It has been a while. I’ve got plenty of valid reasons too. Let’s start with this (warning - slightly graphic) - which should be more than enough. But, that combined with my new job surely puts it over the top.

Although I can tell you - working through the pain is possible, single-hand typing is for freaks. My new cast situation is making it easier. But, that really only get’s me back to about 65% typing efficiency. Unfortunately, with my bad decision to rejoin the grad school ranks - I’m over burdened at my keyboard schedule. So, the blog was one of the first things to go. Paying bills was right up there too. ; }

I am doing much better. Though this past weekend I had a minor set back while tearing down a wall (garage remodel). I do greatly appreciate my son’s efforts, but he motivated me just a tad too much…and I took a piece of wallboard to the top of my hand (not paying attention). It hit hard enough to break the cast - which I’m not sure is a good sign or not. New cast now, and back to the uncomforts of no movement. I will tell you that the most I’ll be doing with the hammer (left-handed) is plucking nails from 2x4 studs.

There is good news in all this. I was able to attend my company’s New-Employee Orientation last week. I can’t get over how cool the people I get to work with are. I am a poser in a pool of rockstars for sure. But, I digress…it was very nice to meet the other newbies - and start to put faces with voices and names. The potential is high…and my desire to succeed is strong. It is also a good thing that I’m not the only one who will be enjoying the southwest winter. (Real nice to meet you AZ guys.)

I’m a few weeks away from being able to reveal what it is I’m actually working on. I will tease a bit - this thing will bridge the company from being a service-centric organization to a product capable business. It remains to be seen what actually happens, but again the potential is high.

I’m just now starting my second sprint. That’s right, sprint - of the Agile kind. We’ve already come an extremely long way - and not just technically. We are learning to break-down the border between Agile and Open Source Software…which is quite the undertaking.

A couple more teasers…if you hadn’t already picked ’em up from Twitters or previous blog posts. I’m very much liking OSGi for its inherent modularity. It isn’t hard to believe when key OSGi people say that it will be core in Java7. It is also understandable that ServiceMix 4.0 is looking to sit on top of, or in OSGi - depending on your visualization needs. Although it bugs my CTO, the term “pluggability” is very well emphasized in OSGi…and has the ability to overcome versioning and classloader issues in Java.

I am also looking deeply at XMPP/Jabber, via the very cool products from Ignite Realtime. The whole pluggable thing comes back to the front here too. Some guys (at my company) have just recently release some cool Open Source tools over at http://dev.java.net - to go along with their JBI stuff.

And to top it all off REST

• which is very cool - and hidden in all of this Web2.0 brewhaha.

A couple more things. In one of my grad classes we are looking at software design, from an engineering perspective. Of course, very few of the students have enough software engineering background to qualify design. Once again, CS has fallen down. Are design patterns and engineering tool or not? Absolutely…but, why is it then that CS undergrads can’t comprehend the relationship between languages and patterns. Reference this great view and it is not hard to come to the conclusion that the teaching of design patterns is lagging - and, right there with CS.

But, I think the bigger problem is the “pattern” bandwagon. Wait, is that a pattern in of itself?

We have EIP. And, now we have Test Code Patterns as talked about in a great podcast. Using patterns has become a pattern. Now wait. Isn’t that just architecture? Hmmmn…do they teach that in CS programs? Is Architecture a core competency? Can a CS grad pick up OSGi and XMPP and design a modular application?

Ok, enough of that. I’m having a great time. I’ll be blogging in more detail about the project shortly. Stay tuned.