Random Thinking

If you check back to my November 9th entry you will find this throwaway line, “So I cancelled the order from Dell“.

To refresh your memory, I had ordered a memory card and a video card from Dell for my daughter’s computer. The video card was back ordered so I cancelled it and bought one from Best Buy. Although the actual cancelling of the order was less than simple, I didn’t think much of it at the time but following events brought it to mind. So let me start at the beginning.

I called Dell to cancel the order and was immediately reminded that Dell had transferred their customer service for non-business customers to India. Because of complaints of bad service, business customers are still being handled in the USA but us lowly personal computer owners apparently don’t require stellar customer service. Anyway, the person on the other end spoke English, although with a thick Indian accent. I told him that I wanted to cancel part of the order, specifically the video card because it was backordered. He told me to wait and after a few minutes he came back to tell me that the memory card had already shipped, which I knew since I had already installed it in my daughter’s computer. I again explained that it was just the video card that I wanted to cancel. He again put me on hold. Eventually he came back and told me that he had sent an email to the people in the US that would cancel my order and everything should be fine. So, let me get this straight Mr. Dell, you transfer American jobs to India and then don’t even give these people the tools to do their job? He has to cancel my order via email? What kind of madness is this?

Flash to ten days later, and sure enough the video card arrives at my house. I call Dell again and again I get someone in India. I explain the situation and he seems to understand the issue. He puts me on hold. A few minutes later he comes back on and tells me that he is waiting for a response from the return center so I can get a return authorization number. Although he didn’t state “email” I strongly suspected he was waiting for one. A few more minutes and I got my return authorization number. UPS picked up the box without any trouble.

This whole thing could have been avoided if (a) Dell’s web site gave accurate information about the length of time you need to wait for back ordered items or (b) the people in the service center were given the proper tools and the proper training to do their jobs!

What led me to my earlier entry about Long Island was the HBO program, Family Bonds. It got me started wondering about what other people think about Long Island. Do people think of Amy Fisher when they think of Long Island? Do people believe that shows like Family Bonds reflect Long Island? Obviously, in one sense Family Bonds does reflect Long Island. The Evangelista family is part of Long Island. But in another sense they are caricatures of Long Island, reflecting only one sample of Long Islanders.

If you haven’t seen the show, then you have missed an entertaining although odd program. The show is about the Evangelista family, who live in Medford. Tom Evangelista is a bail bondsmen and the show in part is about his business and his occasional hunting down of bail jumpers. What makes the show truly entertaining, however, is the family. HBO describes them this way, “the most outrageous, fun-loving, and wild (yet somehow functional) real-life family on TV”. Tom’s family is made up of his wife, his married daughter, his two sons, nephew, and various in-laws.

One of my favorite scenes involves Tom’s mother who has a sick dog. The vet tells Tom that he needs to get a stool sample from the dog so he tells his mom to get it. She says, “I’m not going to get it. You get.” Tom says, “I’m not getting it.” The scene ends without any resolution. As the credits finish, we see Tom in his mom’s backyard with a flashlight hunting for a stool sample. What a good son!

Anyway, if you think the Evangelistas represent Long Island then you right and you are wrong. Long Island is a big place with almost 3 million residents and one family can not represent life on Long Island. But they are Long Islanders.

Another review, of a five star book on Amazon. I have to admit that I am a fan of Velocity so I may be biased. After all, I even wrote an article about Velocity. The book covers Velocity from end to end. There is little that I could find missing from the book where I would say, how could he have left out X. Good examples, clear writing, just a nice job overall.

Pro Jakarta Velocity
by Rob Harrop

I have always been a strong supporter of Velocity. I even wrote an article for JavaRanch about Velocity back in March. Velocity is an open source template framework designed to simplify the task of generating content such as web pages, email, or any other text-based output. The Velocity documentation available from Apache is short, low on examples, and leaves holes (even if it is fairly good compared to some other open source projects). This book fills in the gaps and gives excellent coverage of the many features that are available with Velocity.

The book starts with an introduction to Velocity and then explains how to install and configure it. The author then discusses the Velocity Template Language, examines its shortcomings, and demonstrates how to get around them. Best practices are covered early in the book. Although Velocity is normally thought of as a web-based framework, the author doesn’t let us forget that it can be used for both stand-alone and web applications and gives us detailed chapters on both. Velocity tools are well covered including Anakia, which can be used to transform XML. The Velocity architecture is explained as well as ways to extend that architecture.

The examples are well thought out and give good coverage of the features of Velocity. The most interesting part of the examples is how little work it is to integrate Velocity into a well-designed framework. The author shows how Velocity fits into both Struts and Spring, demonstrating that Velocity is not meant to replace these frameworks but rather to simplify content generation in any framework. I can strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in Velocity. For anyone not interested in Velocity, the question is, why not?

This earned 5 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Apress.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

I have lived on Long Island my entire life. I often wonder what the impression of Long Island is of people who have never been here.

What Long Island really is all about is difficult to pin down. It’s hard to even agree on what Long Island is. Ask someone from the area and they will tell you that Long Island is Nassau and Suffolk county. A person from Brooklyn would never consider themselves a “Long Islander”. But physically, Long Island encompasses four counties including parts of NYC. Going west to east they are Brooklyn and Queens which are part of New York City, and Nassau and Suffolk. The entire island is 118 miles long (it is a long island, the longest adjoining the continental US) of which 85 miles is Nassau and Suffolk. At its widest point, the island is about 20 miles wide. Living on Long Island, it is very easy to forget that you live on an island (at least until you want to get off it).

The population of Long Island is larger than most cities. Including Brooklyn and Queens there are about 8 million people on Long Island. The population of Nassau and Suffolk is about 2.8 million. Generally, the further east you go, the less populated the island is (except for the Hamptons in the summer). For those who are interested, the population density of Nassau County is 4,655/mi²!

Long Island is often thought of as a “bedroom community” for New York City and to some extent that is still true although most people on Long Island don’t work in NYC. Long Island is made up mostly of single-family detached houses. Median household income on Long Island is pretty high (although the cost of living is high) and the education system is generally excellent. Many top-ranked colleges are on Long Island. Many top-ranked hospitals are here as well.

The weather on Long Island tends to be moderated somewhat by our proximity to the ocean but we have definitely have four distinct seasons. Did I mention we have 1,180 miles of shoreline including some of the nicest public beaches in the country?

Some Info about Long Island:

Long Island History

Wikipedia - Long Island

Special bonus picture from my front door:

Another review, this time of an excellent book. I gave it five stars on Amazon. This is similar to the book Effective XML, in that it is a collection of various topics. You could open the book anywhere and start reading an item and not feel lost. Not a tutorial or reference but more like a collection of articles by someone who knows the topic.

Effective Enterprise Java
by Ted Neward

As anyone who has programmed using Servlets, JSPs, and EJBs knows, the complexities of integrating multiple layers of code can drive you to distraction. If you aren’t careful, you can create an application that performs poorly under load, is difficult to maintain, and is impossible to port from one platform to another. The tricks that a programmer needs to avoid these problems often come painfully with experience. The author has taken his experience and given us a book that is well-written, easy to understand, and provides plenty of excellent advice that will help you produce superior applications. The best part is that the advice you get is practical advice from someone who has actually experienced the pain and suffering of J2EE development. This book deals in the reality of development and not pie-in-the-sky theory.

The book contains seventy-five items of discussion broken up into seven main areas. The items cover a wide range of topics from the broad, “Keep it simple” to the specific, “Never cede control outside your component while holding locks.” The items cover everything from architecture, “Define your performance and scalability goals,” to coding, “Use HttpSession sparingly.” Even if a particular item is not of interest to you, there will be plenty of other items that will be of interest.

This book is not a tutorial or beginner’s book. It is expected that the reader already has some experience with Enterprise Java. If that describes you, make sure you get this book to avoid more pain and suffering. You will end up a better J2EE developer and your applications will be cleaner and easier to maintain.

This earned 5 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Addison-Wesley.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

The good: Mikey has been qualified for the Medicaid Waver program. This is going to be a huge help. We are already getting extra therapy in the house for Mikey and we will be getting an aid soon. I think this is going to take a lot of pressure off of everyone especially with Michel being sick. Which brings us to…

The bad: Michel needs more surgery. Her Chiari Malformation has developed to the point where they need to put a shunt in and do some extra work at the base of her skull. This will require two surgeries, two days apart. The plan is to put the shunt in on December 14th and do the other surgery on the 16th. Michel will be bald for Christmas! She will be in the hospital for five days. Fortunately, Michel’s parents will be staying with us and I have some vacation time left over. I just hope that this is the last of the surgeries.

The ugly: We went out to a barn dance with our friends on Saturday. My sister, Barbara, (who lives in Medford near the stars of Family Bonds) watched Mikey while Beth had a sleepover at a friend’s house. It was good to get out and see some of our friends. The ugly part? You should have seen them dancing!

I just wrote a review of Java Garage by Eben Hewitt. I gave it two stars on Amazon. I think this is a book that could have been good but the author was too much into this I have to be different mode.

I noticed that the book got several very good reviews on Amazon and one review similar to mine. That review seems to have been hit with a bunch of unhelpful votes. Some people miss the point and think that the voting on Amazon is for whether you agree with the review or not. The question is, was the review helpful.

Java Garage
by Eben Hewitt

Headache. That is what I got every time I picked up this book. Too cute. Too many short sentences. Sentence fragments. Headache. Recipes. Like reading my 12-year-old daughter’s instant messages.

First thing to note is that this is a beginner’s book. You won’t find that anywhere in the description unfortunately. Second thing to note is that I blame this on “Head First Java”. You know how when a successful TV show comes out and all the other networks try to copy it? You know how they never do it right because they always miss the point? It’s as if someone saw “Survivor” and decided it was a success because people ate bugs so they made a show where people had to eat bugs to win. “Head First Java” uses humor to help focus the mind on difficult concepts. It makes use of educational techniques that have been studied by scientists. This book uses humor to be cool(?), funny(?) but most of the time the book is just annoying, which is a real shame because there is some good information here and some of it is very well presented. Other times I was left wondering why he stopped and didn’t finish explaining a concept. Then there are these stream of consciousness blurbs that seem to just come out of nowhere and go on about anything except the topic at hand. I assume the author is trying to be amusing and be less like a traditional technical book but he fails at the former and overachieves at the latter.

At one point in the book the author suggests that if you still have questions that you should get some Zoloft and take up a hobby like gardening. I think it’s a little odd for an author to suggest that his curious readers are in need of anti-depressants but if forced to read this book, it may not be a bad idea. cya.

This earned 2 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Prentice Hall.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.