Architecture Articles

I ran in to some a great article on architecture:
http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=276&thread=194956

And here are some of the other ones I turned up while trying to find the first again:
http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/seven_secrets.html
http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/opensource/news/myths_1199.html
http://www.rgoarchitects.com/Files/fallacies.pdf
http://mpermar.blogspot.com/2006/07/top-ten-ways-to-create-real-j2ee.html
http://www.addsimplicity.com/downloads/eBaySDForum2006-11-29.pdf

The internet is a great way to learn from the mistakes/experience of others.

Free GMail Invites

Wow, does Google know marketing or what? It is amazing how people will want something just because there is a limited supply. The brilliance is that people in order to get a gmail account are posting their current e-mails all over the web. Bots will pick their current email address up and the spam will mount. So the move to gmail will be facilitated by the mounting spam. Pretty bright way to start a lot of hype before the initial IPO.

I hope this post doesn't lead some poor soul wandering the web in search of a free gmail invite to here. If that is the case, I most sincerely apologize. There are a lot free ones out there, keep looking and good luck. I do have some advice: Don't post your current e-mail address as me@somewhere.com, instead try typing "me at somewhere dot com" This seems to throw off the cheaper bots anyway. The good-news for you would-be seekers is that the demand must be waning, as the price on e-bay has been falling. Two weeks ago people were paying $25 on e-bay for the invites. Last week the going rate seemed about $5. This week they seem be be going for about $1. I guess is is fair that the people that paid a lot for theirs are selling the invites they now get trying to recoup their cost. I've also seen the kind people who have given all of their invites away. Seems like they have got the better idea, I'm a believer in what goes around, comes around.

Do I have a gmail account? Nope. Perhaps it is just sour grapes, but I'm not that anxious to move. I guess it is because then I would have to tell everyone yet one more e-mail address. I will sign up for one when I get the chance, but not unless it is free. I think the size is great. It will be nice to have that much space. I'm wondering if I will end up taking all these files spinning on several different hard drives around here and do a back-up of them by emailing them to myself. Hmm... Google had better have a good way to prevent people from signing up for multiple accounts. I can see them easily becoming the dumping ground for a lot of information. Well enough with this post.

Good luck to all you free invite hunters. If you are willing to hit refresh a couple thousand times here is a link to a site that will give you a free invite eventually: http://freegmail.vzz.net/ It wouldn't be that hard to write a program to do the refreshes for you. If I find the time, I'll do it, and post a link to it here.

A sunset from the Norwegian Sky on our Alaskan cruise. Brian T. took this picture.

Here is a picture I took on Bowknot Bend on a scouting trip at Green River, UT. It was a fun trip (68 miles) to go in a canoe. 

My Very First Post

This is my very first post. I've mostly used Google and just searched and passed through logs. Lately I've subscribed to some. It seems sometimes they have more attention than others. I'm interesting in one of the links here to Hello that has some interesting idea's about photo blogs.