Once upon a time, folks who had ruined their life, generally screwed things up or just wanted to get away and start over, could up and move to a new town and voila - new life. Those days are gone my friend, thanks to the Internet and, specifically, social networking. The advent of Web 2.0 with all of it's interactivity, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, rss feeds, shopping and all that goes with it, means that most folks have left a trail that will live virtually, forever (every pun intended). User names and passwords on shopping sites means that even if you move from New York to California, they remember you. That is, unless you change them all. And how many folks really want to, or will take the time to do all that? Face it, if you shop Amazon, even if you appear in a new location, they'll greet you with your purchasing history and a collection of items they know you'll like! Wait, I thought this was a new start?

OK - I'll make a new Facebook. Wait, I need to add a lot of my old friends, because I don't have any here! And those old friends will probably forget to remove my old profile from their list of 600 friends and some of thim will make more than one reference to my old personality. Busted! And Oh - and with sites like "Whitepages.com" - if I get a new phone, it's just a matter of days . . .

While you can put in a huge amount of effort to cover your tracks, fact is most folks won't put in the effort, and even those who are willing, aren't aware of all of the places they are identified, tracked and tagged. So face it. Now, more than ever, your best bet is to take your time, and do your life right the first time. The Biblical saying "be sure your sins will find you out" is now something that even non-believers must believe in!

Publishing mogul Tim O'Reilly posted a commentary on 10/25/09 about the White House's move to open source Drupal for their content management system (CMS). It's an interesting article in which he makes the following statement near the bottom which reads:

"Features that would have cost millions of dollars and years of development to add will now be rolled into the scope of current contracts."

The it's intended context, that open source is significantly better and cheaper than commercial applications, the above comment, coming from someone like Tim O'Reilly surprises me. Why? Because it's false! Does Tim think that the Drupal community, or open source communities in general, are the only ones that shares code and applications? It's no secret that I am a huge ColdFusion supporter. Maybe there is an upfront cost to the ColdFusion stack, but anyone who has worked in the environment will tell you that the savings in development time, especially on an enterprise scope project such as the Whitehouse.com website, will quickly recover the up front cost, and from that point on, it's pure savings.

Some may argue that the savings, in the case of the President's website, is in the fact that others, not White House programmers, write the code. Well, let's see. The White House employed prime contractor General Dynamics Information Systems, Drupal specialists Phase 2 and Acquia, hosting provider Terremark, and CDN-supplier Akamai, in order to pull this off. That had to have taken an economic stimulus package all it's own. Oh, and Tim O'Reilly has stock in Acquia (a fact that to his credit, he properly disclose in his article).

Please understand. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Tim O'Reilly. I also know that I'm basically a nobody in the IT world. I have no bone other than with the general mindset that open source is the answer to all the world's IT woes - it just ain't true. And I have never seen a cost analysis that proves, in the enterprise, it is a long term cost savings. What you save in software licensing fees, you will quickly eat up in deployment and development fees. And the maintenance is often much more painful than with some commercial products. (Just ask any Java developer when Java goes from, say Java 4 to Java 5). Many commercial products (such as ColdFusion) have a nearly pain free and almost 100% backward compatible upgrade path. Can you say SAVINGS?

There is a time and place for any solutions - otherwise, they would not really be a solution at all. I wish the White House all the best with their Drupal deployment.

Tim O'Reilly's article: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/whitehouse-switch-drupal-opensource.html

OK - I've been a lot of places in my life. I've been in almost every state East of the Mississippi River, and several West of it. I've been to Cape Cod, the Smokey Mountains, the Black Hills, Yellowstone, the Blue Ride Mountains, the list goes on. But during the past couple of months, I've traveled in areas of my own little ole Meigs County Ohio - the county I've lived 4/5th of my life in - traveled roads and seen beauty that I've never known existed right here. Working with my wireless Internet company has given me reason to be in parts of this county I've never had a reason to be in before. Meigs County's East side is bordered by the Ohio River. It's the home of both the sharpest turn in the river, as well as the only place in the Ohio River that it flows Northeast. The East side of Meigs county closely resembles a "boot". Yes - a boot. With a defined toe and heel. The toe of the county is merely a mile and a half wide, from river bank to river bank. And it a beautiful area. It goes from hills that are around 950' above sea level down to around 600' and some flat river bottoms at the river's edge. A bit North of this, are some beautiful rolling farm land. Pastures of well groomed family farms that are still withstanding in the modern economy. This county is the brunt of many a joke by neighboring counties, but I sincerely doubt that the joke makers have traveled the beautiful areas I have the blessing of making my home. Meigs County, Ohio is a beautiful place, and I hope everyone can enjoy it the way I am able to!

Today, I watched my two sons walk across the stage and receive their High School Diplomas. Up until that very moment, it had not hit me. That 18 years had passed since Casey had come into our lives as a little peanut that I held on my shoulder and rocked and rocked to sleep. And at that moment, it hit me that it's been 11 years since Cody, and his sister became our son and daughter. How I can remember oh so well those little faces, hands and feet. It was at that moment that I realized how much I missed those precious little guys running up to my truck when I'd pull in the driveway from work - so eager to tell me what they had been up to during the day, and to ask if I'd play with them. At the time, it didn't seem all that important - routine. But as I watched each of them, in turn walk across that stage - first Cody and then Casey, for that brief moment, all of those scenes raced in front of my eyes. It hit me then that I'll never have those moments again, and how I wish I'd have taken advantage of more of those opportunities.

These two boys have been so easy to raise. They've demanded so little and found ways to be content with whatever they had. Casey tended to be more like me in terms of emotional make up - having is occasional melt down. Cody has always been the poster boy for "whatever comes, just deal with it". Almost to my envy at times. Don't get me wrong - they've both had their challenging moments like we all had for our parents when we were growing up. But there is just something about these two that is different. I believe it's their mother that makes that difference. Either that or the milk man, because I know it's not been me.

OK - I know I'm not the only dad to be hit like this at this moment in life. I suppose all of us feel that we've been terribly inadequate as fathers. I think of all the times I did not stop what I was doing (it was far too important, you know) to give a few moments of undivided attention - moments that you now realize made absolutely no difference to whatever it was you were doing at the time, but make all the difference now - at least to me in my mind.

Casey and Cody - I love you guys. And I am so very, very proud of you. How well you've turned out despite my lack of attention at times. I know all the dad's reading this must feel the same way. I think it's a brotherhood - but for this minute, I feel all alone. Time will fix that - I hope. I do know this. I can't wait to stop what I'm doing when a little guy runs up to me and says, "Grandpa - will you play with me?"

Being a web programmer, I spend a LOT of time in a seat, at a desk, inside a building. Now understand, I have, by most standards, HUGE windows in my office. I am right on the ground floor and it's just a few short steps, and voila - I'm outside. But, as most programmers will relate - you get in the "zone" on a project - and when you do, you put your head down and boom, six hours have passed. You would not even realize that, except that your bladder is screaming at you or your stomach is growling so loud you can't hear the strokes on the keyboard anymore. The worst part of that kind of thing for me is that I get burned out. I've learned to recognize that, at that point, I either take a few days off, or I spend the next few days or weeks just spinning my wheels, until I DO take a few days off. Last week, I hit that wall. So I put in the last three days of this week off. I was out and about on Wed. It was "OK", but it was a rainy, overcast, blustery day. But Thursday - aaahhh - Thursday. I was out all day with a friend, and I have to say that I experienced feelings and emotions that I had not experienced in many years. It was mid 70's with the sun popping in and out from behind fluffy white cotton ball clouds and an ever so gentle breeze. Many times, during the day, I relived little emotions and senses I remember experiencing as a kid. You know, those long, lazy days where you mom locked you outside for what seemed like an eternity to a kid . . . It's amazing how different my perception of time is now that I'm most likely over half way through my life from when I was a kid. What seemed to be dragging hours as a kid is just a few moments now. (Anyway - sorry I digressed). But the point is, I felt as though I was actually coming back to life yesterday. Just those few fleeting hours of God's beauty did it for me. I have no intention of making that my last day. I was out and about all day again today, but it can't compare to the experience yesterday as I experienced this for the first time in a LONG time! Man, it feels good to come back to life again!