Ramblings of a mental patient

I decided today that I’m going to delete my other journal.

 My reasons for this are mainly that I’m not even sure what the point of having it anymore really is.

I had a break through today.For the past week and a half I’ve been figuring out how the folks at jboss implemented iiop (corba).

Yes, Corba. Fast forward to 1999. But, I really need to integrate some java apps into a legacy codebase and it needs to deal with high volumes of transactions while performing well.

Since RMI is out due to me not using java, and web services are out due to them being really, really slow, that left IIOP.As it stands I have a C++ client written that interacts with the EJB I’ve deployed and registered with jacorb (the orb in jboss). Character encoding issues behind me for the most part I’m rather pleased. Its fast. Seriously fast. It gives RMI a run for its money when compared to java->java communication.

Looking at wire dumps its pretty obvious that the corba wire protocol is dense but efficient. Packet sizes are small and marshalling is minimal.All in all as a proof of concept this shows I’m on the right path. I’ll probably be writing up a tutorial on what I had to do to get ejb3+jboss+corba+C all working together. There was almost zero to go on and it was needlessly painful. But, first, I need to finish writing a C++ library for interfacing with the app, then I’ll project bindings to perl via swig. At least that’s the plan. It works on the whiteboard.

 I’ve been thinking about school more. I think my career has more or less peaked where I’m at. I need to do/learn something different. I guess I have about 2 years to figure it out while Kat is in school.

I also noticed that Merriam-Webster has added ‘ginormous’ to their dictionary. See the new words here. 10 year olds everywhere can rejoice.  

I had a nice long bike ride all over valley forge park on saturday. Just about got sun burned, but had an exhaustingly good time. I think I need to go get a new pair of shoes and go running there too. Its less setup and I’m probably more likely to go frequently. I’m so glad I have a nice park nearby. We’re still adjusting to the loss of Beauty. Home feels empty without her. She was such a force of nature. Now, empty laps are common. The other cats are adjusting. Snowbear is being more affectionate. Mornings are quieter. Today Kat starts classes. I’m very excited for her. School has begun. Now I just need to figure out over the next 2 years what I’ll do when/if it is my turn to further my education. 

I had to put her down tonight.

The cancer was in her lungs and making it hard to breathe. She started acting funny about 2 days ago. Yesterday she wouldn’t come out from under the bed to eat or drink. Last night she came up to sleep with me and I could tell her breathing wasn’t right. In the morning today she went back under the bed and skipped breakfast.

I had Kat take her to the vet for a checkup. I more or less knew what I’d hear. So when I got the call that confirmed the worst, I left work and headed over.

The decision to put her down was a hard one, but I feel its better than just treating symptoms and prolonging the end. She had a loving home and I did my best. We held her and talked to her until the very end.