We watched the season finale of Witchblade last evening. Season 2 was pretty good overall. I think I liked the first season better though.

Late last nite I received this letter from Javalobby:

Dear Friends in Javalobby,

I've got a simple favor to ask you. I'd be personally grateful if you would go participate in a Java programming challenge on Wednesday night at OTN to show your support for Javalobby and your goodwill to our sponsor, Oracle, who is hosting the challenge. Oracle has treated Javalobby really well, and their sponsorship and support helps us continue to deliver Javalobby as a free resource for the whole Java developer community. I hope you'll agree that participating in their Java programming challenge is a reasonable way to acknowledge their valuable support, and you may even have fun in the process.

Visit http://www.oracle.com/go/?&Src=1075780&Act=11 for the details and to register.

You won't win any money or a new BMW or a trip to the stratosphere in a Mig- 25, but I will personally send the names of the winners to everyone in Javalobby. You'll be known by your peers in the Java community as the best of the best, and you'll be entitled to brag. I know a lot of you are seriously good Java coders, and I'd bet many of you are better at it than you think. Please take the time to go over to Oracle's OTN site and try your hand at some of their "practice arena" questions. You'll get to preview their interactive challenge environment and you'll definitely hone your skills at coding under pressure. If you enjoy yourself, then go ahead and enter the contest and do your very best to win.

The challenge begins Wednesday, August 28 at 6:30 p.m. Pacific Time. The practice arenas are open around the clock from now on. I understand you should try to show up for the challenge on Wednesday a little early so you don't miss out. If you're late, then you can't participate. Of course, the competition is totally FREE and there is no obligation to buy anything (I don't even think you CAN buy anything!)

Again, visit http://www.oracle.com/go/?&Src=1075780&Act=11 to register and try the practice arenas.

Thank you in advance for your support, and I hope this will be fun for everyone who shows up and helps make the event a success. I genuinely appreciate your help, and you can be sure that your participation will help Javalobby.

Warm regards,

Rick Ross
[email protected]

Oracle 9i for OS X. Took them long enough.

Expert demonstrates yet another Microsoft hack.

Switch to Mac? Too funny!

Java Recipe of the Day: Dynamic Class Loading.

Mozilla 1.1 terrorized my machine.

I inadvertently hit return when asked to change the default browser. No big deal, I thought. Boy was I wrong…

It didn't take long to figure out that version 1.1, like its predecessors, does a pretty pathetic job at rendering most web pages. So I promptly un-installed it. From that point on, Internet Explorer started to refuse opening URLs. I went thru hell and back trying to re-install IE. Everything is hopefully back to normal now. Reader beware.