Disjointed Kitsch

Vacation #1 is just about over. It’s back to work tomorrow morning. I spent some time Saturday catching up on my backlog of email. Not to bad for being away for a week. No emergencies, a few things that my staff couldn’t quite handle and some issues to resolve on Monday.

The remainder of my vacation went well. Hannah and I hung out at the pool Wednesday - Friday. Lots of time to read, get wet and stay cool. Weather was quite hot and humid on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was hot, but the humidity was down. Didn’t do any more personal development on my web site.

Finished reading “Cross Bones“, the new one from Kathy Reichs. A really good read. I highly recommend it to her fans and new readers. Yvette was done with “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” so I started in on that one Friday afternoon.

Spent my usual Friday night out with friends. We opted to try out the American Legion Post 4 Karaoke night instead of our usual trip to the VFW. Not bad, but I prefer the crowd I’ve come to know at the VFW. Saturday was trash day, and relaxing. Weather was AWESOME. Heat was way down as was the humidity. Played darts at Hank and Terry’s on Saturday night. Hank leaves for Canada on Tuesday and will be gone until Labor Day.

Sunday I played golf. I had been putting it off since my last outing didn’t go to well. This one was much better. I made my first par ever! Bretwood #11 on the North Course. A Par 4. On the green in 2 and 2 putted. To top it off I made another par on #14. Had a birdie try but couldn’t roll it in. Still, I was striking the ball well and my preshot routine was becoming, well, a routine. An awesome day for golf!!

Decided to re-read the entire Harry Potter series again since I’m out of stuff to read. Dad sent me a Noah Adams book that I’ve not read yet - I’m not quite up to that type of material just yet.

I’m looking forward to my next “at home” vacation in 3 weeks time. I’ll probably play more golf, be at the pool, get some reading done and hang out with friends. It’s a great combination.

This week I’m eating “vacation time”. At work we have a “use it or loose it” policy and I’m “using it”. We took our family vacation in April when we went to Cancun and really didn’t feel like traveling to visit relatives. So I opted to spend this week of my vacation at home just doing “whatever”.

I had planned on doing some work on the house I’d been putting off but the first part of the week was rainy and hot and the back end of the week is forecast to just be hot (high 80’s, low 90’s). I also wanted to play a bit of golf but who want to play in 90 degree heat and shoot above that!

So far, I’ve played with my new software toy that I wrote. I’ve dubbed it Sondaicus. It’s a web based application that uses embedded JavaScript, Java and XSLT. I used the Spring Framework to run it and Quartz to grab some RSS Feeds. The last bit was to use this new web framework to create an AJAX based web page that can display RSS feeds. Works well. It needs a bit or restructuring on the Quartz side, but it’s serviceable. I’ve learned a lot of new technologies, frameworks, etc.. worth the invested 2 days.

We were scheduled to take a trip to Maine Wednesday - Saturday, but that fell through due to a scheduling problem. Maybe some other time during the summer. It was disappointing, but those kind of things happen.

Instead, Hannah and I have been hanging out at the pool. We also managed to squeeze in a trip to the movies to see Johnny Depp in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. Not bad. Isn’t a remake. Worth the afternoon admission price.

Yvette picked up the latest Harry Potter book (Half Blood Prince) and finished it before Monday morning. We just had to be at the bookstore at midnight on Friday for the first purchase. I’ve finished my latest James Ellory book, Clandestine, which is the precursor to the “L.A. Quartet” series that includes “L.A. Confidential“. I’ve become a big James Ellroy fan ever since I read “American Tabloid“. If you haven’t read any crime fiction, read James Ellroy!

With 4 days left on this vacation cycle, I’m still hopeful to get in some golf. I’ve been ignoring my work email (it’ll be there when I return) and having too much fun just hanging out here at home, enjoying the summer.

When I first read about “Ajax” I though: This is what we’ve been waiting for to start the next generation of web based applications. I saw the promise of ultra-rich web content delivery using a variety of XML sources being assembled by the browser using JavaScript and async-HTTP requests.

Alas we’re still not quite at that nirvana stage yet. While “most” of the technology is in place, some of the core features that would really make this technology fly are missing (or at least I’ve not located their API yet).

The XmlHttpRequest/Response objects work fine, but if we’re going to allow the browser to parse XML and display content, the XML parser on the client side (i.e. in the browser) has got to become much better. The DOM API stinks!! Sure - it’ll work, but at the expense of making you crazy. Sure, JavaScript 1.6 fills this need by making XML a first class object, but so far the release candidate implementation lacks XPath support. What’s a “future looking” developer to do?

At this point it seems best to generate very simple XML structures on the server. To “pre-assemble” the XML for best parsing by the browser instead of having XML that represents the best “data structure”. Creating server-side processes that deliver simple XML to the browser from original, complex XML seems to be the easiest path. Even better would be to just deliver the HTML and leave all the XML processing on the server.

Before this goes too far, I should explain the title of this blog. Several weeks ago, while working on a problem at work, I ran across this article in the Sacramento Bee titled: “Let your flamingos go”

You see, I work with news stories day in and day out. I’m the Director of Software Development for NewsBank, inc. We republish news. At any rate, the search terms that retrieved this article from our search engine were “ducks and dogsâ€?. When that article appeared as the number one hit from our search engine, I had to read it. The article’s about lawn ornaments and when enough is enough – as the article says “the line between chic and tacky”.

The best line from the entire article is this:

I think they are all pretty much tacky. Actually, they’re the epitome of tacky, but they do appeal to a certain personality. If you want one, fine, but try to stick with a theme. Buddha and St. Francis just won’t work with a metal dog and a plastic duck.

The part about Buddha, St. Francis, a metal dog, and a plastic duck sent me howling! I dropped it into my email sig almost immediately. Since then I’ve had a lot of fun telling others about it

When I started thinking about putting a title to this blog I wanted one that would reflect that the Blog’s contents would likely be disjointed – a “mish-mash” of topics, info, ideas, etc. My thoughts returned to that article and the disjointed feeling that my favorite line evoked.

So, I decided on “The Disjointed Kitsch” to pay homage to Darcie Nunes of Custom Plantings who has seen way too many disjointed lawns. Hopefully “The Disjointed Kitsch” speaks to that same disjointed nature that causes someone to publicly display a Buddha, St. Francis, a metal dog and a plastic duck all together in one spot and call it “chic”.