying they were going to sue. Groucho wrote them back saying that the Marx Brothers were brothers before the Warner brothers and would counter-sue. That was the end of that lawsuit.
Night of the Opera is my favorite film of theirs, but I enjoy even their lesser films which compared to what passes for comedy in films today are masterpieces in comparison. To many film comedians have decided that to be funny you have to be vulgar and crass. The new comedians might have their funny moments in film, but it is only moments. The interplay of the Marx Brothers could have your rolling from the beginning of the film to the end. Instead of the onscreen wit and silliness of Groucho’s walk, songs, and painted on moustache we get Adam Sandler.
So thank you Groucho for the years of pleasure and may we one day meet in Heaven even if you would never join a club that would have you as a member.
“I once shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my pajamas I’ll never know” — Animal Crackers
One of my first parodies was a Marx Brothers’ take on the Jesus Seminar called A Night at the Jesus Seminar.

I’m a nosy girl and I really always have been. I have forever liked peeking through binoculars to observe things that weren’t, techinically, any of my business.

Those neighbors sure are loud… I wonder what they’re up too? That lawn mowing boy across the street sure looks cute… just who is that?

And at major league baseball games, I would much rather investigate interesting happenings in the bleachers… who cares about the sport?

My college roommate and I could frequently be found peeking out of our third floor windows that looked out onto campus and “greek town.” When I live in the city, my first paycheck will probably go towards a high-tech telescope, a la Friends. Creepy? Nah. Okay, well maybe a little. But mostly it’s just the curious journalist in me. The fact of the matter is, reality is much more entertaining than television (or even reality TV, for that matter).

Anthropologie’s quirky take on around-the-neck binoculars is just adorable. A funny way to confess my penchant for, uh, exploring.

-tf

You’d think seeing Britney Spears’s fame freefall would be a deterrent, but not for Alli Sims, Britney’s cousin and former personal assistant. The young brunette wants to be a star… and she’s on her way.

According to People.com, the 26-year-old is launching a pop career of her own — releasing her first album — and despite rumors that she and Brit are feuding, she says Britney is behind her.

“She heard my songs on the laptop and was like, ‘I love this song! This is you singing?’ She has always been supportive.”

But Alli may not know what she’s talking about. After all, she also gave props to Britney’s parenting skills, saying “She’s a wonderful mom and she is so hands-on. … Britney loves those babies to death. And they adore her.”

I doubt Alli Sims is going to be Hollywood’s next big star, but on the bright side, I’m sure her album can’t be any worse than the drivel Kevin Federline put out. Remember “Popozao”?

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Propping up Housing and College
Jerry,
Your observation: "Interestingly, learned economists
don’t seem to see this until it’s very clear and plain. Which makes one
wonder why anyone pays attention to learned economists."
Back in the Days of Giants (decks of punch cards and
batch turn-around time) I was passing the time with an actual Economist (for
whom I was doing some programming) and he humorously quipped; "a bankrupt
economist is one who believes his own model."
It is interesting that you look at both housing and
education. It strikes me that these are two of the few industries that we
have not moved off-shore. We can afford to maintain our living standard (or
corporate profit, or fat-cat high-living, etc - this is certainly open to
politically tinged analysis - but clearly we are leveraging some sort of
advantage here) because we have moved production overseas. For work that we
can’t move overseas we have enticed undocumented "overseas" workers to come
here.
"Distance learning" schemes have not caught on. While
there are still North American forests and trade unions (as opposed to labor
unions) it will still be simpler to build locally (although most of
fasteners and other bits and pieces are foreign). Interesting that these two
industries are the last stronghold of unions. I don’t think the costs are
high because of the unions - I think the unions can survive here because the
costs are high and there are no genuine options to off-shore this work.

Our political and corporate leaders are intent on
providing us with the life style we demand. If they didn’t provide some sort
of financial smoke and mirrors, the costs of education and housing would be
terribly out of kilter with other costs.
Andy Kowalczyk Bloomington, Indiana
It certainly does not cost 400 times as
much to build my house now as it did in 1968 when I bought it. I can recall
when the most expensive place in our neighborhood — the old Residency next
door to what was then a Catholic girls high school — was $100,000, and a
few years later, the old movie producer mansion across the street which had
once been the scene of famous Hollywood parties went on the market for
$100,000 but needed $50,000 work to be livable. This wasn’t all that long
ago.
As to universities, what in the world
costs 30 times as much now as it did in 1970? Same with schools: why in the
world are schools underfunded at $10,000 per student? Is there any reader
here who given 100 students and a million dollars a year could not guarantee
one grade’s worth of progress per year (refunding, say, $5,000 for each
student who didn’t make a grade’s worth)? I could make enormous profits at
that. Couldn’t you?

Celebrex Competition The biggest challenger to Celebrex in the COX-2 inhibitor wars was Vioxx, as recent as a few years ago.  Unfortunately for Merck & Company, Vioxx sales were torpedoed in 2004, when the results of studies linked the drug to an increase in cardiovascular disease. The drug was later voluntarily removed from the market by Merck. While being sued by many consumers over the controversy, the company has been back pedaling ever since.  In the meanwhile, Celebrex has become th! e drug of choice, in the race for top COX-2 Inhibitor.  However, just last month, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis released some important news.  Their COX-2 inhibitor Prexige is testing well and may soon be available in the United States (the drug is already available in 55 other countries). &nbsp

New Mexico State opened the season Thursday night and our man Greg was on scene in Las Cruces, scoping out the scenery, above.

The Aggies defeated Southeastern Louisiana, 35-14, behind four touchdown passes from Chase Holbrook.
As you can see, New Mexico State games draw an interesting crowd.
Nightfall descends on Aggie Memorial Stadium and the crowd of 12,682.
Among those in attendance were new basketball coach Marvin Menzies and Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish.

Tired of playing with your HydroBlitz Super Soaker 2007

BEA Workshop 10.1 is out. This is a merge of the BEA Workshop and Workshop Studio products. It’s covered well in Bill Roth’s post. Chris Hogue and Pieter Humphrey add detail too.

In the Articles we have Exception Advice: An Aspect-Oriented Model. Barry Ruzek expands on his popular Effective Java Exceptions work by showing how to use aspect-oriented programming to implement the Fault-Contingency exception model. Barry’s previous article, Effective Java Exceptions, was pretty popular.

Also check out
Running Quercus, A Pure Java PHP Engine, inside Weblogic Server. Tim Hanson shows how to install and run Quercus, a pure Java implementation of PHP, on WebLogic Server. This implementation makes any Java resources available to PHP scripts, as well as allowing you to run applications such as MediaWiki.

We also have
Integrating AquaLogic BPM Suite 6.0 and AquaLogic Service Bus. This article demonstrates enhancements made to AquaLogic BPM Suite 6.0 to support improved AquaLogic Service Bus integration.

In BEA Education Services News, Yu-Ting tells us about new certification programs for Developers, Support Engineers. This includes the BEA Certified Developer: WebLogic Portal 9/10 Program and the BEA Certified Support Program.

In CodeShare News, Jeremy writes that JProcessUnit 1.1 Now Avaialble.
JProcessUnit is a unit-test based testing framework for automated testing of business processes running in a Business Process Engine (BPE), and we published an article on it too a while back: An Introduction to Business Process Testing using JProcessUnit.

In the Blogs,
new blogger Skip Sauls talks about Mashing Up wlp.bea.com using REST and Web 2.0 Sample Code for REST Commands on wlp.bea.com. Skip’s doing some interesting research into adding a REST interface to WebLogic Portal. He provides some examples and is looking for feedback.

Peter Laird returns with More Mashups: Using Greasemonkey to Weave New Features into Web Sites and O’Reilly Safari + BEA dev2dev + Greasemonkey = Web Mashup. Peter quips, “Ever wonder what a mashup between Tim O’Reilly (technology guru) and Alfred Chuang (BEA CEO) would look like?”

New blogger Fred Mikkelsen blogs about Web 2.0, SaaS and Portals and Nick joins in with SaaS Architectural models.

New blogger Rory Douglas writes about Customizing AquaLogic Pages - Part I. Hey, I didn’t know Pages used Spring!

Finally, check out Bill Roth’s Workspace 360: Bridging the Divide. “Workspace 360 is a key initiative around how BEA provides greater interoperability amongst its products, eases collaboration in the enterprise, and improves the ability of IT professionals to build out and implement a Service Oriented Architecture.”

The Dev2Dev Media Center archive features:

Virtualisation and BEA Liquid VM: Performance and Flexibility

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming events:

Ajaxifying Portlets (Webinar, 19 July)
Consistent Service Engineering and Management (Webinar, 1 August)
BEAWorld 2007: San Francisco (Conference, 10-12 September)
BEAWorld 2007: Barcelona (Conference, 2-4 October)

The current Poll asks “Which Java EE (J2EE) version are you using?” Please participate by voting on the home page.

The previous poll asked What’s the impact of “Web 2.0″ on your development projects. Of the 85 responses, 26% responded with “Big”, 8% with “Minor”, 30% with “Negligible” and 37% with “Questionable.” For those nay sayers, check out Peter Laird’s blog!

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Dev2Dev Editor’s blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

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Neal St. Anthony: Deconstructing advertisementsNeal St. AnthonyStar TribunePublished October 4, 2005There’s a noisy new Burger King commercial featuring a heavy-metal band and agitated, muscular dancers with nasty chicken masks promoting BK’s new chicken-fingers product. “Burger King seems to be going for creepy and confusing,” said Sam Simon, the co-creator of “The Simpsons” and longtime TV writer and critic. Maybe. But no way am I going in a BK now without earplugs and a Marine rifle squad for protection.Simon and three other panelists were in St. Paul on Saturday afternoon to critique ads for a taping of “Mental Engineering” — the Twin Cities Public Television show that’s rich in candor, biting humor and insight about television advertising. And it also may be one of the lowest-budget endeavors ever on TV.The show inaugurated its latest season Saturday on Channel 17 and several dozen other public stations throughout the country. The show, which first aired in 1997, is the entrepreneurial brainchild of host John Forde, who stages the show on a set he built himself. Each episode costs about $300 to produce, including satellite transmission fees. The production staff consists of college interns at St. Paul Neighborhood Network public-access television studios.TV is a high-buck medium in a consumption-driven economy that has resulted in many Americans believing that introspection in a political candidate is weakness, grease-soaked French fries are better for you than a real potato and new is always better than used or repaired. Yet TV also can be a valuable source of entertainment, education and enlightenment that spans politics, sports business and social issues. “TV is the dominant driver of culture and politics in America, and commercials are the prism though which you see how the power dynamic flows,” said Forde, 47, a Minnesota native who has done everything from driving a school bus to hosting a talk-radio show. “But nothing really is said to upset advertisers on mainstream TV. We prove that the First Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution] is real.”Two-thirds of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending, and advertising is the grease that helps to keep capitalism’s wheels turning. That’s not all bad. I still remember one thing from my night-school marketing class a couple of decades ago: A good ad is the best thing for a good product. And a good ad is the worst thing for a bad product.And if General Mills or General Motors or General Reinsurance tout some product that doesn’t taste good, drive right or pay out properly, you can bet the competition will hit the airwaves with a contra campaign. That’s competition. As a capitalist endeavor, when it comes to profit from “Mental Engineering,” Forde remains thankful for his wife’s day job. The program, guest travel and related expenses of less than $10,000 a year are covered by the likes of Simon, who travels to St. Paul a few times a year at his own expense, and a couple of dozen other individuals and a small foundation who throw in a few bucks to $2,500 when Forde passes the hat at fundraisers once or twice a year. Suffice to say, commercial sponsors have not been lining up at his door. But Forde would like to produce more than 13 shows a year and establish his own budget for marketing. “We’re looking to get underwriting using the traditional public TV model, but at a [low] price that public TV never comes close to,” he said. “I’ve always believed that since we’re a social program, a good sponsor would be something you put in your mouth, like an independent beer or coffee. Maybe like Summit beer or Dunn Bros. coffee.”This is not a program that’s going to rival the Pamela Anderson-in-a-bikini sitcom or “The Apprentice,” starring the beloved-to-despised Donald Trump or Martha Stewart.Grabbing viewer attention”The scarcest resource in the world is human attention,” Forde said. “And somehow we grab it with some people, according to what people tell me and the fan mail. People say there’s nothing like this.”It’s true that “Mental Engineering” doesn’t play to huge audiences on Channel 17 on Saturday nights. But it’s also true that the “Mental Engineering” Super Bowl commercial special of January 2002 was carried by nearly 50 public TV stations and, anecdotally, was one of the more popular programs seen that evening.With a panel that included the witty Lizz Winstead, a creator of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, and “Talk Soup” host Aisha Tyler, the panelists tore into an ad for Levi’s that showed slim women pulling down their jeans, a dark-side commercial for Quiznos submarine sandwiches that featured a customer getting zapped in the neck with a dart from a blow gun. In short, viewers of “Mental Engineering” get some pretty witty insights into what Burger King, American Express, Jimmy Dean sausage, Holiday Inn, Viagra, Cialis, Snickers, Toyota and Lamasil are trying to communicate in 60 seconds.”That stuff can’t be much good if they have to advertise it like that,” my penny-pinching Dad used to say about the commercials between scenes of “Gunsmoke” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”The old sergeant knew little about Madison Avenue’s hidden persuaders. But he sure knew how to throw a wet blanket on spending a buck. Unless the ads were about Camels or Ford LTDs — his preferred brands.Is “Mental Engineering” a heavy-duty, super-analytical show?No, but it’s fun and insightful to hear lawyer and Miami TV legal affairs analyst Katy Phang try to figure out why the young, beautiful woman on the Tylenol ad “has headaches all the time” on top of stomachaches.”It must be the weight of her hair,” Phang concluded.”It doesn’t really push Tylenol, so it must be an attack on aspirin,” added Simon.”This would be the best commercial in the world if the camera rotated behind her head and there was a woodpecker banging away at it,” writer/comedian Tim Mitchell volunteered to a barrage of laughter.Bizarre, or perfect?In response to a commercial by author and poet Maya Angelou for cable TV and parents using discretion in what they let kids see, the youthful Phang said: “Maya who? … As if anybody would know who she is.”Winstead called the commercial “bizarre” — that an artist would advocate control of the airwaves.But Simon, co-creator of “The Simpsons,” noted that Angelou, not associated with commercial TV and not well known to the masses, was the perfect choice for an industry that fears a crackdown by regulators and legislators worried about what kids can dial up round-the-clock. “It’s against censorship,” Simon said. “The companies that own cable TV hired somebody who’s respected to influence the intelligentsia who can affect legislation. They hired somebody who will not do [other] endorsements.”Neal St. Anthony can be reached at 612-673-7144 or nstanthony@startribune.com.

I want to write more. And more and more and more. And for now I'm going to focus on blogging daily. Just to keep in practice.

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
Marjane Satrapi

I work at a government of Canada office. As such, I can't really say much specific about what I do. It's not some big secretive thing. You could walk into my office and watch me, I work at the front desk. Please don't though. That would creep me out a bit. All I mean is, I am only secretive because I like my job, and would like to keep my job. Therefore don't expect too much from work related stories.

The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3)

I just want to post my thoughts and what's going on in life. I'd probably post most of what's going on in my life, as I'm not really a very private person, but most of what goes on in MY life is also part of someone else's life. We are socialcreatures, after all. But I'll post what I can, when I can. But I'd like to post daily, even if it's just “today sucked.”For now, that's the intro. I'm reading a lot. Almost finished the book that will shortly be to the right of what I'm typing now. There we are. I like it. It was recommended by a friend and I'm almost done. After that it's Persepolis II. Almost done that as well. After that…well, I have a list which I seem to keep adding to. I think next might be the End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. I think I need something non-fiction. After completing university I've been giving myself a break and doing mostly fiction, save for Hundred Mile Diet. But I think it's time for something inspiring and challenging, rather than just fun. Mind you, most of these books are good (though Golden Compass is a “Young Adult” book).  And Persepolis, as a graphic novel, isn't challenging. I'm not berating either of them, though. Both very well done, with clear messages, and mature books. Just not particularly informative. Not something that will inspire me. Though, I shouldn't judge, because I'm not done either yet.I'll do some reading tonight. I have some errands to run, but that's about it, really. Big, kind of scary errands, but errands, all the same. And now, dinner. Cheers, Vox.