The answer is yes

For those who live in warmer climates and ask me almost daily, yes, the answer is yes.
You may begin the weather related mocking now.

Funny and Not-a-Funny

This morning, two things appeared on my screen (at different times). The first, a progress bar declaring that the download was NaN% complete (funny). The second, probably the NaNth time (ahem) I've seen the blue screen of dead in the past month - indicating that my laptop is more than umm, NaN% dead (not funny).




(does anyone still get blue screens of death ?)
Today's entry brought to you by the non-number NaN

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day to all

James Gosling cannot be subclassed

Photo from JavaOne 2009

(Yeah, techie humour can be a sad thing)

We are the fastest ! (and probably the best looking too)

Lots of excitement around Intel's Nehalem launch yesterday. It's one fast chip and if you keep track of these things, you will notice lots of benchmarking activity with press and blogs from the various benchmark leaders boasting about their superiority.

Of course, everyone and their dog (ok, just the people I know) has sent me a note asking about my next bragging post - they just assume - no post, no lead but they would be wrong - we are the fastest still. I just continue to prefer the "humble" is the new "proud" approach to benchmark superiority, but since I'm easily swayed, I will succumb to peer pressure and indulge in some bragging.

Yep... IBM J9 is the fastest Java VM you can get.

Derek sums it up again with a concise chart comparing IBM J9, Hotspot and JRockit and while our friends posted some nice improvements (good work guys), we maintain an impressive lead.

What can you conclude here ? The IBM J9 team is an impressive engineering team, and they have done excellent work - congratulations to the J9 and IBM Testarossa teams and my personal thanks to all for your hard work.

What else might you conclude here ? Any team that posts such good looking numbers is likely a really good looking team, likely the best looking team by about 8-10% :)

Of course, verifing the good looking aspects will be tricky since we keep the Canadian engineering teams locked indoors buried under 2 metres of permafrost. So, you'll have to trust me on this one - in addition to the good looking JVM benchmarks, we are one good looking team.

The score

washing machine 1, 16Gb flash drive 0

'nuff said.

We're with you Ken

My friend and co-worker Ken Walker is going through some tough times this year. His wife is fighting cancer and has begun chemo sessions, with associated hair loss effects. Ken has of course decided to join the club and shave his head down to the shiny base which he showcased at the office today. Very slick.

So, on the way home tonight, I stopped in for a number one, all around - very quick and easy - not much styling going on. Now, I don't have much hair in the first place but the hair I do have, I give up, in support, in friendship and in hope.

When Ken did this, his daughter said he looks like an Elf, but when I got home today, my daughter said I look like I just got out of prison. She should have picked Elf, cause last I heard, ex-cons don't hand out Christmas presents.

Ken, Kelly - in solidarity, thinking about you.