On The Eve Of My Challenge

I am blogging live from St. Paul, Minnesota the night before the 100 mile Ironman bike ride. There are a total of 5000 people that are joining me on my quest tomorrow. I'm excited. The only thing that is dampening my enthusiasm is the fact that the weather forecast is calling for light rain and strong winds all day tomorrow. Luckily we were able to make a stop at the bike store tonight and I picked up a bunch of rain gear for the ride. I figured that it was best to be as comfortable as possible tomorrow as I ride. Wish me luck that I don't get too soggy or cold!

A Requiem For A Dream

I usually try not to post about overly personal matters on my blog but since a number of you have been riding along with me on the Holly-Dan roller coaster for the last six months I thought that I would give an update...

I am sorry to say that after six months of chasing a dream that the dream is finally dead. It's funny that it comes at a time when things looked like they may have had a chance at improving. Holly had finally decided to stop living with her x-boyfriend and to get a place of her own. I'm sure that I will be criticized by some for the timing of my decision.

It wasn't an easy decision to make. There wasn't a fight, things weren't going particularly bad. But it had been over two months since I had last seen Holly. That wasn't for a lack of me offerring to come visit her or to fly her out to visit me. But she always seemed to have other plans preventing us from spending time together.

Over the course of the last two months spent alone I began to imagine what the next 2 years of my life would be like with Holly. As hard as I tried I couldn't imagine a future for us that was markedly different from what the last 6 months has been. I imagined a number of really good weekends ahead of us. But I also imagined those weekends spent together separated by periods of several months spent apart. I imagined myself constantly wondering how Holly felt about me and whether or not things were going to work out.

What I finally decided was that I didn't want to spend the next two years of my life that way. I knew that this decision meant giving up on an awful lot of good times that Holly and I could have had together. But it also meant foregoing an awful lot of pain, confusion, frustration and waiting.

I informed Holly of my decision via an email message. I know that's a little cowardly, but I have had such a hard time really communicating with Holly over the phone. I knew that to get out what I meant to say that I really needed to get it in writing. It has been over a week and I still have not gotten a response from Holly. Is it because she is so pissed off at me that she doesn't want to respond? Is it that she cared so little for me that she doesn't want to take the time to respond? I really don't know. But that was exactly the problem. I never knew what Holly was feeling.

Holly is an incredible person and I may never again in my life meet someone that I'm so passionate about. But, damnit, I'm going to try. And if I am lucky enough to find that person, maybe, just maybe, they will feel the same way about me.

I am the ass kicker-er, not you

The plan for my ride today was to do the same ride around the backside of Utah Lake that I did a couple of weeks ago, only this time I was going to add on another 20 miles or so and end up my sister's house in Orem. That would bring the ride total up to 80 miles and represented about 80% of a full loop around Utah Lake. However, I was feeling awesome and hauling ass on the bike today. So when I got to my sister's house 2 hours earlier than I had planned, I decided to just keep riding and finish the loop. So, my ride total for the day was close to 100 miles (Map Point officially says 96.4 but I don't believe it). James, Chris... I have but one thing to say to you: Prepare yourselves for an ass kicking :)

P.S. - Bonus points to anyone besides Master Fob that knows the reference behind the title of this post.

Impulsive Music Shopping

I stopped by Best Buy on Friday night and picked up four new CD's. Two of them were planned but the other two were total impulse buys.

I bought:

• Evanescence, "Fallen" - Great album. Amy played this for me last week. I had heard some of the songs before but never realized who the artist was until she played it for me.
  
• Johnny Cash, "The Man Comes Around" - I've been meaning to pick this up for some time now. I got it mostly for Johnny's rendition of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" and Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", but I really like the whole album. Holy Crap. Yesterday I wore spandex biker shorts and today I'm listening to Country music. Who am I?!?! :)
  
• KT Tunstal, "Eye to the Telescope" - I loved the single, "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", but didn't really plan on buying the whole album until I noticed that Best Buy was selling it for $7.99. I figured that I couldn't go wrong with that kind of price. It's actually a pretty good album.
• Various Artists (Compiled by Fischerspooner), "The Other Side: New York" - This was a total impulse buy. I was actually looking for some Ferry Corsten but they were out. I felt like I needed to feed my recently rekindled techno affinity, so I started browsing through some of the other albums in the techno section. I recnognized Fischerspooner and the album sounded pretty cool so I bought it. The jury is still out on whether or not this one was worth the money that I paid for it. I like some of the songs, but others are really strange.
  

Zion

I ran down to Zion today to do some hiking. I hiked the Observation Point trail. It starts at Weeping Rock and works it way up 2200 ft over 4 miles to a plateau overlooking the canyon floor. The view was spectacular. Because of the recent rain, the clouds were still hanging pretty low and it was like I was nearly hiking in the clouds.

On my way back down from Observation Point I noticed a fork in the trail that said, "NPS Boundary - 2.5 Miles". The trail wasn't on any maps that I had ever seen before and is not otherwise mentioned in any of the park literature. "NPS Boundary" didn't sound all that exciting, but I couldn't help but wonder what hidden secrets were to be found on this uncharted trail.

Could this be the elusive "secret ranger hike" that Chris and I had speculated about? I had to find out for myself. So, I hiked a 5 mile roundtrip to find out that the trail indeed led to nothing more than the edge of the park. In case you are wondering, it's a big barbed wire fence. Now I know :)

I brought my iPod with me on the trip but I forgot to bring the earbuds. So, it didn't really do me any good while I was hiking. It was kind of scary to be left alone with nothing but my thoughts for 6 hours straight. No good can come of that :) I spent a lot of time thinking about Alabama. Go figure?!?! :)

The pictures are here.

Man In Tights

I never would have imagined that I would do this, but I actually bought and wore (out in public no less) a pair of spandex biker shorts. They come with a nifty padded butt and crotch and that makes me feel a little like I'm wearing a maxi pad. But it does help quite a bit to keep my butt a little more comfy. What do you think, is it a sexy look for me?

While at the bike store I also picked up some clip-in pedals and shoes. It's hard to tell yet how much difference they make because it was really windy out today as I was riding. The wind was so strong that it was hard to tell whether or not I was riding more powerfully.

For some reason I was really afraid of forgetting to clip-out when I came to a stop and falling over sideways. But they really are pretty natural to use. The only difficulty that I've had is getting clipped in fast enough from a complete stop when I need to quickly cross a busy street. I'm getting better though. Another couple of days and I'll probably forget what it was like to ride without them.

Eureka!

I completed my second training ride this morning. I rode 72 miles from my house in Spanish Fork to Eureka and then back again. The most challenging part of the ride was a 10 mile stretch of road that goes up and into mountains to get to Eureka. I thought that freakin' hill was never going to end. But I kicked it into low gear and just kept hammering away until I finally made it.

When I finally got to the summit I did something that wasn't too bright. Instead of stopping in Eureka, I decided it was way too much fun going downhill, so I overshot the town by a couple of miles. That was a great idea until I realized that I had to turn right back around and ride back up it :) Speaking of downhill... cruising back down that 10 mile downhill section kicked ass.

Towards the end of the 72 miles things got ugly. I had plenty of energy left in my legs (which surprised me considering that my knees felt like they were going to explode when I woke up this morning), but my ass was in an indescrible amount of pain. It didn't help that my seat had worked it's way loose and the nose of the seat kept digging into my crotch and applying pressure where pressure really shouldn't be applied. I guess that will teach me to bring tools along on my next ride.

I saw quite of bit of wildlife on the ride; albeit most, or rather, all of it dead. I thought it slightly ironic that most of the carnage was accounted for by bunny rabbits (wild jackrabbits). How fitting for Easter Sunday (It is Easter today isn't it?). I also saw several several dead dear, skunks, birds and even a few cats and dogs. Seriously it was kind of gross.

Romping through the Devil's Garden

I couldn't resist the warm weather today so I got up early and drove down to Moab to do some hiking in Arches National Park. No trip to Arches is complete without a hike to Delicate Arch, so I payed homage to our great states' license plate adornment before exploring new territory in the Devil's Garden. The Devil's garden trail is pretty cool. It takes you down into a maze of Sandstone fins where there were just a ton of Arches.

The highlight of the day was when I decided to go off trail at Private Arch. I crossed through the arch into the canyon separating two fins and decided, in my infinite wisdom, that I could find a better way back to the trail than the way that I came. So, I started to tread up canyon. That worked well until the canyon walls got so narrow that I couldn't fit in between them anymore. There was a section of about 30 feet that I had to traverse by propping myself between the two canyon walls with my hands pressed up against one side and my feet on the other (there is a technical term for this in canyoneering, but I can't think of it now). Fortunately, I made it out alive and without injury. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get any pictures until after I was safely out of the canyon. Oh well.

I had an interesting experience while sitting atop double-o arch. I had climbed up the backside of the arch and was perched a couple of hundred feet above the ground. From my perch I could see a young couple (early 20's) that had wandered off trail and thought that they were hidden behind some rocks. They were totally making out. I felt kind of guilty for watching but, hey, they were totally oblivious to my existence and besides it was all PG rated anyway. The moral of the story is that it made me kind of jealous. No, not of the girl. It made me jealous that I don't have anyone to have a redrock romance with.

Here are my pictures.

In Training

I rode 60 miles on my mountain bike today. I rode from Spanish Fork to Lehi via Santaquin and the backside of Utah Lake. It was long, it was grueling, but I did it. I'm just kidding, it really wasn't that bad. I could imagine riding another 40 miles after stopping for lunch. It was really my ass and not my legs that did me in.

My plan had been to stop by the bike store yesterday to gear up before riding today. I wanted to get some new pedals that I can clip into, biker shorts, a biker jersey, and a helmet. But, the bike store was out of the pedals so I decided to wait until next week to gear up. The moral of the story is that I must have looked out of place while I was riding today, because a Sheriff's van actually pulled up alongside me and asked if I wanted a ride. I was kind of offended :)

Although this is my longest ride, it's not my first day of training. I started riding my bike to work on Thursday of last week. It's about 15 miles each way and then an extra 10 miles if I ride at lunch. So, that's 30 to 40 miles a day of riding that I'm getting in. Unfortunately the weather in Utah in April will prevent me from doing this more than a couple or 3 days a week... but every little bit counts.

My Own Private Opera Performance

I went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Capitol Theatre on Saturday night with Owen, Kim and Pam. As we were driving up to the theatre I was talking to Pam about the opera. It turns out that Pam actually sings opera. This, of course, piqued my interest as I have been starting to get into opera myself lately. I asked Pam what her favorite opera was and she listed a number of operas but said that one her favorite songs was Nessun Dorma from the opera Turandot.

Pam tried to describe the song, saying that it was fairly popular and that we would probably recognize it if we heard it. Jokingly, I told her to sing some of it to us. I say that all the time to people that are trying to describe a song to me and nobody ever does. I don't even really expect anyone to sing when I ask them to; it's just a joke. Most people sing so horribly that they would never even consider singing in front of other people.

Well, Pam apparently didn't think I was kidding and she actually starting belting out opera as we were driving along I-15 on the way to Salt Lake City. Oh my God, she had such an incredible voice. It was beautiful. It only lasted 15 or 20 seconds, but it was still probably the highlight of my evening... and that's saying alot considering that it was a pretty damned good evening.

Lest any of you (one of you in particular) get the wrong impression I would like to clarify that Pam is LDS and I wouldn't really consider pursuing a relationship with her. But she was good company for the theatre and I have to admit that I was terribly impressed by her voice.

My New Car

Well, I did it, I bought a new car this weekend. It's a 2007 Toyota Camry LE. Yes, a 2007. It's so new that it's actually from the future. It won't even start to depreciate until next year.

I didn't really plan on buying a new car this weekend. I had originally planned on waiting a couple more weeks. But, I was out Cross Country skiing with Marci on Saturday morning and afterwards asked if she wanted to stop by the Toyota dealership to take a look at the car that I was thinking about buying.

As we were driving over to the dealer, Sheila, my salesperson, called me on my cell and told me that they just got in some new 2007 Camry LE's for me to look at. I test drove a 2007 Camry LE and then a 2007 SE (a souped up sportier model with a V6) and then a 2006 LE. I decided that the SE was more money than I wanted to spend and that there were enough things that I didn't like about the 2006 LE to make it not worth the killer deal that I could have gotten.

That left me with the 2007 LE which I really liked, was incredibly comfortable to drive, and was reasonably priced. But most of all it just felt like it fit me. The Passat was undoubtedly a fancier car but it just didn't feel like it fit me as well.

So, I informed Sheila that of the 3 Camry's that I had test driven I liked the 2007 LE best. She misunderstood me and thought that I said that I was ready to actually buy the 2007 LE. She told me to come on inside and that we would run some numbers. Just as I was about to correct her and let her know that I wasn't really prepared to buy that day, I thought to myself, "What the hell? Why not buy a new car today?". And so I did :)

More Car Shopping

I continued my car shopping saga today. I took an hour or so and went over to the Brent Brown Toyota dealership to take a look at a Corolla and a Camry. I decided pretty quickly that the Corolla wasn't for me. I wanted something a little bigger and a little fancier. I actually took a look at two Camry models. They had both a 2006 LE and a 2007 SE. The '07 SE was much fancier and was a better comparison to the Passat. But the LE was a really comfortable and nice car. I'm going to wait until I can take a look at a 2007 LE but the Camry is definitely a strong competitor to the Passat.

It was interesting to compare the experience between the two dealerships. They were definitely much friendlier, lower pressure and had better service at the Toyota dealership.

• I waited nearly 15 minutes to talk to a salesman at the VW dealership. And when one came it was some guy who came up from the used car lot not even one of the regular new car guys. At the Toyota dealership, I still had to wait while they paged someone, but she showed up within 20 seconds of being paged.
• The guy at the VW dealership didn't want to let me leave and pretty much told me that he wouldn't deal with me except in person. The girl at the Toyota dealership was totally laid back and relaxed and wasn't pressuring me to buy right then at all. In fact she almost seemed to be working on the assumption that I wasn't going to be buying that day.
• In general the guy at the VW dealership took his sweet time to do everything. He didn't really seem to value my time at all. The girl at the Toyota dealership, when she couldn't find the keys to one of the cars that I wanted to look at, actually ran back into the office to get them. I generally got the impression that she valued my time and realized that I was the customer.
• The Passat that I drove seemed to having trouble with it's automatic rain detection system. The wiper blades kept turning on automatically even though there wasn't a drop of moisture on the car. The frustrating thing was that there was no way of turning them off. I can understand something going wrong on the demo car, it happens to me all the time when demoing software. The thing that bugged me, is that the salesman says, "Oh yeah, I forgot this was the one that has that problem with the wipers". If he knew about the problem ahead of time, why didn't he just have it fixed?
• When I tried to email the VW sales guy for more information (since he didn't email me like he said he was going to) my email bounced with an invalid email address. The email address I was using was right on the business card that this guy gave me. That is just so unprofessional.
  

Car Shopping

Last week my Cavalier started making funny noises again. I've finally decided that it's not worth putting any more money into fixing this car. So, I've begun the long and arduous process of shopping for a new car. My short list right now is as follows:

• Volkswagon Jetta
• Volkswagon Passat
• Toyota Corolla
• Toyota Camry
• Honda Civic
• Honda Accord

I actually stopped by the VW dealer today on the way home and test drove both the Jetta and the Passat. I really, really dig the Passat. The only question is whether or not I really want to spend 30K on a new car. There's no doubt that I could afford it, but the question is whether or not I really want to. I could buy a Corolla or Civic for half the price and find plenty of other ways to spend the 15K that I saved. On the other hand, if this car lasts me for 10 years like my last one did, I would just as soon have a nice car for the next ten years of my life and not one that I settled for.

I was previously harboring delusions of owning an SUV so that I could haul toys around, but I've pretty much killed that idea. I've decided this winter that there aren't any toys that I use frequently enough that it would work out to buy them and store them rather then just rent them a couple of times a season. Besides I never really liked the idea of having to drive an SUV to work every day. It would make me feel dirty.

Drunken Debauchery

After a long day of working in the tech lab at Brainshare on Monday I was able to kick back and relax at the Messaging Architects Brewfest on Monday night. Every year at Brainshare, The Messaging Architects rents out the back room at Squatters Pub and Brewery and provide free beer and food for all in attendance. It's a great party. This is actually only the first year that I have attended Brewfest in Salt Lake City, although I did go to the Brewfest at Brainshare in Barcelona.

I think that I may have gotten a little over-zealous with the free beer this year. Before I even realized it, I had drunk way too much. My first clue was when I wasn't able to walk straight anymore. My second clue was when I started eating Macaroni and Cheese off of Kim's plate with a knife (that's more challenging than you might imagine). My third clue was when I was urinating in public behind a dumpster in downtown Salt Lake while talking on my cell phone to Holly. At least I was outside. I stopped counting after the third clue... but needless to say there were plenty of others.

Fortunately for me, Owen and Kim were along and they offerred to drive me back to Spanish Fork. That was probably a good idea considering that I couldn't walk straight. I'm smart enough that I wouldn't have tried to drive even if Owen and Kim weren't there, but I probably would have ended up sleeping in the parking garage that night instead at home in my comfy bed.

I Am Ironman

I have accepted a new challenge in life. On April 30th, I will be joining James and Chris on the Minnesota Ironman 100 mile bike ride. This will be a real challenge considering that I have previously never ridden more than 50 miles in one day. I plan to start training next week after Brainshare is over. My plan is to start riding to work at least 3 days a week (30 miles roundtrip) and then to bike at least 50 miles per weekend until the end of April. I'm psyched. This is going to kick ass!

Snow Falling in Zion

This coming week is Novell's annual Brainshare convention. We have customers and partners flying in from all over the world to attend. A couple of GroupWise partners flew in a couple of days before the show and decided to do some hiking in Zion National Park. Several of us from the Provo office joined them for what turned out to be a very unique Zion hiking experience. All in all there were 8 of us: two from the Netherlands, one from Germany, one from Bulgaria, two product managers from Provo, the son of one of the product managers and myself.

I knew that we were in trouble when I checked the weather on Saturday morning and discovered that there was a 100% chance of light snow pretty much all day. It's not often that the weathermen feel confident to predict anything with 100% surety. We decided to press our luck and hike anyway. I, being the eternal optimist that I am, decided to hike in shorts. After all it was nearly 50 degrees in the morning before we started our hike. Weatherman be damned, I refused to believe that it was going to snow.

As we started our ascent up to angels landing there was a light drizzle. It was actually still warm enough that it wasn't a problem. Considering how hot I normally get when I hike, it was almost refreshing to hike in shorts in near freezing temperatures. This may very well be the first time in my life that I haven't sweat profusely while hiking.

By the time that we got to Scout's lookout. the light drizzle had turned into a near blizzard. Seeing the snow fall in the canyon was incredibly beautiful. It is the second time that I have seen Zion in the snow, but the first time that I've seen it while actually hiking.

Despite the beauty, the snow added a certain element of danger to the hike. The snow made it way too treacherous to hike the rest of the way to Angel's Landing from Scout's lookout. It also made the descent back down Walter's Wiggles somewhat harrowing. I think that Svetlin had it the worst. The shoes that he was wearing had no traction whatsoever. He mostly slid all the way down the wiggles.

The Magic Flute

I have survived my second foray in the world of Opera. Not only did I survive, but I rather enjoyed it. Last night I went to see Mozart's The Magic Flute at Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City. I was rather surprised at how funny it was. I was also surprised how pretty German can be when it is sung rather than spoken. The Queen of the Night in particular had an incredible voice.

Speaking of sung languages versus spoken ones, I was a little disappointed that all of the spoken parts in the opera were actually in English. It was a little disorienting for the dialogue to be in English and all of the songs in German. Even though I don't understand a lick of German, it feels like it is betraying the original material to have the spoken parts in English.

I suspect that the English dialogue was not the only way in which the opera had been 'modernized'. There were a number of comedic references in the opera which, although they could have just been coincidental, seemed to be referencing some modern themes. For instance, at one point in the opera Papageno has just found Parmina (sp?) but is separated from her by a great enough distance that they are having trouble hearing each other. So, Papageno pulls two cans connected by a string out of his knapsack and throws one end to Parmina. Once Parmina has her end of the device firmly planted against her ear, Papageno asks, "Can you hear me now?"

I know this is a little juvenile but I was amused at the title of the opera. For some reason it kept reminding me of "American Pie". Every time I heard the phrase "Magic Flute", this line kept popping into my head: "This one time, at band camp...". Now that's a magical flute :)

See, that's what I love about me: I'm cultured enough to go to the opera, but white trash enough to compare it to "American Pie".

A Busy Weekend

I had kind of a crazy weekend. It went like this:

Friday:
* Come home from work
* Eat dinner (no time to cook, so I made a quick wrap)
* Practice Piano
* Work Out (Chest and Back)
* Met Jay in Salt Lake for Pool at Fats (I got my ass kicked... bad!)
* Home by 1:30AM

Saturday:
* Cardio Workout
* Made (and ate) Breakfast
* Went in to work (working on a side project)
* Came home, ate a light late lunch (didn't want to eat too much since I was going out to dinner late).
* Practice Piano
* Work Out (Biceps and Triceps)
* Met up with Owen, Kim and Amy at Famous Dave's in Midvale for dinner (Mmmm, ribs and really, really large glasses of beer).
* Went to QuickWits (improv comedy group) at The Comedy Circuit in Midvale.
* Home by 1:30AM

Sunday:
* Cardio Workout
* Made (and ate) Breakfast
* Went in to work for a couple of hours (still working on side project).
* Met Amy to see Ultraviolet (There were some good parts, but overall the movie sucked).
* Went to dinner at Marci's house where I discovered that I was unwittingly being setup with one of Marci's and Lisa's old roommates, Pam. Yeah, they forgot to mention that when they invited me over to dinner.
* Left dinner early and did my weekend chores: grocery shopping, laundry and dishes.
* Cooked some Sweet and Sour Pork and then stowed it away in tupperware so that I had leftovers to eat tonight in between work and my piano lesson.
* Practiced the Piano
* Did NOT workout (I don't lift on Sundays)
* Went back over to Marci's to play some scrabble. Really, I went over to Marci's to catch up with her since it's been a long time since we've had time to just sit down and chat. The scrabble was just a bonus... although I got my ass kicked :)
* Home, in bed and passed out by 11:30PM.

Web 2.0

I cringe every time that I hear a management or business type utter the phrase, "Web 2.0" or toss the buzzword AJAX into a conversation as if they really know what that means. Using Asynchronous JavaScript And XML to dynamically modify the DOM of an HTML document to present an interactive user experience via the web is admittedly cool. But it's cool in a hacked together, "we're making the best of what we have available" sort of a way. It drives me nuts that people are actually considering building the future of their rich client applications around these hacked together technologies.

Have you seen how much HTML, JavaScript and CSS is necessary simulate a fairly standard UI widget like a tree view? It's ridiculous. And even more ridiculous considering that there are dozens of other technologies that already exist with very mature and rich UI and widget toolkits. It makes me laugh a little when I hear people talk about the latest features of some Web 2.0 application that they have just played with: "Wow, it supports drag and drop and context menus and tabbed views". Did everyone forget that these features have been a staple of desktop applications for at least the last 10 years?

So why is it that Web applications are becoming so popular? Why is "Web 2.0" is being touted as the next big thing? Behind all of the hype I think that it comes down to the fact that web applications solve 2 core problems that are often overlooked in Desktop programming:

1. No install required. All the user needs to run the application is a Web Browser and a URL. When the application is upgraded, the user instantly sees the new version the next time that they hit the URL. Think about how easy it was to 'upgrade' to the latest version of Google Maps as opposed to the latest version of Microsoft Office.
2. Universal Access. Web applications can be accessed from any computer, anywhere in the world with a web browser and a connection to the internet. There are no files, settings or software that are installed locally on the computer that you are running the application from. Wherever you are, your data is right there with you. It doesn't even matter if the computer that you are using to access the application is running a different operating system than you normally use. The web application does not care.

Those sound like pretty good things. So, why shouldn't we be excited about turning web application into the face of our rich client applications? Here are some things to consider:

1. Limited desktop interaction. Because the application runs inside of the browser it has a limited ability to communicate with your desktop or other applications. For instance: Do you wanna drag that file from your browser based email client onto your desktop? Well, you can't. Because one, the HTML platform does not allow for that kind of interaction and two, even if it did you would be violating all manner of security policies to allow the browser to write data to the local disk.
   
2. Bound by the browser window. Have you ever right clicked on something in a web application near the edge of the window and then been really confused when the context menu popped up behind the edge of the window rather than on top of it. Because the all HTML is rendered inside the browser window your entire UI is contained within this box. Why?
   
3. Connection Required. How do you read and write email on a flight from LA to Hong Kong using a browser based email client when you don't have a connection to the internet? Simply put, you don't. This may be decreasingly important as more and more of the world becomes connected, but until that time, this is still something to consider. Now, I've heard ideas kicked around about running a local webserver to serve up the Web Interface from localhost when you are disconnected. That's a novel idea but doing so really violates the whole benefit of web applications (i.e. that the application is available through nothing more than a web browser and that no software or data is required to be installed on the local PC).
   
4. Clumsy and Inefficient UI programming. Of course this isn't something that the end user cares about but it bugs me as a programmer. Why should I have to hack together a list view using a milllions of div elements when I can just use a list view widget from a UI library. Even as AJAX toolkits evolve and list view widgets are made readily available through AJAX UI tookits, it still bothers me that the computer has to work 100 times as hard to hack an HTML document to behave like a list view than it would to just render a native list view.
5. Web applications violate browser usability. A web browser is one of the most familiar pieces of software in the world. It is this very fact that makes web applications tempting. Every computer user in the world understands: back, stop, reload and bookmarks. The problem with Web 2.0 is that it violates nearly every one of these concepts. The back button doesn't work to get you to a previous state in a web application because you didn't travel to a new page to get you into the current UI state; you simply modified the DOM of the existing page. Stop often doesn't work, because many times most of the data is being requested asynchronously after the page 'shell' has been loaded from the server. Reload and bookmarks don't work because both of them are URL based and as previously noted, the UI state of the page is not persisted in the URL.

So what is the answer the here? I imagine a future (and I know that I'm not the only here) where applications are written using rich programming languages and UI toolkits, run locally on the desktop (instead of in a browser window), but are dynamically launched from a URL where the most up-to-date copy of the application always resides. Instead of hacking a document formatting language (HTML) to build applications, let's fix the problems in our existing application building languages to allow them to reap the benefits of the lessons that we've learned from web applications (i.e. Zero footprint install on local computer, automatically updating and central access to data).

Leather Jacket

My new leather jacket arrived today from Ithaca, New York. There is really nothing terribly special about the jacket that would require me to order it from Ithaca, New York other than the fact that Harley Davidson apparently discontinued this jacket this year. Lucky for me the dealership in Ithaca had one left in my size on their clearance rack. I like it because it is plain, simple, classic and reasonably priced (which must be why Harley discontinued it). It's also identical to the one the I already own only it's two sizes smaller.