A lonely stretch of hiway
in the middle of canada
on the road where my father
came from

On the way to see his grandaughter
who he would never see
a cold and lonely winter
two people crossing provinces
to see there daughter
who binds them together somehow
through all the trouble

Maybe just friends now on a lonely
distant road. But freinds are what they really alwasy were
Where does each road take us, just to some physical place
or does it takes where we want, some emotional home

Some roads lead to national champioships
proud parents watching their daughter play for the bronze baby
But the road home is miles away, and always will be
Missed years are the worst u can do
Don't miss those years that count, cause
u'll find your self on an endless cold and lonely road
that has no place to go, no home at the end
always one more place to go, one more town to reach

Ruby is a cool language that is poised to gain considerable momentum over the next year. Similar to where Java was in 96. Matz, the inventor of the language is in the process of designing a bunch of changes for it. My gut tells me he will add the things he wants and maybe deprecate a few things but won't really gut Ruby of things that were bad ideas etc. The reasoning will be the same as Sun when they knew there were problems with Java (around 1.1) but didn't want take a chance and alienate the people who had already adopted it. In hindsight it looks like they missed the opportunity, since it it's almost impossible now since there are so many people of projects based on Java. I guess u could argue that Java wouldn't have taken off if they had made those changes, but I think the early adopters would have stayed on because early adopters usually take something to heart and want the best for it anyway. So my hope is that Matz will be bold and clean up the language before adoption really takes off. The early adoptors are loyal and will support the move (no doubt with a lot of whining but they'll get over it :>)

Like I said Ruby is very cool, in many ways it's similar to Smalltalk, a more modern version I guess, although Smalltalk was pretty amazing for it's time (and actually still is). The one thing that Smalltalk had though that Ruby doesn't is the IDE. Smalltalk was an entire environment, with all the code easy to browser, etc. It was a bit quirky and probably not as nice as JBuilder was in it's J789 timeframe. But Smalltalk really pioneered a lot of IDE ideas. Ruby totally lacks this. There are some IDE's but none that even have the table stakes necessary to be an ok IDE.
FreeRide is a Ruby IDE written (mostly in Ruby). However activity on it seems very slow and it's lacking many necessary features or stability. It has a plugin environment (haven't really looked at it to decide if it's a good design or not, but for now assume it is). I think FreeRide should be really pushed by the Ruby communicaty with a lot of effort put into it. IBM created the eclipse community which is really taking off. A fundamental reason is that it empowers java developers to add to there development environment. Back to freeride in a minute.

RDT is a Ruby plugin for Eclipse. It's in a similar state as FreeRide, except they get a bunch of stuff for free since they are basing in on Eclipse which gets them further along with less effort. But now they are at the stage where they are about even and won't be able to leverage as much. They do have one nice advantage though is that some students have done a nice job of adding Ruby on Rails support on top of RDT, which gives RDT even more life.

I think RDT and RadRails can and will be good development environments for Ruby, but the big thing they are lacking is that they themselves are not developing RDT/RR in Ruby. The problem for them is they will spend much of there time in Eclipse and Java and little in Ruby other than some basic testing. They just won't get the feel for how well it solves real world Ruby development problems. If you are developing and IDE you get so much gain from the feedback of developing the tool in itself.

That's why I'd personally like to see FreeRide take off. However another solution would be to use JRuby to create a plugin environment for RDT so that you write plugins in Ruby on top a base framework. If the RDT people were rigorous and just used Eclipse as the equivalent of the core eclipse and then wrote all there plugins in Ruby, they'd get the same benefit as writing for FreeRide and create the community around the IDE that could really boost Ruby.

I'm trying to decide where I would like to help, I'd really like to help make a first rate Ruby IDE that was written in Ruby plugins to get leverage the community.

So, I'd like Matz to really prune the bad out of Ruby, be ruthless, u won't get another chance, Ruby's adoption is just starting to take, the masses are waiting. The other thing which is really needed is a Ruby IDE writting (at least mostly) in Ruby, which one I don't know. Guess I'll jump in soon after I decide which one one I want.

Cheers

My car has been making a lot noise for a long time since a little before my last oil change, but was getting quite a bit worse the last few weeks. I dropped by the dealership and asked the service manager to listen to it. It started sounding expensive and wasn't clear if it could be covered by my extended warranty. He was talking berrings, replacing the air condition motor (it was going on all the time even though the air conditor wasn't going on), faulty switches causing the air conditioner to go on etc. It was sound in the 600-1000 range. So i said thanks and I'll call back for an appt. So I took into my mechanic, to get my oil changed again and for him to listen to it.

Anyway I told him about the air condition motor going on all the time even though the ac wasn't on. He immediatley asked have you had the defog on, and i had because it's been really wet here. He said the ac goes on when you have the defog on (i guess to remove moisture?). So we did a little test to prove that. Whenever the ac motor went on it got more noisy, even though it was noisy without it. So he popped the lid, looked at my engine belt and said that needs replacing,, so why don't we replace that and see what happens. So he changed my oil and replaced the belt. I looked at it after he had it off and it was soooo bad, cracked, even holes right thru, was definitely about to break on me (wonder what that does to the engine). It was amazing easy to replace (he said that's why mechanics never let the customers in to watch because then they can't charge them all that money :>). Anyway the car sounds great, runs better, when the ac motor comes on it just sounds like an electric motor not like how it did, and the total cost was $80 including oil and belt!!!!!

Waiting, always waiting.
I wait believing, but after years and years I start to lose faith
When I go to the mailbox to get that letter
The one that sets me free, that starts my life over
I hope but somehow don't really expect it to ever come
What about that visas, I thought it was done
But now I wait... and wait

When will the waiting end
When will life finally begin
Is it so much to ask
I've paid the price
Just let me start over
Let me have a life again

Maybe it won't be much
But I don't care, just some happiness
for me and my baby
thats all i ask
some happiness
for me and my baby

Patriot! Someone new at my work said 'I'm patriot the other day'. I was offended by that, because it's makes such basic assumptions. Of course patriot is defined by the person saying it, so if you don't agree with their politics/views then by definition you aren't a patriot.

Was my fathers birthday today, or would have been, he died the same year before my daughter was born, over 22 years ago. My mom went to his grave and put flowers up, I will go see them the next time I'm in Canada. I miss him to this day and always will. How I have needed his advice over the years, of course when he was alive I never wanted his advice, man what a stupid human I am. Oh well, that's life, I hear that too much. I think it's a curse to be sentient, why be aware, what worse trick could have been played on humans.