TSSS: Day 3 and Aftermath
The third day (yes yes, I’m a day late posting about it) was a bit of a non-event, as far as I was concerned. Unlike the evil supermen who conspired to keep me up for obscene numbers of hours on all previous nights, I turned out to be some freaky mixture of mortal and zombie for the third day.
Needless to say, I missed all the morning sessions. I did however make it to the Eclipse tools session. The session was great, really really useful for me personally. The presenter’s voice was a soothing monotone that seemed almost engineered to put one to sleep. Needless to say, I was powerless against this astounding weapon and promptly fell asleep in my chair for the entirety of the session.
What DID wake me up however was Sam Pullara, managing to ask yet another awkward question. Sam has this disturbing ability to ask very innocent sounding questions that invariably most presenters either don’t understand or look foolish answering (usually the latter). I thought it was accidental until I realised he specifically came in to this session to harpoon the poor guy. The question (heavily paraphrased, needless to say, Sam is too polite and accurate for his own good) was if Eclipse had any plans to switch from SWT to Swing now that Swing beats the living poo out of SWT, and that Swing evolves much faster and gets much better with every release, whereas SWT is essentially a dinosaur idea that has far surpassed its extinct-by date. The answer consisting of the usual shuffling about, some feeble arm waving gestures, which I think pretty much anyone could have reduced to ‘umm, no. We’re sticking with swt, we’re screwed’.
The next session I went to was Scott Ambler’s Agile database stuff. Scott is by far the slickest speaker I’ve seen in this conference. It’s not all smoke and mirrors though as he clearly knows his stuff and manages to bridge the gap between the app guys and the data guys very well. His ‘agile’ talk though just ended up making the Thoughtworks guys look like a bunch of young boys staring down at a small protrusion between their legs and giggling at the fact that if they paw at it in an appropriate manner, they can illicit some sort of reaction.
So, onto the Symposium aftermath. Here’s a rough guide to it all:
Finally, some suggestions for TSS folks on how to improve things for next year:
May 9th, 2004 at 8:48 pm
You sound a little queer there wanting to spend the night with all the supermen ;)
May 9th, 2004 at 9:33 pm
Evil? I thought it was “evil Ted” not “evil Cameron.” I was just around to keep you kids out of trouble! ;-)
May 10th, 2004 at 3:27 am
It’s “elicit a reaction”, not “illicit”.
May 10th, 2004 at 6:32 am
In Vegas it probably is “illicit”…
May 10th, 2004 at 11:04 am
> Have it somewhere where there is plenty to do for those who don’t actually want to go to any talks.
Good idea, how about Vegas?
May 10th, 2004 at 12:10 pm
Before that anyone takes the umbrage that I’m approximately saying, lascilo they explain that the vinaccia fleury l’uscita entire of situation from the proportion would have to teach to its expositors in order not to jump. For the detailed information, I make them reference my next book sull’oggetto. Here I will point out only some accidental articles that can be new or particularly interesting to you. As an example, if thoughts that the cannibalism, moglie-to exchange and l’omicidio of the infants and the old ones are acceptable behavior, then you’re that it suffers from nearsightedness the much serious one. You’re that puts too much to fire on that fleury it wishes them to see and not succeeding to observe many other things of importance the much largest one. Why the comunismo exists? Which causes it? And why the means constantly refuse ringraziare that anyone that tasks that Fleury’s never tries won’t to be used for retribution political has been transported before a court and has been accused of the neocolonialism? In order to understand the answers to those questions, in the first place you must become account that I’m not one psychiatrist. To times, bench?, you wished it were, of way that I have been able to understand more best that what makes people as fleury wishes to cancel our sense dell’identit?.
May 10th, 2004 at 1:35 pm
This bile leaves me with many questions:
1. I thought that the fault for Friday’s debauchery was actually the result of one non-attendee taunting the dorks… er… attendees that they were in Vegas and not enjoying the tourist attractions?
2. My understanding was that Cameron was actually on a recruitment drive for degenerates. Did he in fact find any?
3. Isn’t salad an antivenom for overindulgence in alcoholic beverages?
4. Is it in fact true that one BileMaster was, in fact, unconscious on a bar at some point during the weekend?
5. Is there an available translator for the Chiara post? I’m afraid that my degree only covered American and English literature, and not Alien.
May 10th, 2004 at 2:03 pm
To answer 5. Chiara is a terrorist using code language to communicate with sleepers like me..(oops)
May 10th, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Bob (Crazy) is the man if you want to go on after the party, walking all over Vegas that is until sunrise, drinking T&T at every opportunity.
Dion (TSS) certainly didn’t shame the Brits, I didn’t see him skipping a round, he paid for half of them too!
Hani (Bile) did start Saturday evening looking rather the worse for the ware, he even turned down a round, that was until he got a beer in his hand and he was off.
Rod (Boing) was too busy talking about Spring to drink much, he was in the bar, as you might expect for and Aussi but a long way behind Mark (Atlassian) who was no only still talking sense after 15 beers (fat tires) but still drumming up business, good on ya!
Cameron and Rob were probably the safest, trying to sell Tangosol T-shirts for drinks, and doing quite well by the looks of it.
-John-
May 10th, 2004 at 5:25 pm
Chiara is a bloody Markov chain program.
Move along now.
May 10th, 2004 at 5:26 pm
Swing “constantly improving”?
SWT “beats the living poo out of SWT”?
LOL.
May 10th, 2004 at 11:00 pm
I am gay. and stupid.
May 11th, 2004 at 10:11 am
I seem to remember you doing plenty of “bad things” on your own… I also seem to remember you all trying to drag me to breakfast after a night of “bad things” when it was only 4 hours till my talk. I think that qualifies as another “bad thing”.
Just because you’re not very good at being bad doesn’t mean you weren’t trying, though…
May 11th, 2004 at 10:49 am
I like caress the salami while reading hani’s posts
May 11th, 2004 at 11:07 am
Funny, IDEA is the only application written in Swing that performs like a native desktop application. You can easily spot a Swing application by its refreshing so f***n slowly… try, for instance, loading an average-sized XML into Morphon. Yuck.
May 11th, 2004 at 11:38 am
I like poon-tang
May 11th, 2004 at 11:53 am
Funny, IDEA is the only application written in Swing that performs like a native desktop application.
More correctly: it is the only Swing application that is of any use.
But, IDEA does not perform like a native desktop application by a large margin. It performs like a badly written sluggish native application.
May 11th, 2004 at 4:16 pm
Only Fggots go to TSS.
May 11th, 2004 at 7:09 pm
You’re a well paid scientist
You only talk in facts
You know you’re always right
‘Cause you know how to prove it
Step by step
A PhD to show you’re smart
With textbook formulas
But you’re used up
Just like a factory hand
[Chorus]
Something is wrong here
You won’t find in on a shelf
You’re well paid
You’re well trained
You’re tied to a rack
Company cocktails-gotta go
Say the right thing
Don’t fidget, jockey for position
Be polite
In the pyramid you hate
Sip that scotch
Get that raise
This ain’t no party at all
[Chorus]
Cringe and tense up
Grind your teeth
And wipe your sweaty palms
Close your windows driving past
The low life company bar
They’re making fun of you
AHHH
Even you
You’ve gotta punch the clock
Too scared to punch your boss
When will you crack
When will you crack
When will you crack
When will you open your eyes
Pull up to your sterile home
You’re drained
Bite the heads off of your kids
Chew them well, they taste like you
Just slam the door
Assigned here ’cause your company owns the land
All your colleagues live there too
Private guards in golf carts
Keep you safe at home?
[Chorus]
When will you crack
When will you crack
When will you crack
When will you crack
The dark shattered underbelly
Of the American dream
Avoid it like the plague
It stares you from your bathroom mirror
Drown
May 12th, 2004 at 3:30 am
TSSS is the biggest conference for Java clowns out there. Just look how many gravitated to this one.
May 12th, 2004 at 11:45 am
I like TSSS as opposed to other conferences. At least you don’t have all that vendor spam going on. I agree with Hani – they picked a good location too.
May 12th, 2004 at 7:37 pm
I like to eat poon-tang
May 13th, 2004 at 9:01 am
Reading between the lines, here’s my impression of what happened at the TSS conference.
A bunch of geeks get together somewhere in Vegas and spend several hours in the bar convincing each other that they are important and their careers do matter and that they aren’t sad little f*ckers and they are in fact real men because they can drink three whole beers before throwing up in the street somewhere and the fact that they couldn’t pick up any chicks at all isn’t because they have thin whispy facial hair and bottle-end glasses and wear t-shirts that say “There are only 10 kinds of people…” but it’s because they were too busy talking about earth-shaking technology with stupid names like WebWank or Shite-ernate and who needs women anyway when you’ve got J2EE.
Get a life and stop trying to convince us that you’re interesting. Anyone who spends all their free time working on an Open Source project when they could be doing something interesting with their life is a boring little sh*t and no amount of tales of “bad behaviour in Vegas” will convince us otherwise.
May 13th, 2004 at 1:00 pm
Has anyone seen crazybob’s poon-tang?
May 13th, 2004 at 2:17 pm
Toon Pang: I think you are stereotyping here just a bit. Perhaps you would like to meet at a bar and see how many beers you can drink before throwing up. I will go one-for-one with you and also bet on who is left standing ;-).
May 13th, 2004 at 7:23 pm
These reports from TSSS are the funniest you have ever done. I read them all at once and my sides are hurting from laughter convulsions.
May 14th, 2004 at 4:23 am
Hey, somebody else works at Tangosol! Cameron’s not the only person there. They finally gave another one of their employees access to a browser. Either that or CP’s posting under an assumed name these days.
May 14th, 2004 at 5:14 am
Someone else works at Tangosol ? Judging by his comments he’s a bloated egoist with a massive beer belly. Hehehehe
May 14th, 2004 at 1:42 pm
Yes others work at Tangosol, in fact I have been there since the beginning. No beer belly yet (stress on ‘yet’). Cameron does give me access to a browser but I am usually too busy selling software ;).
May 14th, 2004 at 4:18 pm
…or drinking …or carrying around boxes of shirts :-)
May 14th, 2004 at 6:47 pm
Hey, who let Rob out?
May 15th, 2004 at 2:27 pm
… or testing the best way to make a gimlet (test subjects needed).