I've been banging on keys for two days to find a solution to a problem that probably shouldn't exist. So here's the set-up. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to have a "recursive table" and made a nice parent-child hierarchy in our database.… more »

Autoboxing is a Java helper introduced with the JDK2v1.5 release that allows some common transformations to be handled by the compiler instead of forcing developers to add implicit code. A trivial example of this is transforming between the Integer ob… more »

The day started out in the high twenties, with the temperature creeping into the thirties before I left home. The forecast put the temperature at the end of the day in the high fifties or even the sixties, so I thought I'd brave the ride in the morning,… more »

It's nearly tax-day, and we're in the middle of a potential spring blizzard. It's just warm enough here to make it into an icky rain. Some of the rain was snow in higher altitudes, so it's come down frozen as it melts en route. As such, the rain isn't… more »

There have probably been a few rants on this log about bad unit testing. If not, then this one ought to cover all of the bases. I write software. Currently I'm writing J2EE software (enterprise level web-services in Java, for those that don't like acr… more »

It's snowing today. Practically blizzard-like in its momentary ferocity. Just big flakes, though, and nothing is sticking to the ground; still, the dunderheads have evidently forgotten how to drive in such weather as traffic backed up all over--took me a… more »

Just game two of our package, and due to complications from weather and dinner last night, we didn't make it to the Metrodome. I did catch much of the game on television, though. Alas, they lost. We do get to return a small number of tickets for re… more »