Don't you hate blog posts about blogging?

My son, Ben, has been nagging me because I only had one blog post for the month of October. So, I started several different entries with topics ranging from the technical to the comical to the cynical. But none of them ever made it.

So, I started thinking about why I have such a hard time blogging. I was in need of a good excuse. Blogger Eric Burke had an interesting one. He said that Twitter had caused him to blog less. Another notable blogger, Michael Easter of CodeToJoy fame, was also of the opinion that Twitter was causing people to stop blogging. In fact, Michael wouldn't even go on Twitter because he was so sure that it was killing blogging. As a side note, I was thinking that somebody should write a Twitter client that would cross post your tweets to the comment section of a target blog. "Wheels down on your blog..." Where was I - oh yeah, Twitter as an excuse for not blogging. Well, I tried that one on for size but it didn't really fit since I hardly ever post on Twitter and when I do it's usually just to reply to someone else. So, I kept looking...

Then, I figured, well, I just started a new job and I don't have time to blog. That sounded like a reasonable reason, except that I'm currently working from home and avoiding 2 1/2 hours on the road each day. So I actually have more time than I've had for a while.

Then, the interesting thought hit me that I don't have anything interesting to blog about. That one didn't last long. With all that is going on in the 2G community and with the cool stuff I'm working on at Contegix, that was a poor excuse for an excuse. So, I'm still stuck inexcusably underblogged.

I'll keep on looking for that perfect excuse, but in the meantime I'll try to start blogging more. At least this one should get Ben off my back for a while. :)

Catching Up

So much has happened since I last put anything here. Where to begin...

Last month Jeff Brown spoke at the Capital Java User Group in Madison, WI. Jeff gave an awesome presentation on metaprogramming with Groovy. Jeff drew our biggest crowd yet and they loved it!

Ok, so this is not a photo of Jeff at CapJug.  It's Jeff at JavaOne 2008.  My picture of Jeff at CapJug didn't turn out.  But still...

Another important note on the September CapJug meeting, during our book give-away, with six excellent titles to choose from, Beginning Groovy and Grails, by Judd, Shingler & Nusairat, was the first choice again!  Second time in a row.  ( and unfortunately last since I don't have any more copies to give away... hey Apress!)

What next... I have been graciously given the opportunity to speak at the upcoming Groovy / Grails Experience which, unfortunately, has been postponed until February of next year.  I guess that gives me more time to work on my slides.  

Our family's newest Grails developer, Joshua Arthur, is doing well, growing fast and bringing lots of fun and excitement to our house.

And following up on the forlorn hope that I mentioned a while back.  The project is over 90% complete and should be "feature complete" by the end of this month.  It has been amazing to see the difference using Grails has made.  Not only are we on track to meet this unrealistic deadline but we were able to replace the existing JSF portion of the application with Grails.  So now we have a 100% Grails web application communicating with an EJB3 server.  If we had another month or so we could replace the EJB server too.  Wouldn't that be nice...

Although I am thrilled with the progress of this project and the statement it makes about Grails' productivity, I am even more thrilled that I will NOT be here to see the end of it.   This is my last week at this job.   After a day off at home and a weekend in Minnepolis for the NFJS conference there, I will be heading down to Saint Louis, MO to start my new job as a Grails Developer with Contegix!!!  (can you tell I'm excited?)   This is a dream job for me.  I've known about Contegix for a while now, as a sponsor of the NFJS series and as the host for the Groovy and Grails projects but then Matthew Porter gave that awesome keynote at the 2GX earlier this year and another at the NFJS / G2One meetup at JavaOne and I was totally impressed with their vision and committment to the 2G community specifically as well as to the broader open source community.   Besides, how cool is it to have a boss who's on Twitter?! 

I guess that's enough of an update for now.  Oh, one last thing.  This was under-reported so I'll post about it here.  My good friend and Groovy guy, Ken Kousen, put up a Grails Plugin Rating site.  It's a great way to see what plugins are there and to let everyone know which ones you like or don't.  Check it out.