John Gordon

Funny thing, but I noticed a few months ago that my site was throwing a syntax error when trying to bring up any page. I wasn't too worried about it, thinking that it was some upgrade Dreamhost had done on my hosting server; I'd have to create a trouble ticket and get it resolved. I was wrong, I'd been hacked!

We did some sledding today to celebrate our neighbour, Luc's, birthday party. Even shot a little video!

A prospective client asked for a code demo and I'm happy to oblige. I put together a simple web application that manages job listings. It's quite simple: list, create, retrieve, update and delete are all supported. the idea is to show:

A) I know what I'm doing
B) I can write Java and .Net software
C) I'm ready for anything. Bring it on

granted, I got a little carried away with that last point.

The code is written in Java 1.5 and the Spring Framework (MVC) 2.5 (complete with 2.5's MVC annotations configuration.)

Our family pics came in the other day. Grace and Charlie were thrilled to have all the attention pored on them. I'd show you the family pics with Nicole and me but doing that reminds me of that line from Apocalypse Now: "...the horror.....the horror..."

For best printing, download the original image at the bottom of this page.

As a member of the town counsel in Bethany Beach, Delaware, my Dad had the opportunity to meet Joe The Plumber today. While Dad didn't vote for Biden, that's okay, all of his offspring did!

fall has yet again returned to Maine. In fact, we're actually approaching the end of the most beautiful part of it. Our backyard has two maple trees, one of which has already dropped it's leaves. As someone who has lived in a city environment almost all my adult life, I'm enjoying watching what these trees do. Today, for example, the maple, which heretofore had held onto it's leaves, decided to drop almost all of them en masse on the space of about an hour. It wasn't uncommon to see during the 20 minute span of time I watched to see 20-30 leaves sailing to the ground simultaeneously.

Place your bets on the new office pool going round...

Well, as you all should know by now, JP Morgan Chase just bought out my employer of 6 1/2 years, Washington Mutual Bank. I, for one, welcome our JP Morgan Overlords. :-)

Attached to this post is the presentation JP Morgan put together outlining their reasoning for the buyout. One highlight is that they are writing down $30 billion in losses from Wamu's portfolio up front. Funny, but didn't the Wamu execs say it would only be $19 billion?

Congratulations to my Dad for winning a seat on the Bethany Beach City Council ("who's he?"--the handsome devil on the right). As an example of my father's incorruptibility, he refused to give me a year-round parking permit for the beaches. What a guy!

The Downeaster, Amtrak's commuter rail between Portland, Maine and Boston, now offers free wifi! This makes the four hour commute a productive one!