Sunday, March 21, 2004

on a "the server side" poll a few weeks ago, i made it onto a list of people who are known in the world of enterprise java. people tended to associate me with "simple to use" APIs rather than particular products such as voyager (objectspace), glue (tme) or fabric (webmethods). in some ways this is a bit depressing, because i think the products themselves demonstrate some good innovation. on the other hand, simplicity is the main theme behind pretty much everything i'm involved with in the world of technology, so maybe it's not such a bad thing after all. 9:41:43 PM    comment []

one of the comments i'm beginning to see quite regularly these days is regarding the impact of choice on happiness. apparently, when there are lots of choices, it's quite common for a person's happiness to go down, because they're more likely to agonize over the initial choice, and more likely to wish they'd made a different choice after they finally make a decision. i can definitely understand this situation. probably the best mind set to have is to settle for "pretty good" most of the time, because the difference between "pretty good" and "very good" in real terms is quite small. 9:38:41 PM    comment []

spring is in the air in washington d.c., so i decided to buy a bike this weekend. when i was a kid, i always used to like racing bikes, but the roads can be quite rough in this area. in the end, i bought a "fast hybrid" bike, which is mostly modeled after a racing bike but has straight handlebars and slightly larger wheels. so far, it looks like this will work out great. i'm going to take it for a spin during the week and see how it fares. 9:35:13 PM    comment []