Thursday December 01, 2005

Well folks (all 2 of you), this will be my last posting on blogs.sun.com. I am leaving Sun. My last day will be tomorrow, Friday, December 2nd. I will be starting at Apple fairly soon... and you can always read my personal blog (if you care) at http://joeracer.blogspot.com Working for Sun for the last 2-1/2 years has been quite an interesting experience. I could say scads of wonderful as well as horrible things, as you might imagine. Sun is like so many other companies - you take the good with the bad. I will simply say this: I had a lot of fun there working with a great group of high-energy folks. I will keep in touch with the people for sure! If I'm lucky, this blog will sit here idle for years to come... cheers! And always remember that Silicon Valley is very small. We'll likely work together again in the future!

Thursday November 24, 2005

Poor turkies... It would sure suck to be a turkey today. Just the smell of cooking cousins would ruin your whole day.

Tuesday November 22, 2005

Okay, so I'm a big fan of the TV show "Medium". I watch it every Monday night at 10pm, or soon after via TiVo. Last night was a big deal because the show contained a bunch of 3-D stuff, and you had to have a set of 3-D glasses (one eye red, one eye blue) to see the effects. The latest TV Guide magazine contained a set of 3-D glasses for the big event, so everyone apparently rushed out and bought up all the TV Guide magazines. All of them. I went out last night around 9:30pm to get my lady and myself a pair so we could settle back and watch the keen effects that we looked forward to all weekend.

No such luck! All gone. Everywhere! Each store I went to immediately responded when I said "Hey, do you guys have any TV Gui..."

"We're all sold out of TV Guides, sorry! No more 3-D glasses! You're the 10th guy to stop by asking."

It was bizarre. I figured I was one of the very few that actually watched the show, but last night was a very powerful reminder of the scale of network television and advertising. Apparently the whole neighborhood was out looking for glasses, and those that were'nt already got theirs days earlier. I actually tried SIX different places with no luck.

Sigh. I guess I have to order some 3-D glasses from a catalog and keep them in a drawer in waiting for the next blockbuster TV moment. Luckily I have TiVo, so I'll get to watch the show afterall - but not until I find a pair of those darn popcorn goggles.

Friday November 18, 2005

I saw Depeche Mode Friday night at the San Jose Arena. Great band. I know the lead singer guy is married and all, but he sure has a lot of his crowd fooled... (you know what I mean). I just kicked back and listened to the great music.

Wednesday November 16, 2005

Every year I attend the latest Warren Miller movie with my skiing/boarding friends. This year's "Higher Ground" was pretty amazing. The show was presented in HD, which is quite something to see. I did notice, however, that the movie was very obviously sponsored by Jeep, Grand Marnier liquor, and Nature Valley granola bars. In fact, it was quite annoying how obvious that fact was. They tried to "slip" these products into the film at every opportunity they could - often not smoothly. Yuck. With this much innerspersed advertising, the movie should have been free...

The non-advertising portions of the film, however, were breathtaking. I am ready to ride this season!

Wednesday November 09, 2005

I just got home a bit ago from the U2 concert this evening in the Oakland Arena. It was awesome! I am a die-hard U2 fan, so they pretty much can't do anything wrong in my book... though it really was a great show! I'll be there again tomorrow night (did I mention that I'm a die-hard U2 fan???), but this time, I'm bringing ear plugs. My ears are going to be ringing all night for sure. Hopefully the ring will be gone by 7:30pm tomorrow!

Thursday October 13, 2005

I have always been a huge fan of Apple... and after today's announcements about the new video-capable iPod and the new iMac (basically a killer home media center), I am a *rabid* Apple fan. The home computer market will be owned by Apple some day. I hope. Sun will stick to businesses, of course, but wow - is Apple making a great run for the home. Wow. I am just beside myself.

I actually feel the urge to rush out and buy a new iMac and a new iPod. I already bought a few music videos, and I don't even have a new iPod yet. I surrender.

Thursday August 25, 2005

I came across this dog recently... His name is Sam. He is the 3-time winner of the Ugliest Dog In the World Contest in Sonoma, California. For some reason, every time I look into Sam's eyes (and gnarled teeth), I can't stop laughing.

Sam is a bit on the old side, and has nasty blackheads and moles all over his bald skin. He's blind too. Such a cutie!

Friday May 20, 2005

I made it back from Korea. This postcard, which I found on the last day, really sums my trip up well.

I visited the DMZ between North and South Korea, which was quite an interesting experience. They have a great golf course there, though the rough is a little bit too "rough".

I asked this guy if he wanted to play through, but I think he was having too much fun playing "robot". I figured he was going to start break dancing any second, so I waited for a while and watched him. No dice.

Sunday May 08, 2005

I am leaving for Seoul, South Korea on Monday with my mom. We're going to visit my sister and her husband and three kids who live there. Her husband, Bob, is a CFO at a tech company there that makes cell phone camera chips. There's a good chance that your cell phone has one of his company's cameras on it. Anyway - I'll be back on the 18th.

Friday April 29, 2005

Okay. I'm new to blogging. It doesn't seem very complicated to do or understand, it's just that I haven't had the time or motivation to submit the request to reset my password. ;-) Yep, that's right. I did the classic engineer's land-grab months ago when I realized that blogs.sun.com/joe wasn't taken... then promptly forgot my password. Well, I'm here now. After quite a lot of peer-pressure, I have a password and can start this blogging thing.

There's really more reason to it than that... I have always been afraid to blog because I have a tendancy to speak my mind. Don't be fooled - this is a corporation. I could surely get fired in an instant if I don't keep myself in check. It will be difficult...

I suppose I should tell all y'all who I am and I what I do here at Sun. At some point, I'll figure out how to have an "About Joe" link to keep this information accessible. Until then, I guess it will be in this general category entry on April 29, 2005. At 7:49:37pm. PDT. Yeah.

I am a Software Architect, working on Sun Java Studio Creator. I had a lot to do with the design of much of the guts of the product. I suppose the most externally visible piece is the Creator Design-Time API. The design of this API drove a lot of what you see in the product today. I got to work with amazing engineers like Tor and Eric to get the concepts of the API implemented in the product. These guys are the lead engineers on the visual designer and insync code engine (respectively). World class guys.

The Creator Design-Time API is a great segway into my latest gig, which is the new JSR-273: Design-Time API for JavaBeans. You see, the Creator Design-Time API wasn't really designed for Creator... ;-) It was a prototype for a major extension to JavaBeans component model, with the intention of later starting a JSR that encapsulated the concepts. Actually, it was called "Beans2" for a long time. The JSR was just accepted by the JCP last week. Now the fun begins!

So why am I so into JavaBeans and tools? I really don't know... but it probably has something to do with my employment history. I was the architect of JBCL, dbSwing, Primetime, JBuilder and C++BuilderX over at Borland before joining Sun. I also did a few stints as CTO for a startup companies in between there including Ready2Build (R.I.P), Voxeo, and FastPhase. I came here back in May of 2003 to help design Creator, and to get a shot at fixing the *real* issues with the Java, which I believe is in the APIs and their inherent lack of toolability.

I am trying to push the concepts of toolability into the Java Platform itself. This is definitely the right place to do that. So, stay tuned for more (hopefully interesting) stuff in the following days, weeks, and years. I have been involved with Java for over 10 years now (Geesh! Happy Birthday Java!), and I have a lot of stuff to share.

- Joe

Thursday April 28, 2005

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