Personal news

This is a Joan Miro aquatint, Hammer Without a Master, that was a gift from my parents. It's been quite a saga getting it reframed, but now that it's up on the wall I'm really happy with it.

I've got a new work blog, thanks to Sun's new found emphasis on employee-community interaction.

Not much there right now, but I like the design.

The J2EE Tutorial, 2nd Edition is listed on Amazon.com, which means I'm an author, the 11th Ian Evans in the results page.

The book will be released in June, coincident with JavaOne.

With the uncertainties involved with the recently announced Sun layoffs, it's a good time to update my resume (in PDF as well).

This morning was our day in court for the "Bonny Doon Four," intransigent trespassers & moonwatchers that we are. After an hour and a half of cases that included DUIs, theft, reckless driving, public drunkenness, and a slew of failures to appear, Chuck, Sarah, and I appeared in front of the honorable Stephen Siegel (Jay was assigned to a different courtroom) for our arraignment. When the charges of trespassing on an ecological preserve were read, people in the gallery snickered, apparently.

Our misdemeanors were ammended to infractions, and a $10 fine was assessed.

Jay, John, and I are settling in to our place here in the inner Sunset, and I've been taking advantage of the neighborhood's amenities, especially the Arizmendi Bakery co-op down the street.

The house is slowly coming together, although we're in short supply of furniture right now. Chuck is rallying for a pool table, but I think that would move us from "bachelor pad" to "female-hostile environment." The bubble hockey table will come, though. Oh yes, it will come.

Our DSL line was installed this last week through BritSys, and it's pretty damn fast: 1300 down/650 up with two static IPs. I satisfied my geekish impulses by putting together a silent router/firewall by installing OpenBSD on a compact flash card, and putting the compact flash card in a Soekris Net4801 via OpenSoekris. It took a little tweaking, but everything's working now, including the wireless LAN.

I've been paying close attention, though, and have yet to spot any residents purchasing or consuming the so-called "San Francisco treat." Nevertheless, I will continue to observe the locals and their customs.

I'm an unrepentant law breaker. Specifically, I've been cited for misdemeanor trespassing for enjoying the moonrise over Monterey Bay and the coast north of Santa Cruz, in the Bonny Doon ecological preserve. There's an area of sandstone formations colloquially known as the "moon rocks" that has impressive near-360 degree views of the Santa Cruz mountains, the bay, and the coast.

Because many people go up there and drink beer, litter, carve their names in the sandstone, and carouse, the California Department of Fish & Game have been writing tickets for people still in the preserve after sunset.

Jay, Sarah, Chuck, Elisha, and I were stopped at around midnight as we were walking back to our car, and proceeded to spend the next hour and a half getting our licenses run and tickets run up. Officer Steve Schindler was kind enough to let Elisha off with a warning, seeing as how we have a court date in late September, and she'll be in Corvalis, OR going to grad school. The rest of us, though, were cited, and must appear before a judge. The maximum fine is apparently $1350.

You read that correctly--$1350 for misdemeanor trespassing. If I don't fight it and pay whatever fine the judge levies against me, I'll have a criminal record. Meanwhile, my neighbor Claire just had her mountain bike ripped off the locked roof rack of her car, a bike easily worth $2000. Any guess on how diligently the police will work to catch this bit of grand theft?

The house search up in SF is over. Jay, John, and I will be moving to the Inner Sunset, on 12th Ave. at Lawton, in three weeks or so.

I think we really scored with the place: a house with a two car garage, a backyard, a really nice kitchen w/ marble counters, and large rooms. It's not expensive either, and the neighborhood is nice. We're just a couple blocks from 9th & Irving with all the restaurants, bookstores, and bars, and are two blocks from the N Judah Muni train. We're up on a hill, with views of Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, Mt. Tam & the Marin headlands, and the tops of Golden Gate Bridge.

The best part is the outside: it looks like a castle, with stone fronting. We'll be digging a moat, and I'll be sure to get a cauldron of boiling oil for the door to door salesmen.

I'm pumped to be moving to the city. I've been in Santa Cruz for 10 years now, and it really feels like it's time to move on.

My older sister got in to an accident back in January on the 101 down in L.A. that left her with a totalled car, but thankfully no significant injuries. She needed a new car, and liked driving my RAV, so I sold it to her.

I had been thinking about selling the RAV for a little while, and was casually noting other cars to buy. Since I bought Lola, my sky blue 1973 Mercedes 280SE 4.5, I felt I should get a more environmentally friendly car for commuting. Lola is a V8 that gets maybe 13 or 14 mpg. It looks snazzy, though.

I was considering the new hybrids from Toyota and Honda, but was a little worried about the long-term reliability of such a new and different car. I also wasn't exactly crazy about the looks of either the Prius or Insight.

In the process of reading about high-mileage cars, I came across the Volkswagen TDI, a modern diesel engine with a turbo charger and direct fuel injection. Yesterday, I bought a new VW Jetta GLS TDI in silver, which gets 40-50 mpg and is a lot of fun to drive.

The engine doesn't have a lot of horsepower (90), but does have a lot of torque, so it feels agile and zippy. It has good passing power, but I won't be hauling a large trailer full of lead any time soon with it. The interior is very nice, with comfortable seats, an instrument panel that lights up in purple and red at night, and a nice stereo.

All of the problems with diesel cars from the past have been fixed: no bad smells when the car starts up, no rattling at idle, and no black smoke from the exhaust. Since diesel fuel doesn't need to be as heavily refined and contains more energy than unleaded fuel, there are some real environmental advantages to using a diesel engine. Diesel engines also produce less CO2 than gas engines. I can also use biodiesel fuel with no modifications should it become more widespread. Biodiesel is made from plants, and apparently gives off a pleasant french fry/popcorn odor when burned.

There are some drawbacks, though. The quality of diesel fuel in the US is far lower than in Europe, where almost half of all cars are diesel. There's a lot of sulpher in US diesel, which helps contribute to acid rain, although California has stricter diesel fuel regulations than other states, and in 2006 all diesel fuel in the US must be ultra-low sulpher. Diesel also produces more particulate matter than gasoline, and while the engines and catalytic converters in modern diesels make this much less of a gap, it's there nonetheless.

Even with these qualifications, though, I still think the benefits are clear. I'll burn 4 or 5 times less gas than a typical SUV per mile, and 2 times less than a typical car on the highway. The impact on the environment will be lessened when ultra-low sulpher gas becomes widespread by 2006, and even more so when biodiesel is available in my area. The car itself is stylish, fun to drive, and economical.

I bought a new Apple PowerBook a few weeks ago, and have been having fun screwing around with it. One of the applications is iCal, which allows you to share calendars on the web.

My work calendar is available now at:
http://www.icalx.com/public/ievans/Work

It should be updated fairly frequently.

It looks like I'll be working on an installation and user's guide for Sun Microsystems for their implementation of the Liberty Alliance identity management service. I'll get to work from home, I think, as the development team is in India.